Rosalie woke in a rustic room not at all unlike the cabin at the entrance to her mountain compound. She was worried but immediately noticed the note on her bedside table. It explained that she died and was Ascendant, and that she should go downstairs where she could get something to eat when she was ready. She thought it might have been a trick even though her senses reassured her. When she looked to her face in the mirror, it was forty years ago she felt just fine. She listened to the sounds coming from outside and got back into bed and slept a little more. She slept deeply and woke again. She checked the mirror to see if she was still young and she was. Her thin gray hair was red and thick, and wavy and vibrant. Her cherub’s cheeks were high and smooth. The note said there were clothes for her in the closet so she took off the night gown, dressed, and opened the door. The sounds were jovial as she walked down the hall. After two turns and some stairs, she came to a restaurant and was seated by a young girl.

The waitress said, “Can I get you something to eat, ma’am?”

Rosalie looked around and didn’t see anyone else sitting by themselves. “I suppose. What do you have?”

“Special today is bear stew. We’ve got kelp salad, bread, rye bread, sour bread, hard bread, and soggy bread. If ya got something else in mind, Barney might get it together for ya.”

Rosalie looked around again and didn’t see a mirror. She was apprehensive because that didn’t sound like the menu in heaven. Rosalie said, “Yes, love.” She looked fully around to her left and fully around to her right hoping to see something to make her feel more sure but there was nothing. Instead, she grabbed a handful of her hair. It was young and strong, and that was convincing enough. She said, “You don’t have any,” she winked, “mushroom ravioli do you?”

“Mushroom ravioli, ma’am?”

Rosalie wasn’t sure if she’d said too much but she nodded confidently.

The girl said, “Let me check.” The girl disappeared and reappeared, and said they didn’t. Rosalie had the salad and the bread, and it was pretty good.

When she was done, she asked the girl, “Tell me, love, are these the other Ascendant?”

“No, ma’am. They’ve gone to the park. I don’t think any of the others went back to sleep after they read their notes.” The girl winked and was gone.

The park, eh? Rosalie walked outside and saw the green space down the road. She walked and it was obvious that the Ascendant were there. Their energy was undeniable and she had never felt so much living energy in one place. Not by a long shot.

A man called to her, “Rosalie, over here.” He told her what he’d told the others. She should make herself at home but she mustn’t wander too far. She could come as far as the park and she may go down by the docks and the pier, but she shouldn’t stray far from Ascendico Boulevard. The man said, “You’re safe here but the dock is never really the safest place.” He told her that the Sea Star couldn’t approach the pier until the wind picked up. Until that happened there was nothing to do but wait.

The man walked away so Rosalie sat quietly among the other Ascendant who also sat in the park. After six days, the wind picked up and on the seventh day it seemed like the whole town would blow away. The girl came to Rosalie’s room and told her that it was time to go. Rosalie gathered with the other Ascendant in the restaurant. She made small talk with another woman, Carla, and then the front door blew open. It scared her. The roar of the wind and rain was terribly loud.

The man from the park came in and, before he shut the door, Rosalie saw a whole cart turned on its side pushed by the wind down Ascendico Boulevard. The man gave each Ascendant person a length of rope and instructed them how to tie a harness for themselves. After an hour, he had checked everyone’s knots and handed each aspiring master a pair of carabiners. He told them to line up by the door single file and attach themselves to the rope outside so they wouldn’t get blown away. The man said, “Just keep putting one foot in front of the other and you’ll make it. I’ve been doing this a long time. I never saw one of you lot get blown away in the storm.”

Someone asked, “Why not do it when the weather is better?”

The man said, “You’ll see.”

The driving rain hurt but they slogged single file down to the dock where the Sea Star was moored. It was a catamaran, two individual sailing ships connected by some crossbeams. One hull sat at the dock and another was fifty feet in the air, completely out of the water. The sails were furled on the lower hull’s masts but the force of the wind at the broad array of nested sails on the multiple masts of the upper hull kept the second ship aloft in a precarious balancing act. The second hull swept in the air as the winds roared and waned, and as the hull in the water rode the waves.

Rosalie thought the wind would blow her off her feet but it didn’t. She kept putting one foot forward and then the other until all the Ascendant in front of her stopped and she stopped too. The angle of the deck on the flying ship was such that gravity should have pulled all the sailors into the sea but it didn’t. As much as Rosalie could see through the deluge, the sailors on the flying hull were walking and working at about seventy degrees to the vertical. The people in front of her got on the lower ship and then it was her turn to climb the net draped over the side. The lower ship rocked a lot as the unconstant wind pushed the upper ship higher and dropped it into its lulls.

The young officer leaned close and yelled in Rosalie’s ear, “Use your hands on the verticals, put your feet on the horizontals.” He showed her what he meant by grabbing two vertical ropes and shaking them. He grabbed a horizontal rope and shook his finger in her face. “No!”

She climbed up. Other Ascendant climbed up behind her. The officer climbed up and two deckhands pulled the net up and over. Besides what might have been a hundred miles of sail and rigging, there were ropes strung across various portions of the deck and she was shown how to loop her foot in the rope near one of the cleats, and to hold the rope behind her back and under her arms.

The Sea Star was quickly underway and then Rosalie was very glad to have the rope. The pitching was as violent as the dickens as the Sea Star somehow remained halfway balanced in the air. She heard a yell and a thud behind her as someone was flung into the sea when the Sea Star cleared the jetty. A big wave came over the port side to wash two more away. Rosalie had seen plenty of violence and didn’t wince, but many others did when a body was thrown into the air. It smashed against the mast as the ship rolled back in the trough. Then that Ascendant person was lost in the water.

Suddenly sailors were about a big commotion. A man was signaling to the higher ship with a pair of flags. Rosalie looked up to see the sails levering the big ship up start to furl and then the sails around her were unfurled. The Sea Star’s sails blocked her view as they caught the wind. The higher ship dropped and the lower deck pitched over until it became a vertical wall. As the higher ship dropped, the lower ship was hoisted higher and higher until gravity normalized and the storm was gone. It was daylight on a calm sea, and the Ascendant looked about confused and awestruck from above by the cosmic porthole landscape of stars.

One of the officers said they were going to sail out into the deep water and then have a viewing. They would sit on the deck and watch each other’s entire lives play out like movies projected onto the mizzen sail, and since almost everyone had made it so far, the viewing was going to take a long time. The crew had experts that would also watch, and they would decide who would disembark where based on what they saw. The Ascendant were ascending to join the Guild of the Greater Good in the fight against the Eternal Enemy.

“Any questions?,” the officer asked.

Someone called out, “So if someone lived to be eighty years old then how long will that take to watch?”

“Eighty years. Any other questions?”

Olunkuna said, “Why are there so many more Ascendant women than men?” There were about three for every two men. She asked, “Are we that much stronger?”

The officer said, “Ah, no. We have polygamy in Exland so... any other questions?”

There were several more questions. The officer answered them all patiently and left them with a stern warning. “Yer among the most powerful people from yer whole planet. Yer from this nation ‘n’ that nation, and this time ‘n’ that time, but we know ya understand what sleep is. Ya might think yer getting tired but yer not! Think of this fine ship—”

A refrain of sailors chimed in from the rigging.

“A fine ship!”

“Yarrr.”

“The finest ship, yarr!”

The officer continued, “Think of the Sea Star as a dream. Don’t letcher mind wander. Something ‘portant brought ya here and keep yer minds on it. If ya ‘cide to take a nap, then that’ll be the end o’ ya. Case closed. No more you!”