Between Vienna and Venice, 1652 — When Distance Learns to Listen
Anja Weiss left Vienna before the bells.
She preferred that. Bells made departures sound like ceremonies, and she did not believe this was something that deserved to be performed. She slipped through streets that still smelled of night, her cloak drawn close, the city behind her behaving exactly as it always had.
Normal.
That was the cruelest part.
Normal made courage feel like vanity.
At the city's eastern gate, a single carriage waited. Not ornate. Not official. It bore no sigils. The driver stood quietly beside it, hat in hand, eyes on the cobbles as though even looking might carry consequence.
He nodded when he saw her.
"Fraulein Weiss," he said softly.
"Yes."
No further words were needed.
She climbed in.
The door closed.
The carriage moved.
Vienna receded.
She did not look back.
Not because she was brave—but because she had learned that looking back too soon was how doubt disguised itself as sentiment.
The road out of the city ran straight for a long while before turning south. She watched the familiar roofs thin into fields and then into nothing at all. Dawn arrived cautiously, painting the sky with colors that felt indecisive—neither blessing nor warning.
She folded her hands in her lap.
She waited for fear to rise.
It did not come as panic.
It came as precision.
You will not be useful, a voice in her mind said calmly.You will misunderstand.You will fail and not even fail dramatically—just quietly, the way things fail when no one notices.
She closed her eyes.
"Yes," she whispered.
The voice did not know what to do with agreement.
The carriage rocked gently as the road shifted from stone to earth. Time became not hours but rhythm: wheels, hooves, breath.
They traveled without banners.
Without escort.
Without urgency.
Which made everything feel more dangerous than any parade of guards could have.
At the first stop, a small village where the air smelled of damp wood and early bread, the driver brought her a cup of thin tea.
She thanked him.
He lingered.
"You are going far," he said.
"Yes."
"Venice?"
She paused.
Then nodded.
He frowned—not with fear, but with curiosity.
"They say it's changed," he said.
"So they say," Anja replied.
He considered her a moment.
"They say it listens now."
Anja almost smiled.
"They say many things."
He tipped his hat and stepped away.
She watched him go, aware of how easily rumor moved when cities learned to breathe differently.
When the carriage resumed, the landscape changed with it—fields giving way to rolling hills, then to darker forests that leaned close to the road as though they had always known something about travelers that travelers themselves forgot.
She took out the letter she had written.
Read it again.
Not to reassure herself.
To remind herself what she had not promised.
Not belief.Not obedience.Not success.
Only presence.
Only honesty.
Only return.
The carriage crossed the border into lands where Vienna's certainty softened. Roads grew narrower. Villages grew quieter. The world felt less arranged.
Anja felt something shift inside her.
Not courage.
Permission.
She did not need to be important.
She needed to be there.
Two days later, they reached the foothills.
The driver changed horses.
The air thinned slightly, carrying a faint scent of snow even though it was not yet winter. The world felt older here—less inclined to accommodate urgency.
Anja stood beside the carriage while the driver worked.
"Do you know why you were chosen?" he asked suddenly, without looking at her.
"No," she said honestly.
He nodded, as if that were exactly the right answer.
"That's good," he murmured.
She studied him.
"You don't think I should be afraid?"
He shrugged.
"I think you already are," he said. "I think you just chose not to obey it."
He finished tightening the harness and stepped back.
"People who obey fear always arrive late to the thing that matters," he added.
Then he climbed back into his seat.
They continued.
The mountains did not demand anything of her.
They simply reminded her how small her choice was in the shape of the world.
And yet—
How decisive.
She dreamed that night.
Not of Venice.
Not of the island.
She dreamed of rooms filled with voices that never spoke aloud—archives stacked with untold stories, corridors of memory that had waited centuries for someone to care without wanting to own.
She woke with tears on her cheeks and did not know why.
She did not question it.
She learned quickly that some feelings were not meant to be interrogated—only carried.
By the time the land began to slope downward again, she felt it.
Not physically.
Internally.
A change in texture.
The air grew heavier, but not with storm. With attention. As though the world ahead had developed an opinion and was considering whether she deserved to hear it.
She leaned forward in the carriage, heart steady but alert.
"This is it," she whispered.
Not Venice yet.
But the approach.
She had read about cities that carried weight in their geography—Rome, Jerusalem, Constantinople.
Venice, she realized, did not weigh down the land.
It weighed on meaning.
The driver slowed the horses as they reached the final stretch of road where land thinned into causeway and causeway into memory.
Water appeared first like a rumor.
Then like a promise.
Then like a decision.
The lagoon spread out before them, wide and quiet, its surface not reflecting the sky so much as listening to it.
Anja's breath caught.
She pressed a hand to her chest.
Not from fear.
From recognition.
"This place knows," she whispered.
The driver did not respond.
He had gone very still.
Fog hovered low over the water—not thick, not thin—present in a way that made the air feel occupied rather than empty.
They reached the final stop before boats would take over from wheels.
The driver climbed down and opened the carriage door.
He did not speak.
Anja stepped out.
Her boots touched the edge of the world.
She stood there, uncertain for the first time whether she should proceed.
Not because she doubted her choice—
Because she felt the weight of being seen by something that had no need to judge her.
She took one step closer to the water.
Fog shifted.
Not to block her.
Not to welcome her.
To acknowledge.
She swallowed.
"I'm here," she said softly.
Not to anyone visible.
The lagoon did not respond.
The fog did not answer.
But the space around her… adjusted.
She exhaled.
"That will have to be enough."
The driver cleared his throat.
"A boat will take you the rest of the way," he said gently.
She nodded.
He hesitated, then added, "For what it's worth… I think you were chosen because you know how to carry quiet things."
Anja looked at him.
She wanted to say thank you.
She did not.
She said something truer.
"I know how to listen to them."
He smiled once.
Then he stepped away.
The boatman did not ask questions.
He did not comment on the fog.
He did not remark on the stillness of the water.
He rowed as though the lagoon had always behaved this way.
Which, she realized, was perhaps the greatest skill of those who lived near something miraculous:
To treat it as environment rather than spectacle.
As they crossed deeper into the lagoon, Anja felt something inside her settle—not certainty, not courage.
Alignment.
She did not know what she would see when she reached the city.
She did not know what the island would ask of her.
She did not know whether she would be welcomed or ignored or misunderstood.
But she knew one thing with painful clarity:
She was no longer traveling toward Venice.
She was traveling toward a conversation that had already begun without her.
And that, she realized, was exactly how it should be.
The boat cut quietly through water that did not resist.
Fog drifted beside them—not leading, not following—simply present, as if to say:
You are not alone in this crossing.
Anja closed her eyes for a moment and let the rhythm of the oars settle her breath.
When she opened them again, the first outlines of Venice rose from the mist like memory becoming real.
Not grand.
Not dramatic.
Simply there.
Waiting.