If the wind shifts, they will still keep it to their side and may sail straight into land, won’t know they’ve turned. The truth is they have no idea what direction they’re going. Each waits for land to rise up, for the hull gouged, and can hope only for a shore and not a small rock in the middle of the sea.

Fear living in close. In the hull and mast that might break, in the rudders, in the air that somewhere holds land, but mostly in the water. Rock and every creature unknown. No limit to the size of what can grow below. All animals on land known but always something new coming up from the depths.

Medea a priestess of darkness, and even she feels fear. Not the same as a forest. Great void waiting, and all that the mind can shape writhes and slips away and will return. Held suspended above that, exposed, dangling at the roof of the lower world.

The serpent in water form, side fins wide fans like wings, water dragon, jaws outsized for the body, distorted, long teeth and tiny eyes, devouring whatever comes near, and who can say how large it might grow? A mouth larger than this ship, and able to sense them, rushing toward them now.

Sharks, also, just below the surface, always waiting. No sea meant to be crossed, and all travel on it borrowed. Filled with abominations. Row after row of teeth on a shark. No eyes on a jellyfish, no face, mostly transparent, made of what? Eyes on an octopus, but how to make sense of the rest? Impossible forms, all beneath her now in a world without sun and perhaps without end. There may be no floor to this sea. If she dies here, she may sink and keep sinking. Medea can see herself submerged, outlined in those stars below, arms wide, turning slowly as she descends, hair pulsing above, and she falls and falls and is torn apart and devoured. No burial, no rites, only monstrous forms wrapped around her until there’s nothing left.

The men say nothing. The previous night, there was a small fire in a cauldron on deck, fish roasted on skewers, but there’s no food now, the deck tilted too steeply.

They wait in hunger and darkness and fear until finally one of them lights a torch. It will blind them. They won’t be able to see any darker shape loom out of the general darkness. But the torch is lit anyway, and they continue to peer into nothing, and keep this light as a comfort, as a shield against fear, as all have done since there was first fire.