In the dark, during the nights, he would close his eyes and try to shed such thoughts. But he would hear a soft singing sometimes, a low discordant groan, like the calls of tremendous walruses from some far ice floe. Perhaps it was the spirits of those lost in this unending desert. Perhaps it was just a trick of the wind in the dunes. If the others heard it, they did not mention it.

It was a shock when, late one day of walking, they came upon the oasis. There were houses of mud and reeds, and a few sheep wandering. There were even a few trees, their leaves spindly and green. This didn’t look real to Avatak, as if it didn’t fit into the world.

Uzzia put her arm around his shoulders. She said they had been walking the desert for thirty-six days.

‘And this,’ she said, ‘is Cathay.’

37

For fisherman Crimm, the morning hadn’t been so bad.

Out on the Northern Ocean, the visibility had been good. There had even been a little warmth in the sun, on this supposedly late-summer day. The crew of the Sabet, all eight of them who had mustered, had been reasonably cheerful, despite the ice-cold spray that soaked its way through the thickest furs, despite the endless labour of pumping water from the bilge, and despite the lousy catch of cod, a longer-term worry that gnawed at their vitals as they thought of the coming winter, and their families back in Northland.

Of course the ice had been their constant companion all day. Scattered floes scraped against the hull, and to the north fleets of bergs sailed on the swell. On the horizon was a band of whitish light that shimmered and glinted: pack ice, solid, unmovable, much further south even than last year, and much earlier in the year too. It wasn’t even the autumn equinox yet! Still, through the morning they had been able to forget about the ice and get on with their work.

But by midday the floes were closing in around them. The men started arguing about when to give up and put into port.

Then the fog rolled in, almost without warning, coming on them with overwhelming speed. That was that. They shipped the nets and made for home.

In a grey cloud they nosed south on a northerly wind. They got close enough to the Northland shore to hear the great steam-powered horns that sounded from the light towers atop the Wall, but they couldn’t see the lights. If Crimm stood high in the prow he could barely make out the big square mainsail, let alone the Wall. You could wreck yourself against the Wall if you came on it blind. They had no choice but to head north again, and wait out the fog. They furled the sails and broke out the oars.