These are thoughts he had when he first started going north, what he came to call The Long Paddle and for a time – having been delirious and hallucinating when he was sick – for a time he thought he was sinking back into that state, thinking that way about the dream world.

But then he thought when somebody was delirious, seeing things, imagining things, like dock people who had pickled their brains on ale and mead, they wouldn’t know it.

So if he knew, or thought he knew, he was losing control of his thoughts, his mind, then it was sensible, a strange logic to think he wasn’t delirious at all.

He was just Leif.

And if he wasn’t hallucinating, there was a chance he was right. That some sort of dream world existed. And if there was such a place Leif might be able to gain entry into it.

He knew, or thought he knew, that he couldn’t really go there, go into that world, even if it seemed real when he first awakened. But it was there, or he considered it to be actually there, and there might be a way to get information to that place.

To his dream mother.

And as he drifted north, riding the ocean’s drift, he chewed on the idea until he at last came up with a solution, or what he thought might be a solution.

He would make the story board current, or as current as possible, and then each time he went to sleep – not dozing but a proper night’s sleep – he would look at the story board so it would be the last thing he saw before he fell asleep. If he could bring the board into his dream, maybe he could work it around, while still in the dream, so even though he could not see his mother’s face and smile and kind eyes, she might be able to see the story board.

And know of him.

And maybe someday, if he did it often enough, and succeeded, she would turn and he would see her face in his dream.

And because of all this, all his thinking and wondering, the story board became still more important and he worked on it, perfected it, sanded it with shore sand and shined it with fish oil until it looked like beautifully burnished old leather.

There was a small part of him that didn’t really believe it would work, but a larger part knew he had to keep trying and so he worked on the board every chance he could, going back to recurve and reshape portions that he felt needed improving . . .

All this while working north, up along the shore, staying close, he became so intent on paddling and drifting and working on the story board that he was not immediately aware that the ocean, the sea, was changing.