I feel Thrushchurl’s hand engulf my shoulder, and he points to the water in what strikes me as a classical sort of gesture, one of the things only human beings seem to do. There’s something white coming up in the gloomy water by the wreck; I recoil for a moment, and would leave the rail if Thrushchurl weren’t unwittingly blocking me, but now I see I didn’t recognize something after all. I don’t know what I took it for, but as I shrink away at first sight Thrushchurl says, confiding and explaining and grinning,

“Bones.”

It’s a humerus. An upwelling current, tumbling shipwrecked bones here round and round from bottom to surface, for how long? There’s a fountain of small bones, from the hands and feet, and back bones in with them, spinning there in that spot; a pelvis makes a long arching pass away from us, up from the dark and then down into it again, like a white ray; I see a witty mandible spin there for a moment, and then an actual rib in the shade of the metal ones. Thrushchurl doffs his hat and holds it meditatively to his chest.

“Bones,” I hear Jil Punkinflake say softly beside me. I peer surreptitiously into his face. For the first time since we embarked, I see there a resurgance of his old self; maybe the bones are calling him back, or perhaps it’s the land. His dog sits pragmatically down beside him and pants, looking relieved. Together we watch the wreck go. It takes a long time for it to fall away. The day should have ended hours ago.

Saskia is navigating more confidently now, or I get the impression we have a decided course. The bluffs give way to sprawling, basin-like green banks under a skyline turreted with indigo peaks. The land grows flat, as though it leaned away from us while stretching itself thin. We pass lacy shelves of barely-submerged stone; they extend out from the coast creating mile-wide shallows, before dropping deeply away as though sheared off at the edges. The water on these shelves is no more than a few feet thick, and the surface shimmers silver with black angles. Thrushchurl stares at the island mirrors as they go by with rapt attention on his face. They do reflect the sky, a long look discloses.

This one is the shallowest yet; the stone here is more of a ramp than a flat plate, and the water flings itself in long corded arms up the slope, and topples back all ramshackle again, at incredible speed. Monstrous boulders big as houses, and a few are larger than our ship, lie on the ramp, and the water rolls them up the ramp a few turns as it comes in, and brings them tumbling back as it recedes. Saskia turns us further out from the coast and we watch in silence as black blocks reel and slam with thundering noise. Gouts of white ocean cream glow against the black of the water and the rocks, the thudding of the blocks cracks and mumbles in the distance as we pull away.