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.

A sharp cry. Saskia turns the ship quickly to port. We’ve narrowly missed running up on a huge, submerged stone. The alarm began with Nardac in the prow, her long arm extended remains pointing unerringly at a cubical black stone under the surface only a dozen or so yards from us. Makemin consults with Saskia, showing her with his finger how the coast is forested with mammoth stone blocks, strewn down from the land and protruding everywhere in the water, some visible, some low in the water, and certainly more of them completely submerged. Ahead of us, the land folds in on itself in long, low sweeps, like two arms dragging in the water, one bent in within the curl of the other. That place is evidently where we are bound.

Grape-colored dusk gathers around us as they talk together in low voices. We will anchor here, to wait for the sun’s light to steer by.

*