I lie back in my bunk again. The sea laps at the hull, the wind grates gently on everything, the island gazes in through the door at me. I dream of the dark water beneath us; I’m a spirit moving effortlessly through the coolness down there, the water moving through me, my calm mind settling as though I were only sinking into a bottomless bed. There is a white mass of paper in a rude body, pulling itself along the bottom with its reedy arms, sliding itself in among the rocks. A sudden impulse makes me want to drag myself down, to stare into its face, because the sight will terrify me and realizing this is like acquiescing to the impulse—I divert myself toward the bottom and watch from behind as the two pale arms float out and it lays its hands on a polished brown brass-framed counter top like a barman. I snort with laughter and wake myself up.

*

We’ll depend on Nardac’s keen eyes to guide us in. She is set out with a couple of sailors in a patched lifeboat, haunched there in the bow, over the water and swinging the boom of her bony arm, in line with her beak, this way and that. There was no keeping her to her bunk, although her wound is still not healing. She seems almost not to notice it, and to be insensible to the pain.

With the coming of the wan morning light, a survey from the mast has disclosed an end to the field of blocks where the land opens up, and that there is a passage through. All hands are on deck watching anxiously; at the rail someone I don’t recognize is impatiently taking it all in. Saskia arrives on the bridge. She puts her hand on Jil Punkinflake’s shoulder as she passes him, no differently than she would have gripped a post standing in the same spot, and he’s just beside himself, his face mingling pink and yellow with pleasure.

We begin to glide tentatively forward; Saskia is unbelievably deft at the helm, but one strong swell could ruin us within sight of the shore. Not all the lifeboats have been patched—some still show daylight through the holes Makemin made. A little after noon, the sun is a snowy coin above us, and with a gasp of relief we drift forward into clear fathoms between the two arms of land. Nardac is reverently lifted from the life boat back to the deck, and, resting her meagre weight in my arms, permits herself to be carried back to her bunk, clucking once or twice to herself in satisfaction. This is as close as I’ve ever been to her, her eyes do sparkle like diamonds, as though a cold fire were caught in them.