Giddon couldn’t dispute that, so he watched the landscape instead. The airship hugged the coast, passing over hills with cows grazing on their golden slopes. Idly, he counted buildings, fields, tiny bright dots in a tangle of vines that might be pumpkins. Then he lifted his eyes to the bank of clouds far out at sea, which seemed to be growing as the airship flew north, masses of gray blobs piling themselves up into mountains.

Giddon was about to ask Nev about the clouds when something astonishing came into view. He’d heard of glaciers, but he’d never seen one before. The glacier, if that’s what it was, was gray and wrinkled, but shining white and blue from within, like the delicate insides of a shell, but massive, as if the earth were an animal with beautiful scales just under a translucent membrane. It flowed between mountain peaks all the way to the sea, where it dropped blue blocks of ice into the water.

On either side of the glacier, the land stretched up from the sea in dark, climbing steps that were cultivated with rows of some now-dead crop that Giddon guessed was tea. Beyond the tea stretched forests of fir trees; beyond those climbed mountain peaks with more glaciers flowing between.

He was about to ask Nev about the glaciers when Nev pointed out to sea. Giddon knew, before he even looked, what she was pointing at, for he felt them: silbercows, filling his mind with a touch as light as a soap bubble.

Hello! Giddon called out. I hear you! Then he saw them, racing across the surface of the water, trying to keep up with the fast-flying Mail airship.

You! they said, sending him the image of the house, the shadowy airship, and the terrible, heart-wrenching explosion. Then they sent him the Seashell, resting on the ocean floor beside the gigantic tentacles of the Keeper. We will help you!

Help me! said Giddon, surprised. How will you help me?

We’ll bring you what you need!

What I need? said Giddon, his heart filling with Bitterblue, even though he knew that couldn’t be their meaning.

In response, their own feelings changed to a kind of surprise and confusion. Tentatively, they began to show him a new story. A swimmer; a drowner. The impression of a small, cold, furious, determined, drowning person passed through Giddon like an arrow and his whole being cried out in anguish and need, because he recognized her.

Wait! he shouted, for the silbercows were turning away. A fjord reached out into the sea, cutting off their path; the airship swept on, but the silbercows had to go around. Wait! he screamed, running to the airship’s stern, trying to hold fast to the thread connecting his mind to theirs. Show me the rest! he cried. Show me the rest. But the thread was broken. They were gone.