Gorga’s eyes had gone rather bright as he watched her rising agitation. “This is the start of an excellent list, Lovisa,” he’d said. “What would you think of an independent study next term, examining these questions more fully?”

—

On her bench on the cliff, Lovisa was trying to come to a decision about the queen’s offer when something extraordinary happened.

A vibration grew around her, starting low, then pushing itself into her consciousness. It was a sense of something swelling, impossibly, in the sea. And it was dark on the water, the light falling fast. But Lovisa saw.

What was it that she saw? Looking back later, Lovisa was never sure what the honest answer was to that question. She saw a mountain, black in silhouette, rising out of the ocean. It had long, winding, wavering legs. And it was making a dreadful, almost unbearable noise, maybe not the kind her ears could hear—it was hard to tell what part of her body was hearing it—but the kind that flooded every cell with a need for the terrible, loud pressure to stop.

One of the mountain’s long legs was holding something. An object with hard edges. Slowly, the leg lifted the object into the air, water streaming down from its surface. Then the leg placed the object gently on the beach to the left of Lovisa’s cliff, nearer to the city.

The mountain receded. Gradually, mercifully, so did the noise.

At her bench, Lovisa was standing. “Icositetrapus cyclops!” she was shouting aloud to the air. “Icositetrapus cyclops! What? What?” turning in circles, looking for someone to talk to. Someone to whom to say, “Did you see that?” and demand, “What was that?”

She was alone.

Lovisa sat down, stood up again, sat down. She couldn’t begin to understand it. Nor could she believe it, except that at the water’s edge on the sand to the left, a large, oblong shape that had certainly not been there before was cast ashore, like a beached ship.

In fact, the more Lovisa looked, the more she believed that it was a beached ship.

She began to be frightened that she was losing her sanity. When, a moment later, voices and images appeared in her mind unbidden, her fears sharpened into a certainty.

Then she saw the small, smooth shapes out at sea, gliding, playing in the sunset water. Silbercows? Is that what was happening? Had they noticed her? Could they possibly—

Yes. She felt them, like a soft touch brushing against her heart. They were calling out to her, wanting to talk. To her!

We heard you, they said, in the north. We heard you say you’re sorry.

It wasn’t words; it was pictures, ideas. Feelings. Lovisa felt breathless, dizzy, but she thought she understood.

It’s not your fault, they told her.

What? she said, not sure how to talk to them, not sure what to say. What just happened?