Chapter 242
The wall of mist at the edge of the world, open: a vast round gap like a mouth, lips of white foam, and beyond it a starless dark. The Beam laid across it from Fyren, holding it.
a foghorn, from the tower.
Both ships, Marka and Upp Igen, every sail set, surging for the gap side by side, hull to hull, neither giving an inch.
already beginning to close, the foam lips drawing in. One ship wide. Less.
at the Upp Igen's wheel, very calm, calling across.
on the Marka's bow, a beat late, looking at the closing Mouth, at the two ships, at the thirty seconds' worth of argument left in a one-heartbeat gap.
lounging against the Upp Igen's rail at an angle that defies anatomy, taking out his battered snus tin. Looking at the Mouth. Looking at the two ships. Doing a very quick, very dangerous sum.
tapping the tin lid three times. Tap. Tap. Tap.
flicking one finger at the Mouth.
which were closing, pausing. Then easing open one notch wider than they should be. Not much. A hand's breadth. A bit.
The edge of the world, the wall of mist parted like a vast mouth, and through it, side by side, hulls scraping, sparks of bark and plank flying where they grind together: the Marka and the Upp Igen, squeezing through a gap one ship and a bit wide, their crews hanging off the rails, shouting, laughing, screaming. A golden dog on one bow, a girl with bells on the other, both barking, or giggling, at the dark beyond.
Behind them, the Beam from Fyren laid like a road across the sea. Ahead of them, the Deep: starless, flat, black, no north at all.
And far behind, small on a black rock, a lighthouse, and at its top, a blind old giant waving a soot-black rag at ships he can only see in his own light.
The two ships bursting out of the mist into the Deep, still side by side, scraped, splintered, both crews collapsed on their decks, panting. Behind them, the Mouth closing, the wall of mist knitting shut.
picking himself up off the Upp Igen's deck, straightening his coat, opening his notebook, very drily.
sitting on the deck, opening his snus tin, and on the inside of the lid, in tiny scratched writing, a ledger: a long column of small debts. ROPE, 1 NOTCH, DUE: A KNOT SLIPS. WIND, 1 NOTCH, DUE: A HAT BLOWS OFF. He scratches a new line at the bottom with a pin:
MOUTH, 1 NOTCH. DUE: ?
on the Marka, staring across at the man and the tin, an odd ache in his chest he can't place.
Through a gap in the closing mist, for one last moment: Fyren, small, the lighthouse, the Beam sweeping. And behind them in the Deep, running from both ships' sterns back toward the Mouth, two thin silver threads: the only lines in a sea with no north.
at the Marka's stern, the Keeper's Log under his arm, staring at the silver threads.
The lantern room. Hallbard at the lens, white-eyed, wiping it. At the top of the stair, Natta, wrapped in her blanket, sniffing.
talking across the water to the dark.
at the foot of the tower. Through the open door, Vaka asleep under her quilt, her lamp burning steady. And on the doorstep, for the second time in four hundred years, someone sitting: the keeper, for a moment, on his way down to check the jetty, with his back to the white wall.
standing again, slowly, groaning, a hand on the doorframe.
The two ships sailing on side by side through a sea with no stars, no horizon, no north. Black water, black sky, and only the faint silver thread behind each ship pointing home. Lanterns lit on both decks. The crews shouting across the gap to each other in the dark.
at the Upp Igen's Perch, her right eye to the scope, a crimson tear on her cheek, looking far and finding nothing.
on the Marka's bow, ears straight up, nose pointing up, into the starless sky. A low, delighted wuff.
on the Upp Igen's rail, looking up too, and her mouth falling open.
Overhead, blotting out the black sky: birds. Thousands upon thousands of them, wings beating, a vast moving cloud of flight passing over both ships like a storm front, the sound of their wings a roar.
And in the middle of the cloud of birds, carried by them, held aloft by ten thousand wings: an island. Grass on top, cliffs underneath, a waterfall pouring off its edge into nothing, and a little town of nest-houses along its rim. Flying.
on their two bows, staring up, mouths open, side by side.
The flying island passing overhead in its storm of birds, its waterfall drifting down over both ships like rain, and on its rim, small, a girl bouncing on her toes at the very edge, a long white scarf streaming behind her like a contrail and swallow-tailed coat-tails snapping in the wind, looking down at them. Waving.