Written June 1 – June 7, 2020.
Published October 22nd, 2020.
Good luck, fair seas and high tides, and may the wind be ever at your back.
I paid a visit to Starflight before we went. Poor Starflight! All dragons ever visited him for was help with finding scrolls, and hardly a sincere bit of respect, though of the dragonets of destiny he was easily the most affected by the adventure, the hardiest and at the same time the most somber. His was the only cave I swung by – Clay I had talked to recently, and Sunny in the dining hall when Fin and Cerulean were arguing, and Tsunami – even if she hated me for life I could never forget her. Glory was in the rainforest, busy 'like a mouse trying to wrangle cats into a pig-pen', as she put it, and here was Starflight, alone in the library.
"Come in, though I don't recognize your step," said he. "Not any young dragonet, your strides are too long."
He could tell by the sound.
"It's Riptide," I said.
"Oh! The last I remember of you was a pattering in the sand. I didn't expect to see you here, though Tsunami was talking of you the other day."
Ah.
"I'm going on a trip, and I came to say -" what had I come to say? For it was true that I had come to pay my respects, but I was unable to formulate words which wouldn't make him feel self conscious. "I came to say goodbye before I went, to a dragon I knew couldn't come and find me."
Starflight's black wings twitched behind his desk, and he put an arm to his sightless eyes. He was not talking to someone he'd met at Jade, and who was interested most in using him as a magical bookshelf; he was talking to me, and he knew how I looked and cared that I'd come by to pay my respects to him.
"Thanks."
"Yeah."
A moment.
"I'll see you when I come back."
I turned on my heels and strode away, a steady gait that broke into irregular, halting steps before I was out of the room, for Pyrrhia was a wide and wild land, and good friends were too few and far between.
Fin was becoming one of them. Already he was standing on the outcropping of Jade, looking east with an air of expectation. He turned at my footsteps, much later than Starflight had.
"Well, chap, have you got wings enough for the flight?"
"Anytime," I said.
"That fathom cable will weigh you down."
"I've got strength enough for it."
Fin's face took on a look of careful neutrality. "Then off we go."
He beat his wings an instant before I beat mine, and with a jump we had broached the lip of the cliff and were in the air, sinking slightly from our apex before the updraft caught us and we went soaring upwards and on. From above the mountains looked like dragons' teeth, spread out in a curving belt from north to south. The atmosphere was thin, but already I had become used to it from Jade, and we managed with a minimum of trouble. Nevertheless, Fin was glad to descend into the middle of one of the passes as we went eastward that day, and it sped our journey considerably, for our lungs were filled, and the previously acceptable experience at altitude now felt like we'd been breathing through a straw and never known it all along.
Dark came, and we made camp in a covey of pines halfway up one of the shorter mountains, out of the wind and under the stars. It was a day more until we broke out of the mountains and into the hills, and a good deal longer till we were in the plains. We both had made this journey before, had flown around Pyrrhia and knew what to expect, but never had I done so with such a load on my shoulders. Still, Fin did not seem to mind his pack, or he concealed the weight of it better than I. I grit my teeth and steadied my pace.
Water we found in the brooks and creeks, and the freshwater springs which were myriad in this part of the country, wide and unoccupied. We saw a farmer or too from time to time, or other passersby like ourselves, but for the body of our travels there were no other dragons, horizon to horizon, and no trace of their presence save the occasional ruined barn on a hill. Had I been on my own I would've quickened my step all the more; though mostly safe, Pyrrhia was still home to a number of bandits, and besides, I was not the type to enjoy solitude, as some were. We spent the hours with some remarks, and chatted at camp for the half hour or so it took to get to sleep, and I was much happier for it.
It taught me about Fin as well.
He was Turtle's clutch-mate (which was a surprise, given my impression of that heroic but decidedly abashed prince), and knew Gill from when he was young, from the bad old days.
"It was Blister who had him captured," he would say, when ever I asked. "You look at the timing, how Gill was preventing her from taking advantage of Coral's power."
Then, darker: "I wonder if Deathbringer had a talon in that business."
But that was the deepest he would go. At most he was serious: much of the time he had a sense of humor, and at best he was jolly. So things went until we reached the sea.
In the morning of the day we reached it the air took on a salty tinge, and the lush vegetation between the Skywing uplands and the Mudwing swamps became scraggly and dotted with cockleburrs and thick brakes of cottonwood by the shallow streams which meandered ever southeast, doubling back on themselves in quaint bends and little banks. I saw a scavenger with a fishing rod; he was sitting quietly on the grassy lip of a brook, peering in the water to see whither the fish would bite. When he caught wind of me he looked up with a start, and gazed at me without fear. It was a brave move, but a dumb one, if indeed I wanted to eat him. Perhaps he trusted to his natural inconspicuous properties to keep out of my sight.
I sliced the air above him and passed swiftly on, wing-brims rustling to either side as they caught steady updrafts from the hills. Gradually the land grew ever flatter, and those updrafts vanished, a steady offshore breeze slowing our progress but making it more pleasant. From our middling altitude we could see a great deal, and already the thin sliver of the beach was widening, and the crash of waves was mixed with the skittering of jumping sand grains. Fin descended and stood with talons making ripples in the lee of the waves, scales dripping with the clear blood of the sea.
"What do you think?" he asked. I circled overhead; it had been too long since I'd been here.
"Incredible! It's too bad we can't stop for a swim."
Indeed, the water was teal for miles eastward, the little waves lapping at Fin's hocks, shallow enough for me to wade in far off the coast without ever submerging my head. Far off I thought I saw a homely dwelling from my aerial perspective, a house built over the centuries by cultivated coral, each generation of Seawings expanding the reef until in place of a barebones frame there stood a multicolored mansion. Fin took longer to spot it, but eventually he did.
"A habitation in the distance," he said. "It must be occupied in such beautiful waters."
Privately I disagreed; the war had ended in the deaths of many heirs to estate, and when the original family died there was no one to take over the property.
"Let's go to it, then, and get our bearings," I said. "Only so much help from a map."
I folded wings and dropped to the water with a splash, neck-deep in a rift in the shallows. Here should be home, but the sudden cool felt odd and a shock. I bit down the sudden sickness and exhaled, removing the air from my lungs lest it damage them while I was submerged. For a horrible moment I was choking, choking – then the water flooded gills long unused and I was breathing again; head above the sunstricken surface, yes, but body firmly beneath.
"Do you expect the owner will be there?" asked Fin.
"Yes," I said, "but in that labyrinth it will be an effort to find him, if there isn't a doorbell we can ring."
"He'll have a knocker instead."
We were half-swimming, half trotting through the ocean, and easing our way through the seaweed with swishes of our tails. The undersea was as lively as any aboveground forest; anemones in place of flowers, kelp instead of trees, and fish and crabs taking the part of flourishing arboreal wildlife. As a middling student of the tides I noticed a peculiar moss taking the place of the red algin to which I was accustomed in these parts. It was, at the time, of very little consequence.
As on land, distances were deceptive in the water; it took the better part of an hour to attain a distance which I'd thought would be fifteen minutes, at most. Before eternity came to pass, however, we had gained the front door – or front gate, I should say; it was as tall as from the ocean floor to the surface, minus a few feet, with four hinges on each side, and was wide enough for both of us to walk abreast. In these warm waters wood would swiftly have succumbed to teredo worms, and instead the entrance was made and framed with brick.
"I knew there would be a knocker," flashed Fin; he cast a triumphant glance at me before reaching up and tugging at the iron on the upper right side of the door. It fell with a clang, rebounded and was quiet, energy stolen by the water's viscosity.
There was a shuffling inside, a pause, then more shuffling noises, and when finally the door opened to the inside I was confronted with an unobtrusive Seawing, middling in stature, but firm, verdant at the back and cerulean at the belly-scales, with a line of luminescent scales under his left nostril and glowing ellipses and rounded squares of light blue running down his shoulders. His forest-green eyes glinted like quicksilver in the dappled light that filtered down through the waves above.
"Hello," he said in Aquatic. "Travelers? I am in the mood for a little company, but please don't make too much excitement, I'm not a fan of commotion – why are you so merry?"
"Don't you remember me?" asked Fin, a wide smile adorning his face.
"Bless my soul! Fin, and Riptide, too. Come in, come in. I haven't seen you in forever."
It was Turtle; unobtrusively heroically abashed Turtle. He led us into the place - 'I'm sorry it isn't much', he would say from his hind-lights, though it was quite majestic: dead coral of ages past still retaining its hue, and the dark banished by the skylights and the resident glow from us which cast cheer wherever we went, and the carefully tended entries which led left and right into the rooms of the dwelling as we went down the main passageway; some of them quite large, and dug into the sand to grant greater depth.
"Is this place situated on a hollow?" I asked.
"Indeed," said Turtle. "There's a whole second story, or basement, or what you want to call it. It might not be so grand as you expect."
"Nonsense," said Fin. "This is the most beautiful place I've been in, bar the palace."
"I did what I could for the place, between putting down an autobiography, you see. I can't think of a name for it, and I'm wondering whether I should put down the adventures of the dragonets besides, from a few years ago. I'm going to be a bit of a historian."
We turned aside in a ballroom, floating with neutral buoyancy halfway between the floor and ceiling, admiring the corals and masterfully tended architecture of the place; archways and round entryways to other rooms, up and down and beneath, the lower level composed of broken coral cemented together instead of the corpses of coral once alive; it seemed there was too little light beneath to support a reef, and the builders had had to cope somehow.
"How did you get the place?" I asked.
"It turns out the dragonets gave me a bonus from their 'Saving the World Fund'," said Turtle, capitalizing the words in Aquatic.
"They have a saving the world fund?" I said.
"I didn't expect that either, but it seems they have some sympathy for young dragons going on dangerous quests in these latter days. Winter got some, and Moon got some, and Qibli got some, and everybody else in our adventure. I started looking around for a quiet place."
"Looks like you found it," said Fin.
"The family didn't want it; the place reminded them of some tragedy or other, so they were glad to let me have it."
"So much to their loss," said Fin. "This place is giant."
"It gets lonely sometimes, but I can't muster the courage to go out into the world," said Turtle.
"C'mon, bro, they'd love you."
"Ah. Well, that's what I'm afraid of. I think it would go to my head. Power always does."
There was little argument to that, and we went on exploring for a while before we came back to the main room.
"Oh, I am sorry," said Turtle. "I do bid you take off your packs. Where are you going with them?"
From an unobtrusive blue-green cupboard he produced some fish, and preserves from the mainland, and other such foods, though no seasonings. Imagine trying to put pepper on your food and having it float away from you and into your eyes. Most impractical. So we lounged in the center of the room, and ate, and talked. Compared to the orderly manners of the princes my eating habits seemed messy and uncivilized, and I considered every bite before taking it.
"Feeling self-conscious?" asked Fin. "This is me every time I'm sitting in front of my mother."
And that brought cheer to an otherwise embarrassing moment.
"As to where we are going," continued Fin, "we are investigating a matter on the other side of the kingdom, on The Ridge."
Turtle swallowed but did not make another bite.
"Mapping it?"
"No. Mother said it was something with the locals being concerned."
"He brought me along because I was an oceanographer," I said.
"Oh, nonsense. You would've caught wind of it and gone with me if I hadn't asked, and it's all for the better that I did I suppose," said Fin, and made eye contact with Turtle again. "Would you come with us? There's not many people there, if that's what you're concerned about."
Now Turtle ate again, and ate, and ate, and all the while considered his choice.
"I want to do my own things," he said at last. "The whole Darkstalker affair wasn't me but me being forced into an adventure I didn't want to be in because I was the right guy in the right place at the right time. I never intended for the whole adventure to go sour like it did, and it was my moral compass which made me do something about it instead of running away and hiding like I wanted to. But my compass isn't in play now, and I want to stay here, writing my autobiography like I intended instead of running off on another adventure I might not come back from."
A moment of quiet.
"It's your choice bruv," said Fin. "Shall we be going?"
He stretched his wings and legs.
"No, no. I would dearly like you to stay here for a night if you wish, and talk about things in a way I never got to with you, or never chose to, and the same goes for you, Riptide. It's not that I'm hostile to the idea, it's that I don't want to go, is all."
"Is there a post here?" I asked.
"Once a fortnight," said Turtle. "In the Bay of Diamonds there's that at least. Any further south and you'd have to hire someone to do it for you. I'll keep in touch."
"That's two people I'll be lettering," I said. "I'm in touch with Cerulean."
"Cerulean, good grief. He was such an adventurous sort the last I remember of him, why isn't he here?"
"He's teaching Fin's class."
"Cerulean? Teaching? He must have been suckered into it."
Fin and I shared a guilty look.
"So you were at Jade, and now you've come down here," he said. "How are the dragonets getting along?"
Fin shrugged. "This is your subject, given you met them first," he said.
"Tsunami is alright, nothing more," I began. "She doesn't like me right now. Sunny is her usual chipper self – it would be hard to dent that self-confident bottle of optimism. Starflight is gloomy and I think depressed, but I cheered him up before I left. Dragons use him as a magic bookshelf and I don't think that's doing him right. Glory is in the rainforest, doing Glory things. And Clay is headmaster of the place, tired but getting the job done, and doing it with heart. He married Peril recently, as I'm sure you know, and they're getting along like a pair of happy clams."
A pause.
"Married?"
"Yes."
"She did like him, before Darkstalker, but I never learned about their relationship afterwards, because that's when I left."
"What's the story Qibli told of her?" asked Fin. "Something about a bowl."
"Qibli was trying to duplicate your magic earrings with your bowl, Turtle, and he couldn't figure out how to make it work, so Peril offered to threaten the bowl with fiery death since it wasn't co-operating," I said.
Turtle chuckled.
"He didn't take her up on it, but she tried," put in Fin.
We spent a little while swapping stories.
"What was that about Tsunami not liking you, did you say?" asked Turtle. "I can't think of any reason why she wouldn't."
"Cerulean says I'm too connected to the Talons of Peace still, even though I left it, and I'm also too tied up with the kingdom, since apparently things between her and her mother haven't been going too well, and so I'm stuck in the in-between."
"It was about Anemone and Auklet, I'm sure of it," said Turtle.
He shrugged.
"By the time I get back I hope she'll have resolved her differences."
"One can only hope," said Turtle. "But you know her, and I know her, although somewhat less than you do, and we both know she's a hothead."
"Cerulean will get her to cool it," said Fin.
The elder prince looked above us, saw the dearth of light creeping down through the coral from above. "Night is getting on," he said. "We could go on talking for hours, and I dearly want to, but I'm adjusted for an above-water schedule and I'm getting tired, so excuse me if I slowly turn into a vegetable."
"I don't want to tire you out," said Turtle. "I was thinking of an addition to the place, though, and I was wondering if you and Riptide could look at it…"
"I've got enough energy in me for that at least," said Fin.
And off we went, out the back door and to the sea floor just outside, though the weather must've been cloudy, for it was completely dark, and even Seawing eyes could barely make out the incipient frame of a planned expansion.
"If someone could do their best impression of a torch I would be most thankful," said Turtle.
"Gladly."
I focused inwards, closing my eyes for a moment and attempting to amplify the lights on my forearms, my tail, my wings. When I looked around again I was dazzled; the seafloor had morphed into an underwater grotto, clear for a hundred fathoms around us except where the silt of our passage curled like a misty pall, translucently cast by a glow somewhere between that of the moons and the sun. Turtle flashed something, flashed again and I understood.
"Tone it down, tone it down."
I could not use Aquatic, being a living torch as I was, but tone it down I did, and through playing around I reached what I thought was decent illumination.
"Nice," said Turtle. "More than I expected."
I grinned.
"Wooden beams?" asked Fin. "It looks like it's a kind of semi-circle with the flat facing the existing house, and on top of that a scaffold reaching to the surface."
Indeed, the skeleton of a future building reached to the top of the calm waters, the waves almost invisible when lit from below.
"I was hoping to have a platform for my children to rest on and sun themselves without resorting to creating an island which might wash away with a bad hurricane."
Fin almost bit his lip, then remembered himself and did not.
"It looks rather tall to me, rather in danger of blowing over."
"It's not going to be a big platform," said Turtle. "I'm going to put in columns of stone here, see, and root them in the floor at least thirty feet deep, where the silt at least takes on a sandstone consistency."
"You're thinking of dragonets?"
Again Turtle shrugged.
"I'm getting to that portion of my life, the part where I'm thinking of leaving a legacy. I think every dragon wants to be remembered."
"Your autobiography is part of that, too."
"Yes."
A pause.
"I haven't met a dragoness I want to marry. You'd think there'd be a lot of Seawings in the sea, but no, they're all clustered in reef-towns, or near the islands, or the deep palace, which isn't really all that deep; just deep enough to evade other tribes' eyes, and there's no point in that since everybody knows where it is, anyhow. This is a lonely part of the bay."
"You've got a lot of years left in you yet," Fin said. "Tsunami told Riptide she met someone who was a hundred and ten, and he told me.You're still young."
"I do hope to live to a hundred. Children and grand-children, and great-grandchildren and great-nephews and nieces, or lots of great-cousins, once removed. I shall have a family I won't have to tiptoe about."
"You had to tiptoe around us?"
"I put it the wrong way, sorry. If I had a family I would be more… accepted?"
"Ouch."
"Yep."
It was at about this time that I questioned whether I was necessary, lighting up the bottom of the bay like this and unable to talk. I held up a talon.
"Oh," said Turtle. "Sorry. It seems we're off track. What do you think of the structure? It is wooden, but that's only temporary."
"It's pretty good," said Fin. "It looks like the semicircle isn't at a perfect right angle to the hall leading to it, though. You'll have to account for that when you bring in the stone. And I think a subterranean level would give it some much-needed room. It's only forty or fifty feet to the surface from here, which is barely enough to turn around in."
"Good points," said Turtle. "Thanks, Riptide; I think you can turn off the torch."
I increased the light to its maximum power, then went dark except for the patch at my brow.
"No problem."
"Much appreciated," said Fin. "That was quite the service. And it may come in handy in the deep, at any rate."
"You expect to go in the deep?" I asked, finally free to talk again.
"And why not?"
"I was surprised, is all."
"We'll fix up the local problem soon enough," said Fin. "Like you remarked, you don't think there's anything in the dark, and since there isn't, I think we should take the time to do some exploring. We'd be on the cutting edge, the cliff between the known and the unknown."
I shook my head.
"That was a terrible pun, unfitting of a prince."
"I'm practicing," said Fin. "But dear me, it is getting late. See you in the morning?"
"I think so too," I said.
"Pick any room you want," said Turtle. "The house is free."
We went back inside and all three of us ended up snoozing in the large ballroom, floating tranquilly.
"Good night, Turtle," I said, before we fell asleep.
"Good night, Riptide," he said back.
"Good night everybody, and quit with the flashing lights, since at least one of us is serious about getting some shut-eye," said Fin, and we all shut up.
When morning came I woke up first; the waves above were sparkling red and yellow with the sun's light filling them like glittering gold, rippling and eddying about little fish nipping at the surface, schools of them like minnows. Suddenly they whisked away; a gray-nosed shark had come on the scene, a little one. It gave up the chase, being too small to make good speed, and began nosing about the coral. I rose from the ballroom and stretched before the skylight, shooing the selachin away.
Should I take a journey about the seabed?
There was no particular reason not to, and so I did. When I came back Turtle was up, and Fin was awake but looking so drowsy he only narrowly qualified as conscious. A little food perked him up until he was swimming about like a butterfly. They took to chatting, and there was little end to their conversation.
"It was your choice in some ways and then in others it wasn't," said Fin. "I think half of us were annoyed by our little brother, and the older half like me who might've been compassionate had no time between war news, meetings, tutoring, lessons, field trips and such."
"I was small and unobtrusive," said Turtle. "Being an animus made me want to be more small and unobtrusive. I made that bowl so I wouldn't have to compete with you for food, because I was always getting knocked out of the way, and bruised, and bumped and pricked by horns."
Fin rolled in the water, still getting the snags out of his muscles.
"And do you hate us for it?"
"The past is the past, but still I wish I could've been treated better. But fate works in strange ways, doesn't it?"
An audible chuckle.
"It's not a good thing to be resigned to fate."
"It is a good thing to be aware of it," said Turtle. "Have you ever noticed how there are certain people you can't get away from, places you keep returning to in ironic ways? Much of your life ends up being ironic one way or another, whether you like it – or see it – or not. Some days I feel like there's a terrible purpose we can't get away from, and though sometimes we stray from the path we always come back to it like seaweed in an eddy."
An uncomfortable silence. Nobody wanted to talk about fate.
"Hullo, Riptide," said Fin. "Didn't notice you'd come back in the room."
"It's fine," I said. "Turtle, could you do something for me?"
"Depends on what it is," he said.
"Hold a letter for me, until the post comes, and get it to Cerulean."
He made a resigned nod.
"Anyhow, I feel like we ought to be going once I get it written. If we delay more than an hour it'll be two days' travel to The Ridge, if the map's right, instead of nearer one and a half."
"Of course," said Fin, and Turtle.
"Alright then," I said. "I'll leave you two to work things out. And Turtle, can I borrow some of your letter scroll?"
"Second room on the right from the entrance, should be in one of the cabinets in the study," he said. "I have more than I know what to do with."
"Thank you."
I bowed my head and departed. Second room on the right – that should be one down from the ballroom, and on my left. I turned in and started carefully looking in each cabinet; notably, this room had an oval outlet leading downwards to the level below. Ah – there. I took only a short length, then cut it away from the rest by shearing it with the sharp end of my claw. My pack was hung up near the front door, the fathom cable and notebook and maps and the surveyor's odds and ends, but what I most wanted was the quill. The study was as good a place as any to write some correspondence, and it had a homey feel and scent which let the words flow.
Dear Cerulean,
I say hello from the Seawing Kingdom. We have made it here successfully and without much trouble, as you may be pleased to learn. The journey was a little longer than I had hoped it would be, but alright. The water is most refreshing; there is as much space as one could imagine here, and the currents are revitalizing. As soon as we get back I recommend you return to the bay with all speed, as it would be good for your health.
We are sheltering just off the coast, in the homely house of (of all the dragons in Pyrrhia) Turtle, your brother. I thought Fin was aware of Turtle's whereabouts, but he wasn't, so I'm telling you about it. I think I shall relate the location of this place at the end of this letter. He is lonely here and would appreciate a visit from his clutch-mate, who apparently he has not seen in quite a while (he didn't know Clay and Peril were married!).
We are about to proceed to the Ridge from here; I expect it to be a relatively short journey by flight. Only a few days more and we shall be there, and ready to clear up the whole matter. I am intrigued to see what we will find that could've made your mother send for Fin personally.
With many regards, your friend,
Riptide.
It took a good deal longer to compose the words than I expected, and I was half-finished putting down my signature when Fin poked his head into the room, or must have, for I didn't see him when he did, and for all I knew he could've been quietly chuckling to himself while watching me scribble a message in my not-so-elegant script. This was the sort of self-absorption which came upon him when he was working on maps, and I knew it now. At any rate, a flash caught my attention, and I turned my head towards him in time to catch his words.
"You done yet?" he asked.
"Just so," I said. "How's Turtle?"
"Miffed that the family doesn't pay much attention to him and miffed that he doesn't go out and ask for much-needed love, but that's Turtle for you."
A thought darted through my mind like a water-strider testing a pool; it would be very unfortunate for a Seawing to be born epileptic.
"At least he's capable of getting something done instead of simply wringing his hands together. There's maybe two dragons responsible for truly saving the world and that's him."
"Who's the other?"
I took a moment to consider.
"Well, the dragonets all did their part, didn't they? So maybe he's one of six."
For the first time I noticed that Fin's back was coated in gear.
"Like I said earlier, it's best to be off."
So I got up with my manuscript in my left talon and my quill tucked away behind my ear, and got all my things, and packed up everything while noticing nothing. Turtle came to the front door to say his goodbyes.
"I was happy to see you, and I wish you good luck," he said to us. "But Riptide, what is it you've got fluttering from your claw?"
Oh.
"The letter," came my words. "That was forgetful of me, and embarrassing. Do take it."
"Glad to be obliged," said Turtle. He plucked the scroll from my outstretched talon. "Take care."
I looked over my shoulder as I turned and swam for the surface.
"Take care."
We broached the waters with a loud splash and an uproar of spray upwards which reminded me of sudden flame, rising and curling into fine steam before falling away, each droplet creating a glittering ripple on the sea as the wave of our passage expanded ever outwards in a perfect circle.
There was nothing missing from me (for it would've been embarrassing to have gone back and picked up something of mine inadvertently left behind), and on Fin were all the things with which he'd begun the trip.
It took a moment to remember to use speech in Aquatic's stead, as the sun was getting on in the sky, and its powerful glare destroyed much of our acuity.
"Where to from here?" I asked. "West and west and a slight adjustment north?"
Fin flew slowly; it was disadvantageous to go too far while deciding directions, and I drew closer to him, feeding off the updraft from his wingbeats while I looked over his chart. "We are farther south than we were when I went to the Ridge last time. It's almost due east of where the summer palace is, or was, and that is how I got there when I set up the buoy. But we are almost a thousand miles downwards from there, and some hundreds back. I expect we ought to head north-east and cut across the island chain, and gain our bearings from there."
I brought out my compass, found north and angled forty-five degrees off, then pointed the direction the centerline led.
"That way," I said.
"I thought about as much," said Fin. "But more south. The sun has a nasty habit of never rising exactly in the east."
"If it could tread a fixed path, so much the better," I said. "Never the easy way, always the hard way."
We chuckled and pressed on. The settlements became denser as we headed north and nearer the spiral island chain which was the tail of Pyrrhia, so populous with Seawings and our kin, and Mudwings, if they felt like it, and Sandwings, if they were here on business. There were underwater reefs, planted and nurtured in the ways their founders wished so many years ago, and grown over the centuries in new ways with each generation, till a home like Turtle's became a city. There were dragonets splashing in the shallows, from the eldest of each family to the joyful little ones for whom the war was something only their fathers talked about in low, boring voices.
They were the blessed. My heart was lifted when we went over the settlements, and met the islands, some keys small and unremarkable, some as large as regions of the kingdoms, with a temperate clime and lots of water.
I liked the water more now that I'd come back to it, but to each his own I supposed.
"I could settle down here," I remarked to Fin. We were halfway through the Bay of Diamonds, having crossed the deepest of parts. "Look at this lagoon. Beautiful."
A reef had grown up in rings around a sandy island, the key long since washed away but the coral expanding ever outward.
"I expect you won't settle for long," said Fin. "If you're not looking for a fight you're looking for adventure, that's the way you work, and if it wasn't you wouldn't have come with me from Jade. Let's shelter in the shallows."
We splashed down in water shallow enough it stopped at my ears. Again the golden sunlight sparkled from the waves as they rolled above us, and the dappled shadows rippled across the sand and the flatfish burrowed into the sand, their fish-skin adapted to the color of the yellow speckled seafloor in which they found themselves.
I caught one, and ate it, and burrowed into the place where it had been, followed by Fin, who saw what I was doing and followed. Soon we were shoulder-deep in cool sand, with a mild current drawing against our fores, and it was then I began to drowse off, again tired by the journey.
The moons rose and the sun fell, and I fell to sleep with it. I woke up with a terrible cramp in my back, a knot in my neck, and limbs stiff from being buried in sand all night. I groaned, spherical exhalation bubbles chortling their way to the surface and making a rush in my ears. Fin was looking at me with a pained grin: we dug ourselves out by stretching.
"You too?" I asked, when my scales were clear of sand. There was a stretched muscle between my shoulder blades which refused to relax.
"I am never sleeping with a load on my back again, never again," said Fin. "Ever."
And it was then I felt rather foolish for falling asleep without removing my pack.
"If it's any consolation, I did as well."
"That doesn't fix the soreness," said Fin, but the common element of suffering at least made him feel better about himself. We swam just beneath the wavetops, paddling to undo the muscular knots, then, already prepared to go (though at a terrible cost for five minutes' time savings), took off and got underway.
There is not much to say about this part of the trip, for it mostly consisted of water, water, an occasional islet, a flock of seagulls, and more water. Our delay at Turtle's in the morning cost us dear, for the light was failing that evening and we were forced to sleep on the seafloor at the seventy-fathom mark, for already the water had grown deep compared to the bay of diamonds. If we were separated from each other by the currents we might lose days finding each other, and if we missed the buoy in the failing light and consequential seas we would be lost for a week, having to go back to the island chain and look for the buoy again.
So future me will understand my frustration when I ascended to the crests of the waves that morning and broke to the air, Fin not far behind. We knew we were close at hand, by dead reckoning, but it was impossible to say how close, or how much the winds in these parts had blown us southwards (for the air tumbles south from the wingtip of Pyrrhia, warms, and travels east from the bay, resulting in those spectacular Caelian thunderstorms south of the Skywing Kingdom and north of the swamps), or for that matter pin down down where we were in a circle of less than fifty miles' radius.
"It's a pretty big buoy, though, to make up for that," said Fin. He ought to know. "We painted it red and put it on cork, and weighted it with stone so it would stay upright, at least a hundred feet in the air."
"What about woodworm?" I asked.
"The waters are a bit colder up here, and that delays the decay, but it makes for an annoying buoy since somebody has to come out here every three years and replace it."
"And if it were lost?"
"Someone from the ridge would probably make a big fuss about it."
But even such a big buoy like that is easy to lose if it's only seen from a distance, passing by on the horizon from the bow quarter to the aft. I strained my eyes greatly that day, trying to sift the proverbial needle from the metaphorical haystack. There was a storm gathering in the north, a towering summer gale which seemed less a conventional thunderstorm than a wall of clouds, like a hurricane, and its mushrooming presence made the pressure all the greater.
"There!" I cried at last. It had almost slipped my eyes on our left, perhaps ten miles away. Peril would have seen it. Clay would have seen it. Tsunami might have seen it.
But what Seawing eyes gained in night vision they lost in acuity (so the other tribes said). At any rate it should be a quick flight there, only half an hour compared to the days we'd spent on the wing, though the wind changed as we beat towards the marker, relieved. Before it had gone steadily south, but now it swiftly swung quarters and came from the east, bearing down on us at a rate nearly equal to our pace.
"Keep making headway!" I shouted.
But the truth was that even doubling our efforts meant we still spent half our energy countering the oncoming gale. What should've taken thirty minutes now took an hour. Rain whipped at our scales, and the waves troughed thirty feet beneath our talons at their lowest and lapped nearly at our talons when they crested.
Then we plunged into the waters, following the chain down, down, down, and the roaring of the sea surface grew quieter and lower in pitch, so it was now no more than an ominous rumble.
We had arrived.