At this season the terrace tops were furred with golden stubble, horizontal lines of brightness against black rock that towered above ice-glittering, echoing fjords. The journey was mesmerizing. Here great waves swept over the reefs between the islands, sometimes a gentle susurrus of ripples, sometimes great shouting geysers of spray that erupted from blow holes on the lagoon side. As nowhere else in Haven, here was the feel of the great sea, the presence of it, the push and sway of it, and, so Garth said, the threat of it as well.
“It’s a big ocean,” he remarked to no one in particular.
“And gettin’ larger,” said Wigham. “These islands out here, they get smaller all the time. People moving up the slope and up the slope . . .”
“Well,” said Garth, comfortably, “it’s said the poles haven’t melted entirely yet.”
“My pa said they was finished meltin’ when he was a boy. Guess there was ice somewheres nobody knew about.”
Garth shrugged, a trifle uncomfortably. “Monsters out there,” he remarked. “So I’m told.”
“Oh, monsters right enough,” replied Weird Wigham. “I’ve seen a man go looking for his craylet traps to find them broken up, squeezed into scraps.”
“Does it happen often?” Genevieve asked, wonderingly.
“Not so often they stop setting traps,” said Weird. “Often enough to make them talk of killing the creatures, though there’s no weapons along the Drowned Range that would do the job. The Lord Paramount might, maybe, if he wanted, but so far, he an’t wanted.”
“I doubt it would do any good,” mused Genevieve. “If one monster were killed, or two, or a dozen, or a dozen dozen, no doubt there are millions more out there.”
“Is that true?” asked Weird. “Is the ocean that large?”
“The ocean is very large,” said Genevieve in a distant, musing voice. “Its surface is about four hundred times larger than the land area of Haven, and if we were to calculate its depth, its true volume of living space would be thousands of times as great. So for every monster you might find here, at Merdune Lagoon, there are probably thousands more where you will never find them. For every mound of swelling gold, rising like a cloud from the depths, there are no doubt a thousand more that no one sees . . .”
She caught herself, too late. Both Garth and Weird looked at her in astonishment blended, on Weird’s part, with more than a touch of hostility.
Weird flapped mightily, crying, “Your daughter talks high and mighty, don’t she, Garth? Are all young ladies these days so uppity?”
“Mostly they are,” said Garth glumly, with a sharp glance at Genevieve. “Even when they’ve left school, like Imogene here, they read books. You’ve heard it said, a little learning’s dangerous.”
“And less is more so,” retorted Genevieve, suddenly angered in her turn. “Why, if people do not know what lives in these seas, how can they live sensible lives in this little space?”
Both men turned away, not letting her see their faces, even Garth making a gesture that she recognized as a common one — to avert ill fortune. She was ashamed of her bad temper at once, but oh, she was weary of this journey. Weary and lonely and confused. Though she had at first been grateful to Alicia for helping her escape Delganor, now it seemed she had not escaped at all, or had gone aside from her future only momentarily, until a great fish reminded her of it!
“Softly, daughter,” murmured Garth. “It will only be a day or two more.”
“Yes, Papa,” she replied in a subdued voice. “I’m sorry I spoke out of turn.”
“Have you . . . seen what you speak of?”
“Perhaps,” she said. “Or perhaps it was only a dream.”
He sighed. “The Duchess told me you . . . see things sometimes. She said to keep it hidden if we could. All in all, you’ve handled all this better than I expected. My own daughters would have done no better. But, how is it you know all this about how large the ocean is? I thought you women were limited to pretty chatter and the economics of housekeeping. I didn’t know you learned geography.”