“You should’ve used chain,” growled Garth.
“Well, and if it was cheap, I would,” growled Wigham in return. “But chain is metal and metal an’t cheap, and we’ve never had rope-eaters before. Now an’t this a pickle?” He muttered and gibbered, pulling his hair into witches’ locks and turning this way and that in an attempt to get his bearings.
“Where are we?” whispered Genevieve, not daring or even wishing to speak of what had happened to her. She had heard the song of the depths. She had sung it in return. She knew exactly what it was—or what her mother had called it.
“East, a good way,” said Wigham, bracing himself at the rail. “Over the deeps of the Lagoon. Oh, it goes down, here, way down. The sea’s come up over the reefs these last few years, and the coral didn’t close off all the ways between the isles, in any case. Under the coral, deep down, there’s tunnels that go out to the sea.” He paused, as though regretting what he had said, adding as amelioration: “Or so they say.”
Garth called, “There’s the tops of the Mountains of the Tail, away north. They’re just lit by morning.”
Like a rose satin ruching on the skirt of the sky, the stiff folds of the mountains lay against the northwest horizon, extending in a ruffled arc to eastward, where soft-lit satin became saw-toothed iron against the dawn. Wigham, shouting instructions to the two of them, tried to tack back to coastal waters, all to no avail, for the wind pressed them strongly to the southeast as the northern mountains slowly disappeared over the horizon.
“We can wear ourselves out tacking toward the coast,” said Wigham at last, “or we can give in to fate and sail on to the Drowned Range. We’re past half there already, and though it’ll lengthen the journey slightly, it’ll be easier on us andUnlikely. There’s anchorage all along the Range on the lee sides of the islands.”
Garth confessed himself ignorant of the geography of the Drowned Range, and it was with some trepidation that he watched out the rest of the morning while the little boat plowed strongly through the waves, leaving a curled wake full of dancing fishes behind her. Genevieve scarcely noticed. In her mind she was still back in the night, clinging to the rail, singing with immensity. What had it meant? Mother had never told her what it meant! Perhaps she, herself, had not known.
“Why are they following us?” Garth asked, pointing to the fishes in the wake.
“They always do that,” called Wigham, from his position at the wheel. “They like looking at us.”
This brought Genevieve to the aft rail, where she looked down at the fish in return, small fat golden fishes with large eyes that faced more front than sideways. Beneath them, never appearing above the water, lay an enormous golden shadow.
“Do you eat that kind?” Garth cried.
Wigham shook his head. “Bad luck to eat that kind.”
Genevieve noticed he had not actually looked at the fish, to see what kind they were. In fact, ever since the chewed rope had been found, he had kept his eyes resolutely away from the water around the boat. She had been going to mention the golden shadow, but thought better of it.
“What kind do you eat?” she called.
“Mostly skinny silver fish of various kinds. And on the reefs there are squeels and nonopuses and saltwater craylets.” His elbow wings flapped several times, telling her she was approaching a forbidden topic.
She asked nothing more. The golden shadow had departed. Except for the small golden fish, there was only water dancing in the wind and throwing sequined light into their eyes, splintered as a shattered mirror. No land showed at all, and only Wigham’s compass told them they still kept to the same course. Genevieve helped prepare and eat a scratched-together luncheon. Hours later, when the light began to fail, she and Garth again went to the food stores, but within moments Wigham called them on deck to point out a line of foam eastward and a lone light southward, red in the center, with a white beam either side.