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The crew of the Clarion Adamant settles in with the natives, some more than others.

Okay, well. Now that the ship is firmly stuck in the New World, it's time to explore that a bit! It's been a long time coming. This is maybe a lore-heavy chapter, or at least it's a worldbuilding-heavy chapter. But in exchange, you get some pornography out of it! Patreon subscribers, this should be live for you with notes and maps and stuff in the next day or so, but I wanted to get this out sooner rather than later.

Released under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. Share, modify, and redistribute--as long as it's attributed and noncommercial, anything goes.

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Terra Nova, by Rob Baird. Ch. 5: "Stars of Different Color"

In Izkadi, far inland from the Sheyib River, they studied magic. Sheshki Anariska knew this. None of the jackal’s family had been academically inclined, and she’d never turned her gaze from the water—but she knew the Dominion studied it, at least.

As she knew, without direct experience, that none of the grey-muzzled scholars in Izkadi, or Shereflik, or even Esifyr itself had ever seen anything like the sight before them. From the outside the building had been plain, and unassuming. Within, the ceiling—was there a ceiling?—stretched as a yawning, wide blue sky.

To either side of the tiles under their feet ran water, clear and quick, seeming at once close enough to touch and so far away that a sense of vertigo struck the jackal. Sheshki focused on each step, following Gethet Issich to a dais where a trio of the continent’s strange inhabitants waited to meet them.

Jalamin spoke in his own tongue to them, and Sheshki saw now what Rettari Halvas meant: now and then, as he spoke, there were overtones beyond the music of his language, beats inaudible that nonetheless echoed in the subtler parts of the jackal’s brain.

Then Jalamin turned expectantly to Halvas, who cleared his throat. “Juten, Vapaske, Suari,” he said, pointing to each of the three new figures. “Vapaske is the most… the most senior, though it seems the translation is somewhat imperfect.”

Vapaske stood, and the disk of wood he’d occupied settled silently to the dais. “Invaders. How did you evade us?”

“We didn’t,” Gethet said. “Not deliberately. We come from far away to the east—the direction of sunrise. Jalamin—and please, I apologize that we apparently can’t pronounce your names as you do—Jalamin said that nothing comes from there. For my people, nothing comes from the other direction. My ship was in the midst of a storm. When it cleared, we were somewhere off the coast. Your coast.”

“If we believed you, that might explain your… bizarre appearance,” Vapaske admitted. “Or you could be from a further sunset. Beyond the dark lands.”

“Bizarre?” The one Halvas called ‘Juten’ rose, too, and stepped down from the dais. He circled the easterners carefully, his eyes narrowed. Sheshki, in particular, seemed to draw his attention, and when the man leaned close she saw eerie sparks glinting in his eyes. “This one looks familiar, doesn’t she? They’re spies, I imagine. We should kill them now.”

“Can we be certain? This is unprecedented.”

Juten stared straight at Vapaske. His paw jerked, leaving a glowing crimson trail behind it. Defiance, Sheshki decided, from Vapaske’s scowl. A gesture of defiance. “What’s more likely? Visitors from the sunrise—or that the desert-folk are testing our alertness? How else to explain the long seasons of quiet? How else to explain this? She’s one of them,” he declared, pointing at the jackal.

“And do you know that?”

Another irritated wave; another flash of red. “Look at her. Feel her.”

“Do you?” Suari had stayed quiet. She kept her seat, and her voice was calm. “Have you?”

“That is not my job.” He muttered something else, in his own impenetrable language, and stalked back to the dais. Suari answered in kind, drawing a growl from the man. “No.”

“Yes,” she insisted. “They don’t understand our tongue.”

“And theirs is… useless. It takes so long to say anything at all. None of this is necessary, Suari.”

Suari folded her paws. “I disagree. Either this is unprecedented, or it is not. We have only one way to find out. What’s your name, stranger? What bloodline painted your fur such colors?”

“Sheshki Anariska Orshanid Basultaqa Basarman. Anariska is my bloodline. I was born in a town along the coast of Tiurishk, a desert nation. I suppose that gave me my colors.”

“Come closer,” Suari beckoned.

Sheshki doubted the wisdom of defiance. Steeling her nerves, she stepped forward. Still, Suari kept gesturing for her to approach, until she was standing right in front of the older woman. Her paws returned to her lap, and she stared. Peered at Sheshki. Narrowed her eyes until her gaze was well beyond the jackal, in dimensions she could not perceive.

“A fisherman. His son. A web, crafted by hand, cast into murky waters.”

Ears flattening, Sheshki nodded. “Sultaqa was the first to move to my hometown. My father Shanid inherited his boat. He makes his own nets to catch fish.”

“‘Net,’” Suari murmured. “I see.”

“What do you see?” Vapaske asked.

Suari closed her eyes, and Sheshki became at once aware that she had been trapped, and was now released from the woman’s hold. “Her bones. Her bones tell a story half as old as this world, Vapaske, and the tellers of that story are unknown to me—the language itself a mystery. Even the means used to craft it are not of our kind.”

Juten snorted, claws showing as his fingers flexed. “You can’t be certain of that.”

The room went dark: utter, oppressive blackness. And then, in subtly glowing threads, Sheshki saw a scene being woven. It was the spires and marble walls of Esifyr. It was the broad stretch of the Sheyib River. It was the black walls of Körlyda. A trireme, the oars shipped and the sail unfurled. A cotton loom. A bazaar.

The tapestry vanished as soon as it was finished, and the chamber returned to its former appearance. Suari stared fixedly at Juten. “More certain than you are,” she said. “If they’re telling the truth, Vapaske, then they’re guests—not invaders.”

“Violating our territory, nonetheless,” Juten insisted. “Desecrating it.”

“From ignorance alone, not malice. They don’t understand where the universe came from. But, with their permission, perhaps I can explain?”

“Please,” Gethet said.

Suari closed her eyes, relaxing. “This world began not in silence but in shouting. Every voice—the voice of every thing—cried out at once. Nothing could be heard. Nothing could be understood. Our oldest ancestors began the task of creating order… learning to listen, to organize, to protect…”

Rain fell upwards, she recounted. Animals gave birth to their own parents, or to reeds, or to fire. Rocks melted, and spread, and took root like trees. Bit by bit, though, their ancestors worked to bring some sense of harmony to their surroundings. Centuries later—how many, even Suari did not know—Osani was the result.

As she explained it, the town was connected to everything around it, and they felt each disturbance as ripples through the fabric of their very existence. That was how they’d noticed the arrival of the Clarion Adamant; that was why the felled trees startled them so. Holding chaos at bay required constant, careful attention.

And everything its inhabitants—raccoons, she said, in passing—did involved bending the threads of that existence. They twisted bedrock to grow their buildings from it; they borrowed the sunlight dappling mountaintops for their torches. Jalamin’s bow was the branch of a tree, destined to fall generations into the town’s future; its shape was held by the energy of the storm that felled it.

“You… make things,” Suari said. “It is a strange concept, and a little crude. But I believe I understand what it means to craft something the way your people do. I understand why you cut down the trees you did.”

“We did not understand,” Gethet Issich said. “I apologize.”

“On behalf of all of us, I accept it. But I’m not sure you do understand, even now. It’s not that they’re important to us. A tree is just a tree: it cannot speak, cannot experience the world as we do. But it is connected to the soil around it, to the time before it, to the time after it. It can be difficult to understand all that unfolds in consequence to its destruction—even more difficult to set right any damage to the harmony of its surroundings. Fortunately, in this case, we can manage.”

“Will you stay here?” Vapaske asked.

“We do not intend to.” Sheski heard the lack of certainty in her captain’s voice. “I intend to return home—if we can. When we can. My ship needs repairs, and my people need food, but…”

“But you will not stay.” The answer satisfied them. “Then we’ll help you. At least we can reduce the impact you have on the natural order of this land. You’ll fell no more trees. We can teach you what to do instead. You understand the tapestry?”

“Not well. My ancestors probably knew magic. But…” Gethet’s shoulders drooped. “I never learned. My adopted homeland does not appreciate it.”

“Isn’t it strange?” Suari said strange, but in Sheshki’s judgment of her tone she seemed more amused than anything else. “The word they use—‘magic’—it implies something mysterious and unknowable.”

Juten grunted. “Primitive.”

“Are they? Why does a torch burn?”

He scowled, as if her questioning should’ve been beneath him. “It’s the nature of pitch to burn. We find the threads that pull it towards such light—shape the course of its story. It takes little work.”

“Indeed.” Her amusement had become more plain; a smile curled her muzzle. “These strangers certainly are primitive… and yet, their torches still burn. What do they know of pitch, Juten?”

“Little,” he declared. “And little of use.”

“But they might learn. My counsel is that—as we help them, Vapaske—we try to teach them, as well. This one, the dark one—his mind is already open. But so is hers.” Suari pointed at the jackal. “One of our own more… radical acolytes should train her. Valisen, I think. I’m curious what we might be able to teach one-another…”

“Valisen is impetuous. Incautious.”

“Yes. And, therefore, more likely to understand someone not raised like us,” Suari countered. “That is my decision, Juten. If we can live with it.”

For now, Vapaske agreed. There was, Sheshki sensed, more arguing to be had between Osani’s elders. And in this case, they would be privileged to hear none of it. Jalamin took them back to their camp, reminding Gethet of Osani’s admonishment to cut no more trees.

“Wait,” he said. “Wait, and we will return.”

For Sheshki, the waiting turned out to be brief. The next morning, as the Aernians discussed among themselves what had happened, a newcomer appeared at their gates, and asked for her by name.

“Valisen,” he announced in reply. He was a young raccoon, to the extent that she could judge their age accurately, with a smile that would’ve been well-received on either continent. “I’m supposed to be your teacher.”

“So I was told.”

“I’m a little… odd, in their eyes. Ah, I see you were told that, too.”

“Without clarification.”

He smiled wider, and began walking away from camp towards the open beach, leaving her to follow. “I’m troublingly interested in finding new ways to look at the world. That’s what my name means, in effect, and it wasn’t intended fondly. I hope it will serve us both well, though.”

“In learning from you?”

“We’ll both learn, right? But we can start with you. You have no training, though, is that right?” She felt no slight in the question. “No sense of your connection to the tapestry?”

“None at all.

“Can you feel it?”

Sheshki shook her head. “No. I don’t think so. I don’t even know what I’m supposed to feel.”

“Close your eyes.” Warily, she did. “Take a step forward… good. And a few more paces…”

“And?”

“Hold your paws out. Turn them to face the sun.”

“Now what?”

“Open your eyes.”

The raccoon was standing right in front of her, watching the jackal expectantly. Why, exactly, escaped Sheshki. “What am I looking at? Or for?”

He took each of her paws in one of his own. “You did as I asked. How? How did you know in which direction they faced? You knew it instinctively, right? You know where your body ends—you didn’t have to see your paws to move them. You asked what you’re supposed to feel? You’re supposed to sense the world around you, the same way you sense your own body.”

The explanation, outwardly logical as it might’ve been, didn’t make the process of learning how to do any of these things easier. She sighed, and slipped her paws from the raccoon’s grasp. “I’m sure this is easier for you. You were raised here.”

“I was. But everyone has to start somewhere. And maybe…” Valisen took a bit to think. “Maybe I would be just as out of place in your homeland. I’m not sure. I’ve seen others like you.”

“Like me?”

He waved his paw over Sheshki’s form, a comfortingly familiar gesture. “Like you. They look like you, but they don’t act like you. I’m happy the town elders allowed you and your friends to live. I hope Suari is right, and we can learn from each other. I hope I can teach you.”

“And I hope I’m not a bad student.”

Valisen smiled. He bent down, straightening again to present her with a fallen fruit. “Take it,” he urged. It was pale-green, smooth around her fingers, but nothing about it stood out to the jackal.

Then he closed his eyes, concentrating. And, curiously, a prickle of something ran from Sheshki’s claws into her mind. Briefly she saw not just its color, not just the curves of its shape, not just its weight in her grasp, but something more—the fruit stretching back in time, unfolding into the countless aspects of its form.

She blinked, and the sense vanished in the blink of an eye. “Which tree did it fall from?” Valisen asked. It was as though the jackal’s ears caught some whisper, some barely audible tale told by the fruit itself. With some effort she could feel around for it, tug the thread until it unraveled enough to bring close, and perceive some sense of detail.

“That one.” She pointed.

Valisen opened his eyes, looking to the tree she indicated, and nodded. “Indeed. The trees are all bound together physically—they share roots. But they also share a commonality of being with the fruit. Ordinarily, we only see glimpses. But there’s so much more! Do you understand?”

Somehow—the effort had been unconscious—she’d followed the fruit back to the tree it came from. Curious, Sheshki tried again: looking to see where it would go. There was an arc, a sense of weightlessness. The sound of its skin parting, a glimpse of the pale interior. No taste: try as she might, the jackal couldn’t imagine its taste.

She cleared her thoughts and, impulsively, tossed the fruit into the air. Valisen caught it, sliced it open with his claw. The raccoon took a careful bite, then tossed it away. “It’s not ripe, unfortunately,” he said.

“Fascinating…”

“You felt what was going to happen?”

“Not exactly. Hints, though. Definitely hints…”

“You’ll learn more over time,” he promised. “You were right, Sheshki: I was raised like this. It’s not something I often think consciously about, and you don’t have that advantage. You must practice—but it can be learned. I’m sure of that now.”

Both alone and with Valisen’s tutelage, she did her best over the following days. As the raccoon said, the work itself became easier. Sheshki found she could tease out the subtle patterns of their new home with less and less effort. And, gradually, those patterns became a tapestry she could almost read.

And touch—gently.

Not the same as Valisen’s touch. As they spent more time together, his fingers seemed to bring a soothing warmth to her senses. And, as they spent more time together, he was slower to let go.

At times she did not want him to. At times, indeed, it was almost possible to admit that she enjoyed it, and enjoyed the effort of learning the way his kind saw the world. That she looked forward to his lessons, and his company. She did not voice the sentiment, though, not even in her own journal.

Mostly, Sheshki concentrated on her lessons, long after they’d ended. It was a way of proving to herself that they were worthwhile—that it wasn’t simply a coping mechanism. That it would be useful—and soon. And on their scouting excursions, and as they gathered notes on the terrain, she began to see opportunities to test that theory out.

On an open cliff, some distance from their settlement, she watched Karn Gebbenbech trying to start a fire. As the sparks flared from his flint, the jackal knew instinctively where each and every one would fizzle out. She focused, studied the moment where heat and dry tinder met… pulled the loose fibers towards the wolf’s next attempt.

“Finally,” Karn growled. “Can’t believe it still gets so cold here, warm as it is in the day.” Sheshki let him shield the growing flame with his paws on his own, though she eyed with interest the shifting contours as the energy built.

“Maybe it’s the altitude?”

He grunted. “We’re not that high. Must be the wind, or… fuck, I don’t know. Maybe it’s just how things are in this place. Can’t believe we wound up here.”

“But we did. I suppose have to make the best of where we’ve found ourselves, right? Maybe there’s some good, too.”

Karn was plainly unconvinced. “I hate it. You don’t?”

She had to think about it. “I don’t want to be in this land,” she finally said. “But I don’t hate it, either, no. It’s… interesting, at least. The magic intrigues me.”

The wolf grunted unhappily, and went silent, staring into the fire. “Not me. It’s unnatural. You and me? We weren’t meant for magic. And I don’t trust it—not after what happened on the ship. The boiler explosion could’ve killed us all. And if not that, then the storm—bloody hell, Sheshki, how do you explain a storm like that?”

“I can’t.”

“I used to lean back—look up at the stars through the sails. The ship would rock and sway, but the stars kept steady. I know I’m not as smart as you, Sheshki—not as good with ‘em as you and Ellea are. But I know what they look like. Those up there?” He jerked his muzzle up without looking away from the fire. “Those aren’t mine.”

“I know, Karn. They aren’t mine, either.”

“I like thinking I’m open to new things. Kind of an… explorer, I guess. But any time I figured on that, I figured I’d be able to go home, too. Can’t tell if it’s really exploring when you’re just lost.”

Curiosity came naturally to Tiuriskhans—they said, anyhow—but even that had limits and, unlike Karn, she’d never thought of herself as especially given to adventure. “Maybe we can learn to understand the stars, though. Isn’t that worth something? If they can tell us where we are…”

“And if they can tell us how to leave.”

Sheshki nodded her agreement, and joined the wolf in watching the building fire until even she was lost in its currents. How to leave…

***

“You’re getting better,” Valisen promised. “You’re understanding things better.”

Sheshki could only chuckle ruefully. “I’m not sure I agree. I…”

“Try again. Where does it go?”

She dipped her paw into the river, and closed her eyes. Rushing water worked a deepening chill into her fingers, but if she forced herself to ignore the cold… if she forced herself to concentrate… if, then she could trace the current upstream.

At each fork, it split into smaller and smaller courses, until she was looking at mere trickles—mountain water, bubbling from tiny springs. Sheshki became aware, too late, that she’d become lost in what came before that, even: glimpses of rainstorms, and the building clouds that produced them. Valisen’s paw was on her wrist. “Sheshki?”

“It’s too easy for my mind to wander. The river stretches… thousands of miles. Tens of thousands. That’s not possible, is it?”

“No, I suppose. But the track of a single drop of water might look like that. That’s what you’re seeing. What did I tell you?” He let the jackal go, and smiled. “You’re getting better. You’re seeing how the pieces all fit together. Don’t blame yourself if it takes time, Sheshki; it was always going to do that. We should return.”

The sky was indeed darkening; the first stars were out. They walked down the riverbank towards its mouth, where camp waited. Was she learning? Sheshki had her doubts, although she didn’t want to tell Valisen that. He must’ve known, surely, because when they reached camp she would rejoin the bonfires, and he would summon one of his strange portals and return without a word to Osani.

Turbulent water disturbed her thoughts: one of the streams she’d first encountered, which still appeared to run backwards despite her best efforts to understand it. Valisen sensed her frustration, and came to a halt. “What is it?”

“I could ask you that. What’s this? Why does it… what’s going on?”

“What do you mean?”

“It looks to run in the wrong direction.” She knelt, and tested the water with her paw. “It feels like it runs in the wrong direction, and I can’t… I don’t understand how. If I try to follow it with my mind, then…”

Valisen sat next to her, dipping his fingers into the stream to play with it idly. “What does ‘the wrong direction’ mean?”

“Water should flow from its source towards the ocean. Like the river does.”

“And this defies that.”

“Yes.”

“It’s unnatural.”

“Yes,” she repeated. Silence followed; she turned to Valisen, who was watching her expectantly. “What? It is. Right? I would say so.”

“So would I.”

Her ears splayed. “Then…” She trailed off, blinked, and turned the idea over in her mind. “You’re doing this. The town—Osani. You’re making this happen…”

“We create areas of managed chaos, yes. So that we have some… flexibility, I suppose? So that if the tapestry begins to unweave itself, there are scattered threads we can use to repair it. It’s too much work to try to maintain a world of perfect order, you understand.”

“I don’t quite understand,” she admitted, but she was proud of her own deduction. “But it’s like a safety valve for you.”

“And I don’t understand that.” He stood, and held out his paw for her to take. “Eventually, no doubt.”

The jackal let him pull her back upright. Warmth spread up her arm from the contact, and she found herself meeting his smile with one of her own. “Eventually,” she agreed. “I don’t know that this will really help me with mapping this continent…”

“Maybe it’s sufficient to know something new.”

She’d begun to feel comforted when the raccoon talked: suppositions that seemed nonsensical on her own or amongst the crew made much more sense when he said them. Knowing something new didn’t help her, didn’t even truly change her experience on the continent. And yet she couldn’t help herself. “Perhaps.”

He smiled at that: “why don’t you teach me something, then?”

“What did you have in mind? You want to know a safety valve works?”

“I want to know something about how you see the world. When you speak of ‘mapping this continent,’ what would that mean to you?”

Sheshki turned east where, by now, the line between sky and sea had begun to blur. “I look to the stars. They tell me where I am. What do you know about them?”

“Myth and madness. Some wilder philosophers say that they’re not unlike our sun, and we feel no heat only because they’re so far away. There could be worlds circling them, and worlds circling those, invisible to us. That’s the madness. The myth is that we only can tell stories about them. The stars have always been there. Much has changed since our world began, but the stars go even longer without changing. And they are small, or so far off, that we can’t really sense them in the tapestry.”

“My people also think they’re distant—millions upon millions of leagues, at least. The movement of a galley on the ocean doesn’t change their position relative to one another. This is, by itself, a map.”

“It can tell you where you are?”

“Good sailors have in their head the changing color of water, and the kind of fish that swim in it, and the birds that circle above. But, also, they know the shape of the stars, and their relationship to the land. The stars don’t move. What if I didn’t move, either? What if the ocean was the one shifting under me?”

Valisen tilted his head, and for once Sheshki saw that he was the puzzled one. “But that’s not true, is it?”

“No. But it makes it easier. To sail from my home in Keshan to the island of Araban, where the fishing is good, I think of me, and Araban, and Bekashi on my beam, beyond the horizon.” She drew a triangle in the air with her finger, to illustrate. “I spin the world under me until there’s a straight line between me, and Bekashi, and where the star Buldan rises above it. And, keeping the line straight, the world must spin until Abakhel rises over Bekashi, and then Veshka, and Saruhan—which never moves. After Saruhan, as Kassavel rises over Bekashi, I know I’m approaching Araban.”

“And that really works?”

“It does for my father. You learn from a lifetime of looking at the stars and the coasts they belong to. I…” She hadn’t really missed the old ways: ‘myth and madness,’ as Valisen put it, surpassed by newer scientific principles. But Osani had given her pause, or at least a pang of regret at the thought she might’ve understood them better if she knew her own culture. “I learned how the iron folk do it, instead. It’s just more mathematical. My father’s method seems more akin to yours.”

“Then I should learn a different way, shouldn’t I? What does this mean, ‘mathematical’?”

“Quantifying. Counting. As the world spins, the sun and stars seem to rise and fall. But think about spinning it perpendicularly. They would rise and fall north to south, not east to west. Right?”

“‘East’ is…”

“Sunrise. West is sunset. North and south are the two ends of the axis on which the world turns. I’m asking you to imagine if the axis ran east to west instead.”

The raccoon pursed his lips, thought carefully, and finally nodded. “Strange, but… very well. I understand.”

“The stars don’t rise and fall north to south, but you get the same effect by sailing north to south. So the angle of Saruhan above the horizon depends on how far north you are. If you can measure the angle precisely enough, you can calculate where you must be.”

“But only ‘north’ or ‘south’.”

“Yes.”

“So you know that already?”

“Yes. It was my first sign that something strange had happened: in an instant, we were much too far south, according to the stars. But that’s all I know.”

“What about the other way?”

“It can be calculated, but not by me. You understand that… it is sunset here, but if we were a hundred leagues in that direction...” Sheshki pointed towards the west. “Sunset wouldn’t happen yet.”

“You should not be there,” Valisen told her. “I should definitely not be there. But, yes… I understand that we see the sun rise before others do.”

“When the sun is at its highest above us, if I knew how long it had been since the sun was at its highest above Keshan, I would know how far the earth had turned in that time.”

“Hm! But how do you know that?”

“I would use a device that precisely measures the length of a day, turning ‘round once each time the sun does. And I would set it so that, when it was halfway done counting, the sun was exactly at its highest over my home. These devices exist, but they are extremely expensive. The skill required to make them is beyond my people, and beyond the iron folk.”

“I don’t suppose you could make one here, then?”

“No… and even if I could, I would need to know where the sun was over Keshan, and I don’t. That’s why I… I hope I can learn something from you that will do the trick instead. If we’re to get back home.”

“We’ll keep learning from one another,” he promised. “And we’ll see.”

***

The bridge was unnaturally quiet. In port, at least, there’d been the sounds of the harbor, the work of handling the freighter’s cargo and the cry of gulls. Now there was all but nothing—only a handful of birds, calling fitfully, instead of thousands—and morning light streaming in through the window did little to warm the jackal.

Gethet Issich rested his paws on the chart table, his fingers splayed. “We need to come to some decisions. I’m not giving you orders—I’m asking for your advice. I walked most of the ship with Milus yesterday. The chief engineer says she needs work. The four boilers we think are safe should be inspected, the hull should be patched… Karn, you said the blocks are seized?”

Karn nodded. “Something about the enchantments, I think. Right?” He looked over to Rettari Halvas.

Their mage nodded as well. Ever since meeting the locals, he’d been more energetic, his voice less subdued, but it still surprised Sheshki to hear. “Precisely. And the rules of magic are different here. I doubt that we should use local supplies to repair the ship—and I doubt that if we did, those repairs would last when we left this continent’s influence.”

Cedda Fletcherson explained that they had enough coal for six hundred leagues of sailing, if they knew the right course to chart. Food could be stockpiled, too, though some of the pilgrims had begun talking of making the new land their home. Sheshki’s ear flicked: Pærtha Kittaling hadn’t been invited to the conference.

“My proposal,” Gethet said, “is that we should aim to return to Aernia. I don’t know how we’ll accomplish that, but I think we need to try. Still: considering all that’s happened, I’m not willing to make that decision for you. So I’m posing the question.”

“I belong in the Iron Kingdom, Gethet.” Fletcherson answered first, holding the tiger’s gaze. “I’d follow you anywhere, but I belong in Aernia. I say we go home.”

“Same,” Karn declared. “Maybe I’m not Aernian, but I’m bloody sure I don’t belong here. The sooner we leave, the better.”

“It may not be as simple as that,” their captain reminded him. “Sheshki? You’ve been making friends with the native folk—probably you know them near as well as anyone besides Mr. Halvas.”

“Friends,” the jackal agreed, and shrugged her shoulders. “But they’re not kin. I want to see familiar shores again, too.”

“Milus and Jenssa have already expressed their desires to me. We all seem to be agreed.” Gethet didn’t sound relieved: the magnitude of the task weighed on him, plainly. “Mr. Halvas, I know this place has changed you. I’ll understand if you wish to stay.”

The panther’s tail swayed, tip curling in thoughtful rhythm. “I must defer my answer, I think. But you’ll have as much help as I can offer in readying our ship for departure.”

“I appreciate that. First things first: Sheshki, I need to know where we are. And, if you can, I need to know how we get back. Do you think you can help? I don’t completely follow the magic you’ve been studying, but it has something to do with mapping, doesn’t it?”

“Attempting to learn the shape of the region, yes, sir. My progress hasn’t been as fast as I might wish. But I’ll do my best with finding an answer for you, I promise.”

“Good.”

He gave orders to the rest of them, in turn, while she listened distractedly. Karn agreed to check the blocks and the ersatz rigging-grease they had to use instead of charmcraft. Cedda would work with Jenssa to lay in supplies for a lengthy journey. Gethet and Milus would handle whatever repairs could be made with the equipment they had. Simpler tasks, Sheshki thought.

Valisen joined her, on the same clifftop where she’d spoken with Karn Gebbenbech. The ashes of their fire remained, and she was gratified to find she could see the whole of its story. She could recall helping him to kindle it, and look forward into what had yet to occur: watching the ash disappear, bit by bit, carried by the wind off and over the ocean.

“You’re doing better.”

“Thank you. You’ve been a good teacher.”

“Have been?”

The words caught strangely in her throat. “My captain wishes to leave. We’re far from our home, and…”

The raccoon took her paw gently, and she felt his comforting warmth working up her arm. “You don’t need to explain,” he assured her. “If I were taken from Osani, I’d want to return as well. No—more than that. I’d be lost.”

“There are parts of this I’ll miss.” Valisen had yet to let her go. That warmth slowly filtered into a gentle, soothing presence, spreading through the whole of the jackal’s body. “I’ve learned a lot,” she offered, half-truthfully. “Met some… interesting new friends.”

“Are we?” he asked, with a cheeky smile.

“I’d like to think so. You’re…”

“One of the things you’ll miss?” She nodded. The heat of his contact flared brighter, and Valisen took a step closer. “I feel the same way.”

And what way is that? Asking it aloud would’ve broken the spell. She didn’t have to ask, anyway: when their eyes met, a tangible, humming thrill passed between them. His head canted, as if he hadn’t known she’d feel it.

“You sense… more things, now?”

Valisen’s thoughts mixed with hers—no, the jackal felt, he wasn’t doing it on purpose. It was their proximity, and the strength of his emotions. And it did not, truthfully, require sensing. Telling herself it was merely curiosity, she reached out her paw… touched his thigh, and worked her way from soft fur to a hint of something stiff enough to resist her fingers.

If you desired… He hadn’t spoken—the question came unfiltered into her own mind, straight from his. And it was less desire than magnetism, a reluctance to pull away from him that drew her closer instead. His eyes narrowed, his expression grew curious, and he brought their muzzles together in—

It was only a kiss for the instant Sheshki realized what he was doing. As soon as they touched the scenery around the pair flickered and melted away into formless, banal shadow. Valisen alone was bright, shimmering in the intimacy of their sudden connection.

“Interesting,” he said quietly, when he pulled away and color slowly spread back into the world. “That your kind would do that…”

“And yours?”

The touch of his claws on her blouse worked the impulse to remove it into the jackal; she did so without conscious decision—only action, and momentum. By the time momentum pressed her down and into the soft grass the rest of her clothes had gone, too, as if in a dream where no effort had even been required for it.

Valisen’s fingers slid from her neck down to her hip, and an electric warmth followed his caress. It was almost a massage: his careful, gentle strokes smoothed the discord of the jackal’s being into something supple and refined. Shaped to contain the bubbling energy of a rising heat in her lithe body.

In port, once—years ago, though Sheshki had some difficulty putting time in its proper place at the moment—she’d teased Karn Gebbenbech, and he’d teased her back, and it ended with her pinned under the wolf. He’d been rough—feral, even—snarling to match her heated gasps and muffled cries beneath him. And in the afterglow, as he panted to catch his breath and the urgency left him, she’d marveled at the frantic chaos of his movements.

It stuck with her, enough that she perceived how Valisen’s attention was the exact opposite. The raccoon was precise—seeking out one touch after the next deliberately, each calculated to draw her attention to the one that followed. He teased her nipple, and when she squirmed his other paw held her hips down, the soothing warmth that melted into her veins stripping away anything but the sensation of contact.

And of inevitability.

Everything was connected. Everything had been tightly woven. She knew before his paw slipped between her legs what was coming, but even still the touch of fur on slick wetness rang out in her mind. She knew that he didn’t stop her from squirming this time because he was stripping out of his own clothing.

She knew what his weight would feel like over her. She knew how his coarse pelt would tangle between her grasping fingers, and give her a solid hold. She knew the way he’d subtly ease between her thighs. She knew how she’d cry out… and that it all seemed predetermined mattered not one whit.

Solid heat pushed for a second and slid inside her, the deepening pressure radiating from around the raccoon’s shaft and into her tense nerves. He didn’t stop until he’d buried himself all the way in, and he held still for the grateful yelp that gasped from Sheshki’s open muzzle.

The rhythm of his thrusting was every bit as focused and purposeful as his touch. Smooth, fluid… finding just the right moment to slide free, when she was most keenly aware of the way she squeezed reflexively about him and his pulse throbbed along her walls. Waiting until she could think of nothing but being filled again and sinking back inside her like the answer to an unvoiced plea.

Building his pace in stroke after easy stroke. Valisen was hilted deep when she felt the pleasure bubble up, all but uncontrollable. He pulled back only enough for her to appreciate the heavier, stronger shove that joined them, pushing firmly, grinding until the jackal shuddered and held him desperately close.

Hot, insistent waves rolled through her and as release gripped her he kept working against her: gently, subtly, the stretching bulk of his cock—warm and rock-hard in the soft clenching of her own body—nudging Sheshki back up every time she started to relax.

Again he waited, halting until she had control of herself. And when he began to move, to take her in quicker, harder plunges the jackal found she no longer really sensed where she ended and Valisen began. His own coming peak drove his shaft swiftly into her but she was aware of it intrinsically, as though it might have been her own…

That, she understood, was what he’d wanted, why he’d paused the last time. The space between them shrank with every new thrust, until she felt his need, keenly. And as soon as that happened, as soon as he perceived it too the raccoon groaned, yielding the last of their shared control.

She rode it with him, drinking in the urgency of the erratic bucks that planted him solidly in her welcoming body. Hugging his shoulders, and wrapping her legs around him, the constriction forcing each sharp, frantic hump of his jerking hips shorter and shallower.

And even as she grasped him, tugging him into her, it left Sheshki less room to escape, too. Trapped her for the crashing tumult when he gasped and rammed forward and went still. Held her as if in amber for the twitch along his length, and the eruption of heat that followed.

She was frozen, herself, the howl that tore from the jackal well beyond any conscious thought. For long, aching seconds the ecstasy was all but drowning—consuming her, rippling through Sheshki’s nerves and shoving aside everything but their shared climax.

And it was shared. She was sure Valisen felt the silky, clenching ribbons of Sheshki’s peak working through her as completely as she sensed the rush of every throb and warm splash that flooded her. He tensed with her raw energy, surging in her body, and she relaxed with the primal gratification of cumming deep inside a willing lover, satisfaction spreading through Valisen as his need ebbed and he slowly sank onto her chest.

He was oddly weightless. As if, at the end, their bodies had completely merged. Sheshki searched for herself, trying to disentangle her own soul from his, but the borders stayed fuzzy. Until he moved—the tug of his buried length was a sensation she alone shuddered to, and finally she recognized the effort of breathing with the raccoon pinning her.

Valisen pulled himself gingerly free, pausing every time the jackal twitched. At last he came to rest on his side, pressed against Sheshki’s frame, so close she felt every slowing breath as the two of them gradually calmed.

It was steady. Slow. Rhythmic. Her eyes closed, but the raccoon’s image didn’t fade. She was connected to him, still—the rise and fall of his chest as much a part of her as the jackal’s own heart. And through him… through him she sensed the way Valisen himself was bound to the ground beneath the pair. To the bones of the earth, and the underground rivers—their course unobserved but working subtle influences through every blade of grass on the eastern slopes.

To the glowing hearts of slumbering mountains, molten rock spreading beyond the shore, beyond the shelf where the ocean floor plummeted, beyond the deeper waters whose silt light would never touch. All the way down to the center of the planet—she gasped aloud, and Valisen squeezed her paw thousands of miles over the scene she perceived, and the shock faded.

Osani stood on the coast of a continent half the size of the one she called home. She perceived the familiar hues of deserts, off to the west, through ominous clouds that rippled and hid the mesas from her keenest awareness. And in the oceans, off to either horizon, everything vanished—pure, stark blackness.

A limit not of vision but of comprehensibility itself. “The Edge of the Known World,” she whispered to herself.

“You can see it?” Valisen’s voice, clear as it was, seemed to come from leagues distant.

“Yes.”

“I’ve never been able to,” she heard him admit. “I don’t know what’s beyond it.”

“Hidden.”

But…

She ignored the Edge, and the waters, and felt for the stars. Searched out their track, and the world shrank away. It seemed to rest gently in her fingers, small and insignificant as a child’s plaything, held before a field of diamonds.

“Sheshki?” A whisper.

“Valisen?” She was back on the clifftop.

“You fainted. Or fell into some kind of trance. It’s been… quite some time.”

He’d dressed himself and was sitting, cross-legged, watching her. “I didn’t feel it that way.” The jackal sat, too. The moons had traveled far, and the fur of her thighs had matted dry. “It was just a few moments. I saw…”

“Visions? Your ancestors?” He scanned her puzzled face. “What?”

“Everything. The universe. We’re…” She shook her head—it was beginning to fade already, and she struggled to hold it in focus. “There are other planets. The moons—I saw—no. Sorry. Never mind. I know where we are. Or… or where my home is. Beyond the blackness.”

But, she tried to say, and couldn’t find words—not in her own tongue; certainly not in Aernian. The sureness she’d felt that, beyond the western edge of this new continent there were other lands still—other people—other towns, perhaps as unaware of their isolation as she and Valisen had been.

And more than that, which she couldn’t bring herself to say.

Valisen helped her back down the hill to the Aernian settlement. Gethet Issich was already asleep, and Karn Gebbenbech was nowhere to be found—out on patrol, someone suggested. No matter. She hugged Valisen tightly and set to work, tugging paper and pen from her belongings to record as much as she could.

By the dawn exhaustion had begun to catch up to her excitement, but only just. She was clear-headed enough to catch Gethet at breakfast. His brow knit at her appearance—she must’ve looked a mess—but he caught the urgency, and dismissed Jenssa from the meeting they’d been having.

“Something happened?”

She unrolled her map, and Gethet made room for it on his table. “What I’ve been able to glean of this continent. And here are the Meteors.”

“What’s the scale?”

“Issenrik is nearly twelve hundred leagues to our east. Beyond the Edge of the Known World, and… I wasn’t able to see anything. From the western side, it appears just as impassable as it did on the east, sir.”

He sighed. “I had my suspicions. They’ve only deepened this morning. Even before that, it seemed a bit… preposterous that in all the centuries since time began, we’ve never encountered one another. You have no insight on how we might cross the barrier? You’re not, ah…” The tiger chuckled sadly. “Not carrying one of those totems the saman had, are you?”

“No. I’m afraid I’m not.”

“Well, we crossed it once. I suppose we could get lucky. Unfortunately, we may have more pressing issues. Gebbenbech returned an hour ago—caught on his patrol by someone from Osani. Another culture has discovered us. Not allies of this town.”

“Do you know who?”

“According to Gebbenbech, Vapaske was unhelpful. He said only that there is ‘a third’ power to consider on this continent. Beyond us and the forest folk, I suppose. Whoever they are, it’s a warlike race, and our arrival threatens a fragile peace.”

She thought of glimpses she’d managed of the desert, beneath roiling clouds. “Are we ready to sail?”

“No. Too many questions remain. Vapaske says we need to talk to these rivals—convince them we’re not allies to the Osani. Even if we are—I think we are,” he added, and sighed again. “You’re not to come. They want me and Fletcherson. Karn, I think—I’ll take him, too. Pærtha, I suppose. But they expressly forbid you.”

“Why? Is it Valisen? My—my teacher?”

“No. I’m not certain about the exact reason. But…” He shut his tired eyes, and when he opened them he waved for her to take the map back. “More questions. Why can’t any of them be answered, Sheshki?”

“I don’t know, sir. Will you go?”

“What choice do we have? The Osani could destroy this whole camp in an instant if they wanted. And we do owe them, don’t we? So yes: I’ll go, and you’ll run the settlement while I’m gone. If I don’t return, do what you can to prepare the Clarion Adamant and… well. Do what you think is best, Sheshki. Get our people home.”

If I don’t return. “Sir…”

“Get them home.”

She gave him that promise, unsettling as it was to speak the words. And she went to find Karn. It took the better part of half an hour before someone pointed her in the right direction and she finally noticed that one of the rowboats was missing. The second mate was aboard their ship, in his cabin writing a letter. She could guess at its contents, and his reasons.

“You’re going with Captain Issich?”

He set the paper aside. “It seems that way. He asked—or they did? Fuckin’ mess, Sheshki; it’s all a fuckin’ mess. They say they’ll open some kind of door—get us there, and close it behind us. Trap us. For three days, and if we’re still alive, then we can come back.”

“They’re worried?”

“Near as I can tell,” he said. “Whoever these people are, our hosts are terrified. If I heard right, Osani itself is hidden from them. They don’t want to be discovered, I guess. Not that we know where it is. Or where we’re going. Or where we are.”

“I do.”

She took her map out, and spread it between her paws. Karn stiffened, ears swiveling back, and when the jackal glanced down she saw color soaking from her fingers into the paper: the color of trees, and mountains, and the darkening blue of deep ocean towards the sunrise. “How…”

“I… don’t know. I’m learning things. I saw the stars, Karn, and I saw our home. Four thousand miles away, but it’s there. I know it.”

“Magic?”

“Glimpses,” she admitted. “Of things far, far above us—our place in the universe. Just glimpses, but…”

“More than that, Sheshki,” the wolf said carefully. “You saw something.”

“The place you’re going. The desert. There were… it was hard to concentrate on it. As though I was on a mountaintop, staring down into a valley covered in fog. Or—or higher, maybe? Looking at storms from above them. It’s a dangerous place, Karn.”

“I figured when they wouldn’t let us come back on our own time. We’ve seen danger before, though.” The wolf frowned. “Storms, too.”

“Not like this.”

“You believe in these visions.” It wasn’t a question, though; wasn’t even skepticism.

She rolled the map up, tucking it away. “Yes, kachka. I do. I wanted to speak to you before you left.”

“The captain said he’s leaving you in charge. He picked well, Sheshki. Don’t know if I’ve made it clear how much I respect you, but… I do. Still—we’ll come back, jackal, I promise. I’m going home.”

“Yes.”

Karn’s head tilted. He searched her face. “You didn’t see that in your prophecy. But there’s… what did you see? What did you want to speak to me about?”

She bunched her paws into fists; steeled herself. “Tell no-one. Promise me. The same way you promised you’d come back, promise this.”

He kept staring at her, and the wariness in her old friend’s voice was like nothing she’d heard before. “Done. What is it?”

“This country is old, Karn. Not just older than the Iron Kingdom, but older than Esifyr, too—so many generations older that I can’t count them all. It might be older than Kessea… maybe even the desert itself. The links that connect it all are well beyond me… but these cultures, too, are ancient.”

“This was the World Before?”

“I don’t know. But it’s connected to… I saw…” She gritted her teeth. “I saw Jana’s surface. And machines, Karn—machines resting upon it. Before all of us, before anything our people can conceive of… these cultures are bound to that.”

“The moon? Jana, the moon?”

“Yes. Vapaske and even Valisen told us nothing about this. I… I’m not sure they’re aware of it. But that’s what we’ve caught ourselves in. That’s what they want you to face.”

She saw his eyes flicker; knew that he was fighting not to believe her, and losing that fight. “If we don’t come back—”

“You promised, kachka.”

“Yes.” He turned, to where Gethet and Cedda Fletcherson were preparing to leave. “So I did. What does that even mean?”