Aur Child

Gallia-Tiul, the most senior of all the elders of Hill Village, would not rush headlong into the forest alone; she had now abandoned that original plan. After hearing Alai’s account, she understood the situation was too dangerous for such an approach. If there were Apostates lurking out there, those abominable hunters of Aur children, she knew she must not be by herself; she must be accompanied by other elders to check their audacity.

Her fellow elders would be found hiding from the midday heat in their thick-walled dwellings, sipping freshly harvested rainwater. But to catch the right ones. So far, besides Alai and his family, all three members of Gallia’s clan, only the fisherman, Gorian-Nemla, and the young woman, Minjla-Hoenria, had heard about the strange occurrences at Sharkjaw; the lack of crabs being reported by the former and Alai’s description of the craters made within earshot of the latter. These events could not be immediately connected by anything other than their proximity, but Gallia certainly had reasons to be suspicious. Such strange things as these – and for them to occur simultaneously – were extraordinary for Hill Village. The best way to maintain calm was to prevent stories from spreading. Gorian and Minjla would be most easily convinced to do so by their respective clan leaders, Jange-Nemla and Nallu-Hoenria.

After briefly explaining what Gallia had heard, Jange, leaning her shoulders forward over her round body, and always quick to jump to conclusions, did just that.

“These things must be related,” she said, after Gallia asked if she would accompany her to Sharkjaw Creek.

“We should not let rumors start. We must know more,” Gallia replied.

Jange agreed. When she nodded, her round cheeks jiggled around wide nostrils, forming deep, black creases from the bridge of her nose down to the sides of her mouth. But concurrence was to be expected. Jange was one of the youngest elders and, unsteady as she was about her recently taken role, tended to go along with the opinions of the others.

Nallu looked less sure. Her lighter complexion contrasted sharply with deep, dark eyes that squinted regularly to signal her steadfast skepticism, especially when it came to anything involving Alai-Tiul. “It seems to me your ward has once again found himself at the center of trouble.” She had scowled when Gallia walked them through her second-hand account. But despite her mumbled “tsk-tsk”, protests about it being “such an important day to remain in the village”, and a slow shaking of her head in silent reprimand to whatever guidance Alai had currently run afoul, she did not refuse her colleague on such an ominous task. The moment they resolved to investigate, she was the first to mount her bicycle.

No hail or mudra could stop them from the momentum they gained rolling down the hill through the streets of Hill Village. Nallu followed the other two onto the shaded pathways of the forest. Gallia leaned down over each pedal as she creaked along the forest’s beaten roadway. When they reached the first junction, Gallia veered onto the narrower path that would lead them to the creek and, eventually, Crabber’s Bay. In the privacy afforded by this deeper section of forest, they began to speak more freely about the great threat simmering about them.

“Could they have been found?” Riding beside Gallia, Jange spoke first.

A verse came to Gallia’s mind. She thought to say it rather than directly acknowledge the possibility of theft by Apostates, those wretched others who had abandoned Earth for a false immortality, those stealers of souls.

“Our Order is but one in an infinite universe. Infinite other orders exist elsewhere,” she replied.

“But do you really think it could be an Apostate?” Jange shuddered as she spoke the word. “If those thieves have indeed found where you hide your Aur children, then our worst fears are realized.”

“You’re jumping to conclusions,” Nallu called from behind. “The Aur children have been safely hidden for over thirty decades. We haven’t even seen Alai’s craters yet already you worry those monsters are lurking around our forests.”

“But the fabric?” Jange said over her shoulder.

Gallia couldn’t deny she shared similar fears. “Let’s first see for ourselves, Jange. It shakes me to even think that such a thing has taken place and, worse…” she paused for a moment to consider if she would even finish the sentence, but after a few cranks of her pedals, she steeled her resolve and forced out what clawed at her mind, “…that my Aur children have been lost.”

Gallia felt a cold sweat trickle down her back. Their success as clans among villages and villages along coasts hinged upon the gospel of Our Order. The sacred texts had been produced by their ancestors following Cloudburst while the world was in chaos. Our Order, heralded by those who chose a path with nature. There were others out there who believed otherwise, she knew, but the same ancestors had settled their differences long ago and, until recently, those others, those Apostates, had not haunted Hill Village as rumors suggested they had elsewhere.

As they propelled their bicycles forward through the sticky sheen of mud, navigating around shiny puddles, Gallia shivered. She struggled to suppress the idea that incarnations of the Apostates could be watching them from behind the trees they passed. Perspiration collected on her face, dripping down onto her flapping sleeves and pale-knuckled hands. Her stomach twisted tighter as she poured over Alai’s description again and again, and as the truth of his words pierced her mind like the first rays of the sun at dawn, her throat began to close until she felt she could no longer breathe. Try as she might, her fears would not retreat. They were gone.

But how could they have been discovered and disturbed after being so carefully hidden for so many generations? Time may tell, but she could not ignore the strong pangs of loss in her stomach. If it were true, then she had failed her village. A secret so carefully guarded, yet so abruptly lost. An irreplaceable knowledge lost to an insatiable hunger for power. Even if it would go entirely unnoticed, even if the elders chose not to reveal this loss to the villagers, her peers would know she had failed to protect the ancestors of her clan. The loss of their confidence would be the beginning of the end of her careful tenure. Her clan would no longer be blessed by those lost souls, and, of course, like seawater to a shell-sliced toe, Gallia would have to pass on her failure to the next clan elder. The rains had brought a great blessing to the village that day but alas, it was not to be a day of celebration; instead, it was a day of devastation.

They found the creek and followed it as the cliffs rose tens of meters from behind. Over Gallia’s left shoulder, a shrill crescendo ended in a loud popping sound that brought all three elders to an abrupt stop, glancing at one another’s tires.

“What was that?” Nallu asked in a wavering voice as she inspected the lush green all around.

“I only saw a small cloud of dust other there,” Jange said in a whisper, pointing towards the cliffs. She straddled her bicycle and walked it closer to the other two. “But there’s nothing there now.”

Gallia looked through the gaps between trees, squinting her eyes to find some hint of the source of the sound. She noticed her foot was shaking. After a few moments, Jange pushed her bicycle to a roll and stepped down on a pedal. “Let’s continue,” she said.

With slow progress and an ear to their surroundings, the elders pushed ahead. Jange reached the unmistakable scene first. She rolled to a stop and released a gasp. It was just as Alai had described. The creek rushed through newly created troughs, steaming at the edges, bubbling at the center. A sour smell spoiled the air, further twisting Gallia’s stomach.

Gallia dismounted her bicycle and approached the edge of the creek. Looking closer, she could see a glowing blob in the depths of the nearer pool. No need to speak; they were too close to the caves in which the Aur Children had been hidden to consider a different explanation, and there was simply no other force she could imagine powerful enough to gouge into the creek so violently, blow down trees in such a fashion, or produce such radiant cores of heat. Only an Aur child, designed long ago to harbor a cherished soul for one thousand decades, contained so much energy. And only an Aur child, carelessly handled and collapsed in upon itself, could release so much energy, thereby extinguishing the cherished soul preserved within.

Gallia hung her head. Jange walked up to her and placed her arms gently around the older woman’s shoulders, sobbing as if it were her own loss. Nallu looked around, her mouth agape. The rush of the creek masked whimpers of grieving.

Gallia cleared her throat. “We must think clearly, ladies,” she said, straightening herself up and reaching for Jange’s hands. “What do the texts tell us?”

Nallu stared at the bubbling waters, reciting the words from a passage rarely read, “An Aur child, Earth allows, shall always attempt to collapse inward, thereby sacrificing the soul within to protect the souls without.”

Jange continued the passage, “Yet beware its environs, for the souls of those who approach without caution shall also be lost.”

Gallia reflected on these words and muttered to herself, “Rather vague when it’s urgent, isn’t it?” She then turned to the other two elders and said, “We have never witnessed such an event in our lifetimes. Certainly, the moment of collapse is a great danger, but perhaps we are all still at risk here. The creek, at least, is hot enough to cause burns. I cannot be sure, but perhaps we must keep villagers from this area until the heat is flushed away.” With a heavy exhale she added, “I have lost them. To whom I do not know, but how can it be any others than those vicious thieves? We can only hope this is the end of it.”

“The end?” Nallu asked with a hint of incredulity. “For you, perhaps.” Her cheeks glistened. She pointed randomly towards the forest and said, “Incarnations of the Apostates could still be out there, hunting now for our Aur children.”

“Look there,” Gallia pointed to the boiling rapids, “Two have been destroyed.” She looked around. “I will check the cave, but surely the third has been taken.”

“Do you know which souls have passed?” Jange asked tenderly, her voice barely audible above the gushing creek.

Gallia shook her head. “I can’t know until I learn of the third who is not here. I can only hope that they, too, are not lost. But to be taken by Apostates and enslaved as just another power cell would be no better fate, I fear.”

Jange spoke as if in a prayer, “Our Order is the substance of life within each and every one of us. Infinite other orders provide the basis for life elsewhere.” Her face scowled in anger, “How could they be so reckless?”

“In haste,” Gallia mumbled. “As they always have been. “For Apostates, it is just another dose of the power after which they lust. They have no care for what to us is a precious object, the sanctuary of our forefathers’ souls.”

Jange said, “Nallu is right, though. The Aur children of other clans may also be at risk if they are still about.”

“Perhaps,” Gallia replied. “But this looks like just as much a catastrophe for them as it is for us. No one could have survived this. They too have suffered in their attempt.”

“Catastrophe? Suffered?” Nallu said with a slight guffaw. “What do they care about the bodies they heist?”

“They care about being known, being followed, being discovered,” Gallia grumbled. “They came for three – what treacherous devices they used to find them after all this time we may never know – but at most they got one. And the cloth Alai showed me; there must have been some casualty here. If they haven’t all perished, then they’ve surely run back to their hole to hide.”

“For now, perhaps,” Jange grumbled.

“Yes, for now,” Gallia said. “The most important thing we can do is reconsider the security of the other Aur children.” She looked at Jange and Nallu, representing two of the five other clans at Hill Village, each clan a protector of its own Aur children, each elder that secret’s guardian. “We should return to the village and convene a council immediately.”

“But,” protested Jange only half-heartedly, “the festivities.”

Gallia shrugged. “It is a good distraction as any while we consider our plan of action.”

Gallia and the other two village elders were holding their bicycles upright at the edge of the creek when the old fisherman approached them from the direction of the sea. As he walked toward them, Gallia tried to conclude their conference, but the words “...protected for ages ...now sadly over ...our failure,” had surely reached his ears. The two craters continued to steam. They released heat to the immediate area that blended in confused drafts with the cool rush of the swollen creek.

“Now, what can that be?” asked the fisherman, following his inquiry with a silent whistle at the odd rearrangement of natural objects framing the creek.

“We, we determine it to be a sort of lightning strike, Gorian. Likely nothing more,” Jange replied to the fisherman of her clan.

“That there’s an odd way for lightning to strike, ain’t it? And if it’s anything like the tiny snaps of dust I’ve seen in the trees comin’ up here, I’d wonder what kind of little lightnings they might be.”

“How many did you see, Gorian?” Jange asked.

“I heard two snaps and saw one little cloud. Strangest things.”

The elders were silent, so the man continued. “At least none I’ve seen before.”

Gallia waited for a moment and then spoke to the fisherman. “Gorian, what of the bay? Have you found anything, or anyone?”

“Well, Elder Tiul. That’s the reason I dropped my anchor on a sand bar and come up this way to find you, where Alai-Tiul said you’d be. I understood from him to be on the lookout for some persons washed out by the creek. So, I sailed about the bay lookin’, but I ain’t found any signs of ’em.”

“So, what then, Gorian?”

“Well, what I did find is hard to say, exactly. I say, it’s a boat, no doubt. Halfaways between here and the rocks at Crabber’s Point. That’s where I anchored so as to take a better account of it. Strange boat at that, though. Smaller than mine. It was pulled up onto the beach and tied off very nice-like, hidden at the treeline with a bit of a green fabric over it. I say, I had to walk down to her just to make out what she was.”

“Oh?” asked Jange, her rounded eyes passed from Nallu to Gallia.

“Oh, yes,” the fisherman continued, seemingly too enthralled in his report to answer the question any less directly. “The fabric’s a sort I ain’t never seen. Tougher than a crocodile’s gut. And the boat is an even odder shape and material. Kinda shinin’ but then, not. Hard to see if you don’t twist your eyes kinda funny. I stared at it a bit just to be sure what I was lookin’ at. By the prop installed, it even seems to have a fancy motor somewhere inside, though I couldn’t find out where for the life of me. Imagine! An electric motor in a small little tender such as that.”

He stiffened up a bit as he continued his report. “But what’s even odder to me is the knot used to tie it off.” He looked straight into Gallia’s eyes. “Elder Tiul, I ain’t never seen that type of knot before. I studied it and thought, in all my decades at sea, that knot I ain’t never come across not once.” He slapped his hand against his side. “Not once!”

Gallia struggled to comprehend the importance of a knot, but Gorian’s consternation could not be ignored.

“Pretty though!” continued the fisherman. “I learned it already, and it’s a mighty strong bite for tying off and such. Releases nice and easy, too. May use it myself!”

The elders stiffened. Gallia suddenly realized that their silent shock might raise Gorian’s suspicions. Jange let out a shaky sigh and peered around the trees once more. Gorian shifted on his feet uncomfortably. He did not say another word.

Jange leaned in and whispered to Gallia, “Incarnations of the Apostacy!”

Gallia held out her hand to Jange. “Are you alone, Gorian?” she asked, and without waiting for an answer, she leaned forward and started walking her bicycle towards the ocean.

“I am.”

“Very well,” Gallia said, in the voice of the stern local official she sometimes needed to be. “Then bring your boat over to this tender you’ve discovered and hold out by the closest sandbar. We will walk a line out to you in the surf with which to tow that tender out to Sharkjaw.”

Gallia quickened her step as she continued her instructions; Gorian and the two other elders followed close behind as she spoke. Her grey frock flowed behind her, bouncing occasionally against the bicycle. “We’ll lead her to the mouth of the rocks and release the tow line so she’s devoured in the jaws. And Gorian…” she stopped and turned to look into his eyes, “it is best that we do not speak of this boat to anyone. It will only cause worry. Remember,” she said, assuming her strongest tone, “meddle not with what we do not understand.”

“Yes, Elder Tiul. You’ve my word on that.”

They hiked out towards the beach and then up to the spot Gorian had pointed out to them. Jange struggled to keep up with the others. She carried her sandals with one hand and lifted her frock from the collapsing sand with the other. The greenish heap of fabric hiding the boat wafted slightly in the mild breeze.

Nallu cleared her throat. “Are we acting in haste?” she asked, her voice shaking. They were almost directly beneath the midday sun now; perspiration streamed down her temples.

Gallia stared at the strange craft that already began to reveal its contours as they approached. She looked up at the harsh sky.

“If we continue like this,” she said, “we will surely tire before our task is complete. Jange, would you poke into the forest for some Backdraft root to strengthen our step?”

Jange nodded and disappeared into the brush.

“You propose we are acting in revenge, Nallu?”

“I mean, we are rushing to destroy this thing. We don’t even know from where it comes.”

“We will soon see,” Gallia said. “Will you be satisfied when it’s clear it wasn’t built by any shipyard we’ve ever known?”

“Even then,” Nallu continued, “Must we immediately insist on its destruction?”

Gallia looked at her fellow elder. Each of them had lived for many decades together and, although they sparred on many pedantic points of village life, they had never differed on the need to keep the secrets of the Apostates from the villagers.

“And what would you have us do with it?” she asked, condescendingly waving her open hand towards the heap of fabric before them. Gallia had heard enough from the fisherman to be sure it would be covering a vessel owned by a people of such advanced technology that they had always agreed, nay, that was commanded to them in the texts of Our Order, that their entire way of life would be jeopardized if it were to be revealed.

“It’s hard enough tamping down the rumors. Would you have us offer the villagers rides on a storied ghost ship? Or cast it off to sea to land at the feet of some other unsuspecting village?”

Nallu’s mouth opened and closed. She stiffened her posture and assumed a righteous tone. “I would have us take the course of action that results in the least harm…the least violence.”

“Violence?” Gallia gasped. She paused for a moment to check herself. Was she at risk of that blasphemy? No. “It’s just a boat. What violence is there in its disposal? Would it not be more violent to risk the questions of our villagers if they were to learn of it, to see it, to desire the bogus benefits of it in their wholesome lives? Or to fill their minds with the fear of real Apostates stalking in our midst?”

This quieted Nallu’s protests. Coarse words to be sure, but she felt an urgency that rarely harangued her. At any moment, a fishing boat could round the head of Crabber’s Point, or a villager might appear at the edge of the forest and multiply the risks of exposure.

At that moment, Jange reappeared from the forest holding up a fistful of leaves.

“No Backdraft, ladies. But this pairing of Wattle leaf and Royal Cheer shall give us a boost to push the boat back into the sea.”

“Very well, Jange,” Gallia said. She turned and continued towards the boat.

When they arrived at the bow of the beached tender, the women could not help but renew nervous glances. Gallia could now confirm that the sleek craft was constructed of materials that, aside from the wind towers, she had only seen at forbidden ruins of the peoples before Cloudburst beyond sight of the wind towers. But she couldn’t share that knowledge with the others; she could not reveal that she herself had hungered for answers in her youth and transgressed more than once in that search.

Pulling the cover away, she beheld the hull, made of a shimmering, pocked material that appeared black up close and nearly invisible from afar. The lines were silky, amphibious, aggressive. The shrouds appeared like braided crystalline threads, nothing like the hempen cord of their own merchant vessels. The sails, furled and secured by their sheets, hinted at impeccable stiffness like folded panes of glass. The furnishings might be plush or stone, it was difficult to discern which without touching them.

Gallia nodded as she surveyed the boat. “This is nothing the villagers should see.”

Indeed, she thought, this must be the first time any of them had themselves ever seen a functioning vessel of this kind. Gallia felt the shiver run through her body. The rigging and lines were all in excellent shape if a bit crusted with salt. Neatly coiled ropes suggested the boat had been recently sailed with human hands.

Gallia snapped out of her daze. “Help me strip these sails off the spars while you take some of that anchor rode and foul the prop. When you’re done with that, Jange, tie off the tiller to keep her pointing straight. Nallu, will you then tie down the boom? Yes, and remove all those lines as well except for that long one; tie it off at the bow.”

The others seemed taken by surprise at these rapid-fire orders but executed their work without protest. Within minutes, the sails and lines had been stuffed in the brush beneath the fabric that had been used to camouflage the boat. The little tender, minutes earlier an existential threat, now looked exposed and helpless. Still, Gallia thought, they must act fast. Who could know what might happen if Apostates returned during their vandalization?

“Now, let’s make a final check in these compartments,” Gallia instructed her colleagues. “We must be sure no living thing is here before we continue.”

The women scoured the boat but found no signs of life. Nallu looked up from the stern.

“It’s empty, Gallia,” she said.

“Very well.”

The breeze blew to shore, forcing the fisherman to hold his boat in position with a light anchor between sandbars. With strength summoned from anxiety and with many grunts, Gallia, assisted by the two other women, slid the lightweight vessel backwards across the soft sand and into the lapping sea. They waded out into the shallow waves, tugging the stripped tender behind them to the sandbar. It bobbed gingerly in the water. Gallia waded ahead with the long tow line in her hand, pushing with her toes as the waves lifted her off the shifting sands below.

“Get aboard and fasten the ends of the tow line to the stern cleats,” Gallia told Jange. Gorian lent his large hand to help them up the ladder. Once aboard, however, Gallia allowed the elders to take direction from the fisherman on hauling in the anchor, hoisting sails, and trimming the lines. Gorian navigated the two craft, his boat under sail and the alien tender in tow, out and across the bay towards the gaping cliffs of Sharkjaw.

Now the shiny tender leaped reluctantly in the tiny swells, as if it were fighting against the tow line. But the cool sea breeze swept to shore, easing their crossing of the bay. As they approached the cape, Gorian’s face twisted into a scowl; he dispensed with obeisance, assuming a captain’s tone and a baffling flume of nautical commands that required one to wade through the vernacular and sometimes guess at what must be done. “I’ll sail past the mouth on a fast reach and come about. When I do, the tender’ll stop dead in front of the jaws for a second or two. That’s when you release the hitch at the starboard cleat and pull it in from the port. The current always sucks in at the mouth of the jaws. Got it?”

“Just give the word,” Gallia shakily responded.

Despite the threat of the nearby rocks, the fisherman deftly performed his maneuver. Gallia kept her eyes fixed on the bow cleat of the tender as the tow line slipped through it, leaving the radiant boat to its own devices at the mouth of Sharkjaw.

The fisherman completed the tack and sailed well clear of the mouth. “Elder Hoenria, ready that anchor line if you will. There’s a shallow part up here where we could set it for a bit, but I think we’ll try and just hove-to well enough in this breeze. I expect that tender to get sucked into the mouth pretty quick. Those jaws don’t forgive for nothing.”

Nallu fumbled with the anchor and line, her attention more on the strange boat than her task. The fisherman positioned the sails of his boat to hold steady. They watched the jaws draw in the tender, swell by swell.

Behind the tender, the ferocious crash of waves could be heard, and spouts of foam visibly exploded from the top of the sharp, jagged cliffs. Although in the safest hands of the village for such an operation, Gallia could see Nallu shaking in fear.

“The timing is good, Elder Tiul. Current will pull her in briskly. This is the safest spot for us, but we must keep our distance.”

Gallia looked out over the bay. No boat plied the waters between the two points. No one could be seen ashore. The tender would disappear completely. At least this can be kept from the villagers.

Within moments, the small craft had closed in on the mouth of Sharkjaw. The seconds before contact between the tender and the jaws seemed to force a hushed quiet in the boat. In a final moment of peacefulness, the tender gently bumped up against the side of the mouth and spun pleasantly around in a pirouette, its bow faced to seaward, as if the unmanned boat was somehow trying to reposition itself to be blown away by the onshore wind from those fatal jaws like a dandelion seed in a breeze. Alas, as the swell rose, shoving countless quantities of seawater through the mouth, the tender was lifted high on the waves and sucked into the jaws.

Gallia stood behind the others, breathless, tears forming in her eyes. Will I regret this? The fisherman held the tiller down in his hands but looked only to the view astern. Nallu and Jange held their hands as if in prayer.

The ruin of the tender was not instantaneous. Nothing could resist the forces inside the mouth, but a boat of that design would not be crushed as easily as a late Autumn leaf. With the first, thunderous crash against the sharp rocks, the hull bounced back resiliently. It ricocheted a few more times until the right angle was come upon. Then, the bow ripped open, shattering and splintering in a burst of spray like children’s boots stomping through a mud puddle. The odd crunching sound of composite layers resonated like the snapping of bones within Gallia’s ears. Sturdy bulkheads exploded under pressure while spars rended and sunk in twisted, unrecognizable curls. Larger pieces were churned again and again into smaller ones, until everything was eventually pulverized.

Although the waves themselves reached them in roars and rushes, a desperate call burst out from the jaws. In the confusion of all that violence, she could not clearly discern the source, yet neither could Gallia ignore her certain recognition of the word “Mother!” in that horrifying call. A dark, green light burst under the water and fanned out past the boat, making the fisherman’s hull vibrate and shaking the legs of its passengers. Jange squeezed Nallu’s hand even tighter. A soup of flotsam materials swirled furiously within the mouth, unwilling yet to sink, shrinking in dimensions with every new collision, unavoidably sucked down into the churn of the wicked internal currents.

The small crew stared aghast at the ruin they had caused, each one an accomplice. Gallia did not notice the sun beating down upon them from above, nor the sea breeze sweeping over them from behind. She only heard the echo of the call in her head. Even she, who understood completely how important it was to erase this object from existence before its discovery by the villagers, who could make a logical case that ships had always been somewhat anthropomorphized in seafaring people’s minds, and who had, only moments ago, experienced the devastating loss of two of the most precious wards under her purview presumably by the same hands that had built this boat, struggled with the decimation just executed. Such violence, she realized, she simply could not ignore, even upon an inanimate object. Moreover, her orders had compromised the sanctity of her cherished colleagues and an innocent villager; it was, she acknowledged, the closest any of them had come to causing harm to another in all their lives.

But the morbid knell was yet to come. From deep within the jaws, among the crushing sounds of hull and spars, a terrible scream of pain gurgled up into her ears. It was not a human scream. It was something else. Something unequivocally non-human. Something rigid, hard, metallic, mechanical. She tensed her chest forward at the experience, cringing as if struck by a shock of electricity. A scream of agony, inanimate, yet nonetheless one of absolute suffering. Gallia stood upright and gripped desperately at a cleat gnarled from decades of work. It was only a brief scream, perhaps two or three seconds, but the chill and the horror of it remained. It was not just her, however. All four of them had been paralyzed by that scream.

In a panic, or the closest thing an old salt like Gorian could have to a panic when in command of his vessel, the fisherman suddenly came to his senses and realized his boat was drifting towards the mouth.

“Release that jib line!” He barked, waking the others from their trance.

He wrenched the rudder over to starboard and the foresail snapped full. The little fishing boat was caused by that action to lurch forward with a brave leap of ambition. But the swell still swept them closer to the mouth. Gorian’s eyes darted from the rigging to the sails and to the spars.

“Pull in that line with all your might or we’ll have it!” He roared.

Although accelerating, the boat drifted by swell and current perpendicular to the captain’s desired heading. A gust filled the sails, and the boat heeled over. Its mast cranked down and pointed towards the mouth of Sharkjaw. The main sheet vibrated furiously under tension. Nallu slipped on the pitched cockpit floor; she found herself down low against the railing beside the rushing sea. Gorian stomped his foot down over hers to keep her from sliding off the deep side of the boat. She cried out in pain. Gallia grasped desperately to the coaming, unable to help.

The boat continued to gain speed. Gorian kept his heading. He seemed to only will the vessel beyond the fangs of the ravenous entrance. The dread of Sharkjaw, its fabled brew of current, gust, and swell, never felt so imminent to Gallia. Her heart jumped in her throat. Endless minutes passed. Then, only after the true moment of salvation, she understood they had finally sailed clear of danger.

Several more minutes of fast sailing out into the middle of the bay and free from any other dangers, the fisherman turned into the wind and set the boat to a gentle float. “What happens now?” he asked no one in particular, peering back towards the wicked misery they had just narrowly escaped.

In the distance, the cheery noontime church bells could only just be heard. A long silence, the pause forcing reality into the moment. Gallia seemed to speak to herself, as if she were in a sedated trance.

“The position of humanity in the cosmos is best thought of in the context of infinity.”

The elders and the fisherman listened quietly, not entirely sure how this answered the question, but ready to accept a sermon upon their moment of deliverance. After a pause, Gallia continued.

“Infinity of space teaches us that we exist as a nondescript point in the spectrum of magnitude. No lens exists to declare a particle that is not made up of some smaller bits. No lens exists to declare a universe that is not encompassed by some larger sphere.”

The roar and crash of waves again reached them from the deep crevasses of Sharkjaw. The breeze hushed in the listeners’ ears. Gallia gulped and spoke again.

“Infinity of time teaches us that we exist as a nondescript moment in the spectrum of events. No record exists to deny a period that is not preceded by some other. No record exists to deny an end can ever be expected without some succession.”

Seagulls squawked above their heads. The little boat creaked in the swell. Nallu rustled in her pocket for some personal item.

“Today, under a kind sky, we shall eat a healthy but small meal and find plenty of reasons to smile and laugh together. Let us return to our village.”