Mareld

FROM THE MANUSCRIPT · READING EXCERPT

Enter the story

The line Seraya had taken for a bank of low clouds hadn’t moved in nearly an hour.

She stood beside the rail with one hand wrapped around a weathered length of timber, watching the eastern horizon through a fine gray rain. The sea had been restless since before dawn. Small waves struck the hull at an awkward angle, sending water across the lower boards and making the vessel roll just enough to trouble anyone who had begun to trust their balance.

Beyond the spray, a darker shape rose against the morning sky.

Land.

She leaned forward, narrowing her eyes. What had first appeared to be a long stretch of cloud now showed separate heights, a jagged break between two cliffs, and something darker along the lower slopes. Trees, perhaps. There had been no trees in sight for so long that she was reluctant to trust what she saw.

A sailor crossed behind her carrying a wet coil of rope.

“Is that Ruthal?” she asked.

He followed her gaze.

“Aye.”

“You’re certain?”

He looked at her, then back toward the coast.

“Unless someone’s moved a continent while we’ve been asleep.”

Seraya smiled despite herself.

“Has Doveth seen it?”

“Captain’s been watching since first light.” He shifted the rope against his shoulder. “We’ll need a pilot before the harbor. Best get your family ready.”

He continued toward the stern, where two other sailors were working beneath the raised steering platform.

Seraya stayed at the rail.

Ruthal.

For weeks, the name had belonged to conversations, uncertain charts, and the account she had carried across the sea. Now it lay before her, dark and green beneath the clouds, with its own weather moving over the hills.

She had imagined the moment often during the crossing. Sometimes she had pictured relief. Sometimes fear. More than once she had rehearsed what she might say to the first person who asked why they had come.

She hadn’t imagined feeling so tired.

A small hand caught the fabric of her sleeve.

“Mother?”

She looked down.

Vaeren stood beside her, his hair flattened on one side from sleep. He had pulled his outer garment over his shoulders without fastening it properly, and his bare arms were already damp from the rain.

“You’re supposed to be below.”

“I was. Draskk woke me.”

“Did he?”

“He put his nose against my face.”

“That’s usually because he wants something.”

“He wanted me to wake up.”

“Then he’s become very clever.”

Vaeren ignored the remark. His attention had settled on the horizon.

“Is that it?”

“Yes.”

“Ruthal?”

“Ruthal.”

He took a step closer to the railing.

For several moments he studied the distant shore without speaking. Then he looked up at her.

“It looks different.”

“Different from what?”

“From the stories.”

Seraya crouched beside him, steadying herself with one hand against the rail.

“How?”

“There’s more trees.”

She followed his gaze.

He was right. The forest appeared to descend almost to the water, thick and dark along the cliffs. Even at this distance she could see places where the greenery was interrupted by pale rock and narrow ribbons of falling water.

The coast they had left behind had possessed its own beauty, though she doubted Vaeren would ever remember it that way.

“Stories leave things out,” she said.

“Why?”

“Sometimes the people telling them haven’t seen everything.”

He considered that.

“Have you?”

“No.”

“Then how did you know we’d find it?”

She could have said they had followed the charts. She could have reminded him that Doveth knew how to cross an ocean, that sailors had traveled these waters before, that land did not vanish simply because it lay beyond the horizon.

But Vaeren was looking at her with the solemn attention he gave to answers he intended to remember.

“I didn’t know for certain,” she said. “I believed we could.”

He looked back at the coast.

“Father said we’d get here.”

“Your father believed it too.”

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End of excerpt. This site presents a selection from the manuscript.