Storm Ring

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  1 | Crossing

  Thomas guided the dinghy north along the Inuvoran coast. The river mouth that lay ahead would serve as his oblique referent for their outward journey to the seaport. He turned them through a tight quarter-arc and set a heading out into the open sea.

  Carmen and Franklin sat in the dinghy’s stern watching the landward horizon. They almost expected the stilling sheet to come rolling up into view above the escarpment. But in fact it had not yet climbed the valley’s long slope, and was slowly scudding along parallel with them, hemmed in by the escarpment. Its sudden appearance in the valley had been unnerving for all of them. They had known that it would eventually blanket this region’s landmass, as it had elsewhere. But that had seemed a far-off event. They realized they were not safe anywhere along this coast.

  Breaking camp and launching the dinghy had gone smoothly. Their unpromising plan was to pick up Oscar at the seaport and continue on to the storm ring. Only by getting beyond that wall of storms could they escape this coming sheet. They would sail a circuit around it, and find a way through. It wasn’t a great plan. But what choice did they have?

  The ocean was not glass-smooth, its wide swells moved gently up and down with a systolic slowness. It felt as though Nebura was holding its breath. As the afternoon wore on the dream-like suspension of movement continued. Carmen was looking ahead, but the horizon was empty. She couldn’t see any sign of the seaport.

  Franklin saw her expression and smiled. He turned to Thomas. “How long?”

  “Three hours, give or take.”

  It was not long after Seamus took over at the helm that Carmen saw the stilling sheet far behind. It was pouring out through the river mouth. She touched Franklin’s arm and he glanced back. After a long look he resolutely faced forward.

  The afternoon wore on. The sun was now nowhere to be seen in the slate-grey sky. They had crossed the half-way point. The coast, and the sheet could only be seen as a part of the curvature of the horizon. It no longer seemed quite real.

  The seaport finally came into view. It gained stature gradually.

  But something new had claimed their attention. Thomas was the first to notice that the upper eighteen inches of the ocean’s surface had grown much clearer, almost transparent. The unnatural clarity had steadily increased. Soon they could see down about thirty feet. It was disorienting. At moments the illusion of being suspended in midair was irresistible.

  “It wasn’t like this when I came before,” Marnie whispered.

  “The water was still refracting light the way it should,” Franklin said, shaking his head.

  Seamus occasionally turned the craft around and ramped up the propulsion’s torque just to churn the sea. The roiled surface disrupted the ocean’s oppressive glass-like illusion. They moved on towards the seaport, increasingly eager to reach their destination.

  To Carmen’s eyes the horizon on all sides was a line between the lesser blue of the water and the slightly deeper blue of the sky, the reverse of what it should be. To a disinterested observer the seaport and the dinghy would have been the only apparent objects on this whole upended saucer of ocean.