When Kelwas next woke, it was at the insistence of a lightening sky, and Captain Xio's boot prodding his foot. He sat up with a groan, rubbing the sand from his eyes. Overhead, the gulls sounded like they were laughing at him.

As everyone else stirred, the captain squatted over a bundle in the forecastle. Wrapped in vermillion and thread-of-gold cloth, she undid the three knots - each more complicated than the next - turning it first in one direction, then another, muttering something to it each time. Once sufficiently convinced, the cloth opened like a flower and revealed a small feast - a joint of meat steamed amidst several loaves of black bread, beets, two wedges of hard cheese, and some dried cherries and plums, complete with brass plates for each. Small though it might have been in a lord or lady's hall, the feast was large enough for Kelwas to wonder why their impromptu tablecloth did not dangle over the edges of their boat to trail along in the water.

Once they had all eaten - the ravens stole and squabbled over scraps from Goldenrod's plate, Wolf gnawed the now-bare joint - the captain gathered the corners of the cloth and between one blink and the next it was a bundle she could hold in one hand again. She punched her free hand into it, and like a festival mountebank performing a trick, turned it inside-out. 

This startled the ravens, who scattered, flapping and squawking in alarm.

As the cloth settled again, a pot-bellied copper autepsa stood at its center on clawed feet. Arrayed around it, three bowls. At Captain Xio's insistence, the autepsa tottered from bowl to bowl, bowing before each to decant hot tea. Once it had completed its circuit, it returned to its original place and lowered itself to rest. Xio took her tea, waiting for the others to follow suit.

"Come then," she said to Kelwas and Goldenrod. "Come then. Now that we've eaten, who will fill our sail's belly?"

Sipping from his bowl, Kelwas yelped something out. The tea was scalding hot. After a long moment where all he did was blow through his moustaches, he repeated what he'd meant to say. "Me--" he gulped more air "--Let me try, then."

Tea bowl still in hand, Kelwas stood and took a moment to get his sea legs. He cleared his throat and began:

Old Gaunt they came a courtin
They braved the valley snows
A maiden fair, with golden hair
Had ensnared their heart, oho

Old Gaunt they came a courtin
Waitin at true love's door
They were dressed, all in their best
For to ask her hand, oho

Old Gaunt they came a courtin
The maiden heard them knock
I'm too young by far, for who you are
She said through the door, oho

Old Gaunt they came a courtin
When their love she did spurn
They bade her see youth and beauty
Would fade soon enough, oho

Old Gaunt they came a courtin
They pleaded, you must know
Beauty's within, beneath your skin
Pure as fallen snow, oho

Thinking back to the last time he had sung, the music welled out of Kelwas and he let it. He swayed, thumped his staff in time, and everyone - even the ravens, even Captain Xio - stopped whatever they had been doing, no matter how small, as if they had been caught in honey. By the time he got to the part of the song when the maiden's resolve wavers and Old Gaunt, sensing triumph, tells her 

Old Gaunt they came a crowin
When her heart did soften, said
O do not fear, I'll dress you dear
In my finest gowns, ho ho

Yes, to wear them, dear, and join me here
In my hall underground, ho ho

The sea around them boiled with movement as every kind of fish and swimming thing crowded the boat, an audience Kelwas drew up from the depths with his voice. The boat being tossed atop the backs of several whales broke the spell for Captain Xio, and she shouted for Kelwas to stop.

Panting, Kelwas watched the sea around them grow calm once more.

They were ankle-deep in fish, which had leapt to supposed safety and now flopped and gasped and rolled their eyes at Kelwas. Fending off the gulls, he tossed as many as he could back into the water. Goldenrod and Captain Xio followed his example, but nothing could be done for the salmon Wolf snapped up, so regal in its silver raiment.

Once done, they sailed on with the captain at the tiller. Once the sun sank behind them, they ate as the stars began to wink in the darkling sky. This time, a squat tureen held a creamy fish stew, full of chunks of carrot and celery root, and dessert was curls of candied orange and lemon peel. Afterwards, Kelwas was certain the autepsa had poured him a bowl of tea stronger than anyone else's.

"Just the thing for first watch." Xio flashed her golden tooth when Kelwas finished with a grimace. "Ever been on the water?"

"Not even a pond." Kelwas smiled ruefully. "Learned how to swim, after a fashion."

"Little swims for little waters, eh?"

"Yes, quite true."

"Come then," Xio gestured for him to sit at the tiller, standing to make space. "Come. It's not so difficult to learn." She pointed at a bright star on the horizon. "Just lean on the tiller until our prow is pointing at the Seaward Star, and the ship she'll do the rest. Anything happens, just wake me."

With that, everyone else settled in for the night. The ravens huddled and muttered to each other, with much flicking of wings. Goldenrod curled up near the base of the mast, her key-hand cradled in her other arm. Wolf had gotten up to press his back against one of Kelwas' feet as he sat at the tiller. After a time, he sank into the eerie silence that surrounds a lone wakeful person among sleepers. Soothsayers and the very wise used to say that outside of dying we are never closer to those unseen waters than when we sleep, though perhaps what they meant was that sleep is a small death. One made common because we all of us do so, eager to fall into its arms night after night. Odd, is it not, that we welcome this small death but not its elder? Both await us all, but perhaps it is the promise of waking that allows us to embrace its terrible dark without fear. So, when Goldenrod murmured something - perhaps a warning - and sat up, glaring at something only she could see, Kelwas could not meet her gaze. Instead, he stared ahead, humming a rambling and shapeless song under his breath.

After an interminable amount of time, she lay down again.

The moons rose, gilding the whitecaps with shining scrollwork. The susurrus of the waves and the low creak of the hull combined with the flap of the sail in such a way that they seemed to form words, as if the boat was trying to tell Kelwas a story of its own in a language he could almost grasp. Straining to listen, he almost did not notice an island like a snow-covered hill rising out of the water ahead.

He stared at its irregular surface, thinking perhaps it was one of the ice mountains he had heard plagued Rimelander sea stories, threatening to split their keel. As he sailed closer, however, he realized with a start that it was a head carved from what seemed to be one colossal piece of white marble, glittering like ice. Half-submerged, all but its crown of thick curls and heavy brow visible. Eyes with pupils large enough to sail through scowled at Kelwas across the waves. So vehement was its expression, he moved to nudge Captain Xio awake.

"The Eyes of the Sea," she said after she had awakened sufficiently. "This is good. Come then, let me spell you." Xio rose to take his place at the tiller, and despite Kelwas' protestations, he was fast asleep in moments.

Dawn was but a pale smear across the horizon when Wolf nudged him awake.

The ravens stirred and bickered amongst themselves, prodding each other until one after another, they launched into the air. They wheeled around the mast, soaring up and up and up until they looked like drops of ink scattered across the clear sky. Beyond them, faint as stars, entire constellations of birds winged their way towards their nesting grounds in the Pure Lands.

Once done cleaning after Wolf and the ravens, Xio again opened her vermillion and cloth-of-gold bundle and once more she shook it open until a breakfast of hearty porridge steamed in a small, dented cauldron, with honey and cream. Once finished, the autepsa again bowed to serve them tea.

As they sipped at the dregs, Captain Xio rose once again to ask who would fill their sail's belly.

"But no more singing from you," she told Kelwas with a bit of a sideways smile.

"I have something." Goldenrod picked at the stitching on her key-hand's hood. "At least it's a story our father once told me."

Xio and Kelwas shifted and sat with their backs to the sail while Goldenrod began.

In a far valley, beyond the sacred rivers we all know, a timorous man lived alone. Once he had been a soldier until he slipped away on the eve of battle. He ran until he became a scribe in one of those capital cities only known in story or song, but his many, many fears crowded him on all sides at his narrow desk. They peered over his shoulder and jostled his elbow until he could barely write. His brushstrokes became either so timid no one could read them, or so forceful they were equally unreadable blots of ink. Unable to continue working as a minor clerk, rattled by the many sounds of the city, he returned home.

However, his nervous condition was not helped by living with his family. His father's prize rooster - a champion with a blood-red comb who had won him many silver pekkari in the ring - crowed at all hours of the day and night, challenging even the sun and the moons to a fight for merely being visible in the sky. Not to mention the sheep his sisters tended filling the air with their inane bleating (whenever they weren't placidly and loudly chewing their cud). Even his mother had taken to cooking food in the Southern style, the onions and spices churning his stomach and unbalancing his temperaments. After several weeks, he could endure it no more and left to find the cottage where he had been born, long abandoned to the forest.

Quiet - at last. Despite needing to mend the thatch and discovering he shared a roof with a badger, too ornery to be coaxed to leave, he slept soundly his first night there. The next day, he swept out most of the cottage with a broom he'd made from a bundle of sticks. At day's end, he settled in and his second night passed without event.

But on the third night. . . on the third night, a visitor came calling.

Just as he had at last gotten his blankets wrapped around himself, and his eyes were going sideways with sleep, a knock at the door set his heart racing. He had no neighbors; there was no one else for miles and miles around. Who else could it be but that old hunter of the living? Who else could it be waiting outside his door, but Old Gaunt?

Again, a knock sounded upon the splintered wood of the door - slightly louder, this time.

The man's heart was at such a gallop that his breath came in shuddering gasps and he could not utter a word. Another knock sent him flinching into his blankets, shrinking away like a snail. What should he do? What could he do? In the old stories, the Vagabond Stranger responded to hospitality, but - tragedy of tragedies - that would mean he would have to invite him in. Very well, he thought, and emerged to try to say come in or perhaps even welcome in the light and carefree way someone much braver than he might have. All he could manage was an inaudible stammer.

A third time the visitor knocked, loud enough that it seemed the cabin shook, and dust drifted down from the eaves.

The man nearly cried out, but clapped a hand to his mouth. Tears trickled over his knuckles, but he took a long, shaky breath before trying to respond. After an agonizing moment, all he could manage was, "Wh-who?"

And hearing this outside, Old Gaunt thought he had disturbed Grandmother Owl and fled, the sound of his heels striking the ground like the rattle of dice in a cup.

Shunned by Old Gaunt in this way, it is said he is still huddled there, weary of his cabin, but too afraid of death to ever leave.

Kelwas and Goldenrod shared a smile before he gave a brief snort of laughter.

"I don't understand." At Xio's blank expression, Kelwas' chortles rolled out from his belly until he was howling. Just as he was steadying himself once more, Xio repeated herself and sent him into new gales of laughter.

"You never heard people say, 'Grandmother Owl was reminded of her husband' when it rains on a clear, sunny day?"

"Oh, you mean when your All-Father gets tricked into smiling?"

"I've never heard that one," Kelwas said, and it was Xio's turn to laugh.

Once the laughter died down enough, Goldenrod said, "The way we told it was that the one time Grandmother Owl knew heartache was when Old Gaunt did not return her love. She had long ago tasked him with chasing the sun over the edge of the world every day and confused his obedience for devotion."

The sun, which had been hidden behind the clouds, chose this moment to reappear. Its rays dappled the sea around them with green and turquoise. The ravens swooped and rolled, cawing at each other in play. The sail billowed and snapped like a pennant, the sound cheering Kelwas, though he could not say why. While Xio gathered what was left of their breakfast back into a tidy bundle, he moved to take another spell at the tiller. 

What had been a mere line on the horizon earlier had become more substantial. Kelwas was certain he could make out a thin sliver of shore, and beyond that the treeline. He uttered a low and melodious ahoi, pointing for Goldenrod and Xio. Even Wolf turned to look.

"The Stone." Captain Xio breathed the words, as if they were a prayer.

"Is the island itself the Stone?" Goldenrod asked, but Xio had busied herself with easing the sail.

"An old order of anchoresses tends to the Stone. They also listen and meditate upon the faint echoes of the Tziren's voices and have taken vows of silence to better observe their devotion," Xio said once the talespun cloth hung slack. "Some sisters even wed themselves to one or both Tzirens as a way to prove their faith."

Drifting on in silence, a voice reached Kelwas' ears. It was raised in song, its notes faint and bright as the coming dawn, but so full of an anguish and a longing that was not meant for him that he was ashamed - for it was as if he was eavesdropping on someone's private pain.

As they drew closer to the island, day and night met in the sky above, roiling in the way a river empties into the sea. Stars glittered in the sky as they sailed into the bay under milky twilight. The moment their keel scraped the bottom, Kelwas and Xio jumped overboard into the placid surf to drag The Spindle onto the pebbled strand.

Once ashore, Xio led them to an old campsite on the beach.

"We must wait here for the Sisters," she said. Behind her, the gnarled and ancient pines leaned over her as if doting on her every word. "And not speak more than needed out of respect for their calling."

They gathered dry wood among the pines to build a fire. Wolf found a shallow, but clear-running spring cradled among the twisted roots and drank his fill. Once they had gotten the fire crackling, they sat staring into its depths. Suddenly, Xio clicked her tongue and pulled out her silken bundle once more. Without untying its knots, she reached into it and pulled out thick woolen blankets for them, one, two, three. They wrapped themselves against the night chill, Kelwas sharing his with Wolf, and Goldenrod's brothers perched in the twisted branches overhanging their small fire. The velvety twilight grew very still. The wind sighed its regrets among the pines, and high above, that voice like the pealing of bells in a far distant land.

Golden, unearthly, yes - but with a cadence, a rhythm like words. Words in a primordial language that flows under the roots of all others, both familiar and unfathomable in a way that draws the ear. As Kelwas listened more, he realized the pauses and silences between notes were a counter-song, both conversation and refutation to the far-off golden voice, and wept into his moustaches at the ache of loneliness so like an old wound remembering its pain that he was forced to cover his ears with his blanket - much to Wolf's disgruntlement - so he could sleep.

With the mist-shrouded dawn, a procession garbed in long, gray robes met them on the beach. Leading them was a woman broad as a barrel, her steel-colored hair shorn close to her skull. She met Xio's gaze before gesturing, her hands making one shape after another fluidly. What Kelwas presumed were her Sisters stood behind her, mist threading through them as if through ranks of statues.

Xio waited until she was finished before pointing first at The Spindle, then back to where they had come, followed by her own series of hand signals. She then pointed at Goldenrod and Kelwas, slowly shaping her hands after each one. In a series of halting movements, Kelwas repeated her gestures: pinched his fingers as if plucking a fishbone from his lips, waving his fingers into the air. Then he stopped and with a smile strode towards their sailboat to scoop out his quarterstaff and thump it onto the pebbles.

Her blunt features slackened in surprise, and she signed at Xio too fast for Kelwas to follow. Xio laughed. "Mother Silence wanted to know if you were the one they heard singing up the deeps."

Kelwas shot Xio a look, and she nodded at the question plain on Kelwas' face: yes, even at that distance they heard you. The rest of the greetings passed in a blur as he wondered if his rather crude singing had distracted Mother Silence or her sisters from their more sacred devotions. The introductions finished, Mother Silence bid them follow, the other sisters falling in behind them.

The windswept pines near the shore gave way to ghostly birches and lush green as they marched farther inland. The mists thinned as they continued, pooling here and there among the trees. Birds trilled and flitted overhead. Nearby, a creek burbled to itself. 

They followed a path through the forest until they came to an overgrown abbey, its dome gone green with time. They were offered hot baths and robes to wear while their travel clothes were cleaned, and once their ablutions were complete, ate. Sitting on the ground, they reached for honeyed cakes of oat and barley, fresh figs, dried plums, currants, not daring to speak until Mother Silence signed her approval to Xio.

"Goldenrod," she said, "I believe you wanted to petition Mother Silence."

Taken aback, Goldenrod stammered at first, but eventually told the story of her father's curse, how he was now too ill, and now needed the restoration the Stone could grant him to at last unravel his own work. Finished, Goldenrod watched the older woman close her eyes as if attempting to recall something - perhaps a childhood playmate's name, or whether she had enough food to spare for her guests. The watery light moved through the mist and the trees while they waited. Mother Silence sat this way a long time. Long enough that they feared she might have dozed off.

The other sisters shifted, stealing glances at each other. One stifled a cough. 

At last, Mother Silence opened her eyes on Kelwas and signed.

He had not yet learned enough of their signs to read what she said, but it was clear she wanted him to speak now. "She's asking if you think she - " Xio tilted her head towards Goldenrod " - should be granted her wish."

He met Mother Silence's eyes, nodded solemnly.

She held Kelwas' gaze as if searching for something before standing, gesturing that he and his companions should do the same. Bowing her head to Goldenrod, she turned and clapped her hands twice, signaling the end of the meal. The other sisters scurried around them, storing the food, stacking the wooden bowls, and swept up everything to the last crumb so that even the ants were left to chase phantom scents leading to nothing. Once again, Mother Silence led them, following the creek deeper inland. The woods grew stranger around them, the birches crowded out by others Kelwas could not recognize, the air becoming cool and damp and still, brimming with such vigor as he imagined existed when the world was young. He was certain he was in the presence of trees that had not been seen by anyone since before Khayme All-Father built his Garden. In similar fashion, the birdsong they had become accustomed to hearing all around them thinned. Instead, shrieking cries and glottal thumps surrounded them, and the skittish Ravens fluttered down to strut and hop behind them.

Then, the growth fell away and they stood at the edge of a wide clearing. At its center lay the Stone, surrounded by a pool of water, a narrow causeway leading to it from the shore. In the water's green-black depths, fish darted to and fro, but the surface was smooth, mirroring the twilit sky so that the Stone lay within a field of stars. Oblong and pale, the World Stone was half again as tall as Kelwas. Out of it - or perhaps into it - sprang what seemed like a tree, its bark so white as to blind the eye, but could equally have been the remnants of some primeval bolt, fossilized, preserved in stone at the moment of impact with its branches forking off in angles alien to any tree known to humanity.

The Stone was dim in comparison, gathering the light of the cream-colored sky and glowing as if carved from one massive piece of alabaster. Split into two equal parts, the Stone brought to mind a recently hatched egg. Kelwas expected a creature with a wingspan to blot out the sun to swoop down at any moment to brood it. Yes, you have likely heard the Stone was none other than the egg the Tzirae - one of whom now perches over the gate to Paradise; the other guards the entrance to the Night Lands - guarded and crooned over in that endless twilight before time began. You have likely heard the Tzirae are sisters, or perhaps lovers, but lest you pass judgment do not forget they are - above all else - goddesses. Whether their egg contained their daughter and another of their kind, a perfect world struggling to emerge, or the brothers and deities of the bitter waters and sweet already striving one against the other within, none of the stories can agree. After the great sundering, however, that time before time ended, and the Tzirae - who sang to each other under that eternal twilight and preened each other, always sleeping with their heads on the other's wing - found themselves apart. Each on the far side of Creation. Singing, always singing, in the hopes the other might hear, lamenting a world that is no more and grieving a world that could have been.

Mother Silence and the other sisters turned towards Goldenrod, waiting. She took one halting step, another, then stopped to glance at Kelwas. He nodded his encouragement, dropping a hand to pat Wolf. Goldenrod understood then that she must do this alone, and once more that cold haughtiness came over her. She strode across the causeway and prostrated herself before the split in the Stone, blonde hair gleaming silver in its light. She held a cupped hand out to where a slow rill of water flowed out of the crack in its smooth face, gathering it into her palm. Her lips moved, whether in prayer or uttering her secret wish could not be known. Likewise, if the Stone spoke in return was something kept between itself and Goldenrod. Even the ravens knew to allow their sister her privacy, pacing up and down the shore, suddenly discovering the horrible burden of waiting and waiting and waiting.

When she came back, gliding across the causeway, Goldenrod seemed wan, like a watery reflection, rippling and wavering before their eyes. Mother Silence, looking upon her, bowed her head. Low murmurs rippled through the other Sisters, their faces brightening as Goldenrod walked among their number. Their festive air soon manifested as a full feast once they returned to the abbey, and Mother Silence waved her arms and announced she would relax their vows enough to allow music and dancing. 

So, Goldenrod was allowed to sit alongside Mother Silence, and a feast was had as the sisters brought forth trays of grape leaves stuffed with millet and currants, and roasted apples drenched in honey, and tiny pungent fishes on hard black bread slices, and grapes and figs and many other foods they had never seen before, until they felt the need to wave away any further trays offered, sated as they were. One of the Sisters stood opposite Goldenrod, hands curled into each other until all eyes were on her. Then she began to sing. At first, slight as a caress, but as she warmed to it, her voice grew husky with emotion. Out among the trees other Sisters paused in their play to listen. Her voice rose and somehow entwined itself with the lonely and distant lament of the Tzirae, both the mournful plea of one who wishes to take another's pain from them, and the regret that they cannot.

When she finished, every cheek shone with tears, and the quiet before sleep comes had fallen over them. Kelwas and Wolf were led to their room before leaving with the tide the following day. But Kelwas could not find sleep, and after glaring at the rafters for a time, he rose - leaving Wolf where he had curled up, snoring - to follow the sound of a chorus nearby. It led him to the chapel, where a score of Sisters raised their voices in a polyphony; individual voices sounding discordant, but thrumming with the depth and power of a mighty river as it tumbles out of the mountains, and across the land on its way to the sea. He was not certain why, but he dared not step inside and contented himself with standing just outside the chapel archway listening. By the time a Sister chimed the hour, a third of the chorus left to make room for their replacements, and Kelwas - stifling a yawn - wandered back to his bed.