Chapter 10 of 13·6 min read·The ascent, lasting several hours
The Sky Above the Current
The gate climbed before the *Morrowfin* did.
Its blue-white opening stretched upward through the ancient vessel’s chamber, widening as the ship approached. The keel-instrument tugged in Orra’s hands, its point drawn toward the light. Behind them, the stone quay shrank into the dark. The tall figure stood at its far edge with its arm lowered.
“Once we go through,” Vey called from the wheel, “I won’t have a quay to turn us around on.”
Orra checked the instrument’s brass tip. The living current ran past the lift crystals, as she had set it, but the flow tightened toward the gate. “Then keep us straight until I tell you otherwise.”
Brask had both hands on a capstan line. “A clear instruction. I’ll write it down.”
Nima’s constellation cards were pinned to the deck beneath small brass weights. Their marks shifted without settling into any sky Orra knew. Nima watched them, lips moving as she counted the intervals. “The gate is carrying a pattern with it. I can hold our field if it stays consistent.”
“And if it changes?”
“I’ll tell you.” Nima pressed one card flat. “Before it gets worse.”
The vessel’s pull caught the *Morrowfin*. Its patched sails filled, though the air inside the chamber remained still. The ship slid off the quay and into the ascending light. Orra kept the keel-instrument level, feeling for a snag in the current. A wrong turn here could drag the ship against the gate’s sides, or feed its lift straight back into the ancient vessel.
The passage narrowed around them. Pale lines crossed its walls, each one running upward and vanishing ahead. Orra could make out shapes within the light: a dark shoreline, a tower with a broken crown, a scatter of small bright points. They came and went as the *Morrowfin* rose, too quick to study.
Nima leaned over the rail. “Those are memories.”
“Of what?”
“Places the course has passed. I think.” She glanced at her cards. “The images are older than the pattern I can read.”
Orra looked back at the vanishing shoreline. The dead surface had given them ruins and traps, but these impressions carried none of the grit or decay. They looked more like the world before its edges broke. She returned her attention to the instrument. Guessing at old pictures wouldn’t keep the ship aloft.
A hard shudder ran through the keel. The gate’s light veered left, and the current followed. The *Morrowfin* lurched toward the passage wall. A mooring line snapped free of its cleat and whipped across the deck.
Brask caught it around his forearm before it struck the mast. He swore and hauled it clear. “That was meant to be tied down.”
Next
Orra has steered the *Morrowfin* toward the island touched by the living course, and the crew must discover what the light is reaching for there.
“It was,” Orra said. The current had changed direction without warning. She turned the keel-instrument to follow, then stopped when the brass point resisted her hand. The line of force pressed the ship toward the wall, but the instrument held its course.
“Something’s pushing against the gate,” she said.
Nima’s cards flashed. A pale arc formed over the *Morrowfin*, the ship’s protective field tightening around its hull. “The passage is splitting. I can brace this side, but the current’s coming through the other.”
Vey leaned into the wheel, trying to bring the bow around. “Can we go where it’s going?”
“If I let it take the ship, it’ll cross the crystals,” Orra said. The lift under the mainmast was already thinning. “I can hold the course around them. I can’t fight the whole passage.”
The keel-instrument hummed against her palms. Its point strained toward the wall. Orra had learned to trust resistance in a winch, a line, a suit seal. It meant the load was wrong or the gear was about to fail. Here, the current was pulling against a route it had already chosen.
She planted one boot against the deck fitting and pushed the instrument’s blunt end down. The brass shifted with a scrape. The course bent away from the crystals, but the pressure remained. Nima’s field snapped bright, and the deck gave a sharp crack beneath Orra’s feet.
“Hold the ship level,” Orra called to Vey. “Nima, give me the current’s edge, not the whole thing.”
Nima studied the cards, then moved two of them apart. “There. It’s thinner beside the split.”
Orra turned the keel-instrument toward that narrow seam. The current caught. Its force no longer shoved at the hull; it ran along the ship’s outer ribs and drew the *Morrowfin* forward. The protective arc dimmed to a steady blue. The deck stopped flexing.
Brask wrapped the loose line around the capstan and secured it with a knot he tested twice. “If the passage wants to eat us, it can start with the rigging.”
Vey gave a short nod and steadied the wheel. “We’re moving again.”
The light ahead widened. Orra kept her hands on the instrument as the *Morrowfin* climbed out of the ancient vessel and into the Aethersea.
The open mist surrounded them, bright with bands of green and violet that rolled far below the ship. It was no water. Raw aether pressed against Nima’s field, thick enough to turn distant shapes into shadows. Orra’s suit rested in its rack by the hatch, ready for a dive, but the ship held a barrier between the crew and the toxic glow. The living course ran through that barrier without weakening it.
Far above, a line of sunlight cut across the mist. The *Morrowfin* rose toward it, sails full and lift crystals glowing blue again. For the first time since Ghost Isle emerged, Orra could see an open sky above the Aethersea. A chain of floating islands hung beyond the veil, their undersides edged in old stone and hanging roots. No chart she had studied showed this view.
Vey looked past the bow. “We’re in the upper lanes.” His voice had lost its strain. “Or close enough.”
The keel-instrument swung hard in Orra’s grip.
A shadow passed over the light ahead. It moved beneath the mist, immense enough to blot out the island chain. The *Morrowfin*’s deck thrummed as a low note traveled through the current. The protective field shivered.
Brask turned from the capstan. “That the gate doing that?”
“No,” Vey said. He eased the wheel away from the shadow. “Leviathan.”
The creature emerged along the ship’s left side, its long body veiled in Aethersea light. Ridges ran down its back, each catching a different color as it rolled. Its head was beyond the mist, but the sweep of its flank dwarfed the *Morrowfin*. The living current streamed toward it, brightening along the creature’s path.
Nima’s hands hovered over her cards. “It’s following the course.”
“Or crossing it,” Vey said. He brought the wheel around a fraction. “We don’t fire. We don’t flash the field at it. Keep quiet.”
The leviathan shifted. A wide fin cut across the current ahead, pushing the *Morrowfin* toward the creature’s wake. Orra could force the instrument against the movement, but the course would drag them across its body. The ship’s field might hold; the old vessel’s gate had already shown how little the course cared about a hull in its way.
She watched the current wrap around the fin and fold behind it. That wake made a narrow channel, moving with the leviathan instead of against it.
“Vey, follow the turn. Don’t close on it.”
He looked once at the black instrument in her hands, then shifted the wheel. “Brask, ease the starboard sail.”
Brask pulled the line in. The sail slackened, and the ship yawed gently toward the wake. Orra turned the keel-instrument to match the current’s curve. The *Morrowfin* fell into the channel behind the leviathan, close enough for its passage to rock the deck, but outside the reach of its sweeping fin.
Nima lowered the protective field until its light barely showed against the mist. She kept it there as the leviathan continued on, carrying the living course with it. The creature did not turn toward them again.
The channel straightened. The *Morrowfin* rode its last rise, and the Aethersea fell away beneath the ship. Sunlight washed over the deck. Orra could see the islands clearly now: a nearer one with a blunt stone underside, and farther off, two narrow peaks suspended above the clouds.
The living course reached toward the nearer island. A thin line of light climbed from its underside, touching the ship’s wake before fading from view.
The keel-instrument warmed in Orra’s hands. It pointed toward that island, then trembled as the current divided into several faint strands. The ancient vessel had brought them to the open sky. It had not told them where the course ended.
Vey kept the *Morrowfin* on its heading. “Can you hold it?”
Orra studied the branching light and the island ahead. Her old charts had nothing to say about any of it. “I can follow the strand that reaches the island.”
Nima gathered the cards that still held their marks. “Then we’ll need a new chart.”
“After we’re past the rocks,” Vey said.
Orra adjusted the instrument by a finger’s width. The *Morrowfin* turned toward the island, leaving the dark mouth of the ancient vessel far below.