The Signal Sent Back

By midmorning, the Morrowfin’s jury sail had stopped snapping at every gust. Brask had lashed the patchwork cloth into a workable shape, and Vey kept the ship hovering above the hidden island’s lee with one lift crystal still dark. The crew had a little room to work. They had no room for a mistake that sent the ship listing into the stone terraces below.

Orra set the brass keel-instrument on a folded sailcloth beside the basin. Its tip twitched toward the distant curved structure, as it had since the last pulse. She had cleaned the soot from its grooves and checked the edges for cracks. The instrument looked harmless in her hands. She trusted the winch on a dive line more.

Nima crouched opposite her with the astrolabe open across her knees. Its shifting points drew thin, pale lines that did not belong to any sky Orra knew. “We can let the basin receive the pulse, then turn the instrument toward the uncharted pillar. If the route holds, it may carry a return.”

“May,” Vey said from the stone steps. He had one hand on the rail of his cane, the other on a folded chart he had stopped pretending to read. “The ship stays here. If the lift crystal flares, I want warning before the island gets a chance to meet us.”

“We’re testing from the basin,” Nima said. “The Morrowfin is well outside its immediate field.”

Vey looked at Orra. “You decide when to stop.”

The responsibility settled heavier than the instrument. Orra had asked for the chance to study the signal. Now the basin offered a way to send one, and she could not tell whether that made her more useful or merely more dangerous.

She laid a length of cord between the three lit pillars and marked the basin’s central groove with a chalk line. Nima watched the astrolabe. Brask took position beside the stone lip, ready to pull Orra back if the instrument caught or the floor shifted. Nobody went near the old windlass. Its iron pawl remained locked.

They waited.

The hidden island gave off the dry warmth of sunlit stone. Far below its edge, the Aethersea glimmered through gaps in the cloudbank, bright bands of blue and green moving without wind. Orra had seen that glow from a suit helmet, close enough to understand why the old crews feared even a splash of it. From here, it looked almost gentle.

Nima’s astrolabe clicked once.

The keel-instrument shivered against the sailcloth. Orra set it into the basin’s central groove. Its fitted edges dropped into place with a small metal knock. A tremor passed through the stone. One pillar lit, then the next. The cloudward one brightened, and the third—the one aimed toward empty sky—held a faint blue flame.

The incoming pulse moved through the basin as a pressure in Orra’s teeth. The instrument’s tip swung toward the curved structure. Its brass body warmed beneath her fingers.