Stonewall Against the Center Sea by Joseph Browning

Author:Joseph Browning [Browning, Joseph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Expeditious Retreat Press
Published: 2019-02-03T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

Miles Before I Sleep

We set sail with the prevailing wind when the tide came in, allowing The Seeker to easily pass over the shallows at the mouth of the bay and into the main mass of the giant body of water. The vessel was a sort of modified carrack, smaller than normal, and it would be dubious to call it ocean-worthy in its current state, but it was enough to deal with the swells of the Center Sea.

The wind was strong and the sails taut as we tacked starboard toward the southeast. We had a hundred or so nautical miles to go until New Pythia—more commonly called the Isle of the Oracle—and we wouldn’t see it until tomorrow evening, even if we kept up the near-maximum speed provided by the favorable wind because The Seeker was filled to the gills with pilgrims and running low in the water. Given the general lack of religiousness among our traveling companions, I suspected we weren’t the only bunch more focused on leaving the Library than seeking the Oracle’s wisdom.

While I was glad Cara arranged us safe passage out of the Library before starting a revolution, she did fail to mention the downside of posing as sojourners, something I only found out after researching in the stacks. One of the requirements specific to visiting the Oracle is that pilgrims can’t sleep once they’re on the waters of the Center Sea. The hammocks we were assigned weren’t for sleeping, they were a place to get us out from underfoot of the crew and to retreat to in case of bad weather. We could rest in the hammocks, but sleeping was strictly verboten. We had a long taxing trip ahead of us.

Since the weather was nice, I eschewed the dark creaking quarters below desk and copped a squat along the edge of the forecastle, dangling my legs through the railing slats and over the side. I’d spent most of last month indoors under the variable lighting of a Granger follow lamp and missed all the bright sunny days of early autumn. The sea air was brisk and chilly, but clean and crisp with nary the hint of vanilla that dominates the air of all book repositories.

A variety of birds crowded the sky, most of them typical to the area in and around the Great Lakes this time of year, but there were a few surprises. A swoon of kittiwakes dove by the ship minutes after I sat down, and large numbers of Hudsonian godwits were traveling in all directions. Given their ubiquity, the godwits must have claimed the Central Sea as a new winter home. In my time, they underwent a giant migration; they should have been somewhere south of the border this late in autumn. At some point during my sea-sprayed reverie, a little cartoon popped into my head featuring a tired godwit flopping down on the shores of the Center Sea with a speech bubble proclaiming, “Forget South America—this is good enough!”

It was enough to tip me into a chortle and startle the other sentients on deck, but I couldn’t care less.

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