A shoal of fish swarmed around the base of the Tooth. The sun glared insistently from the horizon. The dragons and ikti birds swooped over the dying waves, scooping up their dinner. Bram glanced to the ledge above him. A black-and-white bird stood triumphantly over a bloodied fish.
Bram turned and moved toward the bird. Its eyes darted at him. Wings flapped and talons dug into the fish. Bram froze, his eyes locked on the fish. His stomach grumbled.
Slowly, he reached down to his belt. The bird went back to eating the fish. Bram’s fingers wrapped around the hilt of his knife. His thumb undid the fastening loop. The bird glanced at him again.
Bram tensed, his fingers tight on the handle of the knife. He slid the knife from its sheathe and flung it at the bird in one motion. In a flurry of black-and-white feathers, the bird was gone. The fish was still there.
Bram scrambled up to the ledge and closed a hand over the fish. He found his knife and grabbed it with the other hand. His eyes darted around, but the bird was staring at him from a distant perch.
Bram returned to his ledge and dug into the fish with the knife, eating it raw.
—×—
The sun melted below the horizon. Birds and sky dragons settled into their perches. Bram did too. His stomach was full. He lay his face on the moss and tried not to think of his father and brother filling the stomachs of plotosaurs.
The stars came out and the air cooled. Bram remembered something Perisfin had told him about the First World. There had been many places where nightfall brought on a chill that could kill you. On Kampania, this was only true in the far north and south, in Tarta, Kanda, and Rinja. On the First World, Perisfin said, the far north and south were so cold that the air could kill you year-round, night or day, and they were covered in gigantic sheets of ice.
Bram had only seen ice in the form of hail, although he knew there was a lot of it piled atop the highest mountains. People in Andea and Shamera harvested it for sale in lowland cities. Ice had a god, Soto, who also held dominion over the Second Mourning, after the body had rotted away to bones.
His brother and father would not have the Three Mournings of honoring, cleansing, and interring. They would only have the Zeroth Mourning, reserved for those whose bodies could not be recovered. The god Mara would watch over that, warning the other gods to leave the mourners alone.
Under the customs of the Zeroth Mourning, Bram was not allowed to cry until he had announced the deaths of his father and brother to the community. He knew that Fue, the god of propriety, would be watching him. Fue’s star was red and bright in the sky over the Tooth. He prayed to Fue and Mara to keep Soto’s hail (and Beverin’s rain) off him as he slept.
—×—
He dreamed of Perisfin, specifically of the old man teaching him to speak the Old Tongue, an amalgam of languages brought from the First World. A weathered finger pointed at a drawing of a sea dragon with a large tail.
“You know it as felso,” Perisfin said. “A common sea dragon off the coast of Mija. In the Old Tongue, it was called a plotosaurus. Or ploto for short.”
The old man traced the drawing with the tip of his finger. The thin flukes, the scaly skin, the toothy maw. Bram felt his eyes welling up but, in the context of the dream, it made no sense.
“Focus, Bram,” the sage said.
Bram looked up into the old man’s face. His gray brows were lifted in a double arch. His amber eyes were wide.
“Are you ready?”
Bram nodded.
Perisfin flipped pages in the ancient book. His finger tapped the book open to a new page. Among the squarish writing Bram could still not read, there was a drawing of a mottled circle with a tear-drop shape around it. There was a smaller, black circle in the tear’s tail. Bram remembered this lesson.
“The people of the First World found a door in the sky, in the tail of their world’s magnetic shield.”
“In the tail of what?”
Perisfin smiled his sage’s smile.
“In the midnight zenith. The opposite side of the sky from the sun.”
Bram nodded. Perisfin pointed to the smaller circle.
“Through this door, they saw another world. They thought it was a world far from them in space. They were wrong.”
Perisfin turned a page. There was more writing in the Old Tongue, and a drawing of two mottled circles with an arrow between them.
“It was a mirror of the same world, but in a second causality, a different timeline.”
Bram did not know those words. The old man shook his gray locks.
“Anyway, the world through the door was the same world, but many millions of years in the past.”
Perisfin flipped another page. There was a drawing of ploto-like figures, fins and large tails, aimed at a black circle.
“They sailed their celestial ships into the sky, toward the door, intent on colonizing the world they saw.”
The old man put a hand on the boy’s shoulder.
“They didn’t know that this world, our world,” he slowly closed the book. “They did not know that Kampania was a primitive mirror of their own world. They also did not know that sailing through the door would weaken it.”
“The First People broke the door,” Bram said. He knew this much from legend.
“They did,” Perisfin said. “The door collapsed behind them. Trapped on Kampania, they struggled to maintain the knowledge of the First World, but most were too focused on surviving. So it fell to scholars, monks, and wandering sages.”
Bram suddenly realized that Perisfin was gone, wandering in the east. The waking world again pressed itself on Bram. His apprenticeship was in question. The dream began to unravel.
“Bram,” Perisfin said firmly.
He shook his head and looked at the old man.
“Not all of this knowledge was healthy.”
The sage’s eye were dark, sad but intense. Bram felt a nameless fear growing inside him. A gloom. Not the gloom of his brother and father eaten by felso. Not the gloom of being trapped on a rocky island. An ancient gloom he knew Perisfin was about to give name to.
“The Annihilation also came through that door from the First World. And it ever threatens to rise again.”
—×—
When the sun rose, Bram did not notice. He had slept in the shadow of the Tooth. But, the ikti birds and sky dragons noticed. They woke and began squawking and hooting. The noise dragged the boy from sleep.
He shook his head to clear it and wiped a hand over his face. Why had he dreamed about Perisfin? Was the old man thinking of him? He asked Batre, who was the messenger of dreams. The god did not answer. He never did.
He looked up at the birds and dragons. They were gathered on ledges along the north, staring into the sea. Bram got to his knees and peered around the Tooth.
A boat! Two triangular blond sails, painted with the Kampanian sigil K in red. Bram knew this boat. He knew its master, his father’s friend Mattan Kansadi. He knew Mattan’s daughter Aliskoda. She was the only girl in Safran who didn’t tease him about reading Perisfin’s books instead of learning a respectable trade like his parents had.
He stood and began shouting before he fully realized that he had been saved. Sailors on the deck looked across the waters, pointing at him. He would soon be among his countrymen again and could leave the ikti birds and sea dragons and plotos behind.
He felt the spirit of Fue warning him not to mourn. Not yet. Not on the boat. Not until he was back in Safran and had announced the deaths of his father, his brother, and the rest of the crew to the community.
He scanned the waters for sign of sea dragons or sharks. The Thalassic was smooth. He began scrambling down the rocks toward the surf.
The boat turned toward the Tooth. He could see Mattan at the tiller, waving at him. Bram didn’t wait for them to pull the boat alongside the rocks. He waited for the waves to rise up the face of the Tooth, dove in fists first, and began swimming.