Through dark flocks in flight, I’d watched the sunrise this morning and compared its place on the horizon with our position around the lake. Earlier in the journey it had risen on one side, but these days it shifted more diagonal to the shore. In my old home, when I was a child, the sunrise split the shoreline in half behind my island.
We were getting closer, but the waters still fell. If we arrived too late, I dreaded what I might find. The Mainlanders would cross the narrow strait. Most days now, I jogged faster than Gohl, and called back to him to hurry.
We journeyed like this it seemed forever. When Gohl’s hair had grayed in uncounted seasons, the terrain of nearby islands jarred my memory—at least in their higher elevations. Lower down, where the water had fallen, muddy flats extend
