Not very hard, as it turned out. Though it took some time for the two young dragons to learn how to sail, the seas were calm, and the skies were stormless. In fact, the most dangerous parts of their journey had been when they’d landed on islands for supplies — at one point, they’d come across a port town that had been taken over by man-eating manatees. This might have been less of a problem had Snow not disguised Alika and Tarka as humans, but the four had managed to escape unharmed.

Eventually, Alika got used to being on the water, and her seasickness passed. Time passed with it, and their journey became routine and peaceful, almost boring. They had no shortage of food: fish were plentiful here. If only Seluk’s pack had lived on the sea; no pup would have ever gone hungry. Fresh water was no issue either — Yarik was prepared with a marvelous contraption he’d obtained from the Scribes, which used magical energy from the sun in order to remove salt from the water.

As they’d moved further north, the days had become longer much faster than Alika had remembered. She hadn’t been counting days, but the winter had been mild, almost meaningless. Yarik had explained that the seasons would be switched once they reached the northern continent — that they’d be arriving in early autumn, rather than spring — but Alika didn’t quite understand. Still, she was glad that they’d managed to escape the brutal winters of the south.

It was on a lazy moonlit night when they finally passed beneath the rings, and Alika had chosen to take an evening nap after a feast of fish. It was Tarka’s claws that rudely awakened her, shaking her dramatically from side to side.

“Alika! Alika, wake up!”

“I’m awake, I’m awake.” Alika groaned as her eyes fluttered open. “Tarka, what is it?”

“Look!” he shouted, holding out a wing. “Look at that!”

Alika’s gaze drifted to the bow of the ship, where Snow had been perched on one of the hulls, Yarik on the other. In the distance, light rose up from across the ocean in a huge line, spanning as far as the eye could see. A glowing wall rose up as high as the clouds themselves, looming over the ship like a terrible beast.

Alika’s eyes peered up to the sky, where the wall of light faded away. The rings were a thin, barely visible line above her, the full Twins peeking out from behind them.

“Leviathan’s Curtain,” Yarik explained. “It’s made of ringfall — crystals of ice and dust that fall from the rings.”

The wall loomed closer, so unimaginably tall that Alika doubted even Serka could fly over it.

“Wait, we’re going into that?” Alika asked. She shrunk back.

Yarik nodded. “An imposing sight, but mostly harmless unless you can’t stand a little bit of cold and wet, or are unlucky enough to have a meteor fall on your head. I’d avoid breathing it in, however.” He handed a piece of white cloth to Alika, Tarka, and Snow in turn. “Some sailors say that breathing in ringfall can unlock magical abilities and give one prophetic visions. Most just say it’s bad on the lungs.”

“Meteors?” Alika squealed.

“Large chunks of ring that fall from the skies,” Snow helpfully explained.

“Yes, I know what a meteor is,” Alika frowned. “Are you sure we should be going under that?”

“Can’t pass it any other way.” Yarik shrugged. “Don’t worry, it’s unlikely. The curtain is thin — savor your time in it.”

Alika was nervous all the same, but she used a wing to place the cloth over her snout as the curtain moved closer. The wall of light sparkled like glittering rain as it began to consume the boat, raining down on Snow and covering her in color. For a moment, just the silhouette of the front end of the boat was visible within the curtain, before the sparkling light consumed Alika with it.

She shut her eyes and held her breath, half-expecting to feel pain as rocks and ice fell from the sky. Instead, there was just a light sprinkle of cold water on her fur, like powdery snow.

Alika’s eyes opened and she found herself to be bathed in colorful light and rain. Ringshine poured down around them, reflecting from crystal to crystal. Multicolored hues danced around the boat in spirals: greens, violets, and pinks all trapped in the gentle curtain storm.

“This is amazing!” Tarka laughed, waving his wings through the air, causing the lights to warp around them.

“Tarka!” Alika snapped, realizing that Tarka’s cloth was down on the deck. She grabbed it with a forepaw, pushing it over her brother’s snout.

“But the magic!” Tarka mumbled.

A glare from Alika put an end to that. She watched as Snow’s tails twirled, the multicolored light causing her normally white fur to look like the aurora.

Yarik let out a loud, wheezing cough into his sleeve, and Alika saw a tint of red on it.

“Yarik? Your cloth?” she asked, noticing that he hadn’t put on one of his own.

“It’s no matter.” He waved his hand dismissively. “I’m old, and my lungs are already worn. A little bit of ringfall won’t give me more than a few interesting dreams.”

Alika said nothing more, returning to the prismatic display of the curtain. When she stared at them long enough, the dancing lights seemed almost as if they were alive, forming moving shapes. Wings butterflied out from the long, serpentine body of one, and it wrapped around the boat in a ginormous spiral.

Alika turned away from the serpentine figure, only to see a green light that might have been in the shape of a wolf swoop down from above. She tried to duck, but to no avail — instead, the figure slammed into her, scattering into a cloud of mist and leaving her fur wet.

“Did you all see that?” Alika asked, looking at the others. Tarka cocked his head with a confused stare.

“Don’t pay any heed to anything you see in the mists!” Yarik called out. “Many a sailor has gone mad trying to interpret the visions they’ve seen!”

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“Really?” Snow asked. “And you didn’t warn us?”

“There’s a reason we don’t stop here!”

Alika watched as more figures paraded around the sky, each an amorphous blob. Only when she squinted could she manage to make out what they were supposed to be — or perhaps, what she thought they could have been. It was like watching clouds, yet the clouds seemed to change shape just by virtue of her deciding what they were.

“Almost through!” Yarik shouted.

A spiral reshaped itself into a tree wrapping around itself slowly, transforming into a mother taking care of her cubs. Was that one supposed to be Serka? The head of the figure turned toward the boat, and Alika sensed it was Serka, but it wasn’t just Serka. Alika knew there was something she had to be missing here, as if she were a fish beneath the waves, who’d been lifted above the surface and was seeing the clouds for the first time. It felt like she was missing something simple, so obvious that it was right under her nose, but the images didn’t fit together in any way that made sense to her.

And then Alika passed out of the curtain, the colorful icy mists replaced with the stark, cold winds of the sea.

“Wait!” she said, twisting around and stretching out a paw as the curtain retreated behind her, the great wall of light leaving the boat behind. She stared at it, confused, as if Tarka’s shaking had just pulled her out of a waking dream.

Tarka and Snow seemed to feel much alike, and for a few minutes, they all just stared in silence as the boat drifted past the curtain. Soon, it was looming behind them, like a great wall separating each side of the sea.

“Well, come on, let’s get going!” Yarik barked, breaking the silence. “Help me take down the sails for the night. A little rope burn on your paws never hurt no one!”

After they put in the sails, the boat slowly drifted along the waves, and the curtain was once more just a hazy light on the horizon. Alika watched it, her thoughts returning again to the odd visions. Had she truly seen her mother? How could the curtain have known about her? Other than those who joined Nigel’s Clan, no one truly knew what happened to dragons after their deaths. Some believed that they joined the Dreamer’s daughters in the sky. What if that really had been her spirit, dancing in the ringfall?

“You too?”

Alika turned around to see Snow, walking out along the deck. She’d thought that everyone else was asleep, but motion beneath the thatching implied otherwise.

“Yeah, no sleep for me either,” Snow continued. “What did you see?”

“Yarik told us we shouldn’t talk about it,” Alika replied.

Snow waved her tails in the air. “Screw that. I saw dead people.”

“Dead people?” Alika cocked her head. “Like humans? Dragons? Foxes? Anyone specifically?”

“Dunno.” Snow shrugged her tails. “All of the above, and more. A huge pile of corpses, and I could tell that everyone was there. Including you and Tarka, which doesn’t make any sense, since you were on the boat, but I knew you were there. It was… I felt like I should have been sad, but I wasn’t. It just was. Dead people.”

“I saw my mom,” Alika replied. “I think. It was her, but it wasn’t her. Well, it was her, but it wasn’t just her? It was like I saw all of the moms. That makes even less sense, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, complete nonsense.” Snow tilted her tiny head up to the stars. The thin line of the rings cut across the sky like talons had split it in two. “So I guess we’ve passed the equator. That’s sort of cool.”

“The equator?” Alika asked.

“The halfway point between the north pole and the south pole,” Snow explained. “Passing beneath the rings. I sort of thought it was just a line on maps, y’know?”

“It means we’re halfway there,” Alika murmured. “Tarka and I are halfway home.” Or perhaps, halfway from home.

“Right.” Snow’s ears tilted down.

There was a loud cough from the cabin, and Yarik peeked his head out. “I just checked the charts. We head east from this point to get to the Strait, so perhaps not quite halfway. We’ll be sailing through the doldrums — light winds, so our going will be slow.”

“Slow going, got it,” Alika replied. Without the danger of winter here, she was no longer in quite so much of a rush. Perhaps waiting around a bit longer with Yarik and Snow wouldn’t be quite so bad. Maybe the humans of the Summerlands were nicer to dragons.

“It’s sort of neat. I’ve never been this far north before,” Snow murmured, lowering her tails against the deck.

“Really?” Alika asked. “I’m surprised. You’ve been alive so long, I thought you’d have been everywhere by now.”

Snow scoffed. “Why would you think that?”

Alika shrugged her wings. “Serka always said that our pack traveled far across great stretches of the north in order to find prey. They always returned to the dens for the Long Night, but during the day, they would follow the caribou herds on their migrations. The packs in the Summerlands south of us never did that; they stayed in a single territory their entire lives, just going up and down the coast as it melted. Serka claimed it was a waste of the wings the Dreamer gave them.”

“Well, It’s not like I have wings to waste,” Snow replied. “I think this is the first time I’ve left the forest since you found me there. Which was… a while. Honestly, this is the first time I’ve done much of anything in a long time. Everything but the dragons, spirits, and trees seem to die before they’ve even started living, so what’s the point?”

Yarik laughed loudly, and Snow turned to glare.

“What’s so funny?” Snow snarled.

“Ah, I just find it a bit inconceivable to think that you haven’t done anything when every cautious mother in Forester’s Bay has the name of the ‘Great Demon Fox Snow’ on their lips.” Yarik chuckled.

“What are you talking about?” Snow’s tails stuck out straight.

“You’re something of a local legend,” Yarik replied. “A cautionary tale about not trusting beautiful strangers one finds in the woods.”

“Oh my Deer Fox, people still remember that?” Snow gulped, covering her snout with one of her tails. “You can’t be serious. That’s all an entire civilization knows about me?”

“Great tales spread like seafoam,” Yarik mused. “But don’t be dissuaded — unlike mine, your life is still only beginning. In another millennium, perhaps new tales will have been spun about your feats.”

“Hmph,” Snow snorted, lowering her tail. “It’s not my business what humans think about me.”

“Really? I’m quite surprised. There are many humans that, if they had the time and magical potential you do, would use it for something like creating an empire, or even becoming a god. There’s nothing you’re interested in? Nothing in the world that you want to build?”

Snow paused. “Is that what you’d do? Become an immortal god-king?”

“Ah, that sounds like too much work.” Yarik shook his head. “Perhaps once, long ago, I would have. Nowadays, I’m just content with ruling over my boat and seeing my granddaughter.”

Snow looked down at her paws, and the end of one of her tails flicked.

“So why did you let me join you if you knew who I was and what I’d done?” she asked.

Yarik cleared his throat into his sleeve. “I’ve learned that tales, particularly ones spun across centuries and generations, are rarely the whole truth. It’s never bad to keep an open mind.” He turned his head, glancing at Tarka behind him — apparently, he had woken up as well and was now intently staring at the calm water over the edge of the boat. “Plus, Tarka vouched for you.”

Alika watched Tarka. The dragon cub was perched along the opposite side of the hull, his eyes focused on the sea beneath him. The tip of his furred tail wagged, and he crouched down, tensing his body up like a coiled spring.

“Tarka, no!” Alika shouted, just before Tarka leaped into the water. A huge splash came from where he’d dropped in, and Alika sprinted over to the side as the boat bobbed up and down.