The cabin in which Zantheus spent his time recovering was a cramped, dusty affair stuffed with hammocks and illuminated only by a little lantern that hung from the ceiling and swung with the motion of the ship.

Its light winked in and out of existence as he passed in and out of sleep, a sleep troubled by nightmares of enormous mirrors and constricting arms that coiled themselves around him.

And falling sensations. Occasionally he would open his eyes, think that he was falling, leap up out of his hammock in confusion and then all of a sudden remember where he was. Without fail the memory of his predicament would send him back down into sleep and back into his nightmares.

At other times his slumber would be interrupted by visits from a short, crotchety man who came in to give him some foul-tasting gruel and collect his bucket, though after this had happened a few times for some reason the man was replaced by the boy with the curious eyes.

Looked after in this way, bit by bit Zantheus’s condition improved and the swelling around his head started to go down, though he was still sick a number of times.

On occasion he would venture outside of the cabin, but one of the crew would usher him back in, and the renewed pain in his head would force him to comply. However, the pain diminished with each attempt, and on his fourth or fifth excursion onto the deck Thalassa shouted a welcome to him.

“Zantheus!” he said. “Good to see you up and about!” Apparently he was now deemed fit enough not to be banished back to the cabin.

Zantheus was still adjusting to his new surroundings. “How long have I been in that cabin?” he asked the captain groggily.

“Oh, just a few days.”

“A few days?” That was a shock. “I had not realised it had been such a long time...” was all he could manage to say.

“You’d better start work,” said Thalassa. “I’ll have no slackers on my ship. You can help Tromo with his chores. He seems to have taken a liking to you. He insisted on being the one to bring you your food. It’s his turn up in the crow’s nest on lookout duty at the moment. You can join him.”

Zantheus made no comment. His mind was still bleary. Instead he said “What is look-out duty?”

“It’s sort of self-explanatory, isn’t it?” said Thalassa. “Look-out duty... You look. Out.”

“What for?”

“Oh, anything. A ship, a drifting wreckage, paragons falling out of the sky...you know, the usual sort of thing.” Thalassa chuckled. “One day...land.” He looked out onto the ocean. The day was clear and the sea stretched out in every direction as far as could be seen, waves chopping and jostling on all sides but never arriving anywhere. Thalassa walked off and left Zantheus to mount and scale the rigging himself.

There was not a lot of room up in the crow’s nest. It was really just a circle of wood with the mast running through and a rail running round it supported by four protrusions.

Tromo, the young mute boy, was able to sit with his back to the mast without his feet even reaching the edge of the circle. Zantheus, on the other hand, found on entering the nest and nodding a greeting to the boy that the only way for him to be comfortable was to sit with his legs dangling over the edge of the circle, his chest pressed up against the rail.

When he had eventually settled in this position, his mind became free to wander, and his thoughts finally caught up with him. This was not a good thing.

The question that had been hanging over him for a long time now dropped down into his mind again. How in the world had he got here? What was he doing on this ship?

It simply did not make sense. He could not tear his mind away from the question of how he had arrived in his present predicament. He was totally perplexed.

He thought back. Not so long ago he had been climbing Awmeer, about to fulfil his destiny, about to do the thing he had been born to do. Now here he was, the great Zantheus, playing look-out in a crow’s nest for some sailors!

This was not right! This was no fit treatment for a knight! What had happened to him? From climbing a mountain, to being on board a ship.

And what in between? It had all happened so fast. He did not know what to think. All the drama of that expedition up the mountain, all the preparation, the departure ceremony, and now……look-out duty?

He tried to remember back to what had happened to him on the mountain. He thought he could recall a vague sensation of flying, or falling, though he was not sure which.

Further back…he had been climbing Awmeer for a very long time. That much he knew. He could even remember reaching its peak. And then he had found...a mirror? That did not make sense. He had been terribly tired and it had been terribly bright, so bright, but...a mirror?

Yes, he had found a mirror. That was what he remembered. What would the others say to that? Zantheus panicked that he might be accused of lying when he returned to the Sanctuary, if he ever returned at all. But then, he thought to himself, why should the others say anything to him?

Only he had reached the summit of Awmeer. Nobody else had. Everyone else had perished in the attempt, according to his teaching. Nobody else had seen the mirror. Only he had been strong enough. Only he. But then...what had happened to him now that he had done it? Had he changed? He did not really feel any different from how he usually felt…

Arms. That was it! He had felt two arms wrap around him on the mountaintop. Whom had they belonged to? Someone else had been with him on the peak of Awmeer.

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Yes, someone had said to him “I’ll show you.” And then they had thrown him into the sky.

Someone with impossible strength had hurled him upwards, to...to...this. He just could not make sense of it…

Nevertheless, however his mind attacked it, one thing stayed the same: He was brought back again and again to the moment when he had knelt before that mirror and those two arms had taken hold of him and thrown him into the sky.

That was the last thing that he was sure he could remember clearly. Someone had done this to him; someone with impossible strength had followed him up Awmeer and done something to him to put him where he was now.

So he resolved now that, whoever they were, wherever they were, he would find them and demand to know why they had done this to him. They had prevented him from fulfilling his destiny.

All he had to do was get back to Dahma, back to Qereth, back to Awmeer, and then everything would be alright, then he could sort everything out. That was what he needed to cling to. He just needed patience.

What he also needed was a way of distracting himself, a way of passing the time until he was back on dry land.

His thoughts turned to the boy next to him. What did he do to occupy himself? What activity lay inside the child’s head? How did he distract himself from the boredom of look-out duty? T

he boy was sat quite still. His eyes wandered out beyond the ship and over the sea. Zantheus tried concentrating on the sea too, but he found that a hard thing to do.

As he gazed out over its vast expanse he was overwhelmed. There was no visible landmass in any direction. The horizon simply stretched out on all sides, glittering away indifferently. He felt more bewildered and frustrated than ever. He tried following the courses of the waves, but this only made things worse.

On and on they drifted, on immeasurably long journeys that never seemed to come to an end. It was enough to make him almost want to shout out with frustration. He was alone in this unknown corner of the world, and an infinity seemed to lie between himself and his home.

He needed to get back. Back to Dahma, back to Qereth, back to Awmeer. But he was surrounded by cruel, empty nature, barring his path.

He lifted his eyes up to the sky in an attempt to alleviate his despair. He must find a way of distracting himself from thinking about everything that had happened to him. Otherwise he would go mad, sat up here in silence, brooding on his misfortune and the mystery of it all.

He grew more and more anxious. Awmeer. That was the thing to focus on. He must get back to Awmeer. He held a picture of the mountain in his mind to try to focus and comfort himself, one of the visualisation exercises that had been a part of his training.

But Awmeer was not enough. Calling it to mind gave him a brief boost of determination, but when that faded it only served to intensify his longing. The anxiety thickened, and it felt as though a kind of heavy, sapping despair was creeping into Zantheus’s bones. At last, he broke the silence.

“How long have you been on this voyage?” he said to the boy.

Tromo gave a little start. He had clearly been lost in his imagination. He turned his wide, curious eyes on Zantheus and slowly held up two fingers.

“Two days?”

Shake.

“Two weeks?”

Shake.

“Two months?”

Nod.

It struck Zantheus how long it could be before they reached land. It seemed as if Thalassa really did have no idea. This did not help his state of mind. He spoke again.

“Were you born in Shul, Tromo?” His voice was stripped of the condescension it would usually carry when he was speaking with a child.

To his surprise, instead of nodding, the boy shook his head again.

“You were born in Dahma then?”

Pause. Nod.

“In Qereth?”

Pause. Nod.

Zantheus became briefly excited. “Are your parents aboard this vessel?”

Shake.

The excitement dissipated. Zantheus thought a moment. Then he said “Are your parents alive?”

Shake.

This took Zantheus by surprise too. He wondered what had happened to the boys’ parents, how he had ended up on a ship bound for his homeland full of people who had never seen it before.

It would be difficult to figure this out using only questions that could be answered with nods and shakes, or numbers. But at least this would help him to pass the time. Anything to keep his attention off the wide open sea, or the sky.

“Can you remember coming to Shul?”

Nod.

“Did you come with your family then?”

Nod.

“So……your parents must have died in Shul?”

Pause. Nod.

With total insensitivity to the boy’s grief, Zantheus simply continued asking questions.

“How did you come to be a part of this crew then?”

Tromo had gone back to gazing at the sea while answering Zantheus, but he now looked straight at the knight for a second time, with helplessness or anger, Zantheus could not be sure of which, as if to say “How am I supposed to answer that?” He seemed remarkably thoughtful for a boy of only six or seven.

Zantheus must stick to ‘yes or no’ questions. He thought of something. “Did Thalassa take you in?”

Tromo looked out onto the sea again. He nodded, but not in the same way as before, more slowly this time. Even Zantheus could see now that there was sadness in that nod.

He tried to think of another question. It was hard to keep coming up with questions that required only a positive or negative response, but at least it kept him occupied.

He sat in the presence of the waves and the sky, and each time he felt as if he was about to crumble under an attack of panic, a question would pop into his head and he would put it to the boy, distracting him temporarily from his anxiety and reminding him that he was not entirely on his own. This mute orphan boy was here with him too.

“Do you know of any other members of your family who are still alive?”

Pause. Shake.

“Might you have other family alive in Qereth, though?”

Shrug.

“Did you have any brothers?”

Shake.

“Did you have any sisters?”

Pause. Nod.

“How many?”

One finger.

“Were you fond of her?”

Nod.

“So...is she dead too?”

Long pause. Nod.

Eventually their shift ended and another sailor came to relieve them. Zantheus was glad to be out of the crow’s nest.

Tromo, in turn, was glad to be away from the man’s pestering questions. His cloud-warrior had turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. He was beginning to doubt whether Zantheus had really come from the armies of sky-knights at all…