I won’t trouble you with all the grisly details. To make a long story short, Gray pulled her eye out.

It hurt, of course. It was soft and disgusting and she nearly gave up halfway through. The pain lancing through her skull made dying seem like the easy way out.

The price of living was half the world. Through her left eye, the room was clear and crisp and star-bright, but in her mind, a red veil seemed to creep down from her trembling eyelashes. Her hands were soaked in it.

When she was clear of the star, plummeting down like a stone tossed into the sea, Gray finally stood up from the loom.

She cocked her head to one side and was met with a burst of nausea. Even worse was the lingering sense that something was missing. Things seemed askew, a set of scales tipped a little too far; she kept expecting to slide sideways on the perfectly level floor.

There were a dozen horrific thoughts clamoring for center stage, but she shoved them aside. Leaning against the wall and breathing in short, sharp bursts, she washed her hands mechanically, wiping the blood away with a damp towel.

Bandaging herself was difficult without a mirror. Whenever her fingers strayed too close to the wound, brushing over a tender spot on her brow or the side of her nose, she flinched and jerked her hands away.

The pain flickered, but never quite vanished. The blood kept soaking through.

She layered the gauze over and over, but whenever she glanced to the right, red was seeping through the fabric and running down her cheek. It worried her. She didn’t want to die of blood loss.

There were so many ways she didn’t want to die. They surrounded her on all sides; infection, starvation, skelfing, unraveling.

Weaver madness sat alone at the top of the list, infuriating Gray beyond all reason. She hadn’t wanted to fight it. Giving up was far easier than spurring herself forward, with false hope and vague optimism, until the very end. But when push came to shove, she just couldn’t let go.

Surviving another week seemed laughably impossible. Everything was sliding from bad to worse. All that kept her going was the certainty, the tipping point deep down in her soul, that she would not let delirium have her. Better to die with one eye open.

***

The days which followed were peaceful and quiet.

The pain in her head was worse when she moved, so Gray learned to be still. She brought everything important to the deck of the Clarity and sat draped in blankets, watching the clouds. The ship tipped gradually downward, floating from the black sphere surrounding Oshun’s star to the warm blue skies below.

Steering was pointless. She had no destination. Most things seemed pointless; there was an inexplicable pleasure in admitting it to herself. Eating and drinking and skywatching filled the hours.

To her delight, weaver madness did not trouble her.

She didn’t touch the prismatic loom until, after a particularly long nap, she awoke to a mass of clouds on the invisible horizon. They were a dark, drizzly gray, billowing on strong winds as they tumbled toward her.

Gray staggered to her feet. Dizziness pulled her back and forth as she climbed down the stairs to the hold. Most of the candles had gone out, and the corners were draped with shadows. It felt abandoned, more like a shipwreck than a home.

She sat at the loom and flexed her fingers. She hadn’t bothered putting on gloves; the consequences could take it up with her corpse. With practiced ease, she drew the first thread from between the layers of the universe and pulled the Clarity forward.

With a head start and a clear mind, Gray could have easily outpaced the clouds. But they were already close enough to hear—roaring like distant waves breaking on stone—and pain made her clumsy. When she moved too fast, her missing eye would twinge with pain so strong she felt like vomiting.

The storm caught her ten minutes later. The breeze picked up as a light shower fell over the deck.

The drumming was an oddly comforting sound. Gray recalled sitting in her bedroom window, years ago, and watching a thunderstorm soak the city streets. She’d felt so safe and cozy behind the glass.

But here, there was nothing between her and the storm. It swallowed her tiny ship whole. Rain battered the Clarity, thundering against the wood and drenching everything she’d left on the deck. Streams of water ran down the stairs and dripped through the floorboards. She could almost feel the ship getting heavier—it moved slowly through the mist and tempest, straining against the wind.

Her hands kept moving as cold water pooled around her feet, rising up to her ankles. The fabric stretched in her fingers, vibrating with tension. When a gust hit her from the left, she scrambled to keep the ship steady, and the loom cracked with the sound of splintering wood. It was nearly at its limits.

Gray couldn’t quite muster the fear and despair that seemed appropriate. Instead, she felt faintly vindicated. She’d been waiting all this time for something terrible to happen, and here it was. No more speculation required.

The next time her hand reached for the thread, her fingers slipped right through it.

There was no chance she’d missed it. She’d been weaving for years. Her muscles knew the movements even when her brain lagged behind.

But when she grasped blindly for the thread, she felt nothing at all. Her blue hands flailed in empty space where she’d been weaving mere second before.

Little by little, she was unraveling.

The Clarity began listing to one side as rainwater sloshed against the walls. Gray bit her tongue, reached out one last time, and felt the faintest brush of the fabric as it whipped past her wrist.

She grabbed the thread and yanked.

This was a mistake.

In a shrieking groan, the prismatic loom tore itself away from the ship. Gray stumbled backward as the Clarity tipped, and the wall turned into the floor.

She felt like a rag doll tossed into the world’s largest washing machine. Her arms pinwheeled wildly as she sought something, anything, to hold. The whole ship spun around her, thrown back and forth by the storm until she couldn’t tell which way was up.

When the ship rolled again, she fell against the railing and clung to it. Rain spattered against her, running into her eyes and clogging up her nose. Her right eye burned like hellfire. The world was a damp gray blur.

And then, quite suddenly, it was over.

With a deafening crack, the Clarity collided and shattered. Wooden planks snapped like twigs, water poured out through the cracks, and everything finally stopped moving.

Gray sprawled face-down amid the rubble. The sound of rain overhead never stopped, but thankfully none of it reached her. She was freezing cold, battered and bruised, and entirely unwilling to move.

Her left arm was trapped under her body, twisted awkwardly. She could feel a sharp edge digging into her elbow. It was not particularly painful—not compared to everything else—but for some reason, it was driving her insane. She could barely think of anything else.

Eventually she couldn’t stand it. Groaning at the effort, she shoved herself sideways and rolled onto her back. Even this tiny movement triggered several bursts of agony.

She lay on her back, looking up. Through the broken ceiling, a gray haze blotted out the sky. A few scattered droplets landed on her nose and cheeks as she inhaled deeply.

As her head stopped spinning, she had the presence of mind to wonder what she’d crashed into. Despite her best efforts, her curiosity flickered to life.

After going back and forth for nearly ten minutes in her head, she gritted her teeth, rolled over again, and started to crawl. As she dragged herself over the fractured floorboards, the agonizing thudding in her head grew louder. If anything, she expected to find some fresh hell lying in wait.

She reached the gap and looked out through the hull, blinking the water from her eye. Her jaw fell open.

The shadows of the rainclouds were lifting over a damp green meadow. Even now, flashes of light cut through the storm to illuminate the dew-bright grass. A small stream ran through the field, leaping stones and babbling.

In the distance, fuzzy white balls wandered through the greenery. It took Gray a moment to identify them as sheep.

“Impossible,” she muttered. “Completely impossible.” This had to be a dream, she decided, as her head tipped forward and she fell into a deep and dreamless slumber.

***

Gray woke to a soft world. She was instantly suspicious. Nothing hurt as much as it should have.

The notion that she might be dead floated across her mind, but she dismissed it. If this was death, it felt exactly the same as life. As she inhaled the faint smell of lemons and sweat, her left eye cracked open.

She was in a bed—a real one, not a ship’s hammock or a lousy cot. The thick covers were pulled up to her chin. A pale, airy light filled the room, though she couldn’t see a window. She propped herself up against the headboard, wincing as her bruises began to complain.

There was a certain austerity to the wooden walls and smooth black floors. Several beds stood beside her. The furthest one was occupied, though the lump under the covers appeared to be asleep. Across from her, an open doorway led into a shadowed hall.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

When she glanced around, the room seemed off—just a little too small, too dark, too flat.

After a moment, Gray realized the source of her problems. She wasn’t used to looking out of one side of her head.

It was really gone.

She stared at her blue hands and felt the stirrings of a great wave of self-pity. Before it could land, the sound of singing rose up to distract her. Voices mingled together, muted by walls and distance.

There were other people here. Perhaps lots of them. Her heart leapt at the thought. Somewhere along the way, she’d lost track of how long she’d been alone. Certainly, she hadn’t seen a friendly face since the moment they took her to the Erdos Asylum. The fake Evelyn didn’t count—Gray wasn’t even sure if she was real.

She was just debating getting out of bed when the footsteps began, soft and growing swiftly louder. She stiffened. Before she could do anything more, a man walked through the doorway.

His head was shaved bare. He wore a pale robe and carried a wooden tray. His face was unremarkable, but his voice, when he spoke, was smooth and deep and melodic. “Ah! You’re awake. Good. I suppose you can feed yourself, then.”

“Where am I?” Gray asked warily.

“You are a guest of the Travelling Monastery. As it so happens, we are famous for our hospitality.” He smiled. Gray didn’t. “You can relax, you know. You’re quite safe.”

This was not entirely comforting, but Gray sat back and watched him set the tray down at the foot of her bed. He walked to the end of the room and examined the sleeping lump. “Has he said anything?”

Gray shook her head. Her missing eye twinged with pain. She’d never heard of the Travelling Monastery, and the man’s casual air did not inspire much confidence.

On the other hand, the food smelled wonderful.

“Who are you?” she asked, eyeing the tray. Steam wafted gently from one of the bowls, twisting and glimmering in the air.

“You may call me Enu,” the man said, folding his arms. His words were rounded by an accent Gray couldn’t place.

“Where’s my ship?”

Enu eyed her skeptically. “It’s considered polite to give your own name in return.”

“I’m Gray,” she said. “Where’s my ship?”

“Not easily swayed, are you?” He glanced at the doorway and scratched his collar. “Your ship remains where it fell. If you care to finish your food, I can take you to it.”

Gray picked up one of the bowls. She was hungrier than she’d realized, and the vaguely brown stew looked more than appetizing. Still, she hesitated.

“There’s nothing unsavory in there,” Enu said. “I swear by the surpassing weight of unknown things.”

“Try it, then,” Gray said, holding out the bowl.

“Gladly.”

Enu sat on the empty bed to her right and ate until Gray was satisfied. She did not particularly distrust the man or this bright, spacious infirmary, but it never hurt to be cautious.

“If you don’t mind my asking, what happened to your hands?” he asked, wiping the sauce from his lips. “I haven’t seen such a color before.”

“I do mind.” Gray didn’t want to get into it, not now, not with this stranger. She lifted the second bowl from the tray and inhaled a rich, spiced lamb stew. It tasted a dozen times better than any of the dried rations aboard the Clarity.

The warmth in her stomach only added to her growing sense of optimism. Things were improving. That, alone, was a novelty. There hadn’t been a scrap of good news since she reached Oshun. Perhaps her luck had finally turned.

“I have been the senior doctor here for many years,” Enu said, unprompted. “We’ve taken in plenty of sick and wounded travellers, but few have arrived with such … gusto. Were you blown off-course by the storm?”

“Yes.”

“A woman of few words, I see.”

Gray stared at him. “Do you?”

“Indeed. Right in front of me.” He coughed. “I took the liberty of applying a mild antiseptic to your right eye. The wound appears to be self-inflicted.”

His unspoken question lingered in the air. Gray ignored it.

She was nearly done with her stew when he leaned forward. There was something sharp in his voice which hadn’t been there before. “One last question, and then we’ll see about your ship. Are you working for the Sasha Erdos Institute?”

“No.” She met his gaze, privately wondering how these monks knew anything about SEIDR. Perhaps she wasn’t the first ex-employee to wind up here. “Not anymore.”

He relaxed. “Ah. Good. Shall we go?”

“Yes.” But when Gray stood up, the world spun. She clutched the bed frame, staring down at her shoes. Beneath her feet, the floor was solid black. It absorbed the light without a hint of reflection, giving her the uncomfortable illusion of standing on nothing.

She took a breath and walked toward the open doorway, gaining confidence with every step. Her head still felt unnaturally heavy, and the bottom of her left heel was aching, but at least she could stand on her own. “Which way?”

“Here,” Enu said. He led her into the hallway, where two narrow passages stretched in opposite directions. The ceiling was arched, reinforced with slender beams. The floor remained a featureless black. It felt cold even through the thin leather of Gray’s shoes.

Enu did not babble, which Gray appreciated. He strode down the hall, robe snapping at his heels. The walls were lined with open doorways, most of them quiet, a few echoing with voices or clattering footsteps.

They passed a small group of men and women, dressed in the same pale cloth, talking quietly in a language Gray didn’t recognize. She glanced back and saw them watching her, but their eyes were merely curious.

At last Enu opened a door. Gray expected to emerge into the grassy field she’d seen earlier.

Instead, she found herself standing in an open courtyard. The ground was tiled with river stones, spotted with lichen. In the center of a courtyard was a bubbling fountain, sending spurts of water arcing up toward the star.

Shock kept her frozen in place. It made no sense at all. The star was tremendously alien; too large and blue for the sun, too bright for the moon, hanging unmoving in the perfect center of the sky. Everything else, from the courtyard to the fountain to the tall timber walls surrounding her, looked as normal as any old square on Earth.

There was something else bothering her, but it took her a moment to realize the problem.

“We’re not in a bubble,” she said to the clear blue sky. Indeed, there was no skin between them and the star. “What is this place?”

“I could simply say ‘the Travelling Monastery’ again, but something tells me that would irritate you,” Enu said. “Walk just a little further, and you can see for yourself.”

Gray nodded as possible explanations floated through her head. Perhaps the whole monastery was built on planks of wood, some kind of elaborate floating rig. Perhaps it was no different than a massively oversized interspace-ship.

Within the multitude of bubbles, all kinds of settlements flourished, from hermitages to small cities. Outside of the bubbles, the sea was largely barren. The Travelling Monastery was the first exception she’d ever heard of.

She followed him across the courtyard, down another hallway, and through a set of white double doors. There she stopped, soaking in the view, while her heart began to pound.

The ground sloped down before her, meadows and fields stretching out into the distance. There were small herds of animals, tended by tiny robed figures. Plots of wheat shone with gold. A few trees interrupted the view, but when she looked straight ahead, she could see to the end of the world.

Just past a lone, twisted oak, the grass cut off abruptly. Past that, there was only the cloud-spattered sky; a distant bubble gleamed white in the starlight. The whole monastery seemed to sit at the center of a disc, drifting serenely through the void, with no barrier between them and the wild blue sea.

It was immediately horrifying, but Gray couldn’t quite figure out why. She glanced at the star.

A tiny shadow passed across it—a mote of dust, perhaps, or some great looming thing many miles distant. Then she realized the flaw in their design, and turned on Enu. “Do you not fear skelfing?”

Enu laughed.

Gray was appalled, and then merely confused. As far as she could tell, there was nothing to prevent the nearest monster from swooping down and devouring the fearful monks as they ran for their lives.

“I’m sorry,” Enu said. “It’s just … we’re standing on it.”

Gray blinked. “On what?”

“The skelfing.”

She looked down at the soil. There was only one answer that sprang to mind. “That’s impossible.”

“Shall we walk to the edge?” Enu held out an arm. “It’s not far.”

Gray could not have refused, even if she wanted to. She couldn’t believe something so absurd without proof. She didn’t think he was lying, necessarily, but in her experience people were frequently wrong about almost everything.

She scrambled down the hill, and Enu kept pace beside her. At the bottom she craned her head, peering back the way they’d come.

The monastery squatted on top of the hill, a cluster of low brown buildings with small windows. Here and there, narrow gaps opened between the walls, winding inward, perhaps to other courtyards. It looked unremarkable, even cramped. Gray liked it better from the inside.

Now that she was fully awake, she found herself bursting with questions. She’d never known a place like this could exist in the harsh extremes of Oshun, where one nasty storm could tear a ship asunder. From the look of the weatherbeaten walls, they’d lasted a while, but she couldn’t imagine how.

Eventually the ground leveled out. They walked a beaten path through tall yellow-green grass. The dirt was spotted with puddles of water, remnants of the rainstorm. Enu went splashing freely through it, and Gray noted the dried mud already clinging to the hem of his robe.

He whistled, and then hummed, and then fell quiet. Birds called back and forth from the trees. Several bees circled lazily around a lilac bush.

It felt like an afternoon in late summer, though it was none of those things. Gray sneezed twice and reached up to rub her eyes without thinking.

When her right thumb met the gauze, she doubled over. Her strangled scream came out more like a wheeze.

“Are you alright?” Enu asked, and then: “Ah. I’d recommend not touching the—”

“I know,” Gray said.

“Mm.” He fished through several billowing pockets and withdrew a handful of gray-brown slivers. “Chew that. It’ll help.” At her skeptical look, he said, “It’s just willow bark. Surely you’ve heard of its medicinal properties.” She shook her head. He sighed. “It’s a painkiller. Take it or leave it.”

She took the strips of bark, examined them, and finally bit off a piece. It tasted like wood, which was hardly surprising. She couldn’t really tell if it was helping. Still, she started to walk again, and the fire in her right eye dulled until it was merely a prickle of unpleasant heat.

They crossed a tilled brown field, passing a chicken coop on the way. The air was heavy with squawking and a fetid, lingering smell. One of the birds, a fluffy brown hen, came fluttering out of the coop and locked a beady yellow eye on Gray.

The last few feet of grass petered out slowly. The soil became sparse, and then nonexistent. The final line between ground and sky was a plain, reductive black, just like the floor in the monastery. It hung over the abyss, sharp as a blade and perfectly flat.

Gray went to the edge and looked down.

It was indeed a skelfing.

She shut her eye and lurched back. There was none of the terror she associated with skelfing, none of the chilling doubt, but it was still disorienting. The pieces were all in her head, scattered and confused, but they matched a familiar pattern. She assembled them slowly.

It was not like the skelfing she’d seen before; it was nothing like anything she’d seen before.

And yet, when she focused on the first flash of the shape imprinted on her eye, it was quite clearly a turtle. An enormous turtle, yes—unreasonably large and complicated, fuzzy around the edges—but nothing more.

She rocked back on her heels, acutely aware of the ground beneath her feet, and how deceptively solid it felt. “How?”

“It’s just one of those things,” Enu said.

A rather incredulous laugh caught her off-guard before she could stop it. “Just one of those things,” she repeated.

“To clarify,” Enu said, holding up a hand, “it seems like madness until you see it, and then bizarre until you live with it, and then ordinary until you explain it to someone else.”

“Can you explain it?” Gray asked, her tongue loosened by astonishment. “Why doesn’t it eat all of you?”

“Though I’m not privy to the inner workings of its mind, I’d say it got bored.” Enu knelt on the flat black lip of the shell—and yes, it had to be a shell, now that Gray considered the shape of it—looking down with what appeared to be fondness. “It’s an old one. Whether it’s dormant or sleeping or just sick of hunting, we don’t know, but it’s given up on moving entirely. It’s been orbiting the star for centuries. All the other skelfing stay out of the way, which is fortunate. I suppose they don’t want to risk waking Tuin.”

“You named it?”

“Someone did.” Enu smiled broadly. He was missing a tooth. “Now, I admit to some curiosity as to how you came travelling across the starry sea with such a fear of skelfing.”

“It wasn’t my first choice,” Gray said. “More of a last resort.”

“I suppose that explains the crash-landing.” He turned as he spoke, and Gray followed his line of sight.

The wreckage of the Clarity sat in the grass, some distance away. She hadn’t even noticed it; with a sinking feeling, she realized there was very little to notice. What had once been a whole ship now resembled a pile of matchsticks. The prismatic loom was split into at least a dozen pieces.

The damage was far worse than she’d imagined; her dreams of a quick repair and speedy departure vanished into smoke. Gray sat down in the grass as a wave of dizziness swept over her.

She was stuck.

“What is it?” Enu asked.

Gray watched a ladybug climb a long stalk of grass. It was merely a dot of scarlet against the green. She searched her memory for one great mistake, one critical loss she could blame, but it was all a blur of hasty choices and desperate measures.

Trapped in the consequences of her decisions, she tilted her head back until the star blinded her. “Do you know how to play chess?”

“I do,” Enu said. “Why?”

Gray smiled.