The Clearing

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At dawn on the fourth day, the mist rose on the Clearing.

Staever guided the ship at a crawl while Emaria scanned for sandbars. Eventhe backed up her watch from the rigging, exchanging words with Emaria about the riverbed. When someone drifted near King Crab, Wrest asked for reports on every ship they couldn’t see. He didn’t learn much.

Staever had been on duty since the Land Moon set. He something to ask Wrest, but the million tasks of ship life had kept them apart. As he considered lashing the helm, Emaria and Eventhe both called out.

His skeleton clenched. “Sandbar?”

“No danger,” Eventhe answered. “We have seen a large shape on the southern bank.”

Arcite, Wier, Alta, and Wrest ran to the rail, Wrest standing back when the boat started to tip. Staever didn’t know right away what he was looking at. He’d only ever seen one city.

Over a few minutes, the sun burned away the morning mist. The shadow wrought itself into lighthouses and towers of sand.

“No way.” Arcite looked up at Eventhe. Wier and Alta leaned so far over the rail Wrest had to pull them back. “The Clearing,” Emaria said. “That’s the Clearing.”

Decks came into view around them, packed with jubilant lobsters shouting and throwing wood pieces into the river. But something was off. The towers had order and symmetry, but the more of them that passed, the more they seemed thrown across the ground like a clawful of sand.

“Em, is something off to you?”

She glanced at him, sensing his concern, but Eventhe answered first.

“These buildings were constructed with yellow clay. It has a vile stench.”

“Turner’s building boom,” Emaria mused. “Why bother planning when you can build a lighthouse with material you found on the beach?”

Eventhe pulled Arcite into the rigging for a better look: a long distance up, but a motion of absolute trust. Staever hadn’t seen them at night for three days.

“If this is the clay city, there must be a coral city as well,” Staever said. Visibility was not long enough to reveal the sea, but the air was tangy with salt.

“You might be right.” Wrest pointed southeast.

The Clearing fell into a kind of order as King Crab sailed backward through time. First they reached the western end of the walls, three stories high: Great South Walls of sand. Behind them, imbalanced roofs and spires marched along tiers, descending toward the water. Some had larger tops than bottoms, or wings suspended over chasms. Second floors stood on stilts without first floors, third floors without second floors hung from walls.

“The architecture is impossible,” Wrest said. “If that’s really sand.”

“That’s coral,” Emaria explained. “One type of it. Some Clearing philosophers wrote about other kinds, but this is the only one manatees ever gave us.”

“What about the kind they grew in gardens in the Eye?”

“Shallow-water stuff. Purely ornamental.”

“So it’s not sand?” Wier bent over the rail. He poked his sister, but Alta was too enthralled to speak.

“It’s sand. The coral defies gravity. But it also confers gravity-defying properties on anything it’s built around, to a certain distance. The Clearing lobsters used it to subvert all rules of architecture, and the manatees…”

If sand could be made to hover, water could be made to fly.

That led him to the other strangest thing about the Clearing. “There’s no center.”

“Sorry?” Emaria asked.

“Everything about the Eye had a center. Here, there’s no Pupil. No Iris or Whites. The anchor is the sea.”

“There was no need for a Pupil.” Emaria gave an excited hop. “The lobsters who brought yellow clay north didn’t just control the government. They controlled the city to the roots. They built it around themselves, from the moment we started compressing northern sand.”

“Did us a favor, too,” Arcite’s voice floated from above. “Made it easy to tell who to rob. How in sea’s name do we do that here?”

Emaria shaded her eyes as the fog fled. “It changes so suddenly. You could pinpoint the year.”

Back at the helm, Staever noticed vessels turning right. He signalled for Eventhe to strike the topsail, while Wrest and Wier drove poles into the riverbed.

“The whole fleet’s making landfall?” Staever asked.

“By the looks of it, boss,” Arcite said. “While you all were staring, we hit a perfect beach.” He gestured to where the fleet’s largest boats sat dry-docked on a bank of rolling sand. Smaller vessels forged past them until they too ran softly aground.

“I’m taking us in. We need to be first on the beach.”

“What’s the rush?”

“I don’t want anybody in the city, is the rush. Nobody goes through the gates until we’ve seen inside.”

Their blade scuffed sand. The bowsprit pointed over a field of dunes, past the fleet’s landfall, to the gates of the Clearing–distant, towering–beyond a long sandy beach.

“I thought there would be more trees,” Wrest said.

“That’s inside,” Alta waved him off. “They had to bring the soil in from farther south. The waves have been pounding this beach too long.”

Staever piloted King Crab until it would sail no further, then let it tilt. They hit a dune, so high the deck hardly slanted. The beach was larger than the wood before the South Wall, and truly empty, similar to the Eye’s high desert.

Until he examined the sand. Alta scampered down and up the ladder to bring them samples. It was fine enough for one or ten grains alone to disappear from sight, softer than the gossamer southern grass. The rough grit of the north couldn’t have been more different.

As each ship tipped to rest on the chain of hills, lobsters leapt down to run in circles, reveling in freedom from their cramped vessels. Clans gathered in the shade of the fleet. Nobody tried for the city. The walk to the walls was long, and though a few crabs had survived on stable ships, they needed time to learn the shifting sands. The remnants of the Militia held back the most daring lobsters, gently reminding them the holders of the key had to go first.

Staever jumped down. The sand was warm, and the ocean crashed far off, sharpening the smell of salt. A band of sunlight glimmered through the last mists. Water. Life. Home.

The Cuttlefish followed him to the ground. Eventhe furled the last square sail, then disembarked beside Arcite, who protested as she tried to help him walk. “It was three days ago. I’m fine.”

Staever touched cold metal. Emaria was pressing the key into his claw. He didn’t need to ask how she’d saved it. She learned everything I taught her, and more.

Emaria said, “They’re waiting on you.”

Staever borrowed her conch, and strode forward. A quarter of them would be able to hear him, and they would get the message to the rest. He hoped.

“Everyone!” he shouted, emerging from the maze of ships. The crowd rippled as people–merchants and sea-priests, engineers and farmers, lords and criminals–turned. He clambered onto the big cruiser, and flashed sunlight from the key.

“We’re home, but we’re not safe,” he began. The lobsters began to mutter. Don’t show fear, he scolded himself. At least one can tell how scared you are.

“The Clearing looks intact, but it’s been abandoned for centuries. Anything could lurk behind those walls–unstable masonry, old clay. The Last King shaking his claw at us.” Nobody laughed. “We’re not going to move in until I can be certain it’s safe.”

The crowd was turning sour–did he expect them to sit outside with the Clearing within reach? “There will be plenty to do out here. There’s bound to be insects and weeds all over the place, if we’re willing to look. Clan leaders, send out gatherers. Eat from stores in the holds if you need. The soldiers will remain here to guard you, under Wrest.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Wrest start. His heart sank. There had been no chance on the boat to get him alone.

“Myself, Emaria, Eventhe, and Arcite will enter the city and scout for trouble. We’ll return by nightfall.”

The crowd dissolved to bustle and talk amongst themselves. Wrest accosted Staever at the prow of the luxury cruiser. “I don’t want to command.”

“Wrest, you’ve got to understand, I didn’t have a chance to ask you. There’s nobody else.”

Wrest counted along his arm. “There’s Corin, Thesal…”

“Career soldiers. They’d touch too many nerves right now. You’re the only Militiaman they trust.”

“I’m not a Militiaman.” Wrest averted his eyes.

“I know you’re scared. I’m scared too.” Staever dropped to a whisper and pointed at the Clearing. “You already know I’m afraid to go in there. But I’m terrified it’s going to still be unlivable beyond that gate. Toxic. The point is–what I’m getting at–“ he sighed. “I’ll face my fear, if you do.”

Over the years since Wrest had returned to the Eye, Staever had listened to every permutation of his dream of the ship, the bomb, the screams. Sometimes he was on the Field vessel. Some nights he was where he’d been in real life, on the gunnery platform, throwing red clay. And rarely–surely now– he saw himself instead of Kragn, ordering a cowed and helpless soldier to hurl fireball after fireball, rending the Field ship to pieces.

“You remembered.” Wrest was facing away from him, half-shaded by the prow. “You remembered killing Xander. I wouldn’t have. I don’t know if I killed, or who, or how many.” He looked back at Staever. “That’s what I can do. The dream never meant I was scared of Kragn. The dream means I’m scared of myself.”

“One day,” Staever implored. “You can trust yourself until dark.”

Wrest turned away.

“Until dark,” he said. “For one trip in. Then I’m never going back.”

“We’ll be out before you know it.” Staever waited, but Wrest was walking away, somewhere else already.

Arcite, Emaria, and Eventhe waited at the base of a dune a quarter of the way to the gates. When Staever passed, they followed. The Clearing filled the silence like a monster, daring them to come close, its shadows inviting. Come and steal my secrets, if you’re real thieves.

“Everyone stay alert,” Staever said. “If there’s a seal, we’ll hit it soon.”

Emaria came up beside him. He gave her back the key.

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“It’s yours. Your research. Your quest.”

The minutes dragged. Halfway now. The gates loomed, wood wrought through with glimmering metal threads. Arcite and Eventhe outpaced them, sniffing out the defenses. Neither liked to be ambushed.

In the shadow of the walls, what he’d taken for cracks and weathering in the gates turned out to be story carvings, like on the Glass Gate or a Khalis door. It was a stately progression until the bottom right corner, where the several late additions crammed into a tiny space. These showed lobsters raising glorious towers at the behest of a solitary man who radiated authority.

“Turner,” Staever said. The tree, mountain, and river glyphs capped off the story.

Emaria squinted at the end of the sequence. “There he is discovering the three uses. And rebuking a group of manatees, sending away their coral. Then he’s standing by the throne of the Last King.”

Staever followed the story backward through time, away from Turner. “There’s Khalis at the top.”

Eventhe and Arcite were closing in on the base of the gates.

“I recognize him discovering sand compression,” he said to Emaria, “but what’s the one before it?”

“A lesser-known adventure. Khalis was said to be the last lobster to have seen a true Tree.” She pointed to the middle of the door on the left. “Boralus–”

“–the Forest King.”

“How did you know?”

“Seaweed epics,” Staever answered. “And that endless song with the weird pause every verse.”

“He’s the one who planted the trees, and gave the city its name.”

“What was it named before?”

“Twenty different things. Nobody agreed. Above Khalis, though…”

While most of the carvings featured lobsters, with crabs, shrimp, crayfish, manatees, and scattered whales, the earliest carvings were dominated by an enormous and singular creature. Staever thought he saw an air demon, but it changed in the next picture to the shape of a squid. These carvings were bolder than the ones after them. In fact–though it would mean somebody had seriously misplanned a door–they appeared newer.

Scuffling in the sand disturbed him: Eventhe and Arcite doubling back. Eventhe said at once, “Something is wrong.”

“A barrier?” Staever’s heart sped up. Time for the key.

“It’s, well–” Arcite gave up.

Trailed by Emaria, Staever hurried through the shadow of the gates, until he was past where any barrier would have been. Close enough to touch the wood and iron.

Close enough to see the gate was already open.

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