Brightness Reef

“Here it comes,” Huck a

When I write about all this someday from these notes, perhaps I’ll describe sudden billows of mud as we plowed into the ocean floor, gouging a long furrow, sending vegetation tumbling and blind subsea creatures fleeing in panic. Maybe I’ll throw in fierce saltwater spray from a blown seal or two, tightened frantically by the heroic crew, in the nick of time.

What I probably won’t admit in print is that I couldn’t even tell the exact moment when our wheels touched down. The event was, well, more than a bit murky. Like sinking a probe fork into the rind of a shuro fruit and not being quite sure whether you’ve speared the core nut yet.

“Murky” also described the scene around us as slime-swirls spiraled, slowly settling to reveal a dead-black world, except down twin corridors of dazzling blue cast by the eiks. What I could see of those narrow tu

Forcing the comparison, I wondered if any suboceanic locals thought their judgment day had just come.

With her telegraph key, Ur-ro

Yes, it lacks the poetic imagery of flags planted, eagles landed, or infinitives boldly split. I shouldn’t complain. Not all urs are born to recite epic sagas on demand. Still, I think I’ll change it in rewrite — if I ever get the chance, which right now seems pretty unlikely.

Again, sparks jumped the tiny gap, this time without Ur-ro

Welcome news. Proceed.

“Ready, Alvin?” Pincer called back. “All ahead, one quarter.”

I responded — “Ahead one quarter, aye, Captain.”

My back and arm muscles flexed. The crank seemed reluctant at first. Then I felt the magnetic clutch take hold — a strange sense of attachment to once-living g’Kek parts that I tried not thinking about. The special mud treads worked as I felt resistance. Wuphon’s Dream shuddered forward.

I concentrated on maintaining a steady pace. Pincer shouted steering instructions at Huck while holding Uriel’s map for reference. Ur-ro

Time passed. We fell into a rhythmic routine. I pushed, Huck steered, Ur-ro

Huck asked — “What were you saying, Pincer, just before we landed? Something you saw?”

“Sonething with lots of teeth, I vet!” Ur-ro

Monsters, I thought. My umble a

Pincer took the teasing well. “Give it time, chums. You never can tell when… there! Over to the left; that’s what I saw before!”

The Dream listed a bit as Huck and Ur-ro

“Well, I be despoked—” Huck murmured.

“And I vee drenched,” Ur-ro

All right, so I whined a bit — “Come on, you grass-fed bunch of sour-mulching—”

Just then the ground slanted a bit more, and my narrow tu

“Hr-rm-rm!” I exclaimed. “So that’s what got you all stirred up? A bunch of dross coffins?”

They lay scattered across the ocean floor, canted at all angles, many half buried in the mud. Scores of them. Mostly oblong and rectangular, though a few were barrel-shaped. Naturally, all traces had vanished of the ribbons that once bedecked them, honoring the bones or spindles or worn-out tools cast off by some earlier generation of sooners.

“But dross ships never come into the Rift,” Huck complained, pushing two stalks toward my face. “Ain’t that right, Alvin?”

I twisted to peer past her damn floating eyes.

“They don’t. Still, the Rift is officially part of the Midden. Another section of the same down-sucking whatsit.”

“A tectonic suvduction zone,” Ur-ro

“Yeah, thanks. So it’s a perfectly legal place to dump dross.”

“But if no ships come, how did it get here?”

I was trying to make out which kinds of coffins were present and which were missing. That could help pin down when the spill had been made. There were no human-style chests or urrish reed baskets, which wasn’t surprising. So far I’d only seen g’Kek and qheuenish work, which could make the site pretty darn old.

“The cartons arrived the same way we did, Huck,” I explained. “Somebody dumped them off the cliff at Terminus Rock.”

Huck gasped. She started to speak, then paused, and I could almost hear wheels turning in her head. Dumping from land just isn’t done. But she must have already reasoned that this place was an acceptable exception. If a portion of the Midden really did pass right underneath Terminus Rock, and assuming there must have once been settlements nearby, this would have been a cheaper way of burying Grandpa than sending his coffin out to sea by boat.

“But then how did the boxes get so far from land? We’ve come cables and cables by now.”

“Tides, mudslides,” Pincer answered. But I rumbled I negation.

“You forget how the Midden’s supposed to work. It sucks stuff in, isn’t that right, Ur-ro

Ur-ro

“To be dragged underground, melted, and renewed, pushing underneath the Slope and making volcanoes. Yeah, I get it.” Huck turned all four stalks forward, pensively. “Hundreds of years since these were dumped, and the dross has only come this far from where it fell?”

Only few seconds ago, she had been amazed by how great a distance the crates had come from the cliff! I guess it goes to show how different time can seem, when you shift from the perspective of a person’s lifetime to the life cycles of a world. In comparison, I don’t suppose humans have much to brag about, living twice as long as urs. We’re all bound for Jijo’s slow digestion soon enough, whether or not alien invaders leave us alone.

Pincer and Ur-ro

About half a midura later, with a sense of great relief, we found Uriel’s “jack.”

By that time my arms and legs ached from row-boating the crank handle at least a couple of thousand times, responding to Pincer’s insistent commands of “speed up!” or “slow down!” or “can’t you go any faster?” Of the four of us, he alone seemed to be enjoying himself, without any qualms or physical ague.