“No harm in searching, though.”
The captain looked over the side. If you sailed for long enough, you were bound to strike a shore. And no harm in searching.
A movement caught his eye. He smiled. Good. A sign. Maybe it was all for the best, after all . . .
Accompanied by the ghosts of dolphins, the ghost of a ship sailed on . . .
Seagulls never ventured this far along the desert coast. Their niche was filled by the scalbie, a member of the crow family that the crow family would be the first to disown and never talked about in company. It seldom flew, but walked everywhere in a sort of lurching hop. Its distinctive call put listeners in mind of a malfunctioning digestive system. It looked like other birds looked after an oil slick. Nothing ate scalbies, except other scalbies. Scalbies ate things that made a vulture sick. Scalbies would eat vulture sick. Scalbies ate everything.
One of them, on this bright new morning, sidled across the flea-hopping sand, pecking aimlessly at things in case pebbles and bits of wood had become edible overnight. In the scalbie's experience, practically anything became edible if it was left for long enough. It came across a mound lying on the tideline, and gave it a tentative jab with its beak.
The mound groaned.
The scalbie backed away hurriedly and turned its attention to a small domed rock beside the mound. It was pretty certain this hadn't been there yesterday, either. It essayed an exploratory peck.
The rock extruded a head and said, “Bugger off, you evil sod.”
The scalbie leapt backward and then made a kind of running jump, which was the nearest any scalbie ever bothered to come to actual flight, on to a pile of sun-bleached driftwood. Things were looking up. If this rock was alive, then eventually it would be dead.
The Great God Om staggered over to Brutha and butted him in the head with its shell until he groaned.
“Wake up, lad. Rise and shine. Huphuphup. All ashore who's going ashore.”
Brutha opened an eye.
“Wha' happened?” he said.
“You're alive is what happened,” said Om. Life's a beach, he remembered. And then you die.
Brutha pulled himself into a kneeling position.
There are beaches that cry out for brightly colored umbrellas.
There are beaches that speak of the majesty of the sea.
But this beach wasn't like that. It was merely a barren hem where the land met the ocean. Driftwood piled up on the high-tide line, scoured by the wind. The air buzzed with unpleasant small insects. There was a smell that suggested that something had rotted away, a long time ago, somewhere where the scalbies couldn't find it. It was not a good beach.
“Oh. God.”
“Better than drowning,” said Om encouragingly.
“I wouldn't know.” Brutha looked along the beach. “Is there any water to drink?”
“Shouldn't think so,” said Om.
“Ossory V, verse 3, says that you made living water flow from the dry desert,” said Brutha.
“That was by way of being artistic license,” said Om.
“You can't even do that?”
“No.”
Brutha looked at the desert again. Behind the drift?wood lines, and a few patches of grass that appeared to be dying even while it grew, the dunes marched away.
“Which way to Omnia?” he said.
“We don't want to go to Omnia,” said Om.