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The Dove, by Sarah Singleton

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The broken ship shattered into long fragments as it sank into the sand. The glass hull groaned, and the black fin on the ship’s belly emerged for a moment as the wreck turned and heaved, sinking deeper and deeper into the sea.

The mutilated bodies of the crew sank faster, swallowed in a second or two, while the ship struggled in the sand for several minutes more. Then it too disappeared, and the sands were smooth again.

Watching from the deck of the Dove, Roff rubbed his hands on the front of his shirt. He left smears of blood amongst the dust and granules of sand clinging to his tunic. Then he stooped, picked up a dripping head from the deck and flung it with all his strength across the sea. It skimmed the surface, bounced once, then sank like a stone.

Roff, like the rest of the crew, was small and emaciated. His skin was thick and coarse, a tough brown armour protecting his body from the sun. He gazed out across the sands, gathering his anger and calming the violent waves of grief rippling through his body. Rage had played its part. Now was the time to assemble thoughts and plans. He sighed deeply, then turned slowly, to face the sole survivor from the sunken ship. A woman, though it was hard to tell in the height of the Dead Season. Her skin was cracked and dry. Her bones were so prominent they looked as though they might pierce her brittle hide.

“Why did you attack us?” he asked, his voice calm and measured. The woman’s response was just as steady. “Our ship was crippled. We hit a storm two days ago, which left a hole in the hull. We should have sunk in a matter of days.”

“Then why didn’t you ask for assistance?”

“Would you really have taken us all on board?” she asked. “My crew had seven members.”

“No,” he said. “The Dove could carry seven extra perhaps. Our supplies certainly would not. Still, we might have been able to assist you. Now I think you have cost us all our lives. The Dove has been damaged and our navigator is dead.” The woman looked at him quickly. “The tall woman?” She remembered the struggle and the fighting -her ship ramming into the side of the Dove -the terrible splintering of glass. And she recalled the body of a woman slumping to the deck when a knife sliced her across the belly.

“I’m a navigator,” she said. Roff turned towards his father and brother, still standing on the deck. They exchanged glances.

“Then to save ourselves we can’t send you out into the sand with the others,” he said. “Your talents have saved you.” The woman nodded.

“The navigator was my wife,” he said. “Don’t expect favours.”

*  *  *

Roff had spent his life upon the ship with his brother Jax, their father, and Roff's three children. The Dove had belonged to the family for hundreds of years. Within its limits they were born, laboured and died, skimming the surface of the ocean sands. The ship was made of resilient white glass, a substance extracted and refined from the sand itself so it resisted erosion and easily slipped through the seas. Its sides were deep and curved and it lacked masts upon the deck. The ship was powered by the currents in the sand itself.

Roff walked past the woman and led Jax beneath the deck. Inside the ship the sun’s iron heat was dimmed in an instant.

Stooping beneath the low ceilings they headed into the ship’s hull, below their living quarters to a central chamber where they worked the fin. Together they elevated the fin into the ship. It too was made of glass but its colour was matt black. Crafted by glass workers, it was a hundred times as dense as the walls of the ship; hardened against the sand, yet flexible, to withstand the impact of shifting currents. But now it was cracked. Where centuries of sand had failed, the single blow from the other ship had succeeded. From the tapered end the crack wormed its way towards the heart of the fin. The two brothers regarded the damage, dismayed. “I didn’t think a fin could be cracked,” Jax said, running his hand lightly across its surface. The dense glass was so dark it seemed to suck the pale light from the lamp that flickered in the gentle movement of the ship.

“We can sail,” he said, “but the pressure from the sands will extend the crack now the fin has been ruptured. I don’t know how long it will hold out. There’s nothing we can do to fix it ­or even halt the crack. Our only hope is to reach the congregation before it shatters completely.”

“But the damage will cut off our speed,” Roff said. Beneath his blistered face it was hard to discern any expression. “Let us hope this woman is a navigator as she says.”

They returned to the deck. The woman was still standing on her own at the prow and the three children sat with their grandfather at the other end of the ship, staring at her. Roff outlined the damage caused by the impact on the fin. The children looked at him with blank faces but the old man looked down at the deck­

“And how much chance do we have of reaching the congregation?” he asked.

“If the fin holds and the woman can navigate, we’ll make it.” “If the fin holds. And if she can navigate.”

“She says she’s a navigator.”

“And look how she guided her own ship. Perhaps she’s not a navigator at all.”

“Then she’ll die with us. We have no choice but to trust her. Without a navigator we haven’t the slightest chance of reaching the congregation. Get her some food.” The old man regarded his son with undisguised dismay, but he rose from his seat and disappeared below deck. His legs were as thin as brittle sticks. He reappeared with a small quantity of food - dried fruits, a morsel of salted fish and a little water. The woman ate them quickly. He watched her.

“Not grieving overly for your companions then,” he said. The woman turned to him. The skin around her brows had grown so thick it hooded her eyes.

“They’re dead,” she said. “I’m alive. The living owe it to the dead to survive. You know that.”

The old man shrugged.

“Get us to the congregation and we’ll all live,” he said.

The congregation was the annual gathering, held at the end of the Dead Season when the rain had fallen. For a few brief days the currents were calm and the sands still. Ships and their crew could meet together, for trade and celebrations. Marriages were forged. At the congregation the brothers could enlist the help of glassworkers who would possess the skills to mend the fin. The meeting point varied year-by-year, according to the tides - and all the skills of the navigator where required to find the stable fields of sand needed for the congregation. For the rest of the year, the ships drifted apart, carried by the light currents which pulsed through the endless shifting body of the sand. The ocean seethed with layer upon layer of heaving sand, some parts dense enough for a man to walk upon, some quick and subtle, rising in streams and bubles through the ponderous weight of the heavy sands. And rippling through the various ever-changing strata flowed the light currents, energetic veins of sand as smooth as quicksilver. Drawn by the gravitational fields of the blue moon, the light sands streamed in swift ribbons through the ocean, difficult to predict and difficult to follow. Jax and Roff had learned how to tap the currents, how to dip and turn the fin beneath the ship to catch the flows.

*  *  *

The ship sailed on in the dry metallic heat of the Dead Season. Half the year was swallowed up by its scorching heat. Not that the ocean was ever a comfortable place to live - apart from a handful of brief spring days when the rain fell, the seas were always hostile. But at least in the summer, following the rains, food was sufficient and the heat was less intense.

Now for most of the day the children sheltered underneath the deck to escape the stinging rays that seemed to bite the skin. The bright white ship deflected the heat and protected the travellers within. During the painful, burning days the crew existed in a slow torpor, hardly expending or consuming energy. Food supplies were low. Signs of life, vegetable and animal, were disappearing from the surface of the sea. The old man and the children curled in their cabins, like shrivelled husks sucked dry of blood. By night, the temperatures plummeted. The air felt as sharp as a steel knife on the exposed hands and faces of the crew. The penetrating cold was as difficult to bear as the heat. They longed for each punishing day to end, and then after dark, they ached for the dawn again, and escape from the cold.

Jax and Roff remained active and vigilant, manning the fin, guiding the ship through the seas, riding the snakes of light sand. Alone, the new navigator exposed herself to the sun and sand, to the bitter night air. She charted the progress of the moons and the complex tides inspired by lunar gravity. The moons were irregular and difficult to map. They tugged at the sands, which conflicted and struggled in the alternating gravity fields. The maze of currents, the wayward streams of light and heavy sands flowing beneath the surface - these she could trace in her own blood. The family could see she was a gifted navigator but still she was entirely ignored. The children, all still very young, found their semi-hibernation numbed them to the pain of their bereavement, and seeing the new navigator standing at the prow of the ship they could half believe their mother was still with them. Roff tried to bury his own feelings of grief. He worked hard and unthinking, but whenever he returned to his bunk, to rest below deck, his flesh ached for the presence of his wife. He pushed himself harder, so he could fall into sleep without having to think, but even the exhaustion of his body could not cover the pain like a fist gripped tight around his heart and lungs. True, of late they had spoken little to each other - but now without her, Roff found his life had flattened, become superficial. He turned and turned on his bunk, feeling raw and incomplete.

In kinder times, the children often played upon the deck, tempting the seabirds onto the deck with scraps of food, nagging their grandfather to recount their favourite poems and tales, but Roff could see their spirits were starting to sink. Weeks went past and food supplies ran low. When they were obliged to cut rations, the children took the news quietly, but made no comment.

She made no attempt to talk to any of them. When the ship was running on course she sat huddled in her shabby coat and stared across the sands, or closed her eyes and looked inwards, inaccessible. But as he worked, Roff found she caught his attention. Always, out of the corner of his eye, he was aware of her at the prow of the ship. And even when he couldn’t see her, her presence seemed to brush against him. No sign passed between them but Roff began to think the navigator sensed his presence too. They worked together in one pattern, though they said scarcely a word to each other. The sands grew ever more barren. The travellers lived on the few supplies remaining, supplemented by the occasional snake or bird still to be found on the sand. As the season progressed, the creatures seemed to disappear altogether.

Roff observed the navigator’s wrinkled face and perceived that she was struggling to find a path. Water grew scarce. It collected in veins and pockets in the dense sand, occasionally erupting onto the surface when the sea heaved and churned. But weeks passed without any sign of moisture on the sand. Then the sands stood idle for a day. And another. The old man prowled up and down the ship in the baking sun studying the patterns in the sand. Hour after hour he marched, with the heat pouring down on him, beating into his head, He ignored Jax’s entreaties to shelter beneath the deck. Roff watched him. He glanced at the navigator and read her unease in the tension in her face and body. Everything was still. The sand was motionless. Not a creature stirred on its surface. Only the old man moved, pacing up and down the deck, his step regular and incessant till the sound of his footsteps drove Roff into a fury. “Can you stop that!” he said at last. “You're driving us all mad.” The sun was setting. Hovering over the horizon, it was tinged purple, like a bruise on the surface of the sky. The sand was streaked with ribbons of dark orange and magenta. The old man walked on, with a cursory glance at his son.

“Can you stop that interminable pacing!” Roff said again. Still the old man paced along the deck, only when he reached the prow he muttered something at the navigator. Roff couldn’t hear what he said, but he saw she stiffened. Jax appeared beside him.

“He thinks we’re going to die.” Jax said.

“Certainly he’s going to die very soon if he doesn’t stop that pacing.”

“The crack is stretching up through the fin. I don’t know how much longer it’s going to last. Ten days. Two weeks. Not much more.” Roff did not reply.

“There is a flow in the sand,” Jax persisted. “It’s faint and deep, but I think it could carry the ship.”

“I know,” Roff said. “But it’s in the wrong direction. The navigator said we should wait till the tides start up again. There’s no point us heading off in the wrong direction.” “We’ve been becalmed for two days! Surely any movement’s better than none! If we retrace our steps, we might find another tide flowing in the right direction.”

“The navigator said we should wait it out. She thinks a flow will start up soon. I’m sure she knows better than we do.” Suddenly Roff was aware that the pacing had halted. The old man stood beside him.

“If you’ve got something to say, we consider it as a whole crew,” Roff said to him through gritted teeth. “You don’t go off in little councils, conspiring with Jax. If you think we’re going to die, come and talk to me about it.” In the gathering darkness, Roff could see the old man’s eyes were glittering.

“No point talking to you,” the old man half laughed. “You’ve been taken in by her. You’ll do whatever she says.”

“It makes sense you old fool!” he said. “You’re no navigator! Nor am I! We’re best off listening to what she says.”

“We’ve been cursed,” the old man sang. “Don’t deny she attracts you. I’ve seen you watching her. I know you too well for that to slip past me.” Roff shivered involuntarily. Had he been so obvious, when he only half acknowledged the truth himself?

“You’ve been in the sun too long,” he said. “Your reason’s going. Let’s vote on it, shall we? We’re all partners on the Dove. Who’s for waiting it out, and who’s for turning round?” Roff and the old man looked at Jax, who had the deciding vote. Jax looked uneasy.

“Stick it out I suppose,” he said. The old man threw his hands in the air, and resumed his pacing. Jax returned to the fin. The sun slipped slowly behind the horizon and the more violent hues in the sand sank into shadowed browns.

Roff sank down, and squatted on the deck for an hour or more. The last sunlight shrank from the surface of the sea, and the sands were covered with darkness. He felt the temperature plummet and the cold began to finger its way into his body. When at last he stood up, his legs were stiff, so he walked the length of the Dove to restore his circulation. Then he went to the prow, where the woman was sitting with her knees drawn up to her chest, her eyes closed. The old man watched him. When he saw Roff was about to talk to the navigator, he stopped his march and sat near them.

“Are you sure we are doing the right thing,” Roff asked at last. His voice was over loud, and he realised he was nervous. He knew she wasn’t sleeping -her body was not relaxed. She opened her eyes. In the darkness her face was shadowed and all Roff could see was her forehead and nose, illuminated by the radiance of the blue moon.

“As far as I can judge. It’s a difficult year. The moons are taking an unexpected path, and it’s as much as I can do to trace them.” Her words were low and indistinct. Roff stood awkwardly, needing to continue the conversation - conscious the old man was listening in.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Armyn.” She paused for a moment “The old navigator was your wife?” Roff nodded.

“The man whose head you tossed into the sand -he was my husband,” she said. “We are both bereaved.” Roff flinched. Behind him, he heard the old man cough uneasily. “And you owe it to your husband to live on,” Roff said.

“Of course. AS long as I live, he lives.”

“My family have doubts about your finding the congregation,” he said. “They’re as keen to preserve their lives as anyone.” Armyn shrugged.

“I’m doing everything I can. As long as the fin holds, we have as good a chance as anyone. Then they can all be rid of me. And I of them.” Roff looked up from Armyn to the moons. Soon all three would be full. The rain would fall on the gathering ships. The Dove dipped slightly, and Armyn lifted her face to the moons. She stood up, and let her coat fall to the deck. She stood naked, her body thin and coarse, like old rope, sensing the rise and fall of gravity. Above her the moons drifted through oceanic black space, casting webs of light and shade upon the fluctuating surface of the sands. Roff, swathed in ragged blankets, marvelled at her toughness.

The yellow moon was small and flat, like a coin. It pulled with a mean insistence. Armyn disliked it, its inscrutable face disturbed her. Its gravity sent prickles of irritation through her veins. But it was the strongest force, the most consistent. The red moon, large and pitted, hung in the sky like a bag of blood. Its movements were irregular but powerful, creating major tides that rose from nowhere. The blue moon was shadowed and reticent, often difficult to discern in the sky, exerting strange influence on the flows of light sand. A faint breeze fingered the hair around her face. Armyn sensed the contradictions pulling the sands, measured by the strength and direction of the forces in the liquid of her own body.

“To the north by ten degrees,” she said. Roff cast off his blankets and hurried down to the fin to alter its alignment. The fin creaked ominously, and the crack made its inexorable progress further into the black glass, but the ship caught the new flow and lifted gently. The light sand wormed its way through the sluggish sand of the surface, and carried the Dove with it. The ship increased its speed, gliding smoothly through the sand. The white glass glistened in the moonlight. The old man stood up and walked away.

Armyn relaxed, and donned her old coat again. She looked directly at Roff and a flicker passed across her face. He could half fancy she smiled.

“We’re not beaten yet,” she said. “The tides are a bit wayward but at least they’re moving. In other years the sea has becalmed us.”

“True,” Roff said. “Every year we panic about reaching the congregation. But the ship has never been so seriously damaged before. I can appreciate the old man’s fears. But I don’t understand why he has become so obsessed about you.” Armyn turned her face so Roff could see the pitted curve of her cheek. She rubbed her bare feet on the roughened surface of the deck. They were thin and calloused, almost reptilian.

“It’s not surprising,” she said. “But it is surprising that you don’t hate me too. I have replaced your wife. And it was a member of my crew who killed her.”

As the season progressed the temperature continued to rise. The children remained below deck, shrinking into a semi-hibernation as the food supplies disappeared. Curled on their bunks they looked less and less like children, and more like thin leather puppets. Roff visited his daughter, to give her drops of water, and her hand was shrivelled and dry. Armyn and the two brothers went without food for days. The ship’s progress was slowed by a sea as lacking in vigour as the travellers upon it. In the intense heat even the currents were baked into stillness. The old man, while preserving a blaze of contempt for both Roff and Armyn, dwindled into a brittle torpor as the strength seeped slowly from his body. It was no surprise he was the first to die.

Roff found himself half revolted by the old man’s death. Unrelenting in his anger against his son, the life seemed to trickle from him like a tiny stream sinking into the sand. He faded and vanished. His body remained like a husk, which they cast into the sea. Lacking the strength to grieve, the children curled up tighter in their cabins and shrank further from their own lives. Seeing their weakness, Roff knew they would not last much longer.

A day after the death of her grandfather, the little girl died too. And then her two brothers each died, the others seemed to slide faster, as though they were pulled into death by the weight of each successive bereavement As Roff relinquished the bodies of his children into the sand he refused to let his own spirit sink with them. Perhaps now he understood better what Armyn had said about her own strength. He found his determination to live was renewed as on each occasion he saw it drain from his family. But Armyn still stood upon the deck at night - a faceless body of fluid fluctuating in the surge and decline of the gravity fields.

So Jax, Roff and Armyn remained alone upon the silent ship. They dedicated every drop of energy to sailing the Dove. At dusk, when the moons were rising, Armyn and Roff sat upon the deck together, often wordless, each gaining some strength from the perseverance of the other.

The red moon waned and waxed again. Within a few days the three moons would be full at once and the rains would fall. Already they began to feel the moisture in the air. Armyn scratched the tough skin on her face.

Then the sands grew tense with anticipation. And as the rains approached the seas broke out of their apathy and began to move with surprising speed and strength. The split fin whined as it was caught in contrary flows and the crack deepened again. Now the dangers were at their greatest. The tides were quick and fickle. Day and night, the fin was tended and directed by Roff and Jax. Without rest, Armyn stood upon the deck, trying to map the tides which seemed to rise from nowhere, dragging the Dove from her course. They saw no other ships, and could not make out if they were near the congregation or not, though this was not unusual. The meeting was very close, but a ship could travel a hundred miles in a day during the storms. Weakened by days of heat and hunger, the three struggled to master their own bodies, as well as the surging of the Dove upon the seas.

The red moon filled. The three orbs hung fat and complete in the sky -blue, red and gold. A violent storm began to stir deep in the ocean of sand. Armyn sensed me huge upheavals grinding the currents deep beneath the surface. When the dense clouds massed in the sky - for once blocking the heat of the sun - the seas seemed to still for a while, but disturbances pulsed through the sands. In the lull, Jax, Roff and Armyn sat expectant upon their deck. Their exhaustion had fallen from them, and they waited for the storm to break. SIanting through small, ragged holes in the cloud, the sun filtered onto the ocean filling the air with an odd yellow light. The waves levelled - motionless. The Dove rested almost tranquil on the sea while the travellers aboard waited. The minutes moved by.

Then with a great crash, a huge wave leapt from the body of the sea close to the ship, half-lifting the Dove into the air, and showering the deck with sand. The three people were thrown across the ship. Jax clambered to his feet and scrambled down into the hold to direct the fin. Armyn and Roff remained upon the deck, and watched as a second enormous wave appeared, some distance from the ship, before it crashed down again, sending a dangerous wash against the Dove and causing her to rock and dip in the waves. Springing from nowhere, the wind raced across the sea, tearing huge waves from its surface and sweeping across the ship so it staggered under the impact. Jax fought the fin. Armyn shouted directions, but the currents were far too strong and erratic to navigate and Roff ran down into the hold to help his brother elevate the fin into the ship.

The sea bucked beneath the Dove, plunging into huge pockets then exploding into the air again throwing her as it rose. Armyn clung to the deck, straining against the wind and the violent movements of the ship, flinching beneath the lash of the sharp sand which poured over her. She shouted directions, but her voice was lost amongst the crashing of the waves and whining wind. Her skin began to bleed, where the tiny sand blades were slicing into her flesh, but despite the pain and fear she faced, Armyn began to feel a vigour returning to her body. As the ocean reared and dipped, carrying the Dove in a treacherous arc, Armyn felt keenly, fired with the power of the ocean and her own fierce struggle to overcome the threat of the waves and wind.

Then the Dove was lifted on the crest of a monstrous wave, which carried the ship hundreds of feet into the air. The Dove hovered for a moment, and then slipped - plummeting into a great trough with tons of sand tumbling down on top of it. Armyn dung to the deck like a limpet but as the Dove hit the surface of the sand again a deep groan vibrated through its hull, echoing in Armyn’s bones. The ship began to drift and flounder.

As fast as it had risen, the storm broke. Hot grey rain fell in sheets from the clouds onto the sand. The sea fell passive beneath the torrents of water from the sky. Where the sand was dense and impermeable the rain began to collect in shallow lakes, which ran into streams and rivers. Where the sands were light, the water sank beneath the surface, seeping onto the body of the sea.

Armyn lay motionless upon the deck as the rain soaked through her hair and skin. She dosed her eyes, lying on her stomach, feeling the water run in rivulets around her neck, back and limbs until her entire body was drenched. Slowly she came to herself again, and moved on hands and knees through the water, and slithered into the ship. She climbed down into the hold. Roff was standing by the remnants of the fin. The impact of the final wave had shattered the glass into countless black fragments. A long sliver had slipped askew through the slot in the bottom of the hull and penetrated Jax’s body. Armyn looked at Roff. He had endured the deaths of wife, father and children without outward expression of grief. He lifted his brother’s body from the glass and carried him to the top of the ship. The rain poured on down onto the sea. Roff tipped the body over the side. It landed in a stream of water, which carried it across the surface for a few seconds, before Jax too was swallowed by the sand. Roff and Armyn stood on the deck. The rain washed over them, dripping from their fingers and hair. The wound in the hull was small, but already sand was leaking into the ship. With the fin shattered they had no hope of finding the congregation - no hope of saving themselves. But the rain continued and they watched the sands erupt with undiminished wonder. Even as they looked, shoals of seed drifted to the surface of the sand and exploded into life, thirsting for water. Clambering, twisted blooms tore from the sands with bright, desperate petals of blue and gold and yellow. Tiny stone pods, dormant under the sand, softened in the rain releasing delicate lizards, toads and snakes which scuttled over the sand. Tall grasses and creepers wormed out of the sea, bursting with blossom. The sand seethed with colour. Armyn rubbed her face as the rain poured down, softening the soft hide on her body. She peeled a ribbon of skin from her arm, exposing the smooth surface of new skin underneath. She scratched at her legs and shoulders, scraping off the thick leathery hide. Roff, likewise, tore at his skin, ripping it in large sheets from his body. He looked at Armyn. Now her skin was sleek. Although she was gaunt, her limbs glowed in the rain. He reached out his hand and pulled scraps of mottled skin from her face. The horny wrinkles on her eyes and mouth fell away beneath his fingers. She glistened with shades of gold and orange. Her eyes were reddish brown like the sand. And Armyn rubbed the dead skin from Roff's face and hands. She felt the softness of his fresh skin, shining with water.

The Dove rested, stricken, on an island of dense sand. Her two remaining passengers clambered overboard and trod carefully across the sands to the burgeoning plants and animals. They tore at vines and flowers, stuffed themselves with food. They ripped frogs from the sand, gorged themselves on eggs and hatching pods. Sated at last they returned to the ship.

The rain had ceased for a time. The air was filled with the sound of animals and the rustling of plants. Clumps of turquoise blooms drifted past the ship on flows of light sand, like blazing rafts. Quick vines sprawled up the sides of the Dove and over the deck so the ship was snared in flowers, and thick musky pollen coated the white glass.

The red moon quivered in the sky like arose. Roff and Armyn lay amongst the vines on the deck enjoying the moisture in the air, the sound and scent of the spring, and the pleasure of their own repletion. Roff regarded Armyn’s face, smooth and shining, as though she had been newly hatched by the rain. Armyn sat up, and kissed his face and glossy shoulders. They lay in the water and pollen on the deck, amazed by their new flesh.

Armyn crouched above and he entered her, neither moved for a moment or two then she rose from him slowly, and he lost himself in the pleasure of her movement and the intimacy of their moist bodies. And as they continued, Roff drifted into hazy dreams of the storm, and Armyn herself became the Dove, riding the sea and the wind -and he became the heaving waves and storm. But in the re-enactment the ship herself inspired the power of the elements, and it was the ship who guided the storm to the final wave, which crashed above them both - then sank into tranquillity again.

*  *  *

Later in the night they sat at the side of the ship and watched the sands. They listened to the golden toads croaking in the darkness, and the silk petals fluttering on the vine. Already the island was shifting around the ship, which slipped at a slight angle as the sand crept into the hull. It was impossible to predict how long the island would hold them -or how long the Dove would last before the sand in her belly dragged her under the sea. A day perhaps. A few days at most. Their lives were held in a delicate balance. Armyn regarded Roff. His face rippled in shades of blue and white and silver, and her own body pulsed with strength and heat, glimmering in the light of the moons.

*  *  *

By the morning the Dove had settled deeper into the wet sand. She rested half buried, at a slant, and in the patchy sunlight her white sides gleamed. Roff and Armyn slept dose together, with tiny insects whining around their faces. Roff stirred first, his dreams broken by the unexpected sound of voices around him. He thought it was his children, but gradually he rose from the depths of his sleep and realised the voices too were dreams. He jumped to his feet. On the far horizon he could see a distant flash of light. It disappeared for a few moments. Then it flashed again ­unmistakable. Roff felt a rush of excitement. He realised he had seen a glass ship glinting in the early sunlight. Distant certainly, but perhaps they were not so far from the congregation after all. Maybe the shining of the Dove would attract the attention of another ship. Perhaps death was not as dose as they had thought Armyn stirred and awoke. She stood beside Roff. Together they searched the horizon, gazing with strained eyes across the flowering sands, into the distance - and waited.

Sarah Singleton

Sarah Singleton was living in Chippenham when she wrote this story. A former journalist, at the time of publication she was involved in the rather more demanding task of raising her two daughters. The Dove, which was inspired by her travels in the Thar Desert, North-West India, was her first published fiction. Since then she has gone on to greater things, with her novels The Crow Maiden and Moths in the Mirror seeing publication on both sides of the Atlantic. For further details of her work, see her page on Infinity Plus.