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Quote by Micheline Ryckman

“The wind tousled his hair, and Dain’s chest loosed a little as his gaze broke from the wooden maid to follow a breeze-blown gull toward the horizon. The distant salmon skies dipped over the rim of the sea, and for the first time since boarding, he wondered where the waves might take him.”

Quote by Micheline Ryckman

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The Maiden Ship

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Micheline Ryckman

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“The monster under my bed is pitchpoling. See, when you’re in heavy seas you always face the bow forward. Steer into the waves. Seems to break the laws of nature but most times it works. You're gonna live to see another day. If your vessel gets turned sideways though, you get stuck in the trough and in heavy seas you can capsize. I don’t even worry about that so much. I can control that- I just steer the boat into the oncoming waves. Problem solved. Until it’s not.”

“In the evenings the boat spun on its anchor and mist fell to its knees, raining directly into seawater. Trees grew on red buoys, bald eagles lifted out of dark trunks like white-steepled chapels, a raven ate a crab in the boat's crow's nest, and schools of herring, who sometimes migrate in rolled-up balls five or six inches thick, broad-jumped the incoming tide.”

“As madcap whitecaps hammered at the hulls, the bowsprits breasting saw-toothed waves now high and mighty, now abject, the Sun looked down and watched the boats—so bantam, meek, and of no consequence—become engulfed by stormclouds smothering the sallow sea. A norther hurled its curses at the fleet as in return garboards and sheerstrakes groaned amidst the helter-skelter of loud shouts. With drenched and veiny arms the tillers clenched the quarter rudders, trying to prevent the roaring ocean, frothing at the mouth, from swallowing the ships they’d sworn to guide while thinking: Who, in the last instance, can withstand its infinite, digestive force? Anon this beast became a lesser cause for fear, supplanted by the high-pitched shrieks of something neither man nor animal that lurked beyond them in the ebon drear, its contour barely visible by turns when intermittent bolts transpierced the sky. (Canaäd, XV 271-91)”