The wind from the northern fjord smelled of snow and tar as Eira returned from the harbour. Cod scales glistened on the wet planks of the long pier, and hammers rumbled in the settlement. The roof of the jarl's great hall trembled in the gusts, as if it carried an old whisper. Eira stopped at a runestone that remembered chiefs from generations ago. She ran her fingers over the slipped marks and felt the stone strangely warm. The next morning, jarl Arvid announced the Dance of the Seas, a race to determine the guide of the trading expeditions. The prize was a leather casket with a map, supposedly written by the hand of the skalds. Eira, the daughter of a ship carpenter, was supposed to guard the equipment, but curiosity led her to the edge of the bay at low tide. The seaweed revealed a half-scarred beam with a carved wolf with two tails. The mark was identical to the scar on her hand, a reminder of a childhood fall into a campfire. "This is no ordinary crest," Sigrun's grandmother, the bard, said as she inspected the wood by the hearth. "The Wolf of the North has disappeared with all his crew, and this mark opens a bridge between the waters." Eira heard a muffled rumbling in the flames, like a distant drum blending in with the noise of the waves. "If you go, do not swim alone," Sigrun added, but her eyes flashed with something that was not fear. That night, as the aurora twisted over the water like a green rope, Eira went down to the shed. Waiting there were Bjorn, red-haired and silent, with bow and buckler, and Inga, who could read the stars better than the runes. They pushed the little knarr out into the waves and called it the Silver Lusk, as if the name would protect them. "If the jarl asks, we practised rowing," muttered Bjorn, and Inga unfurled the small sail. As the moon stood high, the wolf mark on the bulwark's beam trembled and flashed with damp light. The lights of the settlement disappeared behind a ridge of rocks, and the black ring of Whispering Island loomed before them. Mist rose from an opening in the cliff, like steam rising from a soup, struck by an invisible rhythm. The sound of a drum was already coming from under the very bottom of the boat, and the wood answered it with a quiet murmur. Eira lifted the beam and felt it warming in her hands - and then, from within the rock, someone called her name. A flat breeze came from the darkness, though the air was as still as the skin of a drum. On the water, just off the cliff face, three blue dots lit up, forming a trident. "It's the stars below the surface," Inga whispered, but her voice trembled like a rope. Bjorn reached for the oar and Eira pointed her bow towards the lights. At the same moment, a shadow shaped like the prow of a dragon ship emerged from the abyss, soundless, as if it did not belong to the world of the living.