Dawn was climbing the walls of the fjord and the mist hung like wet wool. Eira, the navigator's daughter, wiped her hands in her cloak and counted the breaths of the coming wind. Underfoot she felt the planks of the dragon boat, dry but ready to drink the storm. The fire was still smouldering in the long house, but the crew were already holding on with oars. Each of them knew the legend of the passage that only opens at the red moon. On the stern hung a raven made of wood, with eyes blasted with amber, a faithful companion of northern expeditions. Eira held to her heart a sunstone, milky and heavy, inherited from her mother skald. In the right light, she said, it would show a path that maps were afraid to even touch. As the horn sounded from the side of the settlement, the mist shook and the waves clumped together like the palms of warriors. Hjalti, the bearded helmsman, arrived, carrying a damp box bound in leather and black runes. It was found in a landslide, where the mountain stream bites the cliffs, always angry and cold. Inside lay a roll of whale skin, smelling of salt, with a circle of islands and a strange gate drawn on it. In the margin flicked a sign that Eira knew from a lullaby, though no one had ever explained it to her. The crew took up shouts, shields banged against the sides, and the dragon's teeth cut through the heavy milk of mist. Eira turned the sunstone, searching for the dancing spark, until the flash pointed north, which was not there. The raven, alive this time, circled over the mast and cawed, as if mocking their certainty. As they swam beyond the shelter of the rocks, the wind fell silent and the water became smooth as bone. Hjalti pointed into the distance, where the darkness was the colour of ink and the mist was arranged in runic weaves. Beneath the keel something sighed, lightly like a seal, but the sound carried the depths of a cave full of dreams. From the shore came the echo of a drum, one bar, then another, and a third no one dared to count. Eira lifted a stone, which began to glow from within, and gave the order before the mist lifted like a curtain. A shadow fell across the water like the wing of a mountain, and the dragon's beak trembled as something huge cut through the silence. Boats without sails began to come out of the mist, pushed by the silence, they had unfamiliar symbols on their bows. They did not wave their oars, yet they moved like dreams, leaving a trail of icy light behind them. Hjalti whispered an incantation for an auspicious path, but his voice stuck in his throat as if he had swallowed a feather. Eira pressed the stone to the map, and the gate on the parchment opened like a pupil, absorbing the world. Then Raven leaned back against the railing and said in an intelligible voice that it was not a gate, but a question.