Spindlewheel Stories

You look out on the western sea and it's hard to imagine, thousands of years ago, that broad horizon was broken up by mountains and jungle. The library's inscriptions speak of this and more of the old world, full of wonders and technologies that would be pointless in our stilt-legged city. But, for all the floral language about their alien passions and anxieties, we still can't find the words that describe how they kept the sea at bay for so long, or what crack finally split the walls of their great civilization. The answer, of course, is below us, in the sunken ruins. But it's a one-way ticket, and we're already too busy with the devils we know to go looking for trouble in the dark and deep. Maybe that's why it took an outsider, a blood-soaked old whaler, to put together this expedition. Maybe it's the wine talking, but something in the way he spoke made me believe it could be done. But I wonder, too, if we'd been more zealous and shoved him back into the sea rather than let fortune decide his fate, if we c