Chapter 2: Forty Miles Out

The boat was called the Delphine, a twenty-eight-foot research vessel held together by fiberglass patches and stubbornness. Marina had borrowed it from the university under the pretense of collecting kelp samples. She loaded extra fuel canisters, a waterproof radio, and enough canned food for a week. The morning she departed, the harbor was still, the water flat as a gray mirror. She motored past the breakwater and set her course northwest. For the first three hours, the journey was uneventful. Porpoises surfaced alongside the hull, their backs gleaming like polished stone. She ate an apple and checked her instruments. The depth finder showed a steady continental shelf dropping away beneath her. Then, around noon, the ocean changed. The swells grew taller and more erratic, pushing the Delphine sideways with sudden force. Her compass needle began to drift, swinging lazily between north and west as though undecided. Marina tightened her grip on the wheel and reduced speed. She had read about magnetic anomalies in deep water, places where iron deposits or volcanic formations confused navigational equipment. But the coordinates were still twelve miles ahead, and the sky remained clear. She pressed on. By midafternoon, a thin fog had materialized from nowhere. It hugged the surface of the water like breath on cold glass, reducing visibility to a few hundred feet. Marina switched on her running lights and sounded the horn at regular intervals. Through the mist, she began to notice strange patterns in the waves. They moved in concentric rings, as if something massive beneath the surface was breathing. Her sonar pinged irregularly, showing a rising seafloor where none should exist. Then, through the gauze of fog, she saw it. A dark shape rose from the water, jagged and immense, crowned with green. It was an island. And at its highest point, impossibly, a light was burning.