“You see,” he said now, “people like art.” Travel, however, as he’d tried to explain to his protesting family as they gathered to wave him off from the wharf on Rhaedr, broadened the mind and taught new skills. He would have believed it without question at the start of his trip around Ys. “You don’t believe…?” the stranger said, sounding quite bewildered. “If you really want me to believe in the bull,” Heilyn suggested, “you should choose a more likely name than Pumpkin.” “Pumpkin is going to be in an even worse mood than usual when he gets back, so consider yourself fairly warned.” “I don’t want you to get hurt.” The stranger’s tone was a little frosty now. “Thank you, but flattery won’t persuade me to move.”
“I only mention it because he broke the last artist’s arm and ate his canvas.” After a moment, the unseen stranger added thoughtfully, “Which in his case was no loss, but your work is much better.” Heilyn laughed without looking aside from his canvas and the shimmering view before him: the sea, still hazy with early mist, and the islands floating above low-lying Sirig, the morning light catching on their undersides where the moss velveted the rocks and brushed against the interlocking brass pipes and cisterns, and the tumbling streams where the water fell like Dwynwen’s tears down the islands’ craggy cliffs, garlanded by misty rainbows. HEILYN HAD just loaded up his brush with the most perfect shade of blue he’d ever mixed when he heard a very polite voice say, “I think you ought to know this field usually contains an awfully bad-tempered bull.” Emyr and Heilyn make a brief appearance in The Lodestar of Ys, but the main characters and plots of the two stories are quite distinct. The islanders of Ys travel by flying ships, built of derwen wood and steered by lodestones. The most low-lying of the islands is Sirig, which floats just above the sea. The most important thing you need to know is that the islands of Ys float in the sky just offshore, lifted by the magical derwen trees that grow on every island. Although it is set twenty years before The Lodestar of Ys, it assumes that you have read that book first. This little novelette was written as a companion piece to my longer novella The Lodestar of Ys, as a thank you to my readers. If you enjoyed this book, please return to your favorite ebook retailer to discover other works by this author.
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