He ambled back up to the top of the hill. From there he could look in all directions. Below him lay sleepy Capital City. Beyond, the wide expanse of beach — sometimes completely submerged, but now uncovered almost to its maximum extent. Beyond that, the River, its waves lapping against the black sands.

The River was, Afsan reflected for the thousandth time, like no river he had ever seen inland, nothing like the Kreeb, upon whose north side his Pack of Carno roamed. The Kreeb, which formed part of the border between the provinces of Arj’toolar and Fra’toolar, was a meandering channel of water. But this river — the River — spread from horizon to horizon. That made sense: it had to be immense for Land to float upon it.

Those who had traveled all around Land claimed that from no point were the River’s banks visible. But it must be a river — it must be. For that is what the teachings said. And, indeed, hadn’t one of the great explorers — Vek-Inlee, was it? Or long-clawed Gar-Dabo? One of them, anyway, had discovered what she claimed was one bank of the mighty River, all ice and snow, just like on the tallest mountaintops of Land, after sailing far, far to the north. And another explorer — and that person’s name completely escaped Afsan at the moment — had eventually confirmed that the northern ice was one of River’s banks by sailing an almost equal distance to the south and bringing back accounts of a similar icy shore there. But those stories were often discredited, since they were accompanied by claims that if you sailed far enough north or south, the River flowed backwards, and that was clearly ridiculous.