Since it has to do with the sneakship, I guess my given name can’t be too bad.

Still, I really like to be called Alvin.

Our teacher, Mister Heinz, wants us upper graders to start journals, though some parents complain paper costs too much here at the southern end of the Slope. I don’t care. I’m going to write about the adventures me and my friends have, both helping and heckling the good-natured sailors in the harbor, or exploring twisty lava tubes up near Guenn Volcano, or scouting in our little boat all the way to the long, hatchet-shadow of Terminus Rock.

Maybe someday I’ll turn these notes into a book!

And why not? My Anglic is real good. Even grumpy old Heinz says I’m a whiz at languages, memorizing the town copy of Roget’s by the time I was ten. Anyway, now that Joe Dolenz, the printer, has come set up shop in Wuphon, why should we have to count on the traveling librarian’s caravan for new things to read? Maybe Dolenz would even let me set the type myself! That is, if I get around to it before my fingers grow too big to fit around those little backward letters.

Mu-phauwq, my mother, calls it a great idea, though I can tell she’s partly humoring a childish obsession, and I wish she wouldn’t patronize me that way.

My dad, Yowg-wayuo, acts all grumpy, puffing his throat sac and telling me not to be such a human-mimicker. But I’m sure he likes the idea, deep down. Doesn’t he keep taking borrowed books on his long voyages to the Midden, even though you’re not supposed to, because what if the ship sank and maybe the last ancient copy of Moby Dick went down with the crew? Wouldn’t that be a real disaster?