Mother was standing by the window, looking out at the floating village of Hafen, when I awoke. Yawning, I stretched, jumped to my feet and shook myself free of the sawdust.

“What will we do today mother?”

“Today, my darling, we will find a passage to Nirvaasan,” Mother said determinedly.

I followed her down the spiralling staircase, through the curtain and into the dingy room we’d sat in the night before. The two dwarves, who had been sat in the armchairs when we had arrived were back in them now – both smoking their pipes as they had the night before. The dwarf with the strange glasses was nowhere to be seen; the younger dwarf – Flussmann – smiled at us as we passed out onto the boardwalk.

Once outside, a feeling of panic suddenly descended on me. In the darkness of the night, I’d been unable to see how close we’d been to the water; in the cruel light of day, there was no room for the comfort of ignorance. I saw the lake stretching out in front of me – for mile after mile. And the boardwalk had cracks in! Huge cracks! Cracks that I felt sure I could have fallen through! It was little more than a couple of planks nailed together. What madness was this! I clutched desperately to mother’s hand as she strode apparently unaware of the perilous danger lurking mere feet below us. Fighting the feeling of nausea, I forced myself to look up and around. I saw hundreds of small huts all bobbing up and down on the water. I imagined how it may look to a bird flying above – like the gently pulsing needles of a porcupine.

Feeling my mother veer away from the huts down an even narrower walkway, my attention snapped back to the present. We were approaching a small ship, where three dwarves were passing a steaming tin cup between them. Each of the dwarves took a sip before passing the cup on to the next. Between the three dwarves, a trapdoor lay open to the hull below the deck. As we approached, I would have sworn I’d seen two metallic circles flashing at me from the darkness of the hull but when I looked again, they were gone and only darkness remained.

“Good day,” Mother called out to them in a strange voice that I’d never heard her use before – a slower deeper voice than hers. It seemed strange to me that she would choose to speak in somebody else’s voice, but I suppose that was her prerogative. “I’m seeking a passage.”

The dwarves ignored her and continued to pass their steaming cup from one to the next.

“I can pay.”

They looked up at that, one even lifted himself from the side of the ship that he’d been lent against and ambled towards us. “Pay what?” he grunted in a similarly rough voice as the dwarf at the inn although the kindness present in the innkeeper’s voice was notably absent here.

“Whatever the price,” there was a steel in my mother’s new voice – I heard that now.

“That’s a high price,” murmured the dwarf, his eyes fixed upon my mother, “where would you want to be travelling for such a high price?”

“Nirvaasan,”

The dwarves roared with laughter.

“Nirvaasan,” cackled the dwarf.

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