Where Lies Adventure!

JOURNEY TO MIRANGA ISLAND Part II: Crossing the Threshold         In the skiff, no one spoke.  Declan kept his eyes on Saltana, dead ahead.  The closer their little boat got  to the ethereal threshold; the wall of light and shadow that separated the land of the living from the land of the dead; the more excitement the young lord felt.  He narrowed his gaze, hoping the land would be clearer to view now that they were closer to it. “Can you make out anything Balric?  Near or far, it all looks the same to me,” Declan said. But Balric wasn’t looking at Saltana.  He was huddled at the tail end of the skiff with his eyes on the ocean’s edge.  It held calmly, contained by the threshold like it was soup and the translucent wall was the rim of a bowl.  The water did not push through, nor did it come back in on itself.  In fact, there were no ripples at all; as though the mighty ocean acknowledged this thing as its limi...

JOURNEY TO MIRANGA ISLAND Part I: The Map The breeze was lighter than Declan expected at the end of the world.  The Windy Biscuit, his beautiful ship, rocked gently in the calm sea as the sun sank in the west.  Before him lay the edge of the ocean and beyond that was the ethereal threshold; a wall of light and darkness that stood as a translucent barrier between the world of the living and the world of the dead.  Looking through it, Declan could see land and trees and all manner of other things he might find in his own world.  But they were wrong somehow.  There was just enough light to make out shapes, but that’s all they were; shadows without substance, like an artist’s outline before filling in the paint.  No matter.  Twilight was approaching, and at any moment now the ferryman would arrive to take Declan and his manservant Balric across the threshold into that land. “Twilight’s approachin,” Balric said as he neared his master on th...