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Viron. As it was, I used his, vaguely conscious that he might ask if it had been helpful someday and wanting to tell him that it had been; gestures like that had become a habit, however futile. It was a good knife, made here on Blue by Gadwall the smith from a single bar of steel which supplied the blade, the stubby guard, and the grip. I remember noticing how sharp it was, and realizing that the bulbous pommel might be almost as useful for pounding as the blade for cutting. I have Hyacinth’s azoth now (locked away and well hidden); but I would almost rather have Sinew’s knife back, if he would give it a second time.
    Here in landlocked Gaon, people would think it queer that we who came from a city so remote from any sea that we had scarcely heard rumors of them should build our new town on the coast. But Viron had been a lakeshore city in the beginning, and it was Lake Limna that left Viron, and not Viron that had left the lake. When we landed here, it seemed natural to us to direct our lander to the shore of our bay, since we thought the water we saw was potable and might be used for irrigation. We were disappointed, of course. But the sea has given us food in abundance-much more, I believe, than even a large lake could have supplied. Even more important, it has been better than the best road for us, letting us move ourselves and our goods faster and better than pack mules or wagons ever could. Gaon is greatly blessed by its cold, clear River Nadi; but I do not believe New Viron would exchange the sea for it.
    When Nettle and I decided to build our mill, after trying farming without much success, it was obvious that we would have to have a location to which logs could be floated. We tramped up and down the coast in search of a suitable spot until at last it occurred to me that we would never find it as long as we searched by land for a place to which logs could be floated by sea. That was when I built our first boat, a sort of pointed box with one ludicrously short mast and a tendency to drift off to leeward that would have been quite funny if it had not been so serious. Eventually Tamarind, whose husband had been a fishmonger and knew something of fishermen and their boats in consequence, showed me how to rig a leeboard that could be dropped when necessary and pulled up for shallows. After that, with a taller mast stepped farther forward, we used that boxy little boat for years.
    From it, we first landed on Lizard. There was a fishing village there already (if four very modest cottages make a village) at the back of East Bay, which was far from the best part of the island to our way of thinking. We claimed the Tor and everything west of it, with the Prolocutor’s support; and since nobody else wanted it, we made our claim good. The land is sparse and sandy (except for our garden, where the soil has been improved with kitchen waste); but there is the Tor with its spring, which gives us water to drink and turns our mill, and Tail Bay, more than half enclosed by the Tail, to which the woodcutters bring the logs we need.
    I can see everything as I write. I believe that I could draw a good map of it on this paper now, showing where the house and mill stand, the Tor, the West Foot, and the rest of it; but what good would such a map be? No matter how accurate, it could not take me there.
    It has been a good place for us, with plenty of space for barking and chipping the logs we haul out with block and tackle, although it is somewhat dangerous because it is so remote. I must not forget that the twins are older now. Between birth and twenty, a year is an immensity.
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    Not long after I finished my fish, the sun was squarely overhead. I have never become completely accustomed to a sun that moves across the sky. We speak here of the Long Sun we left and this Short Sun to which we have come; but it seems to me that the difference implied by the change of shape is small, while the difference between this sun which moves and