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don’t you think – since it all, in a very few tides, will be mine…’
    She turned her back on them and studied the thing on the sand intently. The G took a step closer, trying to see over her shoulder, but she turned on them likean animal guarding a kill. ‘Mine!’ she snarled. ‘Mine!’
    They reared back, shocked by the look on her face.
    Then Market Jones reached for the encyclopedia. ‘What was it I read?’ he murmured, as if to himself. ‘It was under Unfair Advantage… Rules of Forfeit…’
    The Queen frowned, unable to remember any such section, but unwilling to call his bluff. For a long moment she hesitated, then, with a poor grace and no apparent care, she reached one more time into the body of the maelstrom and repeated the process. She flung the new disc up the beach, well away from hers, and turned her back on them again.
    The G rushed over, peered into the disc, and gasped.
    Inside the Traveller…
    It was temfying – a whirling boneless blackness. Eo couldn’t feel Hurpk round his neck. He couldn’t breathe. He should be drowning in the freezing dark but eternity passed and he was still alive, still aware…
    It was only when the Traveller finally spat him. out that unconsciousness, kindly, came.

4 The First Tide
    ‘God forgive you – do you never pay attention?! A beast could write better than that !’
    ‘ Gently, Brother. Maybe God meant him to be thick of head as well as thick of arm. He can row my boat for me even if he can’t get his wits round Holy Writ! ’
    Adom felt his face flare red all over again.
    I’ll be hearing those words on my deathbed , he thought to himself. I’ll be old and grey and every morning I’ll wake up to the Holy Father jeering at me in my head.
    He didn’t notice the way anger was making him pull too hard, skewing the curragh off course.
    ‘ADOM!’
    ‘Pay attention, boy! Follow the boat in front, can’t you?’
    ‘He practically had us on the rocks there –’
    The brothers were all of a twitter, but the Holy Father hadn’t even looked up. If he were any other old man, Adom would have sworn he’d nodded off inthe warm sun, but Columba was not like any other old man. He was Columba – the Holy Father, the stuff that saints are made of. Why should he care about Adom?
    And yet he’d brought Adom back from the edge of death, all those years ago. How could that not mean something?
    Adom was the youngest of a large family, a bit of a late surprise to his parents, but there had always been comings and goings between the farms of his older brothers and sisters, so he was never lonely. It was a life he knew well. He could so easily have just stayed a part of it all – if it hadn’t been for Columba.
    He’d heard the story a hundred times, of how ill he’d been, and how his family had given up hope.
    ‘Then we heard a holy man was come to the village to preach and heal, and we carried you there, as one last chance.
    ‘We laid you down on the ground, and the good man kneeled down beside you and prayed silently for a while. Then he made the sign of the cross on your forehead and was about to rise and move on – when you grabbed him! You grabbed hold of his hand with your two little ones and you held on to him like a dog with one bone. You didn’t say anything. You just held tight and stared.
    ‘We didn’t know what to do – we couldn’t loosen that grip for fear of hurting you! But the Holy Father only smiled, and said, “Let go of me now, little man. If it’s God’s will for you, when you are well once more and grown, I will take your hand again. Eh? How would that be? Sleep now, my son.”
    ‘You let go of him then, peaceful as could be. Andwhen he marked your forehead with the sign of the cross a second time, you were already asleep.’
    ‘And I got better?’ Adom would prompt.
    ‘You did! Before the week was out, the fever had left you, and it wasn’t long after that you were up and about as if you’d never been so ill at all. Of