**There Is an Ocean Above Us** *Extracts from the final journal of Captain Elias Vey, master of the survey ship* Resolute, *during the first western circumnavigation of Orra.* --- **3rd Day of the Western Passage** Wind E by NE, steady. Sea moderate. At noon we took our last sight of Cape Ansel and entered waters for which no reliable charts exist. Soundings at sunset found no bottom at three hundred fathoms. Mr. Harrow believes the western current stronger than reported by the old fishing vessels. I reminded him that nothing has been reported beyond four hundred leagues, which is the purpose of our voyage. Crew in good spirits. One goat lame. --- **7th Day** Wind fallen. Progress poor. The men complain of an unusual brightness along the western horizon after sunset. I observed nothing remarkable beyond a low bank of cloud reflecting the remaining light. Mr. Pell insists the glow remained after the eastern stars had become visible. He has been advised to attend his duties rather than the horizon. --- **9th Day** Clear weather. The western glow was visible tonight. It resembles neither twilight nor lightning. It has no color I can easily name. White, perhaps, but softer. The sea beneath it remains dark. Mr. Venn asked whether there might be ice ahead. We are too near the equator for ice. I told him so. --- **11th Day** Wind WNW, troublesome. A curious event at the sixth bell. Clouds formed ahead in an otherwise clear sky, and their upper edges shone after sunset. This light appears to come from beyond the horizon. No source visible. Mr. Harrow suggested some large volcanic island. I find this unlikely but preferable to the sailors' present theory, which involves a burning city larger than a kingdom. Discussion of the matter after night watch has been prohibited. --- **13th Day** At dawn Mr. Venn reported what he believed to be a white mountain directly west. I saw it shortly afterward. It was visible for less than twenty minutes before haze concealed it. No land has been sounded. No birds. No floating vegetation. Yet there was undeniably something above the horizon. It did not resemble cloud. --- **14th Day** The object returned tonight. It appears as a pale arc perhaps the width of two fingers at arm's length, although distance makes such estimates meaningless. Mr. Pell again called it a mountain. Mountains do not shine after the sun is gone. He then suggested snow. Snow does not shine without light. He asked where the light came from. I had no answer. --- **16th Day** Calm. The arc is larger. It has markings. I record this reluctantly because I have no explanation for them. Dark regions lie across its surface, irregular in shape. One patch appears blue-gray. Another is nearly black. The upper boundary is smooth. Perfectly smooth. Mr. Harrow spent most of the afternoon measuring it with the sextant. He has not yet shown me his figures. --- **17th Day** Harrow's figures are absurd. The object subtends nine degrees. He believes its apparent size has increased not because it approaches us, but because we approach a position from which more of it may be seen. I asked what this meant. He placed an orange upon the chart table and held a plate behind it. "We are here," he said, touching one side of the orange. He moved his finger slowly around its surface. At first the plate was hidden. Then its edge appeared. Then more. I told him the analogy was childish. He said, "Yes, Captain." Neither of us spoke for some time after that. --- **18th Day** The object remained visible throughout the night. This is the first entry in this journal I considered omitting. It does not rise. It does not set. The stars wheel around it. We observed for six hours. Its position against the mast did not change except for the motion of the ship. Mr. Harrow repeated his orange demonstration. I became angry with him. I regret this. --- **19th Day** A disturbance among the men. Sailor Kett swore the object had "followed" him from the foredeck to the stern. This caused considerable laughter until several others attempted the same observation and became frightened by it. The object is sufficiently large now that moving about the deck gives a slight impression that its position changes against nearby rigging, though of course this is due to perspective. I explained this. The explanation did not help. Pell asked whether it was attached to the world somewhere beyond sight. I said no. He asked how I knew. I said because nothing that large could be suspended in the air. He asked what held the sun up. I ordered him back to watch. --- **20th Day** Wind favorable. The pale arc is now plainly a curved body. I write those words and dislike them. A curved body. Not cloud. Not land. Not atmospheric light. Something vast, bright, and whole, concealed from our homeland by the curvature of Orra. Harrow says we have not discovered it. We have merely sailed far enough for it to cease being hidden. That distinction feels important. --- **21st Day** The crew no longer use the word mountain. They call it the Crown. This name arose without order and has spread through all watches. At noon I heard Bosun Rell praying beneath his breath. At dusk three men refused to go aloft because they said the Crown was "looking down." Discipline was restored without punishment. I cannot blame them. --- **22nd Day** The Crown has color. Not the washed colors of dawn, but true colors. There is white near one edge. There are great gray-green regions. The blue patch seen earlier has expanded and is unmistakable. Harrow believes it is water. I told him not to say this before the men. He replied that half the men had already said it themselves. Tonight I stood alone on the quarterdeck for perhaps an hour. There may be an ocean above us. --- **23rd Day** Wind SW. Five knots. Lost one barrel of salt pork to spoilage. The object now occupies perhaps fifteen degrees of sky. Mr. Pell has ceased calling it the Crown. He calls it the Other. I prefer this. --- **24th Day** We saw weather upon it. No other description is possible. A white formation developed along the blue-gray region during the afternoon. It broadened, curled, and by evening had become a vast spiral. Cloud. A storm. On the Other. The men became very quiet. Nothing in the world has ever produced such silence. --- **25th Day** Harrow believes the Other is round. Not a dome. Not a disk. A sphere. He showed me the terminator—the boundary between its illuminated and darkened portions. The curve of shadow is consistent with sunlight striking a sphere. I asked him how large it must be. He refused to answer at first. I ordered him. He said, "Captain, I do not know how to give the number meaning." I asked him to try. He said, "Comparable to Orra." I dismissed him. Later I apologized. --- **26th Day** There was an argument in the mess. Kett claims the old northern scriptures mention a second world hidden beneath the earth, visible only to the dead. Rell says this is blasphemy. Pell says both interpretations are foolish because the Other is clearly above us. Kett replied that "above" depends upon where one stands. I have never before heard Kett say anything intelligent. This voyage is producing alarming changes in all of us. --- **27th Day** No wind. Sea strangely high despite calm weather. Harrow has begun comparing our tide tables with our position. The western tides are stronger. Much stronger. He believes the Other is responsible. This suggests that its influence has always reached our homeland, even though its light did not. I find this thought more disturbing than the sight of it. Something unknown has been pulling at our oceans for all of history. --- **28th Day** We altered course three points north to avoid heavy weather. The Other now fills enough sky that surface details can be followed without instruments. There are dark chains that might be mountains. There are pale regions like deserts. The blue is certainly water. I watched sunlight cross it. I watched dawn occur somewhere else. There is no useful sentence for that experience. --- **30th Day** At sunrise Pell shouted from the mainmast. He had seen lights. No one believed him. At sunset we saw them again. Tiny points upon the nightward portion of the Other. At first I thought stars were showing through. They were not. They lie upon the surface. Clusters. Lines. One immense concentration near the edge of a dark landmass. Harrow has not spoken since. --- **31st Day** The men know. I did not tell them. There are cities above us. I can find no other conclusion. Whether they are inhabited by men, spirits, beasts, or beings for which we possess no word, I cannot know. But those lights are made. The largest cluster brightened as its region entered night. No natural fire behaves so. Rell asked me whether they could see us. I told him no. Then I looked at the lantern burning beside the compass and extinguished it. --- **32nd Day** Every unnecessary light aboard is now covered after dark. This was not my order. The crew did it themselves. --- **33rd Day** Land sighted. Our land. Not the Other. A line of low islands to the northwest, heavily forested. Smoke visible inland. Human habitation possible. We will approach tomorrow. The strangest part is that the men are frightened of the islands. The Other has become familiar after only two weeks. The unknown is once again what lies ahead of the bow. --- **34th Day** We made contact. They are human. Their language shares roots with coastal dialects from the old western provinces, though changed beyond easy understanding. They came alongside in narrow boats painted white and blue. There was initial fear on both sides. Then an old man in their boat looked upward, pointed to the Other, and spoke a word. "Aran." We assumed this was their name for it. Harrow attempted to explain by gesture that we had never seen Aran before. This was difficult. He pointed east, covered his eyes, then pointed at Aran and shook his head. The old man stared at him. Harrow repeated the gestures. The old man called others over. Soon perhaps twenty people were staring at us. One laughed. Another appeared frightened. Finally a young woman climbed aboard with permission. She drew a circle on the deck in charcoal. She placed a small mark on one side. Then she drew another circle beside it. She pointed upward. Then to the charcoal. Then she moved the small mark around the first circle until it reached the opposite side. She covered her eyes. We understood one another. For the first time in this voyage, I wished that we had not. --- **35th Day** The islanders know our homeland exists. Or rather, they know that something exists beyond the eastern sea. Their oldest stories speak of people who "walked under the empty sky." They considered this a poetic description of exile. They did not know it was literal. One of their scholars—if that is the proper word—asked through gestures and our growing handful of shared words whether the sky truly becomes empty in the east. I said yes. She asked where Aran goes. I said it does not go anywhere. She laughed because she thought I had misunderstood. I repeated it. She stopped laughing. --- **36th Day** We are learning quickly. Their word "Aran" does not mean world. It means something closer to companion. Their name for Orra is not Orra. They call it Leth. After much confusion we discovered why. "Orra," in their language, refers to what we call the entire world—all land, sea, and sky together. To them, Leth and Aran are both inside Orra. I tried to explain that in our language Orra is the ground beneath us alone. They found this very strange. I am beginning to find it strange myself. --- **38th Day** They possess old maps. The eastern half is mostly blank. At the far edge someone long ago drew a black band and wrote a phrase our interpreter renders approximately as: **Here the Companion falls beneath the world.** Beyond it are monsters. Naturally. Our own western charts contain monsters as well. It appears ignorance has a limited imagination. --- **41st Day** We depart tomorrow. There has been much debate over whether to continue westward or return home. The crew voted without my asking. Twenty-six wish to return. Nine wish to continue. Harrow abstained. I asked his opinion privately. He looked up at Aran. "Captain," he said, "we have spent our lives believing the horizon concealed more of our world." He paused. "Now we know it concealed another." We continue west. --- **46th Day** Aran is enormous now. It dominates the sky. I understand why the islanders found our account difficult to believe. To imagine this absent is like imagining the sun failing to rise. Continents can be seen plainly. Cloud systems crawl across blue seas. At night the cities burn like spilled stars. There are too many to count. Yesterday Pell asked a question none of us had yet spoken. "If they are people," he said, "do they know about us?" No one answered. --- **51st Day** The Other—Aran—is almost directly overhead. Calling it "above" no longer seems adequate. It is not above us in the manner of clouds. It occupies the heavens. One has the constant sensation of falling toward it. Men wake from sleep shouting. Objects dropped from hand still fall to the deck, which the mind finds increasingly unreasonable. Harrow assures us gravity has not changed appreciably. No one finds this reassuring. --- **53rd Day** Lights appeared tonight in a pattern. Three bright flashes. Pause. Three flashes. Pause. Three flashes. Not upon the surface. Above it. We observed through the glass. A point of light moved away from Aran. Slowly. Deliberately. The crew gathered without orders. It crossed perhaps one degree of sky before vanishing into shadow. No one spoke. --- **54th Day** There are more moving lights. Seven tonight. One altered direction. Harrow says no natural body could do so. I told him I am tired of hearing that phrase. He smiled. First time in weeks. --- **56th Day** We have turned east. Not from fear. Not entirely. Our provisions are diminished and the charts must be brought home. There is a duty in discovery. To see is not enough. One must return and tell those who did not. The crew are subdued. Strangely, several seem reluctant to watch Aran sink toward the horizon. Pell said he feels as if we are abandoning someone. --- **63rd Day** Half of Aran is gone. The cities disappeared first. Then the oceans. Tonight only the upper portion remains. Men remained on deck long after watch ended. No one ordered them below. --- **65th Day** Only a pale arc. We know what it is now. That makes the sight worse. --- **66th Day** Aran has vanished. The western horizon glows faintly. Nothing more. The sky feels damaged. Too large. Too empty. I understand the islanders better. --- **69th Day** There is disagreement over what we should tell the Admiralty. Pell says everything. Rell says we should omit the lights until another expedition confirms them. Harrow says evidence should not be weakened merely because its consequences are inconvenient. I agree with Harrow. This journal will be copied in full. Let others call us liars if they must. Reality does not require our permission. --- **74th Day** Familiar stars. Familiar sea. No glow behind us now. The men speak often of home. Yet I suspect home will no longer look the same. How could it? Every child in our country looks upward and believes he sees the sky. He does not. He sees only the portion of the sky his birthplace permits. Every philosopher who declared the heavens complete did so from half a world. Every mapmaker drew the edge of knowledge and mistook it for the edge of existence. I do not condemn them. Yesterday I would have done the same. --- **78th Day** Cape Ansel sighted. Signal fires lit. Harbor tomorrow. I find myself reluctant to close this journal. Perhaps because once I do, the voyage becomes a thing that happened, and I am not yet prepared for what happened to become history. There is one final observation I wish entered accurately. On the last night Aran remained visible, I looked at it through Harrow's glass. There was a storm over one of its oceans. Lightning flashed inside the cloud. For an instant the entire storm was illuminated. It looked exactly like lightning over our own sea. Not divine. Not impossible. Not meant for us. Simply weather. I think that frightened me more than anything else. A second world had been hanging beyond our horizon since before the first human being opened his eyes. It had oceans without our knowing. Storms without our knowing. Cities without our knowing. Perhaps lives without our knowing. And all the while we had argued about the shape and purpose of everything. We thought ignorance was darkness. It is not. Sometimes ignorance is standing beneath a perfectly clear sky and not knowing that half of creation is behind you. --- *Postscript written in another hand:* *The* Resolute *entered Ansel Harbor on the morning of the 79th day.* *Captain Vey's journal was initially sealed by order of the Admiralty.* *Six months later, the survey vessel* Endeavor *sailed west carrying forty-three sailors, twelve natural philosophers, six astronomers, four linguists, two painters, and copies of every known account concerning lands beyond the western sea.* *Three years afterward, a light appeared in the sky above the capital.* *It moved against the stars.* *This time, everyone looked up.*