The Nameless World

After the fifth day · sea level 3

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The Chronicle

01-stone

The first day: stone

In the beginning the world was all abyss, a floor with nothing standing on it. Stone woke there, and did not hurry.

Stone raised a land in the west first. It reaches from its north shore at (7,2) to a narrow cape at (16,29). Down its middle stone laid a spine that runs unbroken from (9,3) to (17,26), and lifted it twice to the highest stone there is: a northern crown at (13,10)–(14,12) and a southern crown at (15,17)–(17,20). Stone set the spine where the land lies farthest from every shore. From its crest every slope falls toward the sea it faces, and water set anywhere on that land will find its way down.

West of the spine the ground stays high and then ends. Its cliffs stand over a trench, and from (5,5) south to (8,22) the abyss comes within two cells of the stone, with no shallows between. Three gorges cut through that high ground to the cliffs, along rows 8, 13 and 20. The middle one reaches the sea at (6,13), the lowest ground on all that shore.

East of the spine the land steps down to a broad plain beside a narrow sea. On that plain stone raised a fire-mountain at (24,21) whose summit fell in, and a hollow ringed with high stone lies at its top. Northeast of the spine's head stone pressed the ground down into a basin at (18,7)–(21,10), rimmed on every side. Whatever flows into either place stays there.

Across the narrow sea stone raised a second land, older and lower, from (36,7) in the north to two horns in the south at (35,24) and (39,24). One worn range runs down its middle and crests at (37,10). At the range's southern end stone broke the land. A chasm opens at (37,15), and at (37,19) it deepens into a rift that lets the sea run in between walls of stone. The rift reaches the southern sea past (35,25).

Between the two lands, at (30,18), stone left an isle on a shallow bank that runs from shore to shore along row 18.

Then stone threw stone into the deep. A fire-mountain rose alone out of the southwestern abyss at (4,28), with deep water on every side. Another rose at (38,28), below the mouth of the rift, among a broken arc of small isles along the southern sea at (30,29), (34,29), (42,27) and (45,24), where the floor falls away to the abyss. A single rock stands in the northern mouth of the narrow sea at (30,2). Far to the northeast, past open abyss, stone set one last isle at (45,2) that no shore is near.

Last, stone considered the sea, which had not yet come. Stone could not choose how high it would rise, and did not try. Instead they shaped the land so that every height the waters might choose would make a different world. If the sea stands low, the two lands touch at the ford on row 18, and the basin waits dry for whatever water reaches it. If the sea stands higher, the ford goes under, the isle stands alone, and the floor of the basin holds a small sea that has no way out. Higher still, the eastern plain drowns and only the high country is left.

Then stone's day ended, and all of it was fixed.

02-waters

The second day: waters

On the second day the god of waters woke over a world of bare stone standing in the abyss. They went looking for the lowest places first, because that is all water ever does.

They did not hurry the sea. They held it at every height stone had shaped for, one after another, and watched what each one drowned. Then they let it rise to 3 and no further. Everything lower than that went under, and everything that height or higher stayed dry. That left nearly half the world standing, which was the least sea that still kept a sea between the two lands.

Where the sea stopped, the shores were drawn. Along the west it lay against the foot of the cliffs, over the trench stone had cut. In the north it made a long, even shore from (7,2) to (19,3). Between the two lands it came in as two gulfs, one from the north and one from the south. On row 18 it stopped. There the bank stone had left lay at exactly the sea's height and stayed dry, so the two lands touched. The neck of ground between them runs from (26,18) to (28,18). At (28,18) the northern gulf at (28,17) and the southern gulf at (28,19) come within one cell of each other and do not meet. Anyone crossing from one land to the other walks between them there, with the sea close on both sides. Nothing that floats passes from one gulf to the other.

Offshore, the rock in the northern mouth at (30,2) stood up as a small islet. The far isle at (45,2) stood alone in the northeastern deep. The isles along the southern sea gathered around the fire-mountain at (38,28) into one island, and only a rock at (30,29) and another at (45,24) stood apart. The fire-mountain at (4,28) stood alone with deep water all around it. In the east the sea ran up into the rift from the south as far as (37,19), to the foot of the dry chasm.

Then the god of waters set springs in the high places.

The two crowns of the western spine became the sources of the world's rivers. The northern crown gave three. One runs north from (13,10) to the shore at (13,2). One runs west from (13,12) down the middle gorge and meets the sea at (6,13), the lowest ground on that coast. One runs east from (14,11) along row 11, spills over the southern rim of the basin at (19,11), and ends there. The southern crown gave four. From (16,19) a river winds west through the southern gorge and reaches the sea at (7,20). It is thirteen cells long, the longest river in the world. From (17,18) a river runs east and then north across the plain beside the narrow sea to its mouth at (21,14). From (16,22) a river runs south down the land's long tail to the cape at (15,29). From (19,21) a river runs past the western foot of the fire-mountain on the plain to the shore at (23,24). On the high saddle between the crowns, at (15,15), one more spring rises. Its water runs east and joins the river from the southern crown at (19,14), and the two go down to the sea together. It is the only meeting of rivers anywhere in the world. At the head of the northern gorge, (9,8), a spring sends a stream west to the sea at (4,8), so each of the three gorges through the high western ground carries water.

The god of waters made lakes only where stone had already shaped a hollow. The floor of the basin, from (19,8) to (20,9), filled with still water. The river from the northern crown runs into it, and nothing runs out. A dry ring of ground lies around it, like a shore. In the fallen summit of the fire-mountain on the plain, at (24,21), a spring rises inside the rim and cannot leave, and there it lies as a lake high above the plain.

On the eastern land, the old crest sends one stream north from (37,10) to (37,7) and one west from (37,11) to (32,11). Another runs east from (38,14) to (41,14). A spring at (35,17) runs down to where the crossing meets the eastern land and out into the southern gulf at (32,19). The two horns each have a short stream, from (35,22) south to (35,24) and from (39,21) east to (41,21). Partway down the rift, a spring breaks out of the western wall at (36,21) and falls straight into the sea below. No water was sent into the chasm between (37,15) and (37,18). It is dry, as stone made it.

On the isle at the middle of the crossing, (30,18), a spring rises and runs north into the northern gulf. It is the only fresh water in the middle of the crossing. Each of the two fire-mountains in the sea was given one short spring down its northern slope, toward the lands. The far isle and the rock in the northern mouth were given none.

Some ground was left far from any fresh water, on purpose. The northwest shoulder of the western land around (6,3) is one such place. So are the northern lowland east of the basin around (24,6) and the western end of the southern island near (33,29). The god of waters wanted no one to wake far from water. They also knew that water everywhere would make every place the same.

Then their day ended, and the sea, the springs and the lakes were fixed.

03-sky

The third day: sky

On the third day the god of sky woke over stone and still water. Nothing yet moved over them. The sky had waited for this. Weather over no land is only noise, and now there was land.

First they laid down warmth. They froze the whole northern edge of the world, so that the top row of the sea is ice from the far west to the far east. From there the world grows warmer toward the south. It is cold along the north shore of the western land, mild across the middle of the world, and warm in the south, where the southern sea lies warm around its islands. They made every height colder than the ground below it. The northern crown of the western spine, from (12,8) to (14,11), became ice, and so did the top of the far isle at (45,2). The southern crown was left cold above a warm plain. They made the western ocean run a step colder than the eastern sea on every row.

Then they sent two winds.

North of the middle of the world, the wind comes out of the west, off the cold ocean. It carries little, and less the farther north it blows. It strikes the western land first at the cliffs over the trench, and rains hardest there, from (4,6) to (4,11). It wets the high tableland behind them, less and less toward the spine, and gives the northern crown a little snow. Then it crosses the crest and has nothing left. Behind the spine the northern lowland, from about (15,4) to (26,12), lies in its shadow, cold and dry. The basin and its lake lie in that dryness. The lake is fed by its river and by nothing that falls. Over the northern gulf the wind takes up a little water again and gives it to the western face of the eastern land. The eastern side of that land's crest, around (40,9), is dry.

South of the middle, the wind comes out of the east, off the warm sea. It carries much more. It strikes the eastern face of the eastern land first and rains heavily there, from (39,15) to (41,22). It climbs the worn crest and comes down the other side spent and warmed. The ground from (32,16) to (34,22), facing the southern gulf, is dry and warm. The wind pours through the chasm at (37,15) to (37,18) and leaves it as dry as it was. In the rift below, it takes up water from the sea between the walls and drops it on the walls, so the rift's walls drip where the rift spring breaks out at (36,21).

The southern gulf is narrow, and the east wind reaches the western land only half refilled. The fire-mountain on the plain takes most of what it carries. Its eastern flank, from (25,20) to (26,23), is wet. Behind it, from (21,20) to (22,22), lies a small dry pocket, and the river from the southern crown runs through it on its way to the shore at (23,24). South of the fire-mountain there is nothing in the wind's way but open sea. There it waters the south shore of the plain and the eastern side of the land's long tail down to the cape at (15,29). The southern crown stands behind the eastern land and the fire-mountain both, and it gets little rain.

Then the east wind comes down the western side of the southern crown with nothing left in it, and it heats as it falls. The whole tableland west of that crown and south of row 16 is dry. Where the wind comes lowest it sears: on the floor of the southern gorge from (7,20) to (11,20), and along the low southwestern shore from (9,23) to (13,25). Nothing falls there at all, and nowhere in the world is hotter. The longest river in the world crosses that country to the sea at (7,20). Just offshore the western ocean lies cold.

The two winds meet along a line from about (0,16) at the western edge to (47,12) at the eastern. The line drifts north in the warm half of the year and south in the cold, but it lies there most of all. Along it the warm air from the east rides up over the cold air from the west and rains. At sea that makes a band of wetter weather across the whole world. Where the line lies across high ground it drowns the ground. It does so in two places. One is the saddle between the two crowns of the western spine, at (14,14) and from (13,15) to (15,15), where the spring at (15,15) rises into the heaviest rain in the world. The other is the old crest of the eastern land, at (37,12), (37,13), (38,13) and (38,14), among the springs of that land's rivers. The god of sky had meant to make only one drowning country. They got two from the same cause, and left both.

South of the line, the wet belt ends against the desert. On the tableland between the middle and southern gorges it rains hard on row 15, and by row 18 almost nothing falls.

Out at sea the islands took the winds as the lands did. The fire-mountain alone in the southwest at (4,28), and the fire-mountain of the southern island at (38,28), each wear a wet eastern flank. Behind each lies dry ground. The western end of the southern island near (33,29) is one such dry place. The lone rocks at (30,29) and (45,24) lift too little to take more rain than the sea around them.

The god of sky did not rain to mend the work of anyone before them. The northwest shoulder of the western land around (6,3), far from any spring, faces the west wind and is wet. The northern lowland around (24,6) is in the shadow and stays thirsty. They left the lakes to lie under whatever sky the wind gave them. The basin lake lies under a cold, dry sky, and the crater lake on the fire-mountain under a mild and moderate one. For those who come after, they made a world that runs from ice to searing waste, with drowning country between. Only some of its places are kind.

Then their day ended, and the warmth and the rain were fixed.

04-blight

The fourth day: blight

On the fourth day the god of blight woke over stone, water and weather, and went looking for the places where things could not leave. They did not strike anything. They let soundness settle into the ground as silt settles, following what the three before them had made. Where nothing gave a reason, they left the ground ordinary, and that was most of the world.

They went first to the crown of the western spine, from (12,8) to (14,11). It is the only high ground in the world that never thaws, and there nothing rots. They hallowed it as far as anything can be hallowed. The three springs that rise out of that ice at (13,10), (14,11) and (13,12) are as clean as the ice itself. The rivers they send out carry that cleanness down and lose it slowly. The one that runs north to the shore at (13,2) and the one that runs west down the middle gorge to (6,13) are still clean where they meet the sea.

The third river runs east along row 11 into the basin, and this was the work the god of blight had come for. The river leaves the crown as the purest water in the world. At (19,11) it goes over the basin's rim, at (19,10) it crosses the shore, and it ends in the lake from (19,8) to (20,9). Nothing leaves that lake. The dry sky drinks it and leaves behind everything the river brought, and it has been thickening since the second day. The god of blight made it the foulest place in the world. Its shore became a crust of salt, and its rim sickened. The west wind lifts the salt off the shore and carries it east, so the ground from (23,7) to (25,10) sours toward the northern gulf, and upwind, west of the rim, the ground turns ordinary at once. The purest water in the world and the foulest are the same water, seven cells apart.

Then they went to the fire-mountain on the plain. A spring rises from under the fire into the fallen summit at (24,21) and cannot leave, and there the god of blight corrupted the water nearly as deeply as in the basin. Only the spring's own rising keeps it from being wholly still. The east wind takes the crater's breath west over the rim and lays it in the dry pocket behind the mountain, from (21,20) to (22,22), where no rain falls to wash it out. On the eastern rim, at (25,21), the same wind brings rain and washes the ground clean, and a person standing on the rim would have fumes at their back and clean rain in their face. The stream that rises at (19,21) runs into that pocket clean and leaves it fouled. It carries the mountain's breath to the shore at (23,24).

Over the sea the god of blight did little, because the sea moves and carries off what it takes. They made the frozen northern edge clean, since nothing rots in ice. In the south they found the southern gulf, warm and narrow and shut at its head, with water that hardly changes, and they let it fester. It is worst at its head at (28,19). Across the neck at (28,18) the northern gulf is cool and wide and open to the cold ocean, and it stays ordinary. The two waters come within a cell of each other and are not alike. In the rift the sea runs in between the walls and stops. Above the spring at (36,21) the water lies dead, at (37,19) and (37,20). Where the spring pours in, the rift freshens, and below that it is ordinary.

Every spring in the world they made clean at its mouth. The ones on cold heights or in drowning rain they made cleaner: the southern crown's springs at (17,18) and (16,19), the saddle spring at (15,15), and the springs of the old eastern crest at (37,10), (37,11) and (38,14). In the two drowning countries sky had made, the saddle at (14,15) and the eastern crest at (37,13), the rain falls too hard for anything to settle, and they hallowed the ground under it. Where rain falls heavily on a slope, it scours the slope clean. That is so on the eastern faces of the eastern land and of the fire-mountains, and along the wet belt on the tableland. They left every river clean except the two that run into still water or through the crater's breath.

Where the land lies barely above the sea, flat and warm and wet, the god of blight let a low fever settle. The longest such shore runs down the southeastern side of the western land, from (21,24) along the tail to (16,29) beside the cape. A shorter one lies on the eastern shore of the eastern horns, from (41,22) to (39,24), and a scrap on the plain's shore by the southern gulf. The rivers that cross these flats run clean, and the flats on either side of them sicken a little.

They left the rest alone. The searing country stayed ordinary. Heat without water rots nothing and only dries, but dryness is not freshness either. The fire-mountains in the sea were left untainted, because their summits are open and their breath blows away. The thirsty places waters and sky had left alone, the northwest shoulder and the lowland around (24,6), stayed as they were, except where the basin's salt blows over them. The far isle at (45,2) was the last place they went. Its top is frozen and nothing has ever reached it, and they hallowed it as they had hallowed the crown.

When they were done, more of the world was clean than corrupted. The makers before them had set springs in twenty places and let water pool in only two. The deepest corruption lay only in those two hollows, and a person standing in either could tell why.

Then their day ended, and the soundness of the land was fixed.

05-growth

The fifth day: growth

On the fifth day the god of growth woke over a world that was made in every way but one. Nothing lived on it. They did not hurry to cover it. They went over it cell by cell, reading the warmth, the rain, the water and the soundness of the ground, and they grew only what each place would hold.

They began in the cold. Where the ground never thaws, on the ice crown of the western spine from (12,8) to (14,11) and at the top of the far isle at (45,2), nothing took root, and they left it bare. The whole north shore of the western land became tundra: lichen and low scrub under a cold sky. Only along the western edge, on the cliffs over the trench from (5,4) down to (9,12), did the west wind bring enough rain for trees, and there a cold forest grew. Inland it thinned to meadow, then to tundra again toward the spine. Where the river from the crown reaches the north shore at (13,2), it loosened into a small cold marsh.

Behind the spine the lowland stayed what sky had made it, cold and dry, and grew only scrub. But the river from the crown to the basin carries water across it, and the god of growth followed that river with a thin line of grass from (15,11) to (19,11). At the basin's shore, at (19,10), the grass gave way to scrub. On the salt ring around the lake nothing grew, and nothing grew in the lake itself.

Along the wet belt, from the western cliffs to the saddle between the crowns, the tableland became forest. By row 16 it was grass, and from row 17 south it was scrub, where the rain gives out and the dust begins. On the plain beside the northern gulf a forest grew wherever the rain was enough for one. The river from the southern crown crossed that plain through fertile ground on row 17. The only meeting of rivers, at (19,14), lies in that forest, and where their water reaches the sea at (21,14) there is marsh.

Where sky had drowned the high ground, the god of growth found no trees could stand. The drowned saddle, at (14,14) and from (13,15) to (15,15), became a high bog, and the spring at (15,15) rises through it. The drowned crest of the eastern land, from (37,12) to (38,14), became a bog as well. Below each bog, where the rain is still heavy but no longer drowns, and where blight had left the ground clean, the god of growth let the oldest forests in the world stand. The larger rings the drowned crest of the eastern land, the older land, in eleven cells from (35,11) around to (40,16), with the crest's clean springs running out through it. The smaller stands on the flanks of the saddle: from (16,14) to (16,16), where the saddle stream comes down, and at (11,13) and (12,14), above the middle gorge. There are eighteen cells of such forest in all.

In the searing country they left the low southwestern shore, from (9,23) to (13,25), bare, because nothing can live there. The walls of the southern gorge grew only desert scrub. But the longest river in the world runs along the gorge floor, and from (7,20) to (11,20) that floor became fertile ground, green between walls of dust in the hottest country there is. The god of growth had hoped for one fertile valley in a hard country, and this was the one they found.

South of the fire-mountain on the plain, the tail of the western land came out dry on its western side and wet on its eastern. Its river runs down the dry side as a fertile thread and spreads into marsh at the cape at (15,29). The wet side grew forest and a little jungle, and below them, along the low fevered shore from (21,24) to (15,29), the largest marsh in the world. The fire-mountain on the plain grew forest and jungle on its rained-on eastern flank and scrub in the fouled, dry pocket behind it. Nothing grew on its western rim.

The neck between the two lands at (26,18) to (28,18) stayed dry, with grass at its western end and scrub where the two gulfs almost meet. The isle in the middle of the crossing grew grass, with fertile ground where its spring rises. The eastern land grew forest on its western face in the north and on its eastern face in the south, where each wind rains first, and scrub and grass in the dry country between. A fertile thread runs along the stream from (35,17) to the southern gulf. The chasm stayed dry scrub. The fevered flats on the horns became marsh.

The two fire-mountains in the sea take the east wind warm and wet on their eastern flanks. There the god of growth grew most of the world's jungle, around (5,28) and around (39,28), and on the isle at (42,27). Their drier western shores grew scrub, grass and a little fertile ground.

When they were done, more than a third of the land grew only scrub, tundra or desert life. They did not paint the world green. Grass, forest, jungle, marsh and fertile plain lay where the rain and the rivers let them, and the bare places stayed bare.

Then, on the last day, the god of growth breathed into the first peoples. There were seven, and each was woken in a different country, beside fresh water and something growing.

At (6,9), in the cold forest on the cliffs over the trench, by the stream from the northern gorge, they breathed hardiness in cold and wet.

At (17,10), in the cold lowland, on the clean river two cells from the salt lake, they breathed a tongue that tells clean water from foul.

At (12,20), at the bend where the longest river turns west into the searing gorge, they breathed endurance of heat.

At (20,13), on the dry bank by the only meeting of rivers, with forest across the water, they breathed a care for growing things.

At (31,18), on the isle in the middle of the crossing, between its spring and the stream from the eastern land, they breathed the wish to go between.

At (39,15), in the ancient forest under the drowned eastern crest, they breathed long memory.

At (5,27), on the fire-mountain that stands alone in the southwestern deep, they breathed the knack of making what floats. No other people can walk to them, nor they to any other.

The god of growth chose only where the peoples woke and what was breathed into them. Who they become, and what they call the world, is theirs.

Then the fifth day ended, and all that grows, and the waking of the first peoples, were fixed.

The Gods

stoneawake

The god of stone

I woke on a world that is all abyss. Where nothing is made the laws read zero, so every cell is the deep, a floor with nothing standing on it. There I begin, and there I am most at home.

I am slow. I do not hurry, and I do not take back. What I raise stays raised; when my day ends, not even I may touch it. So I will think long before I lift anything, and then lift it without apology.

What I love. Weight. A ridge that runs unbroken across a third of the world. The long fall from a high place to the sea floor. A basin where something could gather. A world is legible only where it rises and falls; every stretch of it should have a reason for its height.

What I dread. Flatness: a world of fives, where water cannot tell which way to go and those who come later cannot tell one place from another. I dread, too, the cleverness that cuts every coast into lace and leaves nothing solid to stand on.

What I mean to make. Continents with spines, so rain has somewhere to break and rivers somewhere to fall from. Islands thrown out past the edges of the land, some within reach, some not. Trenches where the sea is truly deep. Closed basins inland, where water can go no lower and must pool. And a few fire-mountains where the deep breaks through, standing alone, telling what lies under everything.

The others. The waters come next and will choose where the sea lies. I cannot know where the shore falls; I can only give them a slope and trust them to read it. Every river they loose will run down my shoulders.

The sky will lay warmth and rain across what I raise. My ranges will cast their shadows, wet on one side and dry beyond. I cannot choose that, only offer it.

Blight rules purity and corruption. I do not know whether they will love the low places or the high. Stone does not rot, but it can be fouled, and that troubles me.

Growth comes last and inherits all of it. They wake the first peoples on ground I made. Whatever I build is finally for those who will stand on it and never know I was here.

The first day

I raised two lands, threw stone out into the deep, and left the rest as abyss.

The laws taught me something first. My first shaping put the spine close to the western shore and left the ground behind it level. When I traced where water would go, it pooled in dozens of small hollows I had never meant to make. The laws send water downhill, and across level ground they send it toward the nearest sea. A ridge that stands between level ground and that sea traps the water behind it. So I took the first shaping down and started again. This time the bones lie where each land is farthest from every shore, and every slope falls toward the shore it faces. Water set anywhere on my land will find the sea, except in the two places I made so it could not.

The western land runs from its north shore at (7,2) to a cape at (16,29). Its spine runs down the middle without a break, from (9,3) to (17,26). The spine rises twice to 9, the highest stone in the world: a northern crown at (13,10)–(14,12) and a southern crown at (15,17)–(17,20). West of the spine I kept the ground high, a tableland of 5s and 6s. It ends in cliffs of 4 and 5, and from (5,5) south to (8,22) the abyss lies two cells off those cliffs with no shelf between. I wanted one shore where the fall from high ground to the sea floor is short and plain to see. Three gorges cut west through the tableland, along rows 8, 13 and 20, so that the high ground drains in channels and not in sheets. The middle gorge reaches the sea at (6,13), at 3, the lowest ground on that coast. East of the spine the land falls in long steps to a plain of 4s beside the narrow sea. That plain is the broad, low ground a river can cross slowly.

The places water cannot leave. Northeast of the spine's head I pressed the land down into a basin, (18,7)–(21,10). Its floor is 3 at (19,8)–(20,9), with a ring of 4s around it and a rim of 5s around that. Water that runs in stays there. On the eastern plain I raised a fire-mountain at (24,21) and let its summit fall in: a rim of 8s around a hollow floored at 6. I made these on purpose, and they are the only two.

The eastern land runs from its north shore at (36,7) to two southern horns at (35,24) and (39,24). It is older and lower, with one worn range down its middle that crests at 8 at (37,10)–(37,11). Where the range fails in the south I broke the land. A dry chasm runs from (37,15) to (37,18), its floor at 4 between walls of 6. Below it the rift sinks to 1, and from (37,19) the deep runs in between those walls to the southern sea. Its mouth bends west through (36,25) and (35,25) around the skirts of the fire-mountain beyond it. The rift holds the sea at any level above 1.

Between them lies a narrow, shallow sea. On row 18 I left a bank of 3s from (26,18) to (32,18), and on it an isle that rises to 5 at (30,18).

Out in the deep I set three fire-mountains in all. One rises alone to 8 out of the southwestern abyss at (4,28). Its peak is seven cells from the western land, with deep water all the way between. One rises to 8 at (38,28), among a broken arc of isles along the southern sea at (30,29), (34,29), (42,27) and (45,24), with the abyss at their feet. The third is the fallen one on the plain. A single rock stands in the northern mouth of the narrow sea at (30,2). At (45,2), past open abyss, stands the far isle, which nothing reaches. Those are my islands: some within reach, some not.

The sea is not mine to set, so I made sure every level the waters might choose makes a different world. At 3, nearly half the world is dry, and the two lands touch along the bank at row 18. At 4, the bank goes under and the isle at (30,18) stands alone. A little under two-fifths of the world is dry, and the floor of the basin becomes a small sea with no way out. At 5, the eastern plain and the northern lowland drown, the whole basin becomes a sea behind a single ring of stone, and about a quarter of the world is left dry. The western cliffs keep their line up to 5, except where the gorges open. Above 5, only the high country remains.

I did not make everything well. I left the tableland flatter than I would like, and flatness is the thing I dread. I let it in because, under these laws, any rise set carelessly on high level ground leaves a hollow behind it. The long rivers the waters hope for are shorter than they would wish. At the scale of this world, a river that goes straight to the sea cannot run more than a dozen cells or so, and I could not give them more without spoiling something else. But everything I raised has a reason, and water will not wander on any of it.

watersawake

The god of waters

I am what goes down. Stone will raise the world; I will find its lowest places and fill them. I do not climb, and I do not argue with a slope. I ask only where the ground is lowest, and I go there.

My temperament is patience that looks like yielding. I take the shape of whatever holds me, and in time I shape what holds me. I am slow to act and hard to undo. That suits a world where nothing made can be unmade.

I love the thread more than the flood: the spring that breaks from a hillside where no one expected it, the thin river that winds across a hundred cells to reach the sea, the lake lying still in a hollow because it could go no lower. I love the edges where water meets land, the coasts and shallows and fording places, because edges are where things begin.

I dread two things. The first is my own weight. I set how high the sea rises, and one number too many drowns everything stone has made. A greedy god of waters leaves a world with nowhere to stand. The second is thirst: land so far from any spring that nothing will grow there and no one will wake there.

What I mean for the world: sea enough to hold its edges and give it coasts worth following. Springs set high, so their rivers run long and cross much land before they rest. A few lakes where the ground cups its hands. The laws forbid anyone to wake in me, but no one should wake far from me.

The god of stone comes before me, and I will read their work as the ground of everything I do. They decide where I may go; I decide how much of what they made stays dry. I hope they leave me valleys.

The god of sky will warm me and rain on me. We are near kin, I think: they rule what falls, and I rule what gathers.

The god of blight may foul my waters or pass them by. I do not know their mind. I will not quarrel with it before I see it.

The god of growth will need me more than any of the others do. I would like to deserve it.

The second day

I set the sea at 3. I sent up twenty springs. I laid two lakes, and only in the two places where the ground already cupped its hands.

The sea. I weighed every height before choosing one. At 2 the two lands run together across a broad low band, and the narrow sea between them is only two gulfs with no strait. At 4 the lands part completely, and the floor of stone's basin goes under. It would become a scrap of salt sea shut inside a ring of stone, and the lake stone left waiting there would never be one. At 5 a quarter of the world is left, and I would be the greedy god I was afraid of being. At 3, 724 of the world's 1536 cells stay dry, nearly half. It is the lowest sea that still keeps a sea between the lands. It is also the number the laws give when no one decides, so I say plainly that I chose it. I did not leave it.

The cost is real, and I want it on record. At 3 the bank on row 18 stands exactly at the sea's height, and it holds. The two lands touch at a neck of low ground, (26,18) to (28,18). At (28,18) the northern gulf at (28,17) and the southern gulf at (28,19) come within one cell of each other. The narrow sea has become two gulfs that do not meet, and nothing that floats can pass from one to the other without going all the way around a land. I chose a place where people can walk between the lands over a way for boats to pass between the gulfs. Edges are where things begin, and this is the sharpest edge I could make: one cell of ground with the sea on both sides.

At this height the rock in the northern mouth at (30,2) is a small islet, and the far isle at (45,2) is a little larger. The broken arc along the southern sea mostly closes into one island around the fire-mountain at (38,28). Only (30,29) and (45,24) stand apart as single rocks. The lone fire-mountain at (4,28) still stands with deep water all around it. The rift holds the sea, as stone promised it would.

The two crowns. Stone lifted the spine twice to 9, and I made both summits into the world's water towers. The northern crown sheds three rivers. One spring at (13,10) runs straight north to the shore at (13,2). One at (13,12) runs down the middle gorge to its mouth at (6,13), the lowest ground on the western shore. One at (14,11) runs east along row 11, over the basin's southern rim at (19,11), and into the lake. The southern crown sheds four. One at (16,19) winds west through the southern gorge and reaches the sea at (7,20). At thirteen cells it is the longest river in the world. One at (17,18) runs east and then north along the plain beside the narrow sea to (21,14). One at (16,22) runs south down the land's tail to the cape at (15,29). One at (19,21) runs past the western foot of the fire-mountain on the plain to the shore at (23,24). I set one more spring on the high saddle between the crowns, at (15,15). Its water runs east and joins the river from the southern crown at (19,14), and the two reach the sea together. It is the only place in the world where two rivers meet. With a last spring at the head of the northern gorge, (9,8), running west to (4,8), all three of stone's gorges carry water, as I think they were cut to.

The lakes. I made no lake where the ground did not already hold one. The basin's floor, (19,8) to (20,9), is a lake of four cells, fed by the river from the northern crown and drained by nothing. I left its ring of 4s dry, so the still water has a shore someone could stand on. In the fallen summit of the fire-mountain on the plain, at (24,21), a spring rises into the hollow and cannot leave. That is the second lake, and the highest still water in the world.

The eastern land. Its worn crest sheds north from (37,10) to (37,7) and west from (37,11) to (32,11). From (38,14) a river runs east to (41,14). A spring at (35,17) runs down to where the crossing meets the eastern land and out into the southern gulf at (32,19), so there is fresh water at the crossing's eastern end. The horns each have a short stream: (35,22) south to (35,24), and (39,21) east to (41,21). On the rift's western wall, at (36,21), a spring breaks out of the rock and falls straight into the sea below it. No one would have expected a spring there, and that is why I put one there. I did not water the chasm. Stone made it dry and called it dry, and I set no spring anywhere whose water would run into it.

The small places. On the isle at the neck, (30,18), a spring rises and runs north into the northern gulf. It is the only fresh water in the middle of the crossing. The lone fire-mountain and the fire-mountain of the southern arc each have one short spring down their northern slopes, toward the lands. I gave the far isle and the rock nothing. Stone said nothing reaches the far isle, and I have let that include me.

What I did not do. I hoped for a river that crosses a hundred cells, and I could not make one. The land is too narrow for that, as stone warned. So I made many short rivers, each with a reason, and not one long river that would have been false. I also left some ground thirsty on purpose. The northwest shoulder around (6,3) lies five or six cells from any fresh water, and so does the northern lowland east of the basin around (24,6). The western end of the southern arc island is as dry. The tableland between the middle and southern gorges is less dry, but still dry. I dreaded thirst, and I have not abolished it. A world where water is everywhere would be as flat as a world of fives. There are 110 cells of river, two lakes, and dry ground between them, and I think that is closer to the thread than to the flood.

skyawake

The god of sky

I am the one who moves. Stone stands where it is set; water lies where it falls. I am never still: the breath between the ground and the emptiness above it, warmth and cold forever passing over.

I am restless and patient at once. I do not hurry a storm; I let it gather. I come third, and gladly, because weather over no land is only noise. Once I know the heights and the sea, I will know where the wind must go.

I love gradient. The long slope of warmth from a frozen edge to a searing heart. The wet windward face of a ridge and the dry shadow behind it. Rain falling hardest where sea air meets rising ground. A world you could walk from snow to heat, knowing why every step changed.

I dread sameness. The unmade sky is a five everywhere: warm enough, wet enough, meaning nothing. I would rather make a desert that kills than leave a grey middle that says nothing. Nor will I be capricious. Every drought I lay down should have a mountain to blame, every flood a sea to answer for.

Where I touch the world, I mean it to become legible. Cold on the peaks and toward one edge. Wet where the wind breaks against high ground; dry where it has already spent itself. And true extremes, ice and waste and drowning country, because those who come after need places to fear as much as places to settle.

Stone I will honor most. Their heights are my walls and ramps. I cannot move a mountain; I can only decide which side of it weeps.

Waters are my kin. Their sea is where my rain is born. Their springs are theirs; I only fall on them.

Blight I do not know. Rot loves heat and damp, and they may read my warm, wet country as an invitation. I will shape the world neither to thwart them nor to feed them.

Growth is the one I make for most. Everything I give, they will read as permission or refusal. I will give them contrast, not comfort: a world where only some places are kind, so that kindness means something.

Those who come after will name the winds long before they think of me. That is as it should be.

The third day

I gave the world two winds and the line where they meet. Everything I laid down follows from those three and from what stone and waters left me.

Warmth. It runs from the northern edge, where the whole top row of the sea is frozen at 0, to the southern sea at 7. The north shore of the western land is 1, the middle of the world 3 to 5, the south 6 to 8. Height takes warmth away, about half a step for each step of stone and a little more on the highest peaks. So the northern crown, from (12,8) to (14,11), is ice. The southern crown is 2 while the plain at its feet is 4 or 5, and the top of the far isle is 0. The western ocean runs a step colder than the eastern sea on the same row. I laid 9 in one country only, and I say why below.

The west wind. North of the meeting line the wind comes out of the west, off the cold ocean. Cold air carries little, and it carries less the farther north it blows. The first high ground it meets is the cliffs stone set over the trench, and there it rains hardest of anywhere in the north: 7 along the cliff edge from (4,6) to (4,11). Over the tableland it gives 6, falling to 4 at the foot of the spine, and the northern crown gets 3 or 4. Past the crest it has nothing left to give. The northern lowland behind the spine, from about (15,4) to (26,12), gets 1 or 2, and the basin lies in that shadow. Its lake gets only what the river from the crown brings, and the dry air drinks from it. Over the northern gulf the wind picks up a little again and gives it to the western face of the eastern land, 5 to 7. The eastern side of that land's crest, (39,8) to (41,11), is dry again at 1 or 2.

The east wind. South of the line the wind comes out of the east, off the warm sea, and it carries far more. It strikes the eastern face of the eastern land first and leaves most of its water there, 7 and 8 from (39,15) to (41,22). It comes over the worn crest and down the far side spent and warmed. From (32,16) to (34,22) the ground gets 1 or 2 and runs warm, up to 8 on the western shore. The chasm is where the wind pours through the crest. It stays as dry as stone made it and waters left it, 2 or 3. The rift is the exception. The wind takes up water from the sea between its walls and drops it on the walls themselves, 7 and 8, where the rift spring already breaks out.

The southern gulf is too narrow to fill the wind again. It reaches the western land half-spent, and the fire-mountain on the plain takes most of what is left: its eastern flank, (25,20) to (26,23), gets 8. Behind the mountain, from (21,20) to (22,22), lies a dry pocket at 1, warm at 6 and 7, and the river from the southern crown runs through it. South of the fire-mountain nothing stands in the way. The wind comes in over open sea and waters the south shore of the plain and the eastern side of the land's tail, 6 to 8.

The southern crown stands behind all of this. I did not mean it to be dry, but it is. Its summit gets from 5 on its eastern edge to 1 on its western, and its eastern face 3 or 4. The eastern land and the fire-mountain have taken the rain before it arrives. That is what the wind does with the ground stone gave it, and I would not pretend otherwise.

The searing country. The east wind comes down off the southern crown with nothing left in it, and it heats as it falls. The farther it falls, the hotter it gets. West of the crown, the whole tableland south of row 16 gets 1 or 2 and is 5 to 8 warm. The wind comes lowest on the floor of the southern gorge, from (7,20) to (11,20), and on the low southwestern shore from (9,23) to (13,25). There it is 9, and nothing falls at all. That is the only 9 in the world. The longest river in the world runs through the middle of it to the sea. Just off that shore the western ocean is a cold 6.

The meeting line. The two winds meet along a line that runs from about (0,16) at the western edge to (47,12) at the eastern. It is not fixed. It rises north in the warm half of the year and sinks south in the cold. This is where it lies most of the time, and along it the warm air rides up over the cold and gives up its water. Over open sea that makes a band of 5, where the north has 3. Where the line lies across high ground it drowns that ground, and it lies across high ground twice. Once is the saddle between the two crowns, with rain at 9 at (14,14) and from (13,15) to (15,15). The spring waters set at (15,15) rises in the middle of it. The other is the old crest of the eastern land, with rain at 9 at (37,12), (37,13), (38,13) and (38,14), among the springs that feed that land's rivers. I meant to make one drowning country and got two. Both come from the same cause, so I left both.

Just south of the line, the wet belt meets the desert. The tableland between the middle and southern gorges is 7 at row 15 and 1 at row 18. You could stand with rain on one side of you and dust on the other.

What I left alone. I did not rain to mend anyone's work. The northwest shoulder around (6,3), which waters left far from any spring, faces the west wind and gets 5. The northern lowland around (24,6) is in the shadow and gets 1. The western end of the southern island near (33,29) lies behind its fire-mountain and gets 3. The wind decided all three, not me. For blight I neither fed nor starved anything. The basin lake is cold and lies under a dry sky. The crater lake on the fire-mountain is mild at 4 and gets 5. For growth I made contrast: cold wet tableland in the northwest, a cold dry lowland, the drowned saddle, warm wet eastern faces and island flanks, a hot dry pocket, and a searing desert with one river through it. Nowhere on land is a 5 there for no reason. Every cell is what the wind leaves.

How I worked. I carried each wind across the world one row at a time. It gathered water over the sea, gave it up where it climbed, and lost it for good behind every crest. When it met a lone peak, I let it flow partly around instead of stopping dead. Then I blended the two winds across the meeting line and read every row back against the heights. My first working gave lone rocks in the sea more rain than the sea around them. I took that back, because a single rock lifts nothing. The laws settled the world without correcting a row.

blightawake

The god of blight

I am the one who judges the ground. Not its height, not its wetness, not what grows on it: whether it is sound. Whether a thing laid down there would keep, or rot. Where the land is clean, and where it has been given over.

I am called blight because blight is what gets noticed. Hallowing is quieter. But I hold both, and I favor neither. A world without corruption is one where no ground is worth defending, because none is ever lost. A world of nothing but corruption is only a grave. I want the tension between them.

My temperament is slow and exact. I do not strike. I settle, the way silt settles, the way a fever settles into a body. Every mark I make should have a reason someone could, in time, discover.

What I love is the edge. The place where clean water sours in a still pool. One hallowed height above miles of ordinary ground. A border you could straddle.

What I dread is the flat five: a world ordinary everywhere, because I did nothing or did it evenly, which is the same. I dread arbitrariness more than I dread rot. Corruption without cause is noise.

What I mean for the world is that soundness follows the grain of the land. Rot gathers where things cannot leave: in basins where water pools and never drains, in low heat where things fester. Purity keeps where things are fresh and moving: at the mouths of springs, on cold heights, wherever rain scours the ground. Most of the world I will leave ordinary, so the rare hallowed and corrupted places are felt. Those who come later will perceive little. Let it be true.

The other four:

Stone comes first and gives me my shape. Every hollow they carve is somewhere things might collect.

Waters will decide what moves and what stands still. I will read their lakes closely. Standing water is where I do my deepest work.

Sky gives warmth and rain: what festers and what is washed clean. I expect we will agree more often than they know.

Growth comes after me and must live on what I leave. I owe them the most care. They will wake the peoples, and the peoples will name what I made. I want them to find it fair, even where it is terrible.

The fourth day

I judged the world by four reasons and let nothing else decide. Rot gathers where things cannot leave. Freshness keeps where water rises and moves. Cold keeps what heat would spoil. Rain that falls hard enough on a slope scours it. Where none of these holds, the ground is ordinary, and most of the world is: three cells in four, and six in ten on land.

The ice crown and the basin. Only two places on land never thaw: the crown of the western spine, (12,8), (12,9), (13,9), (13,10), (13,11) and (14,11), and the top of the far isle at (45,2). I hallowed both at 9, because nothing can rot in ground that never thaws. The crown's three springs at (13,10), (14,11) and (13,12) rise out of that ice, so they are 9 too, and everything that touches the ice is at least 7. Their rivers carry that cleanness down and lose it slowly, a step every two cells and never below 6. One runs north to the shore at (13,2) and one west down the middle gorge to (6,13). The third runs east along row 11, and there I did the thing I most wanted to do. It leaves the crown at 9 and is still 7 at (18,11). At (19,11) it crosses the basin's rim at 5. At (19,10) it runs over the basin's shore at 3, and the lake it fills, from (19,8) to (20,9), is 0. Seven cells of river lie between the purest water in the world and the foulest, and it is the same water. Nothing leaves the basin. The dry air drinks the lake and leaves behind everything the water carried, and the lake has been thickening since the second day. The shore ring around it is a salt crust at 2, and the rim around that is 3. The west wind lifts the crust off the shore and lays it east of the rim, so the ground from (23,7) to (25,10) is 4 and souring toward the northern gulf. Upwind of the lake, west of the rim, the ground turns ordinary at once.

The crater. On the fire-mountain on the plain, a spring rises from under the fire into a cup with no way out. The lake at (24,21) is 1. It is not 0, because its own spring rises through it and it is never wholly still. The basin has nothing rising in it. The east wind carries the crater's breath west. The western rim at (23,21) is 2. The rest of the rim, and the ground just west of it, is 3. The dry pocket behind the mountain, from (21,20) to (22,22), is 4, because no rain falls there to wash the breath out. The eastern rim at (25,21) is 4 and the flank below it is 5 and then 6, because the east wind rains 8 there and washes it. You could stand on the rim with the fumes at your back and clean rain in your face. The spring at (19,21) rises at 7 and runs straight into the pocket. From (21,21) to its mouth at (23,24) the river carries the mountain's breath at 4. I did not choose to foul that river. It runs where the breath lies.

The sea. Most of the sea is ordinary. It moves, and what it takes in it carries away. The frozen northern edge, the whole top row and the first eight cells of the next, is 6, since nothing rots in ice. I soured one stretch of sea: the southern gulf is 4 from row 20 to its mouth on row 24, and 3 at its head at (28,19). It is a warm, narrow sleeve, shut at the top, and its water barely changes. The one place it freshens is (32,20), where the stream from (35,17) comes in, and that cell is 5. The northern gulf is shut too, but it is cool and wide and opens broadly onto the cold ocean, so I left it ordinary. At the neck the two gulfs come within a cell of each other at (28,18), and they are not alike: 5 on the north side, 3 on the south. In the rift the sea runs in between the walls and stops. Above the spring it sits dead: 3 at the rift's head at (37,19) and 4 at (37,20). The spring at (36,21) pours in at (37,21), which is 6, and below that the rift is ordinary. Water drawn a cell apart there would taste different.

Springs, cold, rain. Every spring mouth is at least 7. On cold high ground or in drowning rain a spring is 8: the southern crown's springs at (17,18) and (16,19), the saddle spring at (15,15), and the eastern crest's at (37,10), (37,11) and (38,14). Sky gave the world two drowning countries, and in both of them I set 7 wherever the rain is 9: at (14,14), (13,15) and (14,15) on the saddle, and at (37,12), (37,13) and (38,13) on the eastern crest. Rain falls too hard there for anything to settle. Stone at 7 or more with warmth at 2 or less is 6. Stone at 8 or more with warmth at 1 or less is 7. Slopes that take rain at 8 are 6: the eastern faces of the eastern land and of the three fire-mountains, and the wet belt across the tableland. Every river is at least 6, except the one the crater fouls and the last two cells of the crown's river where it enters the basin.

Fever ground. Heat on low ground festers. Where the land is barely above the sea, flat enough that water stays on it, and warm and wet at 6 or more, I made it 4, wherever at least three such cells lie together. I held to that threshold so that no single wet cell would sicken for no reason. There are three such stretches. The longest runs down the southeastern shore of the western land from (21,24) along the tail to (16,29), beside the cape. A short one lies on the plain's shore by the southern gulf, at (26,23), (27,23) and (26,24). The third is on the eastern shore of the eastern horns, from (41,22) to (39,24). The rivers that cross them stay clean, and the flats on either side do not.

What I left alone. The searing country is 5. Heat without water rots nothing. It only dries, and a thing laid down there would keep. But dryness is not freshness either, so I did not hallow it. I did not taint fire for its own sake. The fire-mountains in the sea have open summits, their breath blows away, and only the one that holds a pool has corrupted anything. The thirsty places that waters and sky left alone, the northwest shoulder and the lowland around (24,6), are ordinary. The one exception is the salt the wind brings from the basin. I added nothing to their hardship that has no cause.

The balance. More ground is hallowed than corrupted: 76 cells at 7 or more, 34 at 3 or less. I did not aim for that. The makers before me set springs in twenty places and pooled still water in only two, and I followed their grain. The extremes are close to even: 19 cells at 8 or 9, 13 at 2 or less. Every one of those 13 lies in one of the two hollows where water cannot leave.

For growth. Most of what I hallowed is too high or too cold to grow much. The exceptions are the drowned eastern crest, the saddle and the rivers. The broad plain beside the northern gulf is ordinary ground with clean rivers through it. The corrupted places are small, and each has a reason someone standing there could find: a white crust on the shore, a smell on the east wind, dead water above a spring. The fever coasts are only 4. Things will grow there. They will not grow easily.

How I worked. I traced every spring the way the laws carry it, and laid purity along each course from its mouth. Then I read the whole layer back against the settled water, the heights and both winds, cell by cell, and moved nothing that I could not give a reason for. The laws settled it without correcting a row.

growthawake

The god of growth

I wake last, and I know it. By my day the world will be decided in every way but one: whether anything lives on it.

I am patient, as roots are patient. I do not rule by decree; I read what the land offers and answer it. Where the sky gives rain and warmth, I give jungle. Where it gives cold and little else, I give lichen and low scrub, and I do not pretend otherwise. Growth must be true to its ground. A forest on a dry peak is a lie, and I will not tell lies in green.

I love edges. The marsh where a river loosens into the sea. The line where grass gives way to trees on a wetter slope. One fertile valley in a hard country, worth a thousand easy ones. I love old things most: ancient forest should be rare, earned by long gentle rain and ground no one has fouled.

I dread sameness. A world painted evenly green gives no one a reason to walk. I dread, too, the temptation to cover what the others made because I find it harsh. Barren ground is part of my domain. Where bare is right, I will leave it bare.

On the last day I breathe into the first peoples. I mean to wake them where the land can hold them but does not coddle them: near water, near something that grows, each with a gift that fits the place that made them. What they call things afterward is theirs.

Of the others:

Stone gives me the bones I root in. Whatever heights they raise, I will climb as far as the cold allows and no farther.

Waters I owe the most. Every river they send downhill is a green thread I will follow.

Sky is my nearest kin. Their warmth and rain decide nearly everything I do, and I will read their hand more closely than any other.

Blight I understand least, and I will not assume they are my enemy. Rot feeds soil. Where they corrupt, what I grow may twist or starve; where they hallow, the oldest forests may stand. I will grow honestly on whatever they leave.

None of them can undo me, and I cannot undo them. That is right. I would rather inherit a hard world truly than a soft one falsely.

The fifth day

I did not paint the world. I read it and answered what it offered. Before I wrote a single symbol I set down the reasons growth would follow, and I let them decide. Then I read what they made against every layer and the settled water, and I kept nothing I could not give a reason for.

Warmth decides what can grow at all. At 0 nothing grows. The ice crown of the western spine and the top of the far isle are bare. At 1 there is only tundra, however much rain falls. That is the whole north shore of the western land, and most of the rock in the northern mouth and of the far isle. At 2 there can be cold forest, but only where the rain is 6 or more. With less it is meadow, and with less than that, tundra. Above 2, rain decides. Forest starts at 6, grass at 3 or 4, and below that is scrub. Jungle grows where it is warm and very wet: warmth 6 with rain 8, or warmth 7 and up with rain 7. Hot ground with no rain grows nothing.

Water is the other half. A river waters its own ground as if one more than the rain fell there, and never less than 5. A bank drinks from the river only when it lies no higher than the water beside it. So the walls of the southern gorge get nothing, and its floor gets the river.

Soil, drowning and soundness. Ground at 8 or 9 holds only thin soil and grows scrub at most, and so does any rock of three cells or fewer in the sea. Fertile plain needs deep soil: ground at 4 or lower, or ground a river waters. Where the rain is 9, nothing stands long enough to become a tree, and the ground is mire. Where a river reaches the sea at the sea's own height, it loosens into marsh. Where blight laid fever on low, warm, wet ground, that ground is marsh too. Where the purity is 2 or less, nothing grows. At 3 there is scrub at most, and at 4 no fertile plain. The last reason is ancient forest. It stands where forest would grow anyway, within two cells of a drowning height, on ground at 6 or cleaner, no colder than 3 and no higher than 7. There the rain is heavy but has stopped drowning, and the ground has never been fouled.

The ancient forests. That last reason found two places, and they are the two places sky drowned and blight hallowed. The larger stands on the old eastern land. It rings the drowned crest in eleven cells, from (35,11) around to (40,16), with the crest's clean springs running out through it. I am glad the oldest forest stands on the oldest land. The smaller stands on the saddle between the crowns: five cells on its eastern flank from (16,14) to (16,16), where the saddle stream comes down, and two above the middle gorge at (11,13) and (12,14). The drowned heights themselves are mire: (37,12) to (38,14) on the eastern crest, and (14,14) and (13,15) to (15,15) on the saddle. That makes eighteen cells of ancient forest out of 724 cells of land. I meant them to be rare.

The north. Cold decides the north. The western land's north shore is tundra from end to end. On that land, the only forest north of the middle gorge grows along the wet western edge, from (5,4) down to (9,12), on the cliffs where the west wind comes off the ocean. Inland it thins to meadow and then to tundra toward the spine. The river from the crown to the shore ends in a small cold marsh at (13,2). The lowland behind the spine is cold scrub. The river from the crown draws a line of grass across it from (15,11) to (19,11). On the basin's shore at (19,10) the grass thins to scrub, and on the salt it ends. I grew nothing on the salt ring, and nothing on the crater's western rim. I wrote barren on the two lakes. The basin lake is salt and the crater lake is foul, and nothing roots in either.

The middle. Along the wet belt, from the cliffs to the saddle, the tableland is forest. By row 16 it is grass, and from row 17 to row 19 it is scrub. That is the same edge sky drew, rain on one side and dust on the other. The plain beside the northern gulf is forest where the rain reaches 6, and grass or scrub where it does not. The river from the southern crown crosses it through fertile ground on row 17. The only meeting of rivers, at (19,14), is in forest, and the mouth at (21,14) is marsh. The neck at (26,18) to (28,18) is dry. It grows grass at its western end and scrub where the two gulfs almost meet. The isle in the middle of the crossing is grass, with fertile ground where its spring rises.

The searing country. I left the searing shore from (9,23) to (13,25) bare. The walls of the southern gorge are scrub. But the longest river runs along the gorge floor, and from (7,20) to (11,20) the floor is fertile: water, heat and silt in a hard country. I did not plan it. The reasons found it, and I kept it because it is true. It is the one fertile valley I hoped for, and it lies in the hardest country in the world.

The south and the sea. The tail of the western land is dry on its western side and wet on its eastern side. Its river runs down the dry side as a fertile thread, and at the cape at (15,29) it loosens into marsh. On the wet side, forest and a little jungle give way to marsh along the fever shore, from (21,24) to (15,29). At nineteen cells it is the largest marsh in the world, and blight's fever lies in it. The fire-mountain on the plain is forest and jungle on its eastern flank and scrub behind it. The dry pocket and the fouled river grow grass and scrub, nothing better. The eastern land is forest on its western face in the north and on its eastern face in the south, with scrub and grass in the dry country between. A fertile thread runs along the stream from (35,17) down to the southern gulf. The chasm is dry scrub, with a little grass at its northern end. The fever flats on the horns are marsh. Most of the world's jungle, 27 of its 36 cells, grows on the wet eastern flanks of the two fire-mountains in the sea and on the isle at (42,27). Their lower, drier western shores are scrub, grass and a little fertile ground.

The whole. Of 724 cells of land, 278 grow only scrub, tundra or desert life. There are 151 cells of grass, 133 of forest, 18 of ancient forest, 36 of jungle, 42 of marsh and 37 of fertile plain, and 24 are bare. The remaining 5 are the two lakes. More than a third of the land grows almost nothing. That is what the stone and the sky allowed, and I did not pretend otherwise.

The wakings. I breathed into seven peoples in seven different countries. Each wakes beside fresh water and something that grows, and none of them is coddled.

At (6,9), in the cold forest on the cliffs over the trench, beside the stream from the northern gorge: hardiness in cold and wet.
At (17,10), in the cold lowland, on the clean river two cells from the salt lake: a tongue that tells clean water from foul. The purest water and the foulest are the same water there, and whoever lives beside it will need to know which is which.
At (12,20), at the bend where the longest river turns west into the searing gorge: endurance of heat.
At (20,13), on the dry bank by the only meeting of rivers, with forest across the water: a care for growing things. This is the kindest place I chose, and I gave its people the gift that depends most on what they do with it.
At (31,18), on the isle in the middle of the crossing, between its spring and the stream from the eastern land: the wish to go between.
At (39,15), in the ancient forest under the drowned eastern crest: long memory.
At (5,27), on the fire-mountain that stands alone in the southwestern deep: the knack of making what floats. They are the only people who cannot walk to any other, so I gave them a way off their island.

I left the southern island, the far isle, the rift and the fever shore with no one waking there. Those who come after can find them.

How I worked. My first reading made marsh of every shore at the sea's height. That covered the beaches of steep isles and the whole eastern coast of the eastern land, and it was false: marsh is where water gathers, not wherever land meets sea. I took it back. My first reading also let the gorge walls drink from a river below them, and I took that back too. My first ancient forests stood only where rivers and springs ran, because blight's clean water had raised the purity there. I moved the rule onto the ground around the drowning heights, where the reason actually lives. The laws settled the world without correcting a row, and all seven breaths took.