In Forest Afloat Upon the Sea

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The ship arrived when Telly McMahon was two watch-years shy of his first side-year, late in adolescence when all things commonplace had created for him an oppressive prison.

Fortune, or fate, put him in the chart house when it first was sighted—the one place on Schenker Float where Telly felt free from the bonds of mundane life.

Duncan Blake was holding his class in celestial navigation. They had just completed taking the afternoon sighting of the Furnace, still a good thirty degrees shy of the zenith.

“Everyone still has their whiteboards and charcoal?” Blake asked, looking up from his charts and almanacs briefly with narrowed eyes. “Now I want you all to calculate the afternoon position. Work separately, no comparing notes until you’re done. And God’s Plan, McMahon, don’t you dare blurt out the answer before the rest of them are finished.”

Telly felt his face burn, but then saw the smile under Blake’s grey beard. They both knew he was the navigator’s best student.

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