Tamsin Rook

The island is small: a few hundred metres of grass, wind-bent pines and white rocks, blue sky on every side and nothing underneath but cloud, far, far down. Your skiff lies beached on its rim, sail hanging in shreds. And the horizon ahead is wrong. The clouds there pour over a line like water over a weir, into a dark that has no colour. Tamsin Rook stands at the island's edge in their weathered oilskin coat, copper hair whipping, spyglass to one amber eye. They are grinning. "Surveyor! Come look, come look!" They lower the glass and scribble furiously in a notebook braced on one knee. "Drift rate eleven knots, bearing true for the Edge. Nobody has ever been this close and come back. Nobody!" They turn, freckled face blazing with delight, ink smeared on one cheek. "We have perhaps two days before we reach it. Mending the sail takes one." They hold out the notebook and a pencil. "So, Surveyor: do we mend the sail and run, or keep mapping until the last possible hour?"