Thomas looked at the island they were approaching. A moving island! he thought. How fascinating! He couldn't wait to set foot on it and explore, find out where it had come from and what made it move. He had to convince the Captain to investigate it. The insatiable curiosity that had driven him to the University to browse through its library and led to his becoming a wizard simply wouldn't allow him to leave without solving this mystery. He even considered jumping overboard and swimming across to it. That would force the others to follow. He abandoned the idea when he remembered that the island was moving at five knots. He could not possibly catch up with it.

     It appeared to be three or four miles long, with a beach of dark brown sand and covered with a forest of palm trees. It was almost flat, with the highest spot in the centre looking to be no more than a hundred yards or so above sea level. The ship bobbed up and down as it crossed the island's wake and fell in behind it, and the Captain ordered full sail to catch it up. It was uncanny, watching the water splashing up against the ship's prow as it ploughed through the sea while the island maintained an almost constant distance ahead of them, getting closer very very slowly, and it was only after several hours that the Captain judged they were within ballista range.

     "Well, what shall we do?" he pondered out loud to those around him. "That island could be dangerous, but it could be profitable as well. Anything new might be profitable. What do you think?"

     "It's heading our way," said the first mate. "We can spend as long as we like exploring it without losing any time on our journey and risking our profits, and enterprising men never turn down a chance for a new business venture. The islanders may have things we could trade for. If they come from a long way away, they may have things unknown in this part of the world. If we could corner the market, we could make a killing."

     "Yes," said the Captain, his merchant's nose for a quick profit twitching. This was an opportunity too good to miss. He went to the forecastle and ordered the gunner to ready the ballista, while Thomas breathed a sigh of relief. They were going to explore the island! He was so excited he couldn't keep from pacing up and down and wringing his hands, annoying the others. He went to the railing and stared at it, glancing down occasionally at the water rushing past below. Then he gave a cry of surprise. "Look, come and look at this," he cried, beckoning the others. They looked down and saw several crocodile like creatures swimming around the ship, butting it with their noses and chewing at a rope that trailed in the water. "What are they?" he asked.

     "I don't know," said Shaun. "Reptiles. Big ones. They don't look friendly."

      He asked a sailor, who admitted that he'd never seen anything like them before. "They must come from the island," he said. "I'd better tell the skipper. He might want to change his mind about exploring that place if he sees that creatures like these inhabit it."

     "No!" cried Thomas, terrified by the possibility. "They can't be dangerous. People live there, remember. We saw the smoke from their fires."

     "Yes, I suppose so," said the sailor, "but I still don't like it."

     Meanwhile, on the forecastle, the ballista was ready and the Captain ordered a bolt fired at the trees on the island. The bolt had a rope tied to it, which it carried to the island. The first bolt missed, landing in the strange brown sand, and the gunner pulled it back to try again. The second attempt was more successful, and although the drag from the rope slowed it down and shortened its range considerably, it hit a tree squarely and stuck in it. Three more bolts were fired until there were four ropes from the ship to the island, and sailors shinnied across them to tie them properly to the trees. The Captain then ordered the sails to be furled, slowing the ship until it was being towed behind the island by the ropes. After waiting a few minutes to make sure they were secure, the Captain declared the ship safely moored.

     "We'll need a pulley system, so we can pull a lifeboat across," he said. "See to it please, Mister Ward."

     Soon, they had a system whereby a lifeboat, anchored by ropes to both the ship and the island, could cross the distance as men on the ship pulled a rope that went to the island, through a pulley attached to a tree, and back to the lifeboat. The Captain was the first to go across, along with Mister Ward and eight other crewmen, and the six travelers went across next with four others.

     The first thing they noticed, as they stood on the beach of the strange island, was the strong smell of dead fish. They looked around, expecting to see a big pile of them lying around somewhere, and found that it seemed to come from the ground itself. Examining it, they found that what they had thought from a distance to be sand was, in fact, a fibrous brown peaty material, like finely shredded and decomposed leather. "What is it?" asked Thomas, fingering a handful of the stuff. "I've never seen anything like it."

     "It's a little bit like shredded fishskin," said Jerry. "There's a large fish that lives in a lake near where I used to live that's got skin like this. The scales fall off while it's still young, and its skin goes all leathery, like the skin of a desert ibox. It's almost as if thousands of fish like that have all died here, and all that's left of them is their skin. Very strange."

     Leaving the mystery of the strange shoreline, they decided to head a little way inland, although the Captain warned them not to leave sight of the beach. They found more strangeness here, however. As they reached the first of the trees they noticed tracks in the soil, about two feet wide, that looked as though they'd been made by some kind of huge snake. Following one, they found that it led to a two foot wide hole in the ground, stained with dried blood. Thomas went forward for a closer look, but Shaun held him back. "Careful," he warned. "Until we find out what kind of creature made that hole, it would be better not to provoke it."

     Thomas agreed and backed away, but a few minutes later they found out. A rustle from the undergrowth further inland alerted them, and they spun around to see a large reptile coming in their direction. It was about twelve feet long and bore a resemblance to a crocodile, except that it had no legs and slithered along on its belly like a snake. Its teeth jutted forwards at an angle of about forty five degrees, making them wonder what kind of creature it preyed on. Its thickly plated hide was a light pinkish brown colour, and it was covered all over by fresh blood that was just beginning to dry, as if it had just been bathing in it. Thomas recognised it as one of the creatures he'd seen from the ship.

     They stepped aside and the creature slithered past them, opening its great jaws to hiss at them as it passed before continuing on towards the beach, where it slipped into the sea and disappeared. "By the Gods," whispered the Captain. "What kind of creature was that? I've never seen anything like it."

     "How did it get all covered with blood?" wondered Thomas. He went back to the bloodstained hole, just wide enough for a creature like the one they'd just seen to slip down. "That hole must have lots of blood at the bottom, like water in a well," he said, "but how, and why?" An idea came to him, but it was so ridiculous, so outrageous, that he forced it out of his head.

     They continued their exploration, walking about a mile along the beach in either direction from their landing site, at one point coming across more of the snake creatures including a group of around twenty lying side by side like a cluster of washed up logs, seemingly asleep, although one of them opened one eye to regard them suspiciously as they crept past. Thomas wanted to walk all the way around the island, being particularly keen to see the leading edge, and Jerry smirked as he asked him whether he expected to find the bridge there, with a crew sailing the island as though it were a giant ship. “We won’t know what we’ll find there until we look, will we?” replied Thomas indignantly, and the tiny nome chuckled to himself as he turned away.

     Arriving back at their landing site, Thomas then wanted to strike inland to find one of the villages producing the smoke, but the Captain urged caution, reminding him that they had no idea what they might find there. “You mean like tribes of cannibal head hunters?” sneered Thomas, but he instantly regretted his words and his tone of voice. The Captain was right, he knew. Cannibal head hunters might exist only in the songs of bad bards, but the real world contained plenty of worse threats, of which they’d already met more than a few. He apologised, therefore, but added that there was no point in their coming unless they were going to have a proper look around.

     Lirenna moved to stand next to Shaun and Thomas and spoke with a low voice so that she couldn’t be heard by anyone further away. “We’re being watched,” she said. “There are people in the trees.” Thomas turned to look but she grabbed his arm and stopped him. “You won’t be able to see them,” she said. “You need a shae’s eyes. Just take my word for it. They’re there.”

     “How many?” asked Shaun. Matthew and Jerry were also drifting closer, wondering what they were whispering about.

     “Not many, I think, unless there are more further back. About half a dozen. And they’re small. Children, or nomes.”

     “What would nomes be doing on an island?” asked Shaun, turning slowly until he was facing the trees. “They must be children. Out playing, maybe. From one of the villages.”

     “Nomes sail in ships,” said Jerry a little indignantly. “There are whole fleets in Pastora crewed only by nomes.”

     “We’d better tell the Captain,” said Matthew, but before they could do so one of the sailors voiced a cry and pointed a finger. They looked to see half a dozen small figures emerging from the trees and approaching hesitantly, with frequent glances at each other as if taking reassurance from each other’s presence.

     "A welcoming committee," said Waralee, giving the wizard an amused sideways glance. "Come closer, fellows. We won't hurt you."

     The islanders glanced nervously at each other, and one of them led the way forward, the others following more hesitantly. As they approached, Thomas at first thought that they were indeed children, since none of them were more than three feet tall, but then he saw that they all had short, silvery beards and realised that their other guess had been correct. They were nomes, members of a slightly smaller breed of Jerry's race.

     They wore clothes made from furs and woven plant fibres and had several old scars all over their faces and the exposed parts of their bodies, as well as a few more recent wounds. One of them had an arm in a sling, and another had a bandage tied around his head. They stopped about twelve yards away, staring hopefully at Jerry, but the illusionist was clearly not the leader of their party and so it was the Captain they approached, bowing low before him, some of them wringing their hands nervously.

     "Pardon this intrusion, honoured visitors," said one of the nomes, a little larger and bolder than the others, "but I have been selected to welcome you to our island. I also wish to deliver a warning, and to beg a favour from you."