With a change in the wind, one last ship blew into Port Mercy. Between the sweeping flashes of the lighthouse, Aland Weathering dropped a few coins into the sailor’s hand who had kept his passage secret and leapt over the gunwale of the merchant vessel. His boots landed on the docks with hardly a sound, and as he straightened, sweeping the dark, well-kept locks from his face, his roving eyes licked up the torchlight shivering on their poles in the intrepid, coastal air.

The land-breeze, which had spent all day locked up over the earth, now rushed out into the darkened ocean. It tugged at the young man’s billowed sleeves as it sailed by, bringing music and melodious laughter and all kinds of delicious aromas to him as though the whole new world were racing to greet its new arrival.

A shout erupted from the bloated ship beside him, and Aland looked up to see the fat face of the captain leaning out his chamber window and cursing the apparent stowaway. But the young man merely nodded his head to the ample fellow and as new faces appeared at the gunwale, Aland took his leave, dashing into the night with pockets full of gold and a steady wind to launch him headlong to the ripe, tantalizing land.