Then the much-diminished expedition had continued on its appointed route, with Captain Clark meticulously charting their way as they went, while Meriwether collected specimens and kept careful notes of the natural wonders he found along the way. After they passed, the territories might still be arcane, but they were no longer uncharted.
They defended themselves against strange and wild animals. Occasionally, they faced hostile tribes, though many had been cut down or scattered by the mad manifestation of Raven. Once, when departing from a friendly village to navigate a span of harsh river rapids, the natives were so sure the strangers would die that they all gathered on cliffs above to watch the crazy white men perish.
Compared to the other dangers they’d faced already, the churning river and occasional sharp rocks seemed like child’s play. Meriwether had, in fact, maintained some small grasp on his spirit dragon, on the magic of the land, and he found it possible to nudge the boats at the proper instant to protect them from sure disaster.
Meriwether wrote in his journal of the time he had shot a grizzly bear—several times, in fact, with each shot making the huge beast angrier, until a bullet to its brain finally killed it. The gigantic form collapsed in a furry heap moments before it could reach Meriwether with its claws.
A terrifying encounter, certainly, but it could not compare to battling a seven-headed dragon who could breathe fire.
Now that they no longer lived under magical threat, Meriwether decided that now and then in the evenings he could release his spirit dragon and fly over the surrounding countryside, scouting their route.
Sometimes Sacagawea’s eagle joined him, which made these explorations all the more sweet. He still did not know what, exactly, he felt for the native woman, or what could come out of it. But without the shadow of a doubt he admired her courage and nobility.
From the air, he and Sacagawea’s eagle spirit first glimpsed great green forests, extending like a carpet to the horizon, and along the whole horizon they glimpsed a sliver of endless blue.
He knew with certainty this was the ocean they’d been seeking all along!
But the glimpse only made their destination seem closer. Crossing the dense, trackless forest took many days of toil, often requiring them to carry the canoes and pirogues overland when the river was too rough or narrow to be navigated. But they knew the ocean was there, and they continued with building excitement.
On a foggy morning they finally reached the shores of the Pacific, seeing first the pale, rough sands, and then the ocean, roaring in great waves upon the shore.
The seagulls screamed ahead.
He stood with Clark, filled with disbelief and wonder, triumph but also fear. Sacagawea was at their side, staring. “Is this what you expected to find?”
What captured their eyes was the sky. Past the roaring waters, past the blue, there was a strip of…nothing.
It was hard to describe the lack of existence, but the great ocean which had once extended all the way to China, to India, around Africa and eventually up to England and France just…stopped. The horizon ended abruptly in a curtain of mist, churning veils that rose up from an infinite dropoff. Perhaps the literal edge of the world, now that this continent had been sundered from the rest of Earth.
Meriwether stared with tears in his eyes. The gathered men from the expedition were groaning in dismay and amazement. Others were just stunned silent, not knowing what to say.
Of course, Meriwether had seen it before. You’d think you couldn’t see, but you could. He knew for absolute certain that out in the water, perhaps no more than a mile or so from shore, they would find the same type of impenetrable barrier that cut off passage across the Atlantic.
Unless the ocean itself simply tumbled off the brink and fell down into an infinite void, as the legends of frightened mariners told. But now that he knew frightening legends were no longer entirely impossible…
His heart sank, but Sacagawea stood by him, looked up, and cocked an eyebrow. “So this is the ocean.”
“Madam, this is the edge of the world. And not the world we wanted to find.”
Against the whispering roar of the surf, Meriwether heard a tune accompanied by off-key singing. He turned to see three men ambling down the beach with unsteady steps, the Whiskey Revenants, who had come once again to join the lost expedition.
Despite his shock at finding the edge of the world, the sight of these three men gave him a sense of unbearable relief. He’d thought they’d died, their spirits extinguished back in the land of the dead. They should have perished permanently with the defeat of the dragon sorcerer, but then he remembered that these three had never really belonged to him anyway. Now, as they stumbled closer, they kept singing their tuneless version of “To Anacreon in Heaven.”
The Whiskey Revenants sloshed into the edge of the sea and raised their hands up in some kind of celebration.
Baby Pompy wriggled impatiently in his mother’s arms. By now he was old enough to manage a tottering walk, and Sacagawea followed the child as he moved in wonder toward the foaming line of water that met the sand. He giggled.
Meriwether turned his gaze again toward the abbreviated horizon, wondering how much of the ocean remained intact. Were they really done with their exploring?
Suddenly, in the deep water off the shore, a large dark shape appeared, and a slithering green reptile body, surmounted by a smiling lionlike head, lifted majestically out of the waves. The men shouted, retreating onto the beach. Meriwether fell back and reached for his air rifle as Sacagawea swept up her child and ran back to the shelter of the forest’s edge.
But the sea serpent merely looked at them, snorted jets of steam out of a blowhole, then executed a graceful somersault in midair before diving back down into the depths.
Meriwether felt a shudder, though he had sensed no threat. “They look like the river serpents we saw. Like the twined body of the seven-headed dragon.”
“Maybe such creatures come from the sea,” Clark suggested. “We have seen salmon from the sea leaping through rivers and streams, fighting their way inland. Perhaps the young serpents do the same.” He scratched his chin. “You should write that in your journal, Lewis.”
Sacagawea said, “I don’t think they’re hostile without the spirit of Raven enslaving them. They are just animals.”
“That grizzly bear was just an animal, too,” Meriwether said. “They can still be dangerous. Sailors must beware.” Realizing what he had said, he sat heavily on a large driftwood log on the beach. “What sailors would we find? We are cut off here, too. There is no way to make a passage west, over the Pacific, to join the rest of the world.”
Seaman ran, barking and wagging his tail to where Pompy and Sacagawea were playing in the foam. He didn’t seem to mind being stranded.
“Perhaps that is all to the good,” Clark said. “In this slice of land, separated from ancient hatreds and surrounded by magical marvels, perhaps we can carve out a continent that is better than the one we lost.”
“Perhaps we can make the new world everything we dreamed,” Meriwether replied, recalling the story of the fantastic utopia he had heard in the land of the dead. “Perhaps we are fine after all, and it is the rest of the world that’s lost.”