A fantasy in four volumes

The Sea at the End of the Forest

Thirty chapters · a broken ship, a stream that runs west, and a grandmother's road-song

After a great autumn storm, two brothers find the broken prow of a seagoing ship wedged among the beech trees above their valley, hundreds of miles from any sea they know.

Beside it a stream runs the wrong way, uphill and west, into the Great Wood. When Taren follows it and does not come back, his stay-at-home younger brother Lio sets out after him, with a ferryman who once walked out of the Wood alone, a trader who collects seashells found far inland, and the only map anyone has: his grandmother's half-remembered road-song. The Wood is what forgotten country becomes. Beyond it lies a city by the western sea that has never forgotten his valley. Written to be read straight through, or a chapter a night.

Thirty chapters · four volumes · about ten hours