“HEY, SKIDDLE, LOOK AT THIS.”

It was a hot day, and the River Ocean was flat and clear, with blue fingers fanning through the rocks like the sky upturned. Crouching in cutoff jeans, Hal reached down and held something up. A stone. No, a jewel in the sun. A fragment of dripping fire.

“See…”

Skipping carelessly over the shingle, his shrimping net aloft, the soles of his feet hardened to grubby whorls by the long weeks of summer, John scampered over.

Hal lifted the stone to John’s eye, a large red iris over his own of pale silver. John squinted through it, looking along the beach, scanning the horizon, then up at the clear and empty sky.

“What is it?”

“Just a piece of driftglass, Skiddle. Here. But you need to keep it wet…”

Hal dipped his hand in a shallow pool where anemones danced. He held the jewel out, and salt rivulets ran glinting down his arm.

“Look through it. See how everything changes. Even the sky…”