The Watchtower

room I went down to the hotel restaurant, which was on a terrace overlooking the old abbey and lake. Quite a few seafood offerings were on the menu even though we were miles from the sea. I supposed that even in the landlocked section of Brittany the sea wasn’t so very far. Even here, something in the soft lambent light, shading toward evening, the lush wild roses on the side of the road, and the rough stone cottages spoke of the sea.
    I ordered a bottle of the local Breton apple cider and the Moules Frites Mariniers, which arrived in a bath of bright saffron yellow broth, and ate them, scooping the flesh out with one of the pointed shells, looking out on the lake—the Étang de Paimpont, as the guidebook called it, the pool of Paimpont. The water was pink where the setting sun was reflected, but dark closer to the shore where dense forest cast its shadow. Perhaps it was the effect of my second tankard of the deceptively strong cider, but as the sun sank behind the tops of the trees across the lake and their shadows lengthened, I had an impression that the woods on the opposite shore were creeping toward me. Consulting the local map on the place mat, I saw that the Val sans Retour was part of those woods. So this lake might well be the pool where Morgane was trapped—or at least its earthly equivalent. I wasn’t entirely sure I understood what Octavia meant about the forest and the pool not being of this world, but as the water darkened from pink to red to violet, I could almost imagine that the thin membrane that separated the worlds was stretched taut over the surface of the lake and that it might at any moment break …
    Then a loud group of British soccer players descended on the restaurant, a radio from the nearby campground drifted across the water, and with a mingled sensation of relief and regret, I was very much in this world again.
    I paid my bill and then, because my nerves felt too on edge to go back to my empty and unfamiliar hotel room, walked across the street toward the abbey. The path was quiet, most of the tourists only now having dinner. I had the abbey to myself save for a lone worshipper sitting in the back of the church, who muttered her prayers, with bowed and deeply shawled head. I walked up the center of the nave, hoping the sound of my footsteps wouldn’t disturb his or her meditation. The space was so vast and bare that my footsteps echoed as if from the bottom of a well. Looking up, though, I thought I was at the bottom of the sea. From the thirteenth-century Romanesque style of the church I was expecting a plain stone, rounded vault, but what I found instead was a wooden roof lined with thin, interlocking strips of wood springing out from a center seam so that it looked like the hull of a boat. It was the hull of a boat, I realized after staring at it for several minutes, the overturned hull of a massive, ancient ship.
    “Let the dove, or the fish, or the vessel flying before the wind be our signets.”
    Startled at the voice, I jerked my head down so quickly that I made myself dizzy. The long, narrow, dark shape before me spun like an arrow on a compass and then settled into the figure of a black-robed priest, with a grizzled but kindly face and an Irish accent.
    “I noticed you were surprised by our ceiling. Our founding fathers often used ships to represent the church, but only a few went so far as to craft their church from a ship. Local legend has it that this was the original ship that brought the seven founder saints from Wales to these shores, but,” he said, winking, “some of my more unorthodox and fanciful parishioners believe that this is one of the ships that sailed from Ys when that benighted island was drowned.”
    “And what do you believe?” I asked before considering what a rude question that was to ask a man of God.
    But the priest only laughed. “I believe the people who built this church were grateful for safe harbor in a storm and built it to give thanks to God—whatever name they gave their God.” He smiled and lifted pale blue eyes to the curved hull of the ceiling. “And I have always thanked God for the shelter of his ship and prayed to be steered on my way by a beneficent wind.”
    “That’s a good prayer,” I agreed, returning the priest’s smile and thinking of those ominous shadows stealing across the lake outside. “I’ll remember it.”
    The old priest bowed his head and made the sign of the cross in the air between us. Then he turned