The blue boat churning in a test run falters and stops. He fiddles with it for a time until it coughs then roars, violet smoke slipping away like a lost scarf. Then he runs angrily up and down churning a wide avenue of silver, screaming along as if to punish the lake for the frailty of engines.
The wake rises when he’s gone, two long strands of light joining in the far water like a cable aloft and hovering there. It hums for a time then moves toward us, throbbing and swelling and rising, arrows of light running back and forth across its length like electric current incarnate, the whole cable of light levitating now, heading toward shore.
A blue heron hops sideways in the cresting silence and launches itself from the dockweed and parsley of the shallows. Aflap and yet effortless, the bird skids off, anticipating something. He transforms into a shadow and is gone in the glare.
Already, where the light originated, magical pathways smooth themselves between islands of still water. Radiating outward from the first, silver avenue, miraculously they disclose the whole plan of a city on the now gray water.