The morning the sea turned to glass, Edda woke to total silence. No waves, no birds. From her window the whole harbor looked frozen smooth and shining. She sat at her desk and, almost without thinking, dipped her pen and inked a brand-new coastline onto a blank chart: cliffs, a bay, a row of sharp rocks. None of it was real. By the time the ink dried, a fisherman was pounding on her door, shouting that ships were sailing toward land that had never been there before.

Edda grabbed the chart and ran to the docks. Sure enough, three trading ships were turning toward the new bay she had drawn — straight at the rocks she'd inked. She had to warn them. She lit a lantern, swung it over her head, and shouted for the captains to turn back.

Edda's lantern slipped and went dark. No one on the ships could see her now. Desperate, she remembered the pen still in her pocket. She knelt on the dock, pressed her chart flat, and started drawing a tall bright lighthouse right at the mouth of the bay.