Canals in Moonstone

Moonstone is a city where water entwines with land in so many ways. There are large islands and small islands. There are rocky islands with cliffs, and flatter islands with sloping beaches, and places like the district of Scattered Pearls have countless micro-islands. There are natural bays, coves, and channels, and there are also manmade canals that help traffic, cargo, and commerce move from one place to another. Some manmade canals, like the one bisecting the island of Seven Lanterns, are large, and others are narrow and winding. “Canalball” is a game children play where they have to throw the ball across a canal and into a round hoop—and if the ball falls in the water, someone has to dive in to get it.

Due to the many waterways of the city, much business takes place by boat. Books are sold on bookboats, dairy is sold on milkboats, flowers are sold on flowerboats, laundry is picked up and returned on laundry boats, and so forth. Floating “liquor parlors” serve as roving bars, and pleasure-boats take tourists and revelers around the city. There are even poem-boats with poets declaiming verse for a few coins. The wealthy rent gondolas or barges to get around—or they own their own, keeping them in dockhouses or tied up to porches. For those with fewer means, ferries on strict schedules move between the islands. Shops and market stalls also do a brisk business, especially in places like the Sand Market, but there’s nothing like a boat for getting around the city. Someone who pilots a boat for a living is called a boatman or boatwife, unless they’re piloting a larger craft, and then they’re called “captain.”

Larger boats like paddlewheel boats and sailing ships mostly don’t enter the canals but stay in the deep channels of the river, or in the bay of the ocean, while gondolas stay in the river shallows. The bridges that cross the canals are high enough for gondolas to pass under them, and the larger bridges can accommodate barges, rowboats, and more. There are so many types of boats that at some moments it’s possible to walk from one edge of the river to another, solely on boat decks. The bridges that connect islands and cross canals are important gathering points, often with shops on or around them. Some bridges have stories attached: for example, the bridge between Opal Island and Drake’s Hoard is called the Gilded Bridge and people who pass under it can make a wish. And some bridges are so small they can barely be called bridges.

The canals and waterways of Moonstone are a place for commerce, politics, art, pleasure, romance, and sometimes violence. Unlike the homes and palaces, the canals belong to everyone. While not everyone in the city owns a boat, everyone in the city lives close to the water in one way or another.

—Jill Hammer