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The FirstFont Ferry
Type: Ink ferry
Region: The InkWell
Home port: The Ferry Keep
Skipper: Elin EverEbb
Carries: Barrels of ink, from the Awlings' spouts to the InkKeepers' Keeps
Status: Running the round
"The ink keeps its own time, pet. I just make sure I'm there when it's ready."
-- Elin EverEbb, Skipper of the FirstFont Ferry
The FirstFont Ferry is the broad, flat-bottomed ink barge that collects the ink of The InkWell. Every day she sets out from the Ferry Keep, where the punt routes meet, and works her slow way through the mist from one Awling spout to the next, taking on barrels of fresh ink and carrying them to the Keeps of the InkKeepers to be refined, mixed and traded. Every bottle of ink in Threadbare has spent at least one quiet journey in her hold.
A font is a spring, and the first font of all is the Well itself, the source of every word ever written. The ferry is named for it.
The FirstFont Ferry does not keep a timetable. The ink of the InkWell rises and falls on tides of its own, with no moon that anyone has ever seen, and the Awlings' spouts run fullest at the top of each tide. So the ferry runs on the tides, not the clock, and the InkKeepers have learned to listen for her bell rather than watch for her.
At each spout, the Awlings roll their corked barrels down a reed ramp and into her hold. They are proud engineers and fussy about their barrels, and no one but Elin is trusted to stow them. Once she is full, or the tide has turned, she makes for the Keeps, and her last stop is always the Ferry Keep, where the day's barrels are counted, chalked and sent on across Threadbare.
Elin EverEbb is the skipper of the FirstFont Ferry, and has poled her round for longer than most InkKeepers have been alive. She is tall, weathered and unhurried, with a long ferry pole worn smooth by her hands, and she reads the tides of the InkWell the way a scholar reads a page. She can tell from the colour of the mist whether the spouts will run full, and from the sound of the water how deep the channel is.
The Awlings trust her, which is rare. Elin never asks how their works are built, and never rushes them, and that is more than enough. She is a quiet presence at the Ferry Keep, where she leaves the loudest singing to Elspeth EbonDrop.
When Null came to the InkWell and the Awlings were chased deep underground, their spouts ran dry. The FirstFont Ferry has come home empty ever since.
Elin still runs the round. Every day, on every tide, she poles from spout to silent spout, rings her bell, and waits. She says it is so that the Awlings, wherever they are, can hear that someone is still waiting for them.
- The pulse of the ink trade. The FirstFont Ferry is how ink moves through the InkWell. If the ink is flowing, she is full. If something is wrong, she is the first to know.
- Tides, not timetables. Lean on the strange, moonless tides of the InkWell. The ferry is never late, only waiting for the ink.
- A quiet guide. Elin knows every channel, spout and Keep in the swamp, which makes her a natural guide, rumour-carrier and source of LoreQuests.
- The InkWell - the swamp of ink she sails
- Awlings - the engineers whose barrels she collects
- InkKeepers - who receive her barrels at their Keeps
- RiffleReeds - which line the punt routes she follows
- The BlotWorks - Null's rig, which left her hold empty
- The Full Stop - where the ink she carries ends its long journey
- The World of Threadbare - the lore, landscape and denizens of Threadbare
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