"I suppose so," Glora said.
The three of them sat around the table, occasionally getting drinks from their new infinite icechest, and brainstorming. The stone rested securely in a safe in a corner of the cabin. Light warmed the room through the open door, and the sea swelled gently under them. They covered a large paper tablecloth with plans and doodles.
"Healing is a safe bet," Jon said. It would be hard to abuse something like that. But by giving himself the power to heal, or even making some sort of healing artifact, he could imagine a hundred ways something would go horribly wrong. Instead they'd turn the stone's power to good by making a place...
"Let's start it," he said, unlocking the safe and leading the others onto the open deck. He looked the ship over once more. Why had the stone given him something that looked so much like a Coast Guard patrol boat? This one stretched about thirty feet long, with a covered cabin about eight long and six high, and gleamed white in the sun. It was only a few hours old, and Jon had tasted nothing but purity in the sea.
"Here?" Glora asked.
"No. Let's find a large island."
"And wish ourselves there?" said Karyn.
"No."
The sun arced overhead. Jon lay on the cabin floor reading their guidebook to the Land of Things That Disappear. Glora stood unmoving at the stern, looking into the distance, while Karyn tried sunbathing in otter form. Since none of them knew much about piloting the boat, they'd arranged an autopilot and aimed it at a ring of islands a few miles off. The stern had no propellers; instead a pair of vertical fins carved the water and left little turbulence. Other details about the boat seemed off too, like the faint glow from the ceiling above Jon that didn't come from the sun or a lightbulb.
The guidebook he'd wished for last night also lacked names. Each island had a number or letter, but the stone showed no sign of creativity here. This empty world waited for someone... To explore? Create? Conquer? Jon shuddered at what little Glora had told him about the warlord Sleituson. Jon practiced changing his hands into otter paws, his claws digging into the book's blank cover, and decided he should start naming things.
"Land ho!" Karyn hopped up as a human, then snatched her red bathing suit and quickly pulled it on.
At the stern, Glora turned only when Jon approached and tapped her shoulder. She jumped away at his touch. "Sorry," she and Jon said at the same time.
Jon said, "We're here."
Ahead lay a ring of islands. The two main landmasses curled around each other like yin and yang, and several small ones dotted the perimeter. Between them the water had a light green tint, so clear that one could gauge its shallowness by color.
"You're looking at Karyn Island," said Jon.
Karyn turned and grinned. "Sounds good. That makes the other one Jon Island."
He shrugged in answer. "In that case, we'll call the whole ring Glora. I wonder..." He handed over the stone to Karyn, left them, and went back to the cabin to check his guidebook. The names had been filled in! He walked back out with a spring in his step.
Karyn held up the stone, which had warmed in the sunlight. "All right! I wish we had what we worked out on our paper in the cabin."
The sea rumbled, and the three of them felt compelled to glance at the sky. When they looked back down, the ship shook with the impact of a few high waves spreading from the place they'd created. A tower stretched like a rainbow between the two main islands, and around it a glass dome with many vents covered the round inner sea. The tower contained an empty hospital with, as they'd wished it, "the most advanced medical technology," and the water under the dome shimmered with healing enchantment.
Jon hugged Karyn. "It worked!"
But now came the hard part: finding doctors and patients to join them in Glora, in the Land of Things That Disappear.
