New Land

A word ran across the island that morning, from bird to bird: the ground had opened in the south. Polly flew toward an orange glow on the horizon. She found a long, glowing crack in the earth. Fountains of liquid rock rose from it, bright as melted sunlight. The heat reached her from far away, so she kept a careful distance. Her green body was lit orange, and her round glasses were full of fire.

This was the secret from her first day, now easy to see. Here the two great plates were pulling apart, and the gap was filling with fresh rock from deep inside the planet. The people here call this new ground, and they mean it. Iceland is one of the only places where you can watch new land being born in an afternoon.

Where the rock cooled, it turned to black stone, sharp and steaming. Nothing grows on it at first. Later, a soft grey-green moss arrives. But it grows so slowly that one footprint can last for years. So the people here ask visitors never to step on the moss.

Polly found a safe ridge and stayed until dark. The fountains pulsed like a slow heartbeat. The island was quietly making more of itself.