by Speer, Flora
“We’ll monitor it carefully for a day or two,” Tarik decided. “If the earth tremors our computer is reporting settle down, and if this model stops changing shape, we can fly over the area in a shuttlecraft for a visual inspection. Care to come along, Alla?”
“You couldn’t keep me away,” she responded promptly, wishing they could leave at once, but understanding Tarik’s caution. She would be as patient as she possibly could, and keep her growing excitement under control. Smiling broadly, she added, “Herne is not likely to refuse if you ask him.”
“I had planned to do just that,” Tarik replied, grinning back at her, making her believe that he, too, thought Reid might still be alive. “Just in case we discover we need a doctor.”
* * * * *
The great wave rolled beneath the boat sometime during the night. Thrown off balance, Reid fell down from the cockpit where he had been standing watch and tumbled through the hatchway. He landed on top of Janina, who had been thrown out of her bunk by the sudden lifting and settling of the sea.
Certain the sea monsters had come for them, Janina screamed in terror. She clutched blindly at Reid’s rough tunic and buried her face in his chest. Freshly awakened from an exhausted sleep as she was, she had not had time to remind herself to pretend to be brave. Fear swept over her, making her shake uncontrollably.
Reid pulled her to her feet, steadying her until she could stand by herself. Then he raced for the cockpit, grabbing the ladder and hoisting himself up it with remarkable speed. Fully awake now and determined to face their mutual death at his side, Janina followed him.
The boat had righted itself and lay rocking gently on a calm sea. There was no sign of any monster. The fog had dissipated. All around them the world was empty and black, except for the sky behind them, which flamed with a lurid red glare.
“Is it a huge fire?” Janina asked.
“I believe one of the volcanoes is erupting,” Reid answered. Seeing her blank look in the ruddy light, he added, “One of the mountains behind the village. Do you remember how the pool in the grove was filled with boiling water? And how low the tide was when we put out to sea? I would say there has been an eruption, and probably an earthquake, too. What rolled us about just now was most likely a great wave racing toward shore. Which means—”
“Tamat!” Janina stretched out her arms toward the red glare. “Reid, take us back. I have to find Tamat, I have to help her. Sidra will think only of herself. Take me to Tamat.”
“We have been forbidden to go back.” Reid held her fast, as though he feared she would throw herself into the sea and try to swim to the village. “We would be killed the instant we set foot on shore. We don’t know what has happened in Ruthlen. Tamat may be dead already. We have no choice but to go on.”
“No. Tamat needs me. I have to find her. I can’t fail her again!” She began to fight him. Screaming and weeping, she pummeled his chest, biting and scratching and shrieking, while Reid tried to hold her. The blanket she had been wrapped in fell away, leaving her naked. She felt Reid’s hands on her, touching her, inflaming her overwrought senses. And suddenly, irrationally considering their desperate situation, she wanted him to make love to her, wanted him in her arms.
“Stop yelling and listen to me!” Reid ordered, shaking her hard. “If I’m right, if that was a great wave we felt, then the water will recede quickly and there will be another, and possibly a third wave, until the force of it is expended. We are too near the shore for safety. We have to sail into deep water before we are caught by the waves and thrown onto land. If that happens, the boat will be wrecked and we will be killed.”
“Not deep water. The sea monsters live there!” Hysterical now, she flung herself at him, wrapping her bare arms and legs around him. She cried his name over and over, as though he were the only thing she could depend on in a world gone mad. “Reid, Reid, hold me. Please hold me. I’m so frightened.”
The boat began to rock violently. Reid shoved her away from him, slamming her onto the seat by the tiller and holding her there.
“If you don’t stop screaming, I’ll hit you,” he shouted, his voice like a slap across her face. “Get yourself under control. Go below, find a packet of clothes, and put them on. Then come back here and help me raise the sails. And be quick about it.” He watched her as though he feared a renewed attack of hysteria.
The sound of a cataclysmic explosion roared through the night, nearly deafening them. Flames poured into the sky from a mountain far astern. An incandescent cloud above the mountain began to expand, lighting the night with its glow. The once-calm sea began to roll and heave; the wind began to blow.
“You are right, Reid.” Janina slumped on the seat, drained of all emotion in the face of that spectacle, at last accepting what had happened and willing to stop fighting what could not be changed.
Ruthlen must be destroyed by now, she thought, and though its people had teased and tormented her during much of her youth and no one of them except Tamat had ever loved her, still Janina felt pity over so great a loss of life at one blow. She even pitied Sidra for the swift obliteration of everything that cruel and imperious woman had wanted to rule.
Osiyar’s end caused Janina greater regret, for he had never deliberately been unkind to her, and he had always respected and cared for Tamat. It was Tamat’s death that made her heart ache most of all, yet even as she grieved she knew it was a loss that could not have been postponed much longer in any case.
“Tamat is certainly dead after that explosion,” she told Reid in a remarkably steady voice, “and I said good-bye to her this morning, knowing then that I would never see her again. I’m sorry I have been behaving so badly. I won’t weep any more, or cause you any trouble. I’ll try to help instead. I know a little about handling a boat, although I haven’t been on the water since my parents died. I’ll get dressed.”
She felt amazingly calm. From somewhere within her battered spirit there now arose a new determination to remain alive. She reminded herself that Tamat had sent them the boat so they could live. She would do whatever Reid asked of her and, coward though she was, she would try her best to hide her fear of the sea monsters.
She started below. She was halfway through the hatch when the shock wave hit them. The pressure of it lifted their boat out of the water before smacking it down hard against the surface of a wildly churning sea.
Reid had been standing by the tiller. Janina saw him fly overboard just before she fell downward into the cabin. She hit her head, then sat on the deck for a while, too dazed to move, while the mad rocking of the boat made her dizziness even worse. When she could see in single images again, she crawled up the ladder and stuck her head through the hatchway. Reid was nowhere to be seen.
“Reid! Reid!”
A groan answered her, a half-strangled sound coming from below the stern. Grasping the tiller for balance she bent over, straining to see through the red-tinged darkness. Reid was in the sea, hanging on to the rudder.
Nearly blind with fear, certain that a sea monster would appear at any moment to snatch him away from her, Janina grabbed at his clothing and began to pull. It took a long time to get him into the boat. She lost her hold on him several times while they bobbed about on the dangerously rough sea. Each time Reid reached for the railing, he was washed away from it, until a wave caught him, lifting him higher. He took advantage of it, clutching the railing, his chest now at a level with it, and at last Janina, by bending far over the stern, got a good-sized piece of his trousers between her hands. Reid hung there uncertainly for a long moment when the stern began to sink again, until Janina pulled once more, using all her strength. The stern lifted. Janina pulled again, Reid helping as much as he could while still holding on to the railing to keep himself from falling back into the water.
As she finally hauled him over the stern, the bow of the boat plunged downward into the trough between two waves. Reid and Janina rolled over and over together, nearly falling through the hatchway before Reid put
out a hand to stop them. They lay there for a while, catching their breath. Janina’s bare back and buttocks were pressed hard onto the deck by Reid’s weight. Reid was dripping seawater all over her. She felt his sudden hardness, sensed rather than saw that his mouth was about to touch hers. She lifted her face to his.
The boat rolled again, throwing them across the cockpit once more. Reid let her go and reached for the tiller.
“Do you know how to raise the sails?” he asked, shaking his head hard as if to clear his brain of the last vestiges of his fall into the sea.
“I think so,” she replied in obvious uncertainty. “It has been so long since I helped my father on his boat.”
“Here, take the tiller.” He seized her arm and put her hand on the smooth wood. “Just hold it steady. I’ll get the sails. It’s not too different from the rigging I’m used to.”
Janina sat watching his red-outlined figure in the darkness while he worked with the practiced movements of an expert sailor. The wind was rising, making the sea even rougher. She struggled to hold the tiller steady.
“Go below and put on some clothes,” Reid ordered, dropping into the cockpit once more.
“You first. You’re dripping wet,” Janina said.
He did not argue. A moment later she saw a dim glow from the cabin and knew he had found the switch for the solar bulbs. By the time he returned in fresh, but too-small tunic and trousers and a heavy jacket, she was shivering and glad to follow his command to finally put on some clothing. She took the opportunity to make two cups of hot dhia and find some slightly damp bread. These she brought to Reid at the tiller. She stood beside him, swallowing her share while he ate his. She was not hungry, but she knew that if she was going to be of help to him at all she would have to stay healthy and capable of work.
They scarcely knew when night changed into day. The sky was dark with clouds of volcanic ash that blotted out the sun and fell upon the boat and the sea until the waves were coated with the pale grey floating particles. Reid ordered her to brush as much of it as she could off the boat.
“It’s so light, it’s hard to move it,” she complained, sneezing through a cloud of fine grey-white dust.
“If it piles up, it will be heavy,” he replied, “and heavier still when it gets wet.” Then he sent her below to find cloths to wrap around their faces so they would not inhale the dust with each breath.
Janina was greatly relieved when Reid, deciding the danger of more great waves had passed, began to sail closer to shore. The wind continued strong at their back, and the current added its northward motion to help carry them along parallel to a rocky, barren coast that offered no harbor inviting enough to make them want to stop. Another night and day, followed by a third night of steady sailing took them well beyond the immediate debris thrown out by the volcano to a dawn of hazy blue sky and pale sunshine.
Among the ship’s stores, Janina located several pair of the slit eye protectors the fisherfolk used against the dazzling sunlight. When she took a pair to Reid, she found him watching the shore, which had changed in character. No longer did precipitous rocks fall off abruptly into the sea leaving no place to drop anchor. Instead, a strip of green scrub-land edged the water, with a range of low, worn-down hills in the background. Reid adjusted his eye protectors before once more turning his gaze shoreward.
“There’s a river,” he said, pointing. “I think it’s time to stop and rest.”
He moved the tiller and sheeted the sail, sending the boat toward land. A short time later they were sailing between green banks overgrown with bushes and a few stunted-looking trees. Reid continued up-river along its meandering course until they were well away from the sea, and the river had narrowed considerably. Only then did he order Janina to lower the sail. He dropped the anchor in a little cove with a gravelly beach backed by a single clump of trees.
“This looks safe enough,” he said. “The trees will shade the boat from the late-day sun.”
After the rough seas they had endured, it was strange to be at rest. In this sheltered place, the boat hardly moved at all.
“Now,” Reid said, “before anything else, we sleep.”
They’d had only short snatches of rest for three nights, taking turns and always on guard against the weather or another great wave or, in Janina’s case, against the sea monsters she still expected to appear and destroy them. She needed no prodding to make her lie down upon her bunk while Reid took the narrow berth opposite her. He rolled over once, wrapping the blanket around himself, then lay silent. In the unaccustomed stillness, however, it some time before Janina could fall asleep.
It was almost evening before she was awakened by a movement on deck, followed by a loud splash. Lifting her head in alarm, she saw that Reid was gone from his berth. Fearing that something terrible had happened to him, Janina leapt from her bunk and climbed up into the cockpit to look for him.
When she emerged from the cabin, she found a scene of peaceful beauty spread before her. The sun lay low in the sky, bathing the distant hills with orange-gold light. The trees edging the shore shook out their leaves in a sun-sparkled, windy dance. Yellow-and-white flowers starred the rough grass and ran across the gravel beach on slender vines.
“Join me,” called a voice from below.
Janina looked down to see Reid floating on the smooth surface of the cove.
“What are you doing?” she cried, too frightened to move.
“Jump in,” he invited. “Or climb down if you’d rather. Use the ladder at the stern. I found it in one of the lockers. Too bad we didn’t know about it when I fell overboard.”
“Why are you in the water?” she asked.
“After three days of hard work, I needed a bath.” He laughed up at her, mocking her fear. “So do you. Come in, Janina. Don’t look so frightened. The water is much too shallow here for your huge sea monsters. That’s one reason I sailed so far upriver before stopping, just in case they do exist.”
“I’m afraid of the water. I don’t know how to float on it the way you are doing.” It was worse than that. She could see that Reid had taken off all his clothes before he went into the river. She would have to do the same. She wasn’t sure she could bear it if he tried to touch her or wanted to kiss her. Thinking about what had happened in the sacred grove and immediately afterward, she felt a terrible shame. Remembering how she had wanted him to make love to her their first night on the boat, she was embarrassed at the very thought of Reid holding her.
“It isn’t deep,” he said encouragingly, apparently not seeing her confusion. “Look, I’m standing, and there is no current in this spot. You won’t drown. I won’t let you.”
I’ll drown in your eyes or your kiss, she thought, and whatever you say now, you will let me.
“If you don’t come in,” he said, “I’ll climb aboard and throw you in.”
She thought he probably meant it. He probably found her unwashed body repulsive in the close quarters of the boat. She turned her back to him and began to strip off her tunic and trousers, noticing as she did so the bruises on her arms and legs and hips, evidence of how many times she had been thrown against something hard during their days at sea. Perhaps Reid would consider those black-and-blue and yellow marks unattractive and would not want to touch her.
She went down the ladder awkwardly, hating the thought of immersing herself in the river. At the temple, daily baths were taken in a carved stone tub with the sides comfortingly near. But the temple was gone, and this limitless space was all she had, this empty world peopled only by Reid and herself.
The bruises did not deter him. As she had feared, he touched her. When she reached the bottom of the ladder, he put his arm across her back to float her away from the boat. At first she was terrified, stiff with tension, crying out when he tried to make her lie back and float on her own. She threw her arms around his neck in fear, nearly sinking them both. Reid bobbed to the surface, putting out one hand to hold on to the ladder. He kept Janina safe within the
circle of his other arm, drawing her closer to him. Beneath the water their legs tangled in a lazy rhythm. She rested her head on his shoulder while she wiped the hair out of her eyes and caught her breath again. Reid pulled her closer still, his eyes on her mouth.
“No.” She turned her head aside. How could she fight what she felt for Reid? How could she obey the laws that had compelled her all her life when the only thing she wanted was to be held in his arms like this, to feel the long strength of him against her trembling body? She thought that if she did not drown in the river, she would surely drown in her own confusion.
“Janina,” he whispered, “don’t be afraid. You really will float, my dear. Let me show you how.” He gently pushed her onto her back.
She went under a few times, trying to fight him, before she found to her astonishment that he was right. She would float on top of the water so long as she did not struggle. It was a delightful, careless, relaxing feeling. Tired of struggling, she gave in to that feeling, letting her fear of what Reid might want to do and her embarrassment about their nakedness drift away on the river.
Her long silver hair swirled around her, the tops of her breasts stood up like small hills above the gentle plain of her chest and abdomen. She laid her head back in the warm, clear water and let Reid guide her where he wanted.
He was behind and beneath her. She could feel his strong legs kicking steadily. His arm curved around her left side, his hand splayed across her abdomen as he pulled her slowly along. Above them the sky arched in misty purple-blue, decorated by deep green leaves when they neared the shore. Janina relaxed a little more, closing her eyes. She felt Reid sink to some lower level beneath her, before he rose out of the water with her in his arms, to walk a few steps onto the gravel.