by Zoë Archer
On the deck of the boat as it swayed at anchor, in the depths of night, hidden somewhere in the Aegean, they moved together. Slowly, at first, gradual, delicious slides of flesh. Then with building speed and hunger. He was strong and able and alive, and he claimed her with his body, his mouth and hands. She felt his brand upon her skin, felt him within her.
Consciousness almost ebbed away as she climaxed, a fierce contraction of muscle and pleasure. His own release came seconds later. He was taut as a bow, hard everywhere, his head thrown back as he poured into her, with the stars overhead and stars within her body.
And when he said, again, “I love you,” she felt her heart seize. Because she wanted desperately to say those words back to him, because she knew then that, despite all her intellectual understanding and self-protection, knowing full well that there would come a time that they would separate, she loved him. Not his version of love, but her own.
The pleasure of sleeping beside London all night was much too brief. Kallas woke Bennett and London an hour before sunrise—the captain looked as though he could easily strangle a bear in his current foul mood—and, once they were all dressed, the blankets and pillows stowed, everyone drank bracing, small cups of coffee, speaking lowly in the predawn darkness.
As he sipped the revivifying coffee, Bennett watched London nurse her own cup, blinking and yawning in the cool of morning. He sometimes spent entire nights with women, but not often. It wasn’t that he disliked sharing a bed, or the routines of morning, for in those quotidian moments he found a muted gratification that felt much like a worn and comfortable jersey. But no matter how much a lover insisted she had no claims on his heart, most believed that, if he slept next to them, shared a bed for an entire night, things changed. Demands and expectations that he could not meet. So, to save himself and his lover distress, he usually retired to his own bed after making love. Much better for everyone.
This was the first time that Bennett wanted more.
More sleeping with his arms around London. More silly, drowsy conversations with her about made-up constellations. More middle-of-the-night lovemaking. More seeing her face the moment he woke up. More of her. Anything. Everything.
He bolted down the rest of his coffee, wincing when he burnt his mouth, but it was a distraction from the turn of his thoughts. Something was happening to him. Something he didn’t understand and wasn’t completely certain he wanted to confront.
Further distraction came when Kallas barked at everyone to make sail. Grumbling but dutiful, Bennett, London, and Athena all performed their tasks, and soon the tiny island shrank to a smudge as they sailed away. Bennett decided to take Kallas aside later and find out the exact location of the island, just in case he wanted to go back to it later. The spring, the temple. They were part of his prized memories now. Memories he would share with no one but himself. He wondered if he ever would return, and the thought that he might not or, worse, that he might return alone, felt like lead collecting in his belly.
They put the island behind them just as the sky whitened with the dawn. He watched the horizon, waiting for the sun.
Then it came, delineating the boundary between sea and sky, a crimson curve that bathed the sails of the boat, the faces of the people upon it, with aureate light. London, gilded, stood at the railing, a vision of arresting beauty as she, too, watched the sun as it rose.
“This is lovely.” Her voice was hushed and low, the way one might speak in a holy place. “But I do not see anything that will guide us to the Source.”
“Consult the mirror, perhaps?” suggested Athena.
Bennett quickly retrieved the mirror and studied it, crouching near the mainsail. The sun continued to rise, turning from a curve into a disc. Soon, it would be above the horizon. They were running out of time. But for what, he didn’t know.
“Onward, and reflect toward the dawn,” he recited aloud. At once, it made sense to him. He stood, then turned his back to the sun.
London must have seen his purpose, because she was at his side immediately. “You think…?”
“Look.”
He held up the mirror, so that it reflected the sun cresting the skyline. Both he and London peered into the mirror.
“On the horizon.” She gasped.
Kallas and Athena crowded closer, so they all looked into the mirror’s reflective surface.
“A giant.” Kallas scowled in disbelief.
Bennett said, “Colossus.”
In the mirror, they saw it. Reflected light gleamed on the horizon, coalescing into a massive, glimmering shape.
Whatever, whoever it was, it took the form of a towering man, but how tall, Bennett couldn’t determine. The sea destroyed all sense of proportion. Even if the figure was only a hundred feet away, it was huge. A man, or titan, standing upon the surface of the sea. Upon its mammoth head, a spiked crown, and he was nude, save for a cloak draped from one arm.
Bennett glanced over his shoulder, back to the horizon, and saw nothing. But when observing the same location through the mirror, the giant stood, plainly visible, gleaming as he stood upon the water. Everyone followed his example, turning their eyes back and forth between the reflection and the actual skyline.
“Can you plot our course using the mirror?” Bennett asked Kallas.
“Done.” Kallas needed no compass or quadrant—the sea was his birthright. He knew it as he knew the tendons of his own muscles.
And just in time. The sun climbed higher, and the vision of the giant disappeared from the mirror. Now it was only morning. Bennett lowered the mirror and saw London watching him, an extraordinary brilliance in her eyes. She glowed, not with the rays of the sun, or with anything supernatural. What shone from her, in her face, her eyes, was a respect and affection Bennett had never seen before—never directed by any woman toward him, anyway. But London looked at him as though he was truly admirable, as though he was something more than a wayward reprobate with a mad case of wanderlust.
He didn’t know if he was that man, the one she saw when she looked at him, but he sure as hell wanted to be.
The clarity of Aegean air confused. Distances flattened into nothing. What was in truth far away seemed close enough to brush with the tips of one’s fingers. London felt as though she could lean over the rail of the caique and gather armfuls of tiny islands like a shell collector. She wanted to set them in jars upon a window ledge, to catch the sun, or to prevent fading, into a shaded cabinet, then perhaps label the jars. Eastern Aegean Islands, May 1875.
Should she collect and label Bennett as well? The First Man I Loved, Late Spring, 1875. No. He was not the sort of man to be trapped and categorized. She loved him for his freedom, and would not take it from him. So she kept silent on her new discovery, but the wise eyes of Athena Galanos saw much.
“Please don’t say anything,” London said quietly when she and the witch had a moment alone in the quarterdeck house.
“He should know.”
“I’ll tell him. But not yet.” She glanced at Bennett who, at Kallas’s request, was entertaining the captain with stories of his travels. Most Englishmen prided themselves on their reserve, the impenetrability of their façade. Not Bennett. He smiled and laughed often. He had the masculine beauty of a classical statue, but he was irrepressibly full of life, responsive to everything around him. Nothing cold or remote about him. As he spun a tale for the captain, he wove images in the air with his long hands, hands that could fire a rifle with deadly accuracy or caress her into erotic delirium. How many women had fallen in love with him? Likely thousands, and no wonder. He could not be resisted. Her own resistance had been, at best, token.
“When?” Athena pressed.
London looked away. “I don’t know. This is new for me, too.”
The witch pressed a kiss to London’s forehead, her own expression faintly melancholy. “Go, then. I shall keep silent.”
Midday came with the sharpness of an armory. Yet as they sailed steadily onward, the giant failed to mat
erialize. The only thing on the horizon was another island.
“No disrespect, Captain,” London said, “but are you sure of our bearing? We were looking through a mirror, after all.”
“I’m sure,” Kallas said. “That island is exactly where we are headed. Shall I change direction?”
“Stay the course,” said Bennett.
As they neared where the giant had appeared, the shape and size of the island were gradually revealed. London tested her own sight and the spyglass, but what she saw she could not truly understand. Not until the boat was less than half a mile away, did things become clearer.
“Great Lord,” London breathed. She had a very bad feeling about what was going to happen soon.
The island rose sharply up from the water in a sheer cliff face, without even a beach. Instead, the surface of the cliff plunged directly into the sea, which crashed in booming, churning waves along the jagged rocks. Kallas brought them in close, so that the caique lurched and heaved, but he kept it well contained so the caique did not slam into the rocks. Athena looked green. But it was entirely possible that the motion of the boat was not to blame. Instead, a sight that made even Bennett whistle low loomed over them.
The cliff shot straight up, stretching toward the sky, harsh and white in the sun. Over a hundred feet high. Imposing and terrible. Nothing grew along its face, not even weeds in the crevices and cracks. London tilted her head back to see the top, where the tiny forms of seabirds wheeled. She couldn’t make out the top of the cliff, and grew dizzy from contemplating it. Alarm prickled her like a million insect stings.
Bennett said with a smile, “Time to start climbing.”
Chapter 15
Colossus
“Do you seriously mean to climb that?” London glanced up again at the towering cliff, her eyes round with apprehension.
Bennett shucked off his jacket. He slipped his arms through the straps of a rucksack, hefting its weight. He’d already checked the contents of the pack and knew that everything he would need was there. He still wore his revolver at his waist, and tucked a cartridge belt into the pack. A flex of his hands, testing their strength. Soon, they would be all on which he could rely.
“No other way to go but up,” he answered. There was no fear in him, only the familiar thrum of excitement that seized him whenever he faced something decidedly dangerous.
They had sailed the entire circumference of the island and found it to be sheer cliff all around, like a column on a Brobdingnagian scale. Bennett had never seen anything like the island, and itched to explore it.
“Yes, but—” She glanced up again, trepidation clearly written across her face. “I only wish there was something I could do to help.”
He stepped to her and cupped her face in his hands. He looked into her eyes, the color of darkest chocolate, but infinitely more sweet. She put her hands over his, her thumbs brushing his wrists, as if to feel the beat of his pulse. When he bent to kiss her, she rose up on her toes to meet him halfway. He tasted her, cinnamon and oranges.
“This is as close as I can get,” Kallas called from the wheel of the boat.
Bennett broke the kiss, reluctantly, to see that the captain had maneuvered the boat nearer to the cliff. With Kallas’s usual skill, he had managed to bring the caique within several feet of the jutting rock face without slamming the boat against the rocks.
“It’ll do.” Bennett gave London’s hands a squeeze of farewell before striding to the rail. He needed to keep his mind focused on the task at hand—easier done when he hadn’t a care for anyone but himself. With every step he took, he felt her, felt the tie between them grow taut but not break.
The boat heaved on the swells, but he balanced himself in a crouch on the rail, breathing slow and deep. He scanned the surface of the cliff, finding its niches, learning its hidden secrets. Then—he leapt.
He scrabbled, gripped the cliff, his boots finding purchase as his knees banged into the rocks. Good thing prizes weren’t handed out for jumping from caique to cliff. He wouldn’t have won any trophies for that display. But it got the job done. Now came the fun part. The climb. He’d never scaled a cliff this size before. And there’d be no rope to catch him if he fell. Either he’d plunge into the crashing sea or smash through the deck of the caique.
He couldn’t move with undue haste. He didn’t want to tax himself too quickly. Over a hundred feet to go, and if he tried for speed, he’d be spent midway. So, deliberate and steady, not too quickly, not too slowly, he found small crevices in the cliff face, and wedged his fingers into them. He stayed on the balls of his feet, testing and then using outcrops for footholds.
No looking far down. No anxiously measuring his distance to the top. It must be the continual search for footholds and handholds, nothing else. Not London, below him.
He unmoored his mind and became only the motion and clarity of climbing.
The pull of muscle, the heft of his body, legs pushing, arms pulling. The feel of the rock under his fingers. Sun on his shoulders, reflecting off the surface of the cliff. He tried to keep his arms loose, his hands giving position and balance. Search for an opening or outcropping, test it, then hold fast. Again. Again.
His thoughts wandered. The view from the top would be something. A shame London wouldn’t get a chance to see it. But better to have her safe on the caique and miss the view. And no matter how much stronger she’d become in the past weeks and days, she wouldn’t have the ability to scale the cliff.
He felt the weight of his body pulling on his arms, tried to keep his center of gravity over his feet. Time lost meaning, dissolving into rock. Sweat stung his eyes, and he tried to wipe them on his sleeve, but with little success. He couldn’t chance relying on just one hand to support him as he dried his face. Winds picked up, tugging hard, blowing grit into his eyes and mouth. He held tighter as the wind shoved at him, trying to throw him from the cliff.
A step up, and the foothold crumbled under him. His boot slid along the rocks, searching for purchase, his hands wedged into small fissures in the cliff face. Far below, the rock struck the deck of the caique, and it took a damned long time to get there.
Moving quickly, he gripped a new handhold and hauled himself higher, until he found new outcrops for his feet. The first true burn in his muscles, an ache in his lungs. But he pushed on.
A clattering above. He flattened himself against the cliff as rocks and pebbles tumbled down, pelting him with a multitude of bites. A larger rock hit his right hand. Bennett swore to himself as he fought the pain, refusing to lose his grip.
The next handholds stretched high overhead. No choice but to swing and grab for them. He breathed in, then pushed upward, the momentary sensation of air all around him. His fingers found the holds. Yes.
“Hell!” The rock he gripped turned to dust under his fingers. His feet scraped for support under him and found none. He was flung backward. Only his left hand, holding fast to an outcropping, kept him alive.
Muscles in his arm screamed, and his fingers locked in stiffened agony as they bore the full brunt of his weight. He looked down and swore again, dangling seventy feet in the air. Blue water churned against the base of the cliff. The caique was a child’s toy beneath him, and London, Athena, and Kallas merely dolls looking up at him, helpless to do anything but watch. They would watch as his fingers lost strength and he plummeted down to them, another Icarus dashed to pieces. London would see him impaled on the caique’s masts or else his neck broken from hitting the water.
No. He’d make himself survive. With a groan, he flung his other hand up, searching the face of the cliff for even the tiniest crack in its surface. There. Barely able to fit the fingers of his right hand, but he wedged in tight. Now both arms burned, but the pain was slightly lessened, giving him the opportunity to find new footholds.
He found them, and took a moment to gather his breath, his lungs aflame. But he couldn’t linger. Already, his hands were sweat-slick, ready to lose purchase if he dallied.
/> Noises of animal force shoved from his chest as he pushed himself hard and fast. Higher he climbed, the wind picking up speed and strength, clawing at him. He refused to think of failure, of falling, of tiny London, so far below. There was only up.
Now he tilted his head back to see how much farther. Ten feet. Every part of him shouted with strain, but he forced himself on. Nine feet. Eight. He dodged another rock coming loose from the face of the cliff. Seven. Nearly there. He wouldn’t give in to the greedy maw of the wind. Six feet. Five.
Then he stretched out. His fingers brushed against horizontal rock and grasses. The top. Another push from his legs. Another. There. There.
He hauled himself over, and splayed out, face up, eyes closed, lying atop the rucksack. His chest heaved as he let his arms and legs rest for the first time in…God, how long? He couldn’t make himself consult his pocketwatch. An eternity. A minute. Didn’t matter. He’d reached the top. He felt like a god. A breathless laugh rasped from his throat, then grew in strength until he shook with laughter.
Bloody hell, but he loved his job.
After a few minutes, when he felt his limbs wouldn’t collapse under him like soggy towels, he rolled onto his stomach and crawled on hands and knees to the edge of the cliff. It was, indeed, a gorgeous view. The sea stretched out in endless azure brilliance, sunlight sequined upon its surface, and the sky glowing with midday radiance, barely dusted with clouds. Far below, the caique danced on the water like a leaf, the forms of London, the witch, and the captain barely visible from Bennett’s height.
From a pocket on the front of his pack, he took the Compass. He turned it so light gleamed across the glass, signaling everyone below. A moment later, an answering signal from Athena. He’d made it, and they knew.