A Twist in Time

by Susan Squires

  A growling whistle rent the night. The ship came on. They weren’t going to make it. The boat needed to come around even more.

  He slithered aft to Lucy and braced against the side of the cockpit, leaning into the wheel beside her, putting his back and shoulders and thighs into the spokes. The mast bent. Let not the jib sail tear, dear gods. His muscles strained to breaking.

  “Njord!” he shouted into the wind. “Spare your seafaring children!”

  The bow wave of the mighty ship caught them almost across their flank, just where it should not, rose under them, and for a long moment Galen thought they would go over. The boat teetered, half out of the water. But the wave pushed them out of the way of the ship and they were off, skimming almost northwest just on the edge of the wind. Galen jumped to the mainsail and hauled it tighter.

  The huge ship powered on, seeming unaffected by the storm. Giant white words spelled HANJIN on its side. High above, tiny figures lined the deck and shouted.

  Galen breathed. Lucy might be crying. He couldn’t tell in the rain. They passed under the span of the giant bridge. The unstill open sea stretched before them into the night. But there were still the stern waves of the giant ship. Galen was ready. Lucy turned the bow slightly into the stern waves. The sea was a mass of roiling currents as the stern waves countered the rolling seas of the storm. The turmoil waited to capsize them. He raced back to help Lucy pull on the wheel, both of them leaning back and heaving. Waves slapped their stern quarter. Water rolled over the boat. But they held to the wheel.

  The boat came around and headed out to sea. He trimmed the sails again. Weariness had seeped into his bones along with the cold salt water. He felt apart from himself. The bridge and the city and the other ship faded behind them. It was only wind and sea out here, and through his weariness, or because of it, he could feel the swell of powerful water surging under him and the breath of the gods in their sails. It filled him with peace in the middle of the choppy midnight ocean. He sipped from the strength of wind and water until it filled his chest. And there, underneath, he felt a scraping deep down in the earth, the pressure building under the seabed. Tomorrow, it whispered. Tomorrow will the world right itself and become true again.

  Galen listened and heard it clearly through the silence inside himself, in spite of the wind and the creak of the boat.

  When he came to himself, they were out to sea.

  “South!” he yelled to Lucy, and saw her shove against the wheel spokes. Poor Lucy.

  But it was decided now. They would go where they must go. South. He saw in his mind’s eyes a quiet bay, south facing, smaller and shallower by far than the huge body of water they had left.

  He set the sails. They would not need changing now. Scrambling back to Lucy, he took the wheel. “I sail now, Lucy. I know where we must go.”

  She looked up at him, her pale cheeks wet, her lashes spiked together. She scanned his face. And then she let him have the wheel. “The wheel works opposite of a tiller I’ll tend the sails.”

  He nodded. He had already figured that out.

  “Ja.” But the sails would not need tending. The boat would run before the steady wind out here, south to the bay he saw in his mind. That felt right.

  It must be two o’clock in the morning, Lucy thought through a haze of fatigue. They eased into the south-facing curve of Half Moon Bay up behind Pillar Point where they were protected from the wind by the curving spit of land. All Lucy had to do in the last couple of hours was sit on the windward side of the boat, though what her weight could do for such a big boat was doubtful. Galen sailed the Camelot like he was born to it. He knew how to keep a boat straight in the following wind, no mean feat as well she knew. They had gone faster than she had ever sailed before. It was frightening but also exciting now that the treacherous currents of the Gate were past and they’d narrowly avoided that tanker. God, but that was close. Thanks be to whomever Galen prayed in those last moments. Only divine intervention could have saved them.

  The wind was dying, almost as though it had blown them to safe harbor and done its job. The rain only spit fitfully. A cluster of lights showed along the shoreline across from the cove.

  “We anchor here,” Galen said.

  “There’s probably a marina near the town,” she said. Oops. “Bad idea.” Showing up in a marina where people could identify them or their boat would be stupid.

  “We anchor here,” he repeated.

  She nodded. They took down the small weather mainsail and stowed it. They furled the jib. Lucy’s limbs moved sluggishly, as though disconnected from her will. They were about a half a mile from shore, she figured, maybe less. She hoped the Camelot had enough anchor line. They needed five to seven times the depth. Galen loosened the anchor winch and let it out. It reeled off for a long time. She started the engine and backed down on it at “slow” to set it, then nodded to Galen to release some more line. He leaned over the side to feel the line. She didn’t have to tell him you could feel whether the anchor was just bumping along the bottom through the line. Embarrassing that she’d not had faith in his assertion that he could sail. He was way better than she was, and on a strange boat, too. When he was satisfied, he straightened and looked around at where she’d been stowing the mainsail and furling the jib.

  He nodded once. “We go under, Lucy.”

  She had never heard anything so welcome in her life. She thought briefly of lighting the lights on the top of the mast that told other boats there was a craft anchored there in the dark and then decided against it. Better run the small risk of getting rammed in this out-of-the-way anchorage than reveal their location to prying eyes.

  Vandal greeted them with eager whines. She’d forgotten about him totally. The poor thing had probably gotten tossed about pretty badly. She stumbled around and lighted the lanterns in the salon. The boat was still rocking. She’d never tried to sleep in an open mooring like this. She checked the floor. Not a seasick puppy. They were lucky.

  Galen looked like a drowned rat, but he grinned at her, peeling off his dripping coat. “You sail well, Lucy.”

  “You are even better. Your shoulder okay and your thigh?”

  “Ja.” He rotated his shoulder and suppressed a wince. “Good.”

  “Oh yeah. Just peachy.” The roll of the boat was getting less all the time. “Let’s get dry.”

  They stripped and toweled each other off. Galen was very gentle with the livid bruises Brad had left on her arms and her cheek, and she in turn was gentle with his healing wounds. The scars were only lines now. They had really healed fast. Lucy wasn’t ready to think about that just yet. Her mind was numb. She unbraided her hair. When every towel in the boat was wet, but they were not, they dressed. Dry clothes were heaven. They needed something to eat, but you couldn’t really cook on a rolling boat. She rummaged through the galley and got out bread and cheese, a beer for Galen, some red wine for herself. Galen sat at the table in the salon.

  The future loomed ahead, just like that Hanjin tanker tonight. Just because they’d gotten out of the bay didn’t mean they were safe. It didn’t mean Galen could get home again, or that she would ever be able to stop running from Brad and Casey.

  “So, I guess tomorrow we head south. Go off the map like Jake said, where no one can find us. We’ll just have to hope that the world isn’t changed too much by you staying in this time.” That plan didn’t make her happy. As a matter of fact, it felt very wrong. She sat beside him and handed him a knife for the cheese. He didn’t look happy, either. Of course he didn’t. She wanted to think he could get used to being in the twenty-first century. But maybe he couldn’t. Maybe it was a tragedy that would stain his life and twist him into a bitter man.

  “I am not sure of this,” he said, cutting off a slab. Vandal scooted up to the table.

  She blew out a breath, then broke off a hunk of sourdough and handed it to Galen. “We can’t get to the time machine to take you back. I’m sorry. Brad and Casey have it. And we know they’re capa
ble of killing.” She stared at her hands, thinking of Jake. She’d lost a friend. Two if you counted Brad. Galen had lost life as he knew it. Hell, she’d lost life as she knew it, too.

  Galen chewed, lost in thought. His brows were drawn together as he tossed a piece of cheese to Vandal.

  Lucy’s thoughts strayed back to Brad. “Was Brad always so much of an asshole?”

  “What is this, ‘asshole’?”

  She pointed at her buttocks. Galen suppressed a smile. “Earse. Ja. This Brad is asshole. He tells you that no man wants you, that you are not fair. Is a word, ‘fair’?”

  She nodded, blushing. She didn’t think he meant “fair-minded.”

  “He is a stupid man.” He tossed another piece of cheese to Vandal. “Are you sorry that this Brad is asshole?”

  She chuckled then grew serious. “Maybe I did know, somewhere down deep, that he wanted to be more than friends. Women know. But I thought I could skate over the top and keep it just friends.” She looked up. He understood “skate.” Of course. That was a word from Danish. “Maybe I wasn’t fair to him.”

  “You do not know men, Lucy. Men lust, always. Many men lust for you. I know this.” He took a swig of his beer. “I am glad you do not lust after Brad. I am andig for you, Lucy.”

  The boat had nearly stopped rocking. He was jealous? She’d thought it was just protective. He hadn’t liked Brad hitting her, of course. But jealous? She wanted to dismiss it. She wanted to disapprove. But it made her feel . . . good.

  “No rolling,” she remarked to give her thoughts new direction. “At least we’ll be able to sleep tonight.”

  “It will be still until morning.”

  “I guess I have to believe you. You sure were right about the weather today.” She exchanged the cheese he handed her for another hunk of bread for him. “How did you know it would storm? The weatherman said it would miss us entirely.”

  She thought he would say something about obscure Danish weather lore, sailors’ warnings, or some old injury that told him the barometer was dropping. Instead he got quiet. He tossed another piece of cheese to Vandal and took another swig of his beer. When he remained silent, she raised her brows at him. “Galen?”

  “I tell you before. Why should I speak it again?” He took a bite of bread.

  Oooh. That hurt. She wasn’t very good at leaps of faith. “I promise I will listen.”

  He took another swig of beer and cut more cheese. She wasn’t sure he was going to answer at all. At last he said, “Something happened, Lucy, in here.” He touched his chest. “In my heart. I know things, about the land, about the sky and water. They tell me things.”

  Lucy pushed down her clamoring protestations. She had promised to be open to his answer. She doubted she could believe what he was saying in the end. He still believed that gods of the sea granted prayers, and she only called on hers in some half-mocking way. His was a simpler time with more direct beliefs. But she’d promised.

  “Okay,” she said, nodding for him to continue.

  “I think I become like a brother to the earth.”

  He actually used the word “brother.” His longing to be special like his brother was at the root of all of this. But she hadn’t thought he’d be so blatant.

  “I know things now about the world. In your time the earth is sick. Ice melts. Air stinks, like with many fires.” He looked at her.

  “Smoke,” she said, a little stunned. “It smells of smoke.” He could see the pollution over the east bay, but how did he know about the melting of the ice shelves at the poles?

  “Your bay is sick. Evil things flow into it. Fish die. The wyrts of the sea die.” He looked to see if she understood.

  Wyrts? Like Saint-John’s-wort, maybe. Plants? She understood all right. Or maybe she didn’t. “How . . . how do you know this?”

  “I listen. Since we lust together, they speak to me.”

  Whoa. She wasn’t sure she could go there.

  “I feel when the world is right and when it is not right.”

  That struck a chord. She’d been feeling that rightness herself lately. Like being with Galen. Like when they made love. “I . . . uh . . . I have sometimes felt that rightness.”

  “You have, Lucy?” His eyes lighted.

  “Yeah. When we’re together, mainly.”

  His face softened. “Ja. Then you know what I say is sooth.” He heaved out a breath in relief, though she hadn’t actually said she believed the whole “brother of the earth” thing. Suddenly she wasn’t sure exactly what she believed. She blinked at him as thoughts rolled around in her head as though the boat were still pitching. Did she believe she’d fallen in love with an honest-to-God Viking in six days? The pull toward Galen had been so strong, in retrospect it was almost uncanny.

  She was in love with him. She wanted to be with him, enough so that the prospect of giving him up to his own time, knowing she couldn’t go back with him without changing everything, made her almost physically ill. She wasn’t sorry they couldn’t get to the time machine, no matter the consequences. That was the bottom line. And she didn’t care that he believed he was connected to the earth since they’d made love. If that made him feel whole and happy, fine. Hell, she felt more grounded since she’d been with him, too.

  Guess she’d finally found out what love was.

  She was in for a rough ride. He was a Viking. Probably not a monogamous bone in his body. They’d be stuck together on a tiny boat for weeks at a time. Their money would run out and they’d start to quarrel. In broken Saxon English. What a farce. It would be like a bad French movie where the plotters all ended up hating one another after they’d committed a crime, and got caught and thrown in prison in the end.

  Just dandy.

  But it couldn’t be helped. She loved him, whether he really loved her or not. And she’d try to keep him out of Casey’s hands, and Brad’s.

  And to hell with the time machine.

  Now why didn’t that feel right?

  They ate in silence while Galen’s mind spun with possibilities, all more outlandish and impossible than the last. Somehow he had to protect Lucy. He had to make her world safe for her, even if he had to sacrifice himself.

  He looked over at her. In the lamplight, her drying hair made a cloud around her face. She looked like the Valkyrie he had first thought her when he woke in that white room. Or an angel of the Christ Cult. An angel who still wasn’t sure she was beautiful, a Valkyrie who blushed.

  He felt a surge of life course up his veins, as though it came from the very center of the earth. He reached his arm around her and tucked her in close. “Lucy,” he said, “we can do nothing until morning.”

  She looked up at him, and he saw that she flowered with his thought as well. “We should sleep.” She didn’t mean it.

  “We will sleep. After we lust.”

  She grinned and slid out of his arms to rummage in her bag. “Then I have a surprise for you.” She pulled out a box and from it a small circle of strange material stretched across a ring.

  “What is this?”

  “A condom.” She unrolled it over her finger. “For your weapon.” She grinned.

  “Why?”

  She blushed. “No lytling.”

  She didn’t want to make a child with him.

  The thought struck him like a blow. He straightened his shoulders. Why should it? It didn’t matter. He wanted to make her happy, whether she wanted to make a child with him or not. “Ja, Lucy. I will wear your condom.”

  Freya, the goddess of his father, who watched over the fertility of the earth, rose from a fiery chasm and spoke to him. The blast of hot air from below carried the stink of sulfur.

  “The Earth is sick, Galen. And you will make it right. Go, into the jaws of death, and snatch it back from the brink of ruin. Time is a vortex. Now is your time.”

  And Baldur, the sacrificed god, so fair of form he was blinding, strode through the blackened forest all around the crevice to stand on its edge. “You must
go in my name, Galen. You must brave losing all.”

  “Will I be sacrificed, as you were?” Galen called to him.

  “Time will tell the sooth of things.”

  “Will I make a child with Lucy?” That was not important to the gods, but it was to him.

  “Time will tell . . . ,” Freya echoed. She and Baldur began to fade, both of them.

  “You speak in riddles!” Galen shouted.

  “You know what to do.” This last from Baldur just before he disappeared.

  Galen was left alone in the searing heat from the crevice of the earth and the smoking, blackened ruin of a forest.

  Galen woke in a sweat, gasping. Lucy lay beside him sleeping like the dead after their lovemaking. What kind of a dream was that, where gods spoke in riddles?

  But it wasn’t a riddle. He knew what to do.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Lucy swept the results of Vandal’s morning constitutional into Half Moon Bay and rinsed the deck. Oh, well, at least it was natural. But she felt guilty after Galen’s speech about the ailing earth. They’d slept late. The sun was already up over the coastal hills, lighting the boat, though the town of Half Moon Bay, stretched along the coast, was still in shadow. Must be about nine. The cold sea air stung her lungs in a good way. Today they would start south, never touching a wharf until they were past San Diego and into Mexican waters.

  Why didn’t that feel as good as the air in her lungs? She motioned Vandal below. If they were going on a long haul, she’d better check the equipment one more time. Spare parts for the engine—had she seen those anywhere when she was exploring that first day? She didn’t think so. She vaulted down through the hatch and jumped off the ladder. How could she feel so good with so few hours’ sleep? Probably had something to do with that Viking bent over the charts. She sobered. She had felt some reticence in him last night. He’d looked almost tragic for an instant when she’d rolled the condom over that lovely big weapon he owned. Probably mourning for a time when there were no such things as condoms. He might be mourning his time for the rest of his life. And that might stand between them.