by Amy Cross
"Two more weeks," I mutter under my breath, staring at the reflection of my eyes. Two more weeks and then I'll abandon this body entirely, switching to my wolf form with no intention of ever switching back. The day can't come soon enough and, frankly, part of me wants to just do it now. I mean, do I really owe Duncan anything.
Suddenly I hear the sound of breaking glass coming from the other room. I rush through to find Duncan, still naked, standing by a small table, staring at a broken bottle on the floor.
"What happened?" I ask.
Duncan looks around the dark room. "He's here," he says. "The Mariner is here."
Joseph
1889.
It's nearly midnight when I head down to the Port Horizon. I always prefer sailing at night, when there are fewer people about and it's just me and the moon. This is a big boat, almost too big for one man to handle, but I'm confident I can take her out to the island and back. She's had a lot of repair work done recently: she's a big boat, and she's getting old. A lot of owners would have picked her apart for scrap by now, but the Port Horizon has sentimental value for a lot of people, so she's being kept in service long past her sell-by date. Tonight, it's just me and her, heading out onto the water to watch the stars.
As I get close to the boat, I hear a strange sound nearby. It takes me a moment to realize that it's a woman, crying. I look about in the dark, trying to find her, but it's no use; she just seems to be everywhere, all around in the darkness, her sobs being carried on the slow evening breeze. Finally, however, I see a shape huddled between two of the large warehouses, and I hurry over.
"Are you okay?" I ask.
She looks up, and I see that it's Clara.
"Sorry," I say, taking a step back. It's almost as if I'm scared of her beauty. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I feel like I have no business being around her.
"No," she says, getting to her feet. "I shouldn't be here." She tries to gather up her basket of flowers, but she fumbles and everything spills out across the ground. She immediately gets down onto her hands and knees to start scooping the flowers up, and I get down to help her. "It's okay," she says. "Please, it's fine."
We get all the flowers back into the basket and finally we both stand up. There's an awkward moment where it seems as if neither of us really know what to do or say.
"I've seen you around," I say eventually.
"Me too," she says. "I mean, I've seen you around too. You're a sailor, aren't you?"
"Merchant sailor, yes," I reply. I point to the Port Horizon. "I'm taking that boat out tonight."
She stares at it, her eyes widening. "Wow," she says. "It looks wonderful."
"She's a good boat," I say, as we slowly walk toward the huge, dark shape that towers over the harborside. "Old, but good."
"I can't believe she's yours," Clara says. "You're so lucky."
I open my mouth to correct her, but no words come out. By the time I've decided I should tell her that I don't own the boat, it's too late and I'm trapped in the lie. I can't backtrack and put her right, not after waiting so long. "Yeah," I say, feeling my heart sink a little. How can I ever have a relationship with Clara now? I've just allowed her to believe something so insane and improbable, there's no way I can back out of it. Sooner or later, she's going to realize that I'm a liar.
"How long will you be gone?" she asks.
"Just a few hours," I say. "I need to take her out to one of the islands and back, to make sure some repairs have taken."
"Can I come?" she asks.
"What?" I say, taken aback.
"Can I come?" she asks again, smiling. "No, I'm sorry. It's crazy. I shouldn't have asked -"
"No," I say, interrupting her. "It's fine. Of course you can come. It might be a bit boring. I'll be working the whole way -"
"I don't mind that," she replies, taking her turn to interrupt me this time. "I can watch you work, and I can look around the boat, and I can look out to sea. It must be so calm and peaceful out there."
"It is," I say. "It's beautiful."
I lead her onboard, and then I start the process of pulling up the ropes. It's quite a job, getting such a large boat out of port without any help, and it takes almost an hour for us to be underway. Clara seems completely happy, though, watching me working and occasionally asking me why I'm doing certain things. She seems genuinely interested. It's weird, but after trying to catch her attention for so long, now she seems to be utterly focused on me.
Once we're far enough out to sea, I check the sails and then I walk over to meet Clara as she comes up from the lower decks.
"Find anything interesting?" I ask.
"It's a big boat," she says, "but one built for work, I think. There aren't many home comforts."
I smile at her naivety. "When the Port Horizon is fully manned, there are more than a hundred people working on these decks. All of them men. This isn't usually a place for ladies."
"I'm lucky, then," she says.
"I guess," I say.
She laughs, and then - to my complete surprise - she steps forward and kisses me on the lips. Almost losing my balance, I'm eventually able to put my arms around her as we share a long, slow kiss.
"Sorry," she says after a while, pulling away slightly. "I don't know why I did that. I just..." She pauses. "I just wanted to kiss you."
"It's okay," I say, though I'm finding it hard to understand her motivation. It's unusual for a woman to be so forceful and upfront, and I'm not entirely comfortable with the way she seems to be taking the initiative.
"I don't believe in holding back," she says, staring into my eyes. "I don't believe anyone, man or woman, should just stand and watch as something they want slips past. This dainty game of moving forward slowly doesn't interest me at all." She tries to kiss me again, but I pull away. "What's wrong, Joseph?" she asks. "Don't you like me?"
"I must check the sails," I say, hurrying over to the other side of the deck, where I busy myself with checking various ropes attached to the mast. In truth, the job is hardly necessary, but I want a moment away from Clara. There is something unladylike, even crude, about the way she presents herself. I am not an old-fashioned man, but I would still like a lady to behave like a lady.
"I have offended you," she says, coming over to me. "I'm sorry. I'm truly sorry. I thought perhaps you felt as I feel -"
"I believe in a certain tradition," I say, turning to her. "That's all." I take a deep breath, trying to work out how to make her see that we should take things a little more slowly. "Perhaps if we can understand one another's views, we can work out how to meet in the middle."
"That sounds good," she says, smiling.
I turn and finish my work with the ropes. But after a couple of minutes, I feel Clara wrap her hands around my waist. I turn, ready to ask her to let me go, but I see that she has removed her dress and is standing before me completely naked. All sense seems to be flushed from my mind as I stare at her beautiful body. I have never seen a naked woman before, at least not one so beautiful, and certainly not one who is presented in such a manner to me.
"Let us be a little unconventional tonight," she says, pressing herself against me. "Won't you come below decks with me?"
I want to resist her, and to act like a gentleman. I know that I will be filled with regret if I surrender to her charms. And what of God? Surely he is looking down, watching to see if I surrender to this most carnal of temptations? But I cannot help myself. Leaning in to kiss her again, I put my rough hands on her smooth breasts, and we are locked for several minutes in a passionate embrace under the moonlight. Finally, she takes my hand and leads me across the deck, and we go below to make love.
Jess
Today.
Covering my nakedness with my hands, I look around the room. "I don't see anyone," I say.
"Of course you don't," Duncan says, "but he's here. He's arrived." He steps past me and puts his ear to the wall. "Come here," he says after a moment. "Listen to this."
I join him at
the wall and I immediately hear a very faint hum.
"Humans wouldn't hear it," Duncan says, "but we have better hearing. We can detect it. That hum is him. He's moving close by, perhaps even straight through us."
"Through us?" I ask, not understanding what Duncan means.
"He moves in another dimension," Duncan says. "It's only tangentially related to our own, but little echoes get picked up from time to time. The tremor in the wall. The bottle that just fell off the table of its own accord. Things in our dimensions that are disturbed by tiny ripples emanating from other places."
"So why not just let him go?" I ask. "Why all the fuss? He's not hurting anyone, is he?"
Duncan pauses. "It's not as simple as that," he says. "He needs help. His crew are long since dead. No-one knows for sure, but I've heard stories that he lost his mind long ago."
"No kidding," I say. "But I still don't see why this affects us. What does it matter if he's out there, bobbing along on his magic boat?"
"It's not as easy as that," Duncan replies. "Every time he strikes out on his search, he starts again. And every time he comes close to our world, he comes closer than before. He causes more damage. Sooner or later, someone has to stop him, or there's going to be real carnage. He can't just keep on sailing from one dimension to the next. It's chaotic."
"And what's he looking for?" I ask. "What does he want?"
"A woman," Duncan says, smiling. "What else could inspire such complete madness? His lost love. She fell overboard a long, long time ago, and he's determined to find her, even if it takes forever. No-one really knows where she is or what happened to her. He..." He pauses for a moment. "She was very pretty, and he loved her very much."
"Have you met him before?" I ask.
"A long time ago," he replies. "Before he was the Mariner. Back when he was just an ordinary man. Now he's little more than a lovelorn husk, searching for a woman who can't be found."
"So if we find her," I say, trying to join the dots, "then he'll give up and go play happy families with this woman, instead of sailing around looking for her?"
"Absolutely," Duncan says. "It's as simple as that." He's clearly making fun of me now. "I don't know why no-one thought of that before, Jess."
"Fine," I say, giving up. Why bother trying to help, when he just shoots down all my ideas.
"I'm sorry," he replies. "I just..." He sighs. "This isn't something I need to be thinking about right now. There's so much going on, and I have to work out what to do about all the other stuff, and now here comes the Mariner, sailing into view again, and you know what? Everyone expects me to sort it out. They all think I'm the only one who can go and point his god-damned boat in a different direction and find this woman he's looking for. It's like everyone thinks I'm some kind of magician."
I smile. "You act like one sometimes."
"Not on purpose," he says a little forlornly. "All I want to do is have a nice, quiet life. No danger. No risks. No messing about. No-one demanding I run off and find swords or whatever."
I stare at him, and slowly I realize that perhaps he and I are more alike than I'd realized. What he wants, more than anything else, is to get away from a complicated life where people demand things from him. It's the same thing I want. Perhaps there's hope for us yet, if I can help him see that it's possible to break away from this dual existence he insists on pursuing. Although it seems like a long-shot, I can't help thinking that maybe I could somehow persuade him to join me in my plan of becoming a wolf forever.
"So what do we do?" I ask, kind of nervous about the answer I might get.
Duncan sighs again. "We have two choices. We run, or we try to stop him."
"How do we stop him?" I ask.
He shrugs.
"How do we even contact him? If he's off in some other dimension, what do we do? Shoot him an email?"
"Exactly," Duncan says. "I don't even know how to get him to hear us."
"And if we run?" I ask. "If we just do nothing?"
"He'll go away," Duncan replies. "He'll just sail off, and he'll come back around this way again in a few hundred years, and we'll be having this exact same conversation all over again."
I consider the options for a moment. "I can handle that," I say eventually. "I mean, a few hundred years, that's a long time. More than enough for us to go find this stupid sword, take a nice long holiday, and then maybe - maybe - deal with this Mariner guy the next time he sails past. And if it's so fucking important, let someone else sort him out."
Duncan stares at me for a moment, looking a little shocked. "Really?" he says.
"Why not?" I reply. "One job at a time. Sword. Deal?"
He pauses. "Deal," he says, leaping to his feet. "I've got a lead on the sword anyway, down on the south coast, by the beach. It's a long-shot, especially since Excalibur's not real, but we can probably find out a bit more about what's going on."
"And the Mariner?" I ask, getting up from the bed.
"Screw it," he replies. "Like you said, it's not really our problem, is it? We'll just forget all about it, and maybe in two or three hundred years we'll have to come up with a plan or something." He grabs me and hugs me. "I don't know why I didn't think about doing this before."
"What would you do without me?" I ask.
"Exactly," he says. "Come on, there's no time to waste. Let's get going."
"I thought we were staying in London for another week?" I ask, watching as Duncan goes to the mirror and tidies himself up a little. "I thought we were having a working holiday?"
"Plans have changed," Duncan says. "We can only really ignore the Mariner if we're convincingly busy doing something else. So let's get on with it. This Excalibur, if it exists - which it doesn't - isn't going to find itself. Besides..." He pauses, turning to me and looking serious for a moment. "I'm pretty sure Excalibur's just a cover story for someone who wants to move us around a little, like pieces on a chess board. I need to work out who, and why, and how, and what."
"So we're going to the beach?" I ask, a little tentatively.
"We are!" Duncan replies triumphantly.
"And if we find this sword," I say, "then perhaps we can actually stay at the beach and have a holiday?"
"We won't find the sword," Duncan says, "but I'm sure we'll fit a holiday in soon."
We head out of the B&B and, as soon as we're in a side-alley, we both switch to our wolf forms. This way, we can just run to the coast. It'll take a day or more, but doing things like this - rather than taking a train or a bus - seems so much more natural. Duncan takes the lead and we head off through the streets of London, dodging the scattered humans who are making their way home from various pubs, bars and nightclubs. This is my favorite time of night to be in London, because all the excitement has faded and the streets are full of tired revelers. There's something kind of poetic about that gap between the end of the party and the start of a new day.
As we reach the river, Duncan leads me along towards Tower Bridge. For a moment, it feels as if we're free, far from the troubles of our regular lives. But suddenly Duncan pulls up, and I stop next to him. He shifts into his human form and steps towards the embankment, looking out over the dark river.
"What is it?" I ask, changing my form as well.
"He's here," Duncan says.
I try to see what he sees, but there's nothing. All I can see is the blackness of the river as it winds its way through London.
"Trust me," Duncan says, his voice filled with darkness. "He's here."
Together, we walk up onto the bridge. There's not much traffic this late at night, but the city is lit up as usual with electric lights that sparkle from every building. As we stand on the bridge, looking down into the murky depths of the water, I find it hard to believe that there's anything hidden here. Everything seems so still and calm, and -
I pause, realizing that the bridge is vibrating slightly. There's a distant roar, but I can't tell where it's coming from. Everything looks so peaceful. But then Duncan taps me on the
shoulder, and I realize I'm looking in the wrong direction. I turn around just in time to see a huge wall of water smash down onto the bridge. Duncan and I have no chance; we're swept away in the flood.
Joseph
1889.
It's dark down here, but a thin line of moonlight is just about enough to pick out the shape of her hips. I run my hand over her skin, brushing the hair between her legs, and I cannot help but marvel at her beauty. I felt sure that once we had made love, I would be filled with the most terrible regret, yet now I find that I can think of nothing but how wonderful she is. Having been taught all my life that a man should not go to bed with a woman before marriage, at least not unless she is a whore, I find myself wondering why all men and women do not indulge in the pleasures of the flesh a little sooner.
"What are you thinking about?" she asks.
I smile. "I thought perhaps you were asleep." It's true: She seemed so calm and restful, I assumed she had fallen asleep after our love-making.
She shifts on the bed, rolling onto her back. "Perhaps I fell under for a moment," she says. "But now I am awake again, and replenished." She takes my hand and slips it between her legs so that I can feel the wetness. "I want you again," she says.
"I should check the sails," I insist, moving to get up, but she grabs my arm and holds me down.
"Don't you want me again?" she asks.
I pause, knowing that I should go back up to steady the boat's course but too weak to tear myself away. I climb on top of her, kissing her breasts as she delicately opens her legs to accept me once again. Although I know I shouldn't be doing this, I find it impossible to resist Clara's charms. Holding her in my arms feels so right, as if nothing in the world could ever be more right. Perhaps, after all, God isn't testing me; instead, he's rewarding me by giving me the woman for whom I have been waiting.