Chapter 287
The lake gold. No storm-wall on the horizon: just sky, all the way round. The dock. And at the end of it, where Old Pike was always tied, an empty mooring ring.
trotting down the dock as he has every morning, jumping in, swimming out to where the skiff always was. Circling. Nothing there. Paddling round and round the empty water, looking.
on the end of the dock in his blankets, boots in the water, watching the dog look for a boat that isn't there.
swimming back, climbing out, shaking himself all over Njord, and lying down against his hip. Njord's huge hand on his wet head, a strip of salt-cod in the other.
The whole village crowded in. On the slip, Jeppson's plank, the one that floated, set down as a keel-plank, and round it, the beginnings of a new skiff: ribs going up, fresh planks steaming. Fisher-folk shipwrights working. And Jeppson in the middle of them, sleeves rolled, one eye shut, by hand.
laying his palm on the floating plank, now the spine of a new boat.
Day three of the raincloud: Flexsnus under it, helping carry planks, soaked, cheerful.
Day four: Roffe's salt-cod-in-mjölksta becoming a village dish. The fisherwives asking for the recipe.
Day five: Trollmage and Njord at the end of the dock, lines in the water, not speaking for six hours. One fish. "Best day of the trip." "Best day of the trip."
Day six: Kompis signing with Sill on the beach, much better now. [Your cousin's TERRIBLE at this.] [I KNOW.]
Flexsnus on the dock, looking up. The tiny raincloud over his head thinning, a last drop, two, and gone, with a faint pling. Sun on his slicked hair for the first time in a week.
opening his tin and, with a pin, scratching through the line: STORM, 1 NOTCH. DUE: 7 DAYS RAIN (paid in advance). Struck out. Paid. One line still open above it: MOUTH, 1 NOTCH. DUE: ?
that evening, and lying on his pillow, polished till it shines, a bottle cap. Gold-painted, very old, stamped with a tiny winged figure. Under it, a scrap of paper in a big untidy hand:
PAID. KEEPING THE BILL. — V.
picking up the cap, turning it in his long fingers, the winged figure catching the lamp-light. Recognising it.
the same evening. Vigolas on the rail, swinging his legs, bottle caps clinking in his coat pockets. One fewer than yesterday. Kompis beside him.
(Kompis says nothing. Mingus, between them, thumps his tail once.)
The new skiff finished: small, bright with fresh tar, smelling of pine and lake, her keel-plank old and grey and whole in the middle of all that new wood. The village round her. Njord in front, his hand on her bow.
with a pot of white paint and a brush, kneeling at the bow, painting her name, slowly, carefully, tongue out.
YOUNG PIKE.
open on Jeppson's knee, his pencil, steady.
Young Pike sliding down the slip into the lake, the whole village cheering, Mingus leaping in after her and swimming out alongside, and Njord, in her stern, reaching down one-handed to haul the dog aboard. A strip of cod.
Both ships ready to sail: sails loosed, crews aboard, the village on the dock to see them off. Njord standing at the end of it with his rod. Six knots on it now, and the frayed bit of cord.
at the foot of the Marka's gangplank.
on one of the six knots on his rod.
The knot untying, SNIK, and out of it, pouring gently into the sails of both ships, a fair wind: warm, steady, smelling of lake and summer, filling the canvas, the Marka and the Upp Igen leaning into it together.
The two ships sailing out of Heartbeat's great lake, down the long arm of the Current, back toward the Deep. Tidekant's lamps behind them. And Young Pike rowing alongside them, Njord at the oars, Sill in the bow, seeing them out as far as the lake's mouth.
at the oars, stopping. Shipping them. Going very still in the skiff. His head tilting. His eyes starting to move like water. And his face changing.
The mouth of Heartbeat's lake where it opens into the Current: the water ahead turning from lake-dark to the moving starlight of the Current. And drawn over all of it, the way Njord hears it for the first time in his life, the tides of the Current: great slow swells of starlight rolling under the surface, long silver breaths rising and falling between the realms, a sea breathing. Not weather. Not coming. Already there. Always there.
In the middle of it, a huge old man in a small new skiff, his face turned up, tears running into his salt beard, his hand pressed flat on the water.
at the Marka's wheel, looking down at the old man weeping in the skiff alongside.
wiping his face, rowing Young Pike in close under the Marka's wheel, pointing.
closing his eyes at the wheel, feeling it: the Marka lifting on a long swell of starlight, and settling, and lifting, and the ship leaping forward on it like a horse given its head.
(The Marka leans left in the crosswind. Nobody minds.)
Young Pike falling behind at the lake's mouth, Njord standing in her waving his rod, Sill waving both arms, Mingus barking from the Marka's stern until they're too small to see.
The two ships running fast on the starlight tide. And out of a clear sky, something falling. Grey. Light. Drifting down onto the decks like snow.
A flake landing on it. Not cold. Warm. Grey. Crumbling.
Something bumping against the hull out of the dark: a charred spar, a ship's yard burned black, floating on the starlight. And nailed to it, half burned away, a scrap of black sailcloth with a painted sigil Vigolas leans down and stares at, going white.
Far to the south, the whole night sky glowing red, as if the edge of the world were on fire. Ash drifting out of it on the wind. And at the heart of the glow, so far off it's only a shape, a branch of something vast dipping down into the Current, burning. And in the fire on it, a tiny figure with arms spread, held by chains that shine white-hot.