It might well be the price of seeing Quarrie MacMurtray again.
Still, she eyed Frode with misgiving as he loped over the rocks to them, a big, rangy, loose-limbed body now bent with age and likely the results of hard work. Boatbuilding, with all its attendant labors, was not an easy vocation.
He spat as he joined them. Hulda did her best to ignore it.
“Lads.”
She was indeed dressed like a lad, some of Jute’s stolen clothing cut down to fit and with her hair tightly braided, so she took no offense. Looking into the old man’s face, which was deeply lined and frankly not too clean, she saw he had two different-colored eyes. Strange from birth, then.
“So you want to buy theFreya?”
Hulda sighed. Was not every second boat calledFreya?
Garik gave her a look before treating Frode to a wide grin. “Ja, we do. And you promised you would make us a fair price.”
“Did I?”
“Ja, sure, the bunch of us young men just starting out, like I told you.”
“She needs a considerable amount of work.” Frode squinted at the vessel. And spat into the water.
No lie,Hulda thought.
“Needs a new rudder. New mast, as you can see. Repairs to the deck. There was a fire—”
“A fire!” Hulda exclaimed.
Frode glared at her. “Just a small one.”
Hulda began to say that she did not think it a good prospect for them. A picture of Quarrie MacMurtray flashed into her mind, face battered, eyes steady. Just the way he’d looked before she kissed him.
Days and days had passed, yet she swore she could still taste him on her lips.
“How long? To get it ready,” she asked.
Frode hemmed and hawed. He mumbled to himself. He spat some more. “The big repairs—not long. The minor ones—”
“We could help with those,” Garik said quickly. “Helje and I. And”—he gestured at Hulda—“you know I want to learn.”
“She was a swift boat, once,” Frode said. “Agile. Almost no draft. She would serve you well.”
“Can you have her ready in a fortnight?”
Frode turned and stared at Hulda. Behind his bi-colored eyes, she glimpsed a certain lack of focus. In his thoughts, only? Or was that madness?
She said, “The season moves swiftly. We have only so much time.”
“Ja,” he agreed. “Summer is fleeting.”
She stood there waiting while he pondered it, with the smell of the sea in her nostrils and urgency prodding her inside.
If he says he can ready the boat in a fortnight,she decided,I am in.If he says it will take longer, I will withdraw.Though the gods alone knew what she would do with herself then.
“Ja,” he said. “A fortnight.”
It felt as if Hulda’s world shifted. As if, indeed, she found herself balanced upon some great wheel—that of Freya’s chariot, perhaps—and she had to dance in order to keep her feet.
“If you help,” the old man added.
