sweet departure
the ocean wide
A day later, and the world continues on without the Shipwright and the Shroudweaver.
Distantly, up in the hills, stone peels away in a landslide, the earth raw and red beneath. It exposes the remains of roots, branches. The sky shivers with the half-hearted sighing of shifting pines as the wind pushes through them, the air carrying always from east to west, borrowing the heat from the rising sun and pushing it into the belly of the trees, popping cones and splitting bark. The breath of the forest is painted with sap, pungent and sticky.
The wind freshens as it moves to the coast, its lines ridden by small, swift-winged birds, the tiny stamps of their bodies like punctuation. It gathers the slow heat of fruit groves, the burnt citrus of dusky earth, the scent of herbs hollowed in the sparse soil between warm rocks. It swoops light over the Midlands, and dances on the tongues of tillers, field hands and laughing girls.
Ducking through the white gates of Hesper, it dwindles to dust in the throats of old men, swilled clean by sharp beer and sweetened wine. It chases carts down winding lanes, teasing the hair of back-bent women, keening the edges of ploughs and pushing the stones down into grain fields whipped with life, scattered and tussocked with mice, birds and fattening hawks.
Briefly caught against the morning, it glows afire with golden whispers for a moment, before it swirls under the axles of the first day’s trade, picking sweat from the bellies of drays and baking the mud under-hoof, creaking the hinges of wide-flung doors and swallowing the hurling shouts of porters and bakers and long-limbed lovers. It gathers steam from cups and spittle from lips,running the arch of spines and fleeing the clack of shutters quick-clasped against it, running to the salt of the sea.
Picking at chunks of sailor’s curses in the freshening light, it skips over cask and barrel and lash, rat back and mule sway, thick thumbs and strong hands and seaweed-slick dock. Along rope-lines and jetties it runs, and over the tops of the waves, called by the shouts of sailors to whip wildly over arms that lash rigging and legs that stride the decks. It brushes over Ropecharmer’s dry lips and shaking hands as they stow a package, small, clay-wrapped, twine-tied and wax-sealed. Skirting the replaced board, his quick-turned shoulders and tight legs, before skipping off along sweat-struck skin to twist Shipwright’s salt-scoured hair. She feels it cool against her brow, breathes deep – pine and lemon and shore and sea. The ship at long last casts off.
As Shroudweaver slings himself over the rail, the deck flexes under his feet. A last slap of the boarding ladder against the side, and he’s offshore, his head turned to the freshening breeze. Hesper’s body is square and angular before him as the docks grudgingly relinquish the ship, trailing ropes and anchors into the water like the heavy fingers of a reluctant lover.
The smoke-stained scrape of the great white walls slowly shifts into the horizon. The clatter of metal and the bustle of the docks sifting into the sound of waves and gulls. The stark teeth of the Grey Towers fading into twin lines, iron against the sky.
Above, the rig spirits hum into life, battening against canvas and unfurling their sails out into the sharpening air. Shroudweaver walks to the bow of the ship, stepping lightly around hanks of rope, quick slung hammocks, the detritus of the refugees coming west with them. There’s a smattering of small ports before they strike out for the deep waters and the Heron Halls. They can cling to the coast for a few days and find time to settle the last few of Thell’s survivors somewhere quiet, with a soft shore and smoke in the earth. Shroudweaver envies them, a little.
Ropecharmer steps aside as he passes the hold, dipping his head respectfully. Shroudweaver smiles at his broad shoulders and climbs the steps to where Shipwright stands at the helm.
‘I’d missed this,’ he says.
She turns the wheel slowly, easing the ship out into deeper waters. ‘Of course you did, love. This is our home.’
He leans into her as she steers, the warm salt of her skin, the steady shift of her muscles, the faint smell of tar and leather and polish. The noise of the port falls away to the sea, and after that, the noise of the crew, until there’s only the crisp song of rising waves.
He places his lips against her ear. ‘So, just us then.’
The breath that fills Shipwright’s lungs is long and soft, the first real breath she’s taken in a long time. She pulls his hands around her waist, and cups her chin into his shoulder.
‘Just us, dearest of my heart. The way I like it.’
The ship rides the swell of the waves out under the belly of the sky, and the world recedes.
Shipwright turns the tiller, and kicks the spinners a little higher. The loops of Hesper’s docks pull up and into the horizon. Behind them are Fallon and Riss, and Ice, a town of refugees in a city of sailors, the bones of the mountain in the belly of the vulture. Behind them, Thell and the darkness, the tall forests of the Burners and the low dark stone of the Midlands. She breathes out, the shudder of her ribs sounding the timbers of the ship as it turns north, then west again. Above, she hears the snap of canvas as the sails fill with golden light, backed by a gentle hum from the highest spars as the brass of the rig spirits dances up a song. Beyond them, the sea is blue and beyond that there are further places, white spires and the sunken spindles of cities which have never known the weight of land.
The air leaves her lungs and returns to the tops of the waves. Shroudweaver’s hand appears in hers, soft and slight, and she holds it for completeness and warmth. She can feel the brush of his bones beneath the skin, the pulse of his blood and the shift of his lips against her ear.
‘I love you,’ he says, and the ship bucks the crest of a wave.
She puts an arm around him, saves the other for the rail of the ship. Warm wood, warm skin. ‘I love you too.’
In front of them, the sea opens up to whiteness, the bright light of dawn slipping to blue under the keel.
The ship moves west, and westwards.
The Shipwright holds the Shroudweaver, and the Shroudweaver holds the Shipwright, each lost in the hollow of each other’s lives.
92
my one true love
still by my side
Two days later and twenty leagues out from Hesper, the sea pulls to silver under the stern. Shipwright steps up beside Ropecharmer and claps his shoulder. ‘The ropes are singing today, Charmer, light and easy.’
