“Shut up!” Rap said, and went back to singing. The horses' ears rose again as they listened to him. They kept splashing their big hooves and the wagon continued to roll steadily forward. A couple of swimming gulls watched intently, bobbing up and down as the waves flowed under them.
Maiden, maiden, maiden, oh…
Far off to his left, two fishing boats were setting sail from the quay, and Rap wondered what they thought of this strange horsedrawn vessel plying their harbor. There were a couple of big rocks coming up on his right, green with weed and purple with mussels, being lapped by the small waves, and he knew about how far those were from the road. A fraction more to the left…
There was just enough wind to make the water ruffled and impossible to see through, but he could tell where the edges were by the way the waves surged over them. It was safer than it looked, he told himself.
Lin was starting to whimper.
I gave her love, I gave her smiles,
I wooed with all my manly wiles.
The rocks floated past on the silvery water, and the swell was beginning to trouble the horses, coming well up their legs now, over the wagon axles. They were finding the wagon hard to pull. They were towing it.
The water was deeper. The waves no longer showed the edge very clearly.
“Turn, Rap!” Lin sobbed. “We’re at the bend, Rap! We must be! We’ll go off!” He rose to his feet, awkwardly holding the seatback with his one good arm. They were going to get wet boots in a minute. “Rap! Turn!”
Rap was not sure. Distances were deceptive when they were all covered with water and there were no landmarks at hand. He was thinking of the road itself, beneath the water, two stone walls filled in level with shingle and rocks, greeny blue, probably, with the strands of weed waving in the current. There would be shadows of ripples moving over, like cloud shadows moved over the summer hills. Fish? He had not expected so many fish, little ones…
“Maiden, maiden…”
“Shut up, Lin!”
“…maiden, oh.”
Now he could imagine that watery blue roadway making its turn. He pulled on the reins and the wagon curved slowly round and apparently he had guessed right, because they continued their slow progress.
Lin had started to pray to some God Rap had never heard of. A new one, maybe.
One of the fishing boats was heading in their direction.
The wagon had almost stopped bumping. The tide was stronger here, in the middle, leaving a wake as it flowed by the horses, and they were getting very nervous now, no matter how hard he sang.
“Maiden, maiden”
“SNOWBALL!”
“… maiden…”
Too far to the right!
He eased the lead pair to the left and they carried on. But if the wagon began to float, then it would surely drag the horses off the road.
The second bend, a big, wide curve… the wagon seemed to lift, skew left, then settle, then lift. He blinked sweat from his eyes, squinting against the sun’s glare, visualizing that underwater causeway, easing the horses around the bend.
Staying away from the edges.
Then Tallow Rocks were straight ahead and the current was behind them and the road was starting to rise. He flicked the reins for more speed and licked salty lips. He’d done it!
His hands were shaking slightly and his neck felt sore. He arched his back to ease it and then sat down.
“Sorry, Lin,” he remarked, “what were you saying?”
Lin’s eyes were big as oysters. “How did you do that?”
Come to think of it, how had he done that? Rap began to feel very shaky. It was almost as if he’d been able to see the road under the water. He’d known where it was, what it looked like, almost. He had not seen it, but he’d felt as if he knew what it would look like if he could… or as if he could remember having seen it like that. Which he never had; no man ever had.
Just as, earlier, he’d known there was another wagon around the seventh bend?
He did not say anything, just shrugged.
“Another thing we youngsters have to learn, I suppose?”
Rap grinned at him. “Practice by yourself, though.”
Lin used some very special obscenities. Where had he learned those?
“Lin?” Rap said. “Lin, please don’t go and make a big story out of this?”
Lin just stared at him.
“Lin! You’ll get me in trouble.”
“I suppose you weren’t getting me in trouble?” Lin yelled. He must have been more scared than Rap had realized.
“It was nothing much, Lin. I was standing up. I could see where the water was flowing over the edges.”
“Oh… sure!”
But Lin reluctantly promised not to make a big story out of it.
They left the water and followed the lumpy track across Tallow Rocks, wheels spraying silver drops in the air. The last dip was deep, but very short. The wagon might float there, but it would not matter for there was no current and the road was not raised above the shingle. He had done it!
The king had ordered him off Krasnegar before the tide.
Gods save the king.
“You shave now?” Lin asked suddenly.
“Of course.” Rap had shaved the previous night for the fourth time and included his chin for the first time. He would have to get a razor of his own soon. Lin had a faint dark haze on his upper lip. And he still had a very odd look in his eye. “Why?”
Lin shrugged and turned away, but after a moment, he said, “Funny thing, growing up. Isn’t it?”
Yes it was, Rap agreed, and concentrated on the next water barrier. But once they were safely through that, he relaxed and began to enjoy himself, enjoy the feeling that now he was one of the drivers—if the old man would ever trust him again after that mad stunt he had just pulled .
“Yes,” he said. “One moment you’re feeling all manly and the next you find you’re behaving like a kid again. It’s like being two people.” A fellow’s body started making all these odd change without as much as asking permission… What right did his face have to start growing hair without asking him?
Like being two people… And you knew only one of those people. Growing up was becoming a stranger to yourself again, just when you thought you’d got to know yourself. And part of growing up was wondering what sort of person you were going to be. How tall? How broad? Trustworthy? A strong man or a weakling? And what were you going to do with that man? Master-of-horse? Man-at-arms?
“Girls!” Lin muttered to himself.
Girls.
Inos.
Now they were rolling along the edge of the shingle, passing the lonely cluster of shore cottages with their racks of fish and nets and a ramshackle corral and a couple of haystacks starting to sprout. There were stacks of driftwood that the old women gathered and heaps of peat moss. Bonfires of kelp were sending up blue smoke. There were girls there and they waved. The men waved back. The long bent grass waved, also.
“We could eat here,” Lin said thoughtfully.
“Later.”
Beyond the shiny blue harbor lay Krasnegar, a towering triangle with a castle as a topknot. Yes, it did look like a piece of cheese. Perhaps Rap was hungry after all, but he’d said later, so later it would have to be. A yellow triangle. Where had the sorcerer found black stone for his castle?
Inos was in that castle.
He thought of horse rides and clam digging and surf fishing; of Inos running over the dunes, long legs, gold hair streaming in the wind, and her shrieks and giggles when he caught her; of Inos scrambling up the cliffs in the sunshine, daring him to come after her; of hawking and archery. He thought of her face, not bony like a jotunn’s or round like an imp’s. Just right. He thought of singsongs and winter firesides with singing and joking and his arm around her as they sought pictures in the embers.