Part 16 (1/2)
A companionable silence stretched out between them. Finian glanced at the river. Not a villager in sight. He rose to his knees and fingertips, then unraveled to his feet.
”Let's go, la.s.s.”
The sun burned hot on the top of Senna's head and upper back as they hurried forward, crouching at the waist. Everything seemed bright and close to hand. The world smelled fresh, like warm, clean dirt and pine, hot flowers and river-stirred air. Ireland's beauty was beyond her words, vivid and brilliant, like a drop of ink quivering on a ma.n.u.script.
The tall gra.s.ses closed behind them, rustling like eager, buzzing conspirators. Small puffs of breeze coasted down the river, which was such a shattering, smas.h.i.+ng shade of blue it almost hurt her eyes. The thought of getting in a boat hurt her stomach.
She plodded forward, looking neither left nor right, resigned to the fate of sickening all over the indescribably beautiful land of Ireland. Or its waters.
Closing her eyes resignedly, she put her hands on the edge of a worn wooden boat and threw her leg over.
”Senna, no!” Finian hissed behind her.
She turned, startled, half in the boat, half out.
”Not that one.” He gestured once, rising slightly out of his crouch. ”Come. This one.” He pointed to a smaller teardrop-shaped craft, tucked amid the cattails, hard to see.
She sighed and lifted her foot back out again. She did not, though, remove any of her weight from her hands, which rested on the lip of the boat. In fact, she was quite used to leaning on things, things that didn't bob. Being incautiously unaware that her previous experience with one's leaning tendencies and the movability, or immovability, of things upon which one leaned, did not apply in the present situation, she pressed down on the boat, which was, by nature, a bobbing thing. Her foot was in the air.
The small craft sailed out into the river. The rope tugged it immediately and snapped it back to sh.o.r.e, but it had to bounce off Senna, who had fallen in the water with a hearty splash. One ankle still remained hooked over the lip of the boat.
She flailed as soundlessly as flailing in water can be done, trying to get her footing. Water lapped over her belly as she arched backward, her hands sinking into the soft, silky mud, one foot in the water, the other hooked over the edge of boat.
How she hated boats.
She tried to kick her leg high enough to free it. Her body having only so much bend, each kick up with her foot forced her head in the opposite direction which, in this case, was under the water. Her fingertips sunk deeper into mud. How long before the owner of this boat heard her racket and came to investigate?
”What do ye tink ye're doin' with me boat?”
Not long at all, apparently.
She tried to crane her neck around to see whom she'd perpetrated her highly embarra.s.sing but not-yet-criminal behavior upon.
Finian's legs walked into view. She tilted her face up to look at his, which appeared to be filled with disgust, if she was reading it properly. She was was upside down, of course. Perhaps she was interpreting it wrongly. upside down, of course. Perhaps she was interpreting it wrongly.
He put an arm behind her back, which gave her the leverage to get her foot out. He helped her slosh to sh.o.r.e where she stood, dripping wet, a length of sea gra.s.s stuck to her neck. She peeled it off, looking at the sullen, yet-surprisingly-unsurprised, aged face regarding her.
”Me boat. Why're ye climbing all over her?”
”I was only climbing there at the bow...the prow, the...edge,” she said chirpily. ”She's a bit wetter, but none the worse.”
Finian and the old man scowled at her. Then Finian turned to the old man.
”Grandfather,” he murmured, bending his head, and that was the last word she understood, because Finian lapsed into the most evocative, lyrical, deep-throated plumage of language she'd ever heard. Irish. It almost took her breath away. Finian surely did.
Watching his body, so powerful, restrain itself to bend into a pose of respect for an elderly man. Listening to him, whom she knew not at all, transform into some spellbinding creature before her eyes.
Wild, his language was. Wild, he was. Wild, she wanted to be.
Without warning, Finian was moving again, tossing a few heavy bundles onto the boat she'd almost capsized, speaking so she could understand again.
”We'll take these to Cuil Dubh Cuil Dubh for ye, grandfather. And ye've my thanks.” for ye, grandfather. And ye've my thanks.”
The old man stood impa.s.sively. He must have been sixty if he was a day, and more fit than men half his age. Compact, sinuous, and suspicious, he did not look happy, but he wasn't arguing. Finian was moving swiftly, tossing another sack into the craft, muttering for Senna to get on board.
She hesitated. The old man was watching her with a canny regard. His eyes were bluer than the water, his eyebrows as wild grown as the gra.s.ses they'd crawled through, and his face was cragged enough for plants to take root. Old curmudgeon. She smiled. She'd once had a curmudgeon in her life, a laughing bear of a grandfather she hadn't seen since her mother disappeared. Senna liked curmudgeons.
Slowly, the old curmudgeon smiled back.
”And we're off, Senna,” Finian said lightly. But underneath, he sounded rushed. As if he was worried. As if, at any moment, this old man might turn and start shouting to others. Younger, armed others.
Without thinking, Senna scooped deep in a pouch tied around her neck and lodged between layers of her clothes, and dug out a few coins she'd taken from the trunk under Rardove's table. She dropped them into the old man's hand. A few pennies gone from her future, but they were owed.
”My thanks, grandfather,” she whispered, then held a finger to her lips, suggesting silence. She smiled at him over its tip.
His hand closed around the coin, probably sufficient to sustain him and his eight neighbors for a decade. His smile didn't grow an inch, but slowly, one eyelid came down in the most extravagant, flirtatious wink Senna had ever been the recipient of. She blushed to her hairline and got in the boat.
They floated off, the old man watching them, until the tall gra.s.ses swallowed him up and the only thing to be seen was the blue bowl of sky and the long, outstretched wings of a dark, silent cormorant that flew overhead.
Chapter 21.
”Ye gave him coin?”
At Finian's sharp tone, she looked down from the bird and nodded.
He snorted. ”Ye bribed him. That's something ye English like to do.”
She smiled loftily. ”And something you Irish like to do is a.s.sume you understand the meaning of things. 'Twasn't a bribe. And if you cannot see that, then I am at a loss for words.”
He snorted again. ”That'll be a rare day in h.e.l.l.”
”You snort a lot,” she pointed out.
He stared at her. ”Lie down.”
”Pardon?”
”An Irishman in an Irish curaigh curaigh floating down an Irish river with a sack of skins is unremarkable. Ye, remarkable. Lie down.” floating down an Irish river with a sack of skins is unremarkable. Ye, remarkable. Lie down.”
”How am I remarkable?” she asked, already lowering herself.
He just looked at her.
She did insist on disrobing somewhat, rather than lying in wet leather, to be baked like a cod in the sun. He grumbled but she was resolute, and in the end, he relented.
A brief, disagreeable delay ensued, wherein she hitched and yanked at various wet clothes, disrobing down to a thin linen s.h.i.+ft. Then she lay down in the bottom of the boat.