The pebble mouth lifted a bit, then collapsed. “Ah, but you are. Full passage, well, not much we can do for that, but half, well, I can at least make this last part a mite easier on you, girly. For I’d a daughter once, no slip was she, but I’d not let her row alone here if I’d a say in it.” His mouth slumped more as he nodded toward the front of the ship. “An’ that there, girly, that’s Haros’s signal fer you now, I’m afraid.”
Clo glanced toward the bow, where a lantern was now swinging in the dark.
Beside her, the bosun muttered under his breath, “Yes, yes, I see you, old man.” Untying a final knot, he gestured to the dinghy he now held aloft with rope and pulley. “Right then, girly, in you go.”
Clo, feeling her own gray sea of doubt and fear roiling within her, hesitated. “But where are we going? I don’t know where we’re going.”
“Wellaway, girly, it’s the only place a half passage goes. The island, it’s a mite, a tip, maybe, better’n full. Neither here nor there. Take it an’ be glad. But if you don’t go now, we’ll lose our chance. See Haros still swinging that light? He’s taken us all he can, and he’s not the patient sort, so if you want yer half passage, an’ you think yer father’s got a half passage comin’ too, go, girly. Go now. Haros can keep the boat here just so long.”
Clo opened her mouth to protest again, but the bosun shook his head. “If we delay, I cannot take you. Yer ticket will not matter. You’ll be full passage, and there’s no return for that.”
Clo glanced from Haros’s light to the the bosun offering his hand to help her into the dinghy. Her mind raced. Her father had given her the ticket. He’d know where to find her. She did not want to go, not a single bone in her body wanted to go, but she would have to.
Clo, wall-jumper, biscuit-nibbler, father-seeker, now forced herself to clamber over the side of the boat and into the dinghy. It was not the one she had arrived in; it was smaller, with only a single bench for the rower. It swung wildly. Her heart swung with its motion.
“On th’ floor now, better t’ be on th’ floor, there you go, an’ here’s yer things, hold tight to them, all right, then.” Still holding to the ropes, he heaved himself into the dinghy and settled himself on the bench. “That’s it. Now”—he raised his hand in the direction of the flashing lantern and began lowering the boat into the waves below—“Don’t mind the wet or the waves. A bit of time is all it is an’—ach!” He stopped the dinghy’s descent. “I’d nearly fergot. An’ smashed to bits we’d be! Here!” With one hand pulling hard against the ropes, he reached beneath his jerkin and removed a slip of paper. Clo recognized it as the half paffage. He shoved it at her. “Take it. Take it! Make sure you hold it—don’t let the wind or waves—”
“What?” cried Clo. There, so close now to the churning water, she could hear only the crashing voice of the sea.
“Don’t let the wind or waves rip it from yer hand!” the bosun shouted as the little dinghy plunged into the waves. “Hold tight now, hold tight, girly!”
The little boat, a speck on the surface of the sea, a speck on the waves that rose and crashed beneath and above and around it, was lifted and thrown and tossed and whirled into what Clo thought must surely be oblivion.
CHAPTER THE SIXTH
IN WHICH THE PEBBLE-MOUTHED MAN IS SORRIER STILL
CLINGING TO HER WOOL-WRAPPED WHEEL OF CHEESE AND the slip of half paffage, Clo pressed herself against the bottom of the boat. Waves, cold, a cold so deep it seemed unearthly, broke over the dinghy again and again. Clo felt herself drenched through, and in the stuporous cold and in the violent tossing of the boat, she thought she surely must be already at the bottom of the sea. She must be drowning. How could this not be drowning? But in flashes, she saw they were still in air, upon the waves. The bosun, pulling hard on the oars, rowed them up the gray mountains of water and guided them down their frothing cliffs. Between waves, she thought she glimpsed his line of pebbles open in a wide, delirious grin, thought she heard him howling out a song, but the water crashed again and again, and she could hear nothing but its roaring.
She was not drowning. Was she breathing? She braced herself against the boards. She clung to her cheese. She shivered and tasted salt. Her eyes were blurred by water and wind. Over and over the boat climbed or was cast up the walls of water and was plunged into its seething ravines.
And then suddenly, plummeting down one last wave, pitching over a few last breakers, they were through. They had found the edge of the fog, the edge of the storming sea. The calm was immediate. Behind them, the water continued breaking and churning, but ahead of them, the sea stretched into a flat, rippling gray expanse.
“Ah, there we are. All right, girly? I told you that’s a fearsome thing. Not fit for any man. Now, I’ve not had to row that in a good many ages—not so many half passages—but that, that’s the test of any boatman. And a test of yer nerves, too, eh?” The bosun gave Clo a crooked smile. “The rest is easy going.”
Clo, still shaken, nodded. She sat up carefully, looking with horror at the waves they had just come through. She felt the word sea in her mouth and understood the depth and violence of water that is full of salt and has no edge.
The bosun, far from looking weary, appeared younger, reinvigorated. Even his teeth, grinning, looked more like teeth than pebbles. “An’ there, well, there’s yer port.”
Clo whirled around. Dead ahead was an island. No, not so much an island as a cliff rising straight out of the water—stone, steep, straight cliffs of stone. No trees, no green grew anywhere on its ledges; its gray shape was simply darker than the sea and sky surrounding it.
“Ach, an’ there’s the same tidesman. Never leaves, that one. See ’im standing there?” He gestured with his chin.
Following his nod, Clo saw a small figure standing at the edge of a line of stones that extended out into the sea. He was dwarfed by the towering cliffs behind him.
How could this be her destination? Stomach sinking, Clo scanned the waters. Behind her, the walls of waves. Ahead, the island of cliff and stone. And beyond, nothing. Nothing. The gray water. The gray sky.
“Do you sing, girly?”
Clo shook her head, incredulous the bosun could even think of music in this bleak place.
“A bit o’ music is good for th’ travelin’. Good for passin’ th’ time.”
The bosun rowed ahead, singing in rhythm with the strokes of the oars:
Merrily, merrily rowed he on
across the frothing sea;
the waves did toss his little boat
as on and on rowed he.
He rowed until his back grew stiff
and his arms could row no more,
but there at last before the bow
he saw a distant shore.
The shore he reached was still and dark,
as dark as dark might be;
no light or wind or sound or shade
could he hear or see.
“So I’ll sleep,” the man did say,
“sleep here on this bleak shore,”
and down he laid his heavy head
and slept forevermore.
Clo, shivering, half listening, watched the cliffs draw ever nearer. Approach changed nothing: nothing grew on those jagged walls. Walls, thought Clo. Walls that could not be climbed or jumped. The little figure at the base, the tidesman, did not move. The boat, without waves to jostle it, slipped easily over the water. So smoothly did they glide across the expanse that Clo did not notice when they finally floated to a stop.