The bosun stopped his song and stared silently at the little wisp of a thing in front of him.
“Here you are, girly. ’S the end, I’m afraid.”
“What?” Clo turned her eyes from the cliffs to the bosun. “What do you mean? The shore is far over there. We’re still in the sea.”
It was true. The bosun had stopped his boat a good distance from land.
“Wellaway, it’s as far as I can go.” The bosun rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Not permitted to take you farther. And look, ’s not deep here.”
Clo peered into the water. Under its gray sheen, she thought she could make out a shimmering pebbly bottom.
“But I can’t swim,” she said, then blushed furiously. Clo, who was comfortable living in the shadows and who was not afraid of the dark, had never, not once in all her years of traipsing mountain and forest and moor and bog, ever immersed herself in water—except to sit in a shallow pool or large bucket to bathe. And this she did only infrequently.
“Nor I! But here it’s a walk; it’s not above yer head, girly, I promise. Walk right up to the island. Hold yer little parcel there on yer head. Water’s calm; you’ll have nothing to trip yer feet, and you’ll not go under.”
Clo looked at the bosun with an expression she would not have recognized in herself, but he saw that her eyes were desperate and pleading.
“Girly,” he said softly, standing in the boat. “I hate to do it. But I can’t take you back. It’s yer half passage. And”—he pulled her, wobbling, to her feet—“I’ve got to row myself back to Haros. Here.” He took the cheese parcel from her arms. “I’ll hold this. Now climb out over the edge—that’s it. I’ve got the balance there.…”
Clo, without being fully aware what she was doing, allowed herself to be lowered over the edge of the dinghy and into the water.
A sharp intake of breath. The cold, the cold! The cold was filled with panic and terror. The water came up to her chin, and she rose on her toes, desperate to keep her head above the water.
“No!” she cried. “No—it’s too deep! Too deep!”
“Ah, girly. Yer all right, yer all right. Here, hold yer parcel on yer head to keep it dry. That’s right, that’s right. There you are, now just walk ashore, a few minutes in the water is all.” The bosun sat down into the boat and picked up the oars.
“Don’t leave me!” The words burst from Clo; she had not thought to say them, but now that she had, she felt her entire being behind them. “Don’t leave me!”
She stared desperately at the man in the boat. His lank hair, his pebble mouth, his arms and chest, everything seemed to sag at once.
“I’m sorry, girly.” A pull on the oars. “I am.” Another. The boat was moving away. His face was as gray as the sea.
“My father!” Clo called after the dinghy. “My father!”
Five, six, seven strokes, the boat moved into the distance.
“My father!”
…
“Please!”
…
The sound of the oars died away.
CHAPTER THE SEVENTH
OF A PIPING AND A MURMURING
IN THE WATER, ON HER TOES, LITTLE WAVES SLIPPING AROUND her chin, Clo shivered. She could no longer see the bosun; he had disappeared into the line of roiling waves.
“Please,” she whispered again to the empty expanse. “Please.”
This could not be what she was meant to do.
She looked toward the island. The small figure, the tidesman, was still standing, immobile, at the end of the line of rocks. He seemed a rock himself.
Willing herself to walk forward, she felt the cold heaviness of the water pushing against her every step. Her feet, seemingly far, far beneath her, seemingly not her own, slipped again and again on the stones below.
She rose slowly out of the sea: her shoulders, her chest, her waist emerged. She took the cheese bundle from her head and clasped it in her arms. The tidesman—now she could begin to see his features, his leaden face, his craggy nose—stared blankly as she approached. Behind him, Clo saw with some relief, stretched a thin beach, a pebbly bottom to the cliffs that rose ominously above it.
“Tekcit!” the tidesman cried as she neared his rock. “Tekcit!”
Clo halted knee-deep in the sea. Frigid as the water was, the air felt even colder on her skin. Her teeth chattered uncontrollably. “Take it?” She looked at the craggy man.
“Tekcit!” he barked again, his voice flinty and sharp.
Though Clo saw his mouth move, his face seemed rigid. “I… What…” She shook her head, attempting to clear the confusion of cold. She had to get out of the water. Shivering, numb, she stumbled toward the shore. Collapsing on the dark rocks, she curled into herself for warmth.
The tidesman strode up to her, gesturing vigorously at her cheese bundle. “Tekcit!” Reaching down, he snatched the slip of half paffage from Clo’s fingers. Until Clo felt it being removed from her hand, she had forgotten she was still clutching it.
“Oh… but…”
Unfolding the damp document carefully, he bent his hooked nose above the crease and nodded sharply. He handed the paper back to her and turned away, waving over his shoulder at the cliffs. “O, go. No. No.”
“What? Go where?” Clo cried in dismay and confusion, but the stony figure was already stalking back to his post on the rocks. Clo looked from the man’s weather-beaten profile to the slip of paffage. “Oh…” The ink on the paper, she saw, had run and smeared. Though the phrase half paffage was still clear, everything else was illegible smudge. Except at the fold. Here the ink had pooled and shaped what looked like new letters. Soporta. Soporta? An inky swirl. It meant nothing.
Shivering, Clo worked frantically at the knots she had tied in the cloak. It fell from the cheese and the rag-wrapped painting, and she pulled the fabric, its scratchy warmth, tight around her. She sat, teeth still chattering, looking from water to cliff and cliff to water. She could see nowhere she might go, nor could she see the bosun’s boat anywhere in the sea.
The cloak under which she now huddled smelled faintly like home, faintly like her father. She sniffed deeply. There were the scents of woodsmoke and honey, of stew and bread, of warmth and comfort. And there was the scent of pine. And salt. And dark. And alone. And the awful odor of the cheese. She felt a sob rise in her throat.
“No,” she whispered fiercely. She stared hard at the wheel of cheese, her sack of turnips, and her father’s notebook crushed beneath them. “Always.” She gathered the things into her arms. “Always.”
Standing, she took a last look at the tidesman—he kept his face turned to the sea—and made her way across the beach. The wall of rock rose straight and menacing, a sheer gray face of stone. But drawing closer, she saw, hidden in the crags of the cliffs, stairs that rose sharply, crookedly, up and up and up.
Hugging the cheese, the notebook, the turnips, Clo began to climb. And climb. And climb. The stairs wound into cracks and fissures in the cliffs; the dark stone loomed above her.
She counted a hundred, then another, and another. The scent of cheese, uncloaked, was everywhere, and at every breath, she tasted its thick scent. Another hundred. She stopped to rest. Far beneath her, she could see the tidesman on his rock, the flat expanse of the gray sea, the distant line of crashing waves. She lifted her head, trying to find where the staircase ended.