Chapter 6 #2
Up close, the worst thing about it was not even its size, though it stretched so far that her eyes could not see the place where it ended it. It was the movement. The constant heaving, the sense that the whole thing breathed and shifted according to its mood.
Her fingers tightened on the edge of the cloak.
"First time on open water?" Ivar asked.
He had come to stand beside her without making any sound, which should not have been possible in a man of his size, yet somehow always was.
"Nay," she said automatically, and then, because there was no point in trying to preserve a lie he could clearly see through, she added, "Aye."
She did not look at him, but she could sense that his mouth had moved.
Before them, the birlinns sat low in the grey water, rising and dipping with a confidence that she found unsettling. The men moved around them with easy familiarity, coiling rope, checking tackle, stepping in and out of the shallows as though it was no stranger than crossing a courtyard.
Watching them ought to have reassured her. Instead, it only made her feel more keenly that she did not belong among people who treated the sea as a thing that could be managed.
"How dae we get in?" she asked.
"Here."
He had already moved toward the nearest birlinn.
The boat rocked lightly at the edge of the water as one of the men steadied it. Matilda looked at the narrow gap between shore and hull and considered, with complete seriousness, whether dignity might be preserved by refusing.
She drew breath, ready to announce that she could manage.
Ivar's hands closed around her waist before the first word left her mouth.
It happened so quickly she did not have time to object. One moment she was on the stones, the next the world shifted under her, and she was being set inside the birlinn with both hands on the rail and her pulse somewhere at the base of her throat.
The lift itself had been clean. Efficient. Effortless.
Which was precisely the problem.
He had not warned her. Had not strained. Had not seemed to think twice about taking hold of her and moving her where he wanted her.
She felt her cheeks burning at the thought of where his hands had been, and the fact that unconsciously, she would have liked the moment to linger.
Then, in one single easy motion, he was in after her with one boot on the rail, one hand to the mast, and his body settling into the kind of balance that suggested he belonged more naturally to moving decks than to dry land.
She realized she was still clutching the rail with both hands and loosened her grip slowly, one finger at a time.
"Ye can hold it," he muttered, without looking at her. "Nay shame in it."
"I'm nae holding it." She attempted to sound indignant.
"Aye." A pause. "Ye're nae holding it very tightly at all."
He was watching the water ahead, and the corner of his mouth was doing the thing again.
"Ye're insufferable on land," she said. "Are ye worse on the water?"
"Considerably," he smirked, before nodding to Torvald, who yelled an order.
The men shoved off, and the birlinn scraped over the stones with a rough, grating sound before the oars bit the water together. The change was immediate and deeply unpleasant. The shore, which had a moment before existed under her feet with all the steadiness of the known world, began to slip away.
The beach pulled back first, then the path leading up from it, then the dark lines of the castle and the hills beyond. Nothing dramatic happened, yet the feeling of leaving still landed with terrible force. The land simply receded, as if it had agreed too easily to let her go.
She kept her eyes on it until the details blurred into shape and distance. Then she forced herself to turn toward Mull.
The island lay ahead, dark against the water, growing by such small degrees that it scarcely seemed to move at all. Behind her, everything she had known was shrinking. Ahead was a place she had never seen, and a life she had not chosen. She fixed her eyes on the island.
This is only water. Water is merely the space between one shore and another. People cross seas every day without dying of fear or humiliation.
She told herself the words very firmly, but then the birlinn shifted beneath her feet.
She discovered almost at once that reason had very little power over motion.
The heave of the boat came up through her boots and settled low in her stomach with a patient, horrible consistency.
The horizon tilted, righted itself, and tilted again.
She took a breath and then another, gripped the rail she was definitely not gripping, and kept her face composed out of sheer defiance.
The wind came at her hard off the water, sharp enough to sting her eyes.
Then, almost without her noticing how, it lessened.
Ivar had stepped in behind her and slightly to the left, placing himself between her and the worst of it.
He did not touch her immediately. He only moved close enough that the force of the wind broke against him instead of her, and it was only then that she realized how exposed she had felt until he did.
His chest hovered just behind her back, near enough that she could feel the heat of him even through wool and damp air.
When he reached past her, one arm on either side, and adjusted her hands on the rail, his fingers closed around hers for a moment before shifting them wider apart.
The movement steadied her more than she wanted to admit.
"Look at Mull," he said, his voice low near her ear. "Nae the water. Just the island."
"I was looking at the island."
"Nay," he said. "Ye were staring at the sea as if stubbornness might tame it."
She turned her head slightly, forcing herself to find humor. "And did it seem persuaded?"
His answer came close enough that she felt it before she quite heard it. "Nae especially."
That should not have warmed her as much as it did.
She fixed her eyes on Mull again. Dark hills. A line of shore. Something solid.
"Better?" he asked.
"A little," she said.
He did not move away.
That was what was truly difficult now. The awareness of him on all sides of her, without quite touching.
His arms braced on the rail, his warmth cutting through the cold, the sense that if she leaned back even the smallest amount, she would discover exactly how firm his chest was and how little space there really was between them.
It was absurd that she should notice such things while trying not to disgrace herself on a boat, and more absurd still that noticing them seemed, in some strange way, to help.
Torvald appeared at her other side, holding a piece of dried fish.
"Nay," she shook her head firmly.
"It helps," Torvald said.
She glared at the object he was holding out to her. "It daesnae look like it will help."
"It will. Take it."
She took it with reluctance. The first bite was bearable. The second was much less so. By the third, the taste and the movement of the boat had combined into something that felt distinctly hostile, and she lowered the fish before matters became worse.
Torvald, to his credit, did not look triumphant. "Ye dinnae have tae finish it."
"I'm fine."
"Aye," Ivar said from behind her, "ye look wonderfully at ease."
She turned, with the intention to glare at him, and immediately regretted it because he was too close.
Her face ended much nearer his than she found comfortable.
It was now close enough that she could feel the warmth of his breath despite the wind.
Close enough that when his eyes dropped briefly to her mouth, the sea disappeared for one disorienting second.
Torvald glanced between them and said, with remarkable tactlessness, "I can come back later."
"Nay," Matilda said.
"Aye," said Ivar at the same time.
Torvald's brows rose. "Well. That's interesting."
"Go away, Torvald," Ivar said.
He took the fish back with dignity. "As ye wish. I'll leave ye tae the weather and whatever this is."
He moved off before she could think of a retort sharp enough to kill him.
She faced forward at once. "Islanders are intolerably smug about boats."
"Islanders survive on smugness, salt, and repetition."
"Mainlanders survive on manners, wine, and floors that dinnae move beneath them."
"And how are those advantages servin' ye just now?"
A laugh escaped her before she could stop it. Half incredulous, half unwilling.
Behind her, she felt––rather than saw––his satisfaction. "There it is."
"What?"
"Proof that I can be amusing," He stated drily.
"I laughed at the situation, nae at ye."
"That seems ungrateful, given that I am currently protectin' ye from wind, drowning, and despair."
She turned her head enough to let him see her expression. "Ye are protectin' me from none of those things."
"From the wind, unquestionably."
"Only because ye're too large tae dae otherwise."
"Ah," he said. "So now me size is useful. It could be useful in a lot of other instances also."
He clearly intended for her to use her imagination in that instance, and she hated how easily that moved into dangerous territory. She cleared her throat. "Nae useful. Unavoidable."
His laugh this time was low and real, and it immediately filled the air between them with even more tension.
Torvald reappeared with a waterskin and handed it over. "Drink. Before the pair of ye freeze out here or something."
She took it gratefully, if only because it gave her something to do besides being overly aware of the growing tension between them. The water helped. Or perhaps enough time had passed that her body had decided not to revolt after all.
Either way, the crossing became marginally less miserable, and the horizon steadied into something she could tolerate.
When she lowered the skin, she caught a quick look between Torvald and Ivar over her head. It was the sort of look shared by two people who had known one another for so long they could communicate without speech.
"How long have ye served him?" she asked Torvald.
"Since we were lads."
"Long enough to ken the fish is terrible," Ivar said.
Torvald nodded gravely. "The fish has always been terrible. He refuses to admit it because he is too proud."
"I've nay pride in the fish."
"Then what possible reason remains?"
Matilda glanced over her shoulder. "Stubbornness, I assume."
"That," Torvald said, "is always a safe guess with him."
He moved off again, and the boat settled back into the rhythm of oars and water and wind.
She looked out at Mull, closer now, it’s dark hills resolving into something she could read.
"How much longer?" she said.
"An hour. Maybe less."
Matilda nodded and faced forward, hands on the rail, and let the crossing do what it was going to do. The boat rocked then, enough to shift her balance, and his hand came to her waist to steady her. It should have been nothing. A practical touch. Brief. Necessary.
Instead, she felt every aspect of it.
The firmness of his grip. The warmth of his palm through the layers between them. The slow, deliberate way his thumb moved once against her side before his hand eased away, leaving behind the distinct and maddening impression that he had done it on purpose.
She did not turn around. She did not trust herself to.
Mull had grown larger while she was not paying proper attention. Its shore had begun to separate into detail, stone and slope and the suggestion of a life waiting on the other side. Somewhere on that island stood a castle she had never seen. Somewhere behind her lay the shore that had let her go.
Ivar remained close behind, his chest still just shy of her back, his arms still on either side of hers, the wind still forced to go around them both.
She was aware of every place they nearly touched.
More troubling still, she was no longer entirely certain she wanted him to move.