The Riddle - Alison Croggon [58]
“The sea around Thorold has many moods,” he began. “Sometimes it is blue, sometimes green, sometimes yellow, sometimes gray, sometimes a blinding silver dazzle, but it is always beautiful, and always dangerous. One day it will tickle the toes of small children playing on the beaches, and the next it’ll erupt in a tempest of water and spume, dragging down trees and houses and goats from the lowlands.
“You see,” Owan continued, “the sea once loved the mountains. And she confessed her love to the mountain king, showing him her corals and her pearls and her beautiful foaming hair. The king laughed and said to her, Why should I come down to your dark, wet, weedy bed, when I love the sky, and the wind, and the cold nests of eagles? And the sea was humiliated and furious, and she returned to her palace beneath the waves.
“And ever since, she has hated Thorold. She eats up the cliffs until they collapse, and she calls up her tides until the feet of the king are flooded with fish and weed, and she summons wild storms to pull the drowned sailors down to her dark bed. But still, underneath her hatred, remains her love, and when she remembers that, she forgives the king his insult and is calm. And then there are the still days, when fishermen set their nets far out and take of her bounty of fish, and the landsfolk look out on her beauty and marvel.”
Owan knocked his pipe out against the railing, and all was silent for a moment, apart from the clink and creak of the sails against the wind. “Today,” he said, “she remembered her love.”
“I guess the moral is, never refuse the love of a powerful woman,” said Cadvan. “Eh, Maerad?” He stretched lazily and grinned at Maerad through the shadows. She thought involuntarily of Nerili, and flinched at his sally. She did not want to think about those inscrutable emotions.
“Maybe the moral is that it’s best not to love at all,” she answered stiffly, without looking at him. “It just causes trouble.”
Cadvan raised his eyebrows at Owan, but said nothing. Shortly afterward, Maerad retired to her hammock, and Owan unlashed the tiller, whistling. The wind was beginning to shift to the east. Cadvan, who was sleeping in the tiny cabin on deck, retired not much later; the two men were sharing the labor of sailing and Owan was taking the first shift. The little boat rode on through the night, a frail shell bearing its human cargo between the twin darknesses of the sea and the sky.
The following day, the wind continued to shift and strengthen, and a bank of dark clouds began to build on the northern horizon. The sea was now a dull, yellowish gray with choppy waves, and the wind had a bitter edge. Maerad’s sailing lessons were postponed; she sat, cold and bored, in the prow, as out of the way as she could get without going below decks, with her cloak wrapped tightly around her. They were still making decent time north toward Gent, Owan said, but he feared being driven off course and asked Cadvan for assistance. Maerad watched as Cadvan raised a wind into the red sail, pushing the White Owl face on into the rising squalls.
Now Maerad was very glad of Elenxi’s seasickness remedy because the boat had a most uncomfortable action, rising to the top of each foam-tipped wave and dropping with a thump into the trough. She felt nothing worse than a slight queasiness, whereas without it she knew she would have reached an abyss of misery. But even so, sailing today did not seem quite as much fun as it had the day before.
The weather steadily worsened all day until they were pushing through a driving rain and the wind was almost gale force. Toward evening, Maerad retreated to the tiny galley in the cabin and prepared a meal that was within her limited cooking skills: a thick soup made from dried peas. It made her feel less useless, since she was no help with the