Ship of Magic

His mother sighed out, as if she had been holding her breath. “Well, if that's settled, then let's go home.” Her voice broke unexpectedly on that last word, and fresh tears spilled down her cheeks. “Oh, my father,” she said softly, as if rebuking the dead man. Kyle patted her hand where it rested on his arm and escorted her from the ship. Wintrow followed more slowly with his grandmother. His younger siblings scrambled impatiently past them and hurried ahead to the carriage.

His grandmother moved so slowly, he thought she was excessively weary until she began speaking. Then he realized she had deliberately delayed to have a moment of privacy with him. Her voice was lowered, pitched for his ears alone.

“It all seemed strange and foreign to you earlier today, Wintrow. Yet just now, you spoke as a Vestrit, and I believe I saw your grandfather in your face. The ship reaches for you.”

“Grandmother, I fear I have no idea what you are talking about,” he confessed quietly.

“Don't you?” She halted their slow stroll and he turned to face her. Small but straight, she looked up into his face. “You say you don't, but I see otherwise,” she said after a moment. “If you did not already know it yourself, in your heart, you could not have spoken up for the ship the way you did. You'll come to it, Wintrow. You'll come round to it in time, no fear.”

He felt a tightening of foreboding. He wished he were going home with them tonight, and that he could sit down with his father and mother and speak plainly. Obviously they had discussed him. He did not know what they had been talking about, but he felt threatened by it. Then he sternly reminded himself to avoid pre-judgment. His grandmother said no more and he assisted her down the gangplank and then handed her up into the waiting carriage. All the others were already within.

“Thank you, Wintrow,” she told him gravely, and “You're welcome,” he replied, but uncomfortably, for he suspected she thanked him for more than walking her to the carriage. He wondered briefly whether he would truly welcome giving her whatever it was she assumed. He stood alone as the driver chupped to his horses and drove them off, their hooves thudding hollowly on the wooden planks of the docks. After they had gone, he lingered for a time, seeking the quiet of the night.

In truth, it was not quiet at all. Neither Bingtown proper nor the docks ever truly slept. Across the curve of the harbor, he could see the lights and hear the distant sounds of the night market. A trick of the wind brought him a brief gust of music, pipes and wrist-bells. A wedding, perhaps, with dancing. Closer to hand, the tarry torches bracketed to the dock supports provided widely spaced circles of fitful light. The waves sloshed rhythmically against the pilings beneath the docks, and the tethered boats rubbed and creaked in their slips. They were like great wooden animals, he thought, and then a shiver walked up his spine as he recalled the liveship's awareness. Neither animal nor wooden ship, he realized, but some unholy mix and wondered how he could have volunteered to spend the night aboard her.

As he walked down the docks to where Vivacia was tied, the dancing torch-light and moving water combined to confuse his vision and make every step uncertain. By the time he reached the ship, the weariness of the day had caught up with him.

“Oh, there you are!”

He startled at the ship's greeting, then recovered. “I told you I would come back,” he reminded her. It seemed strange to stand on the docks and look up at her. The torchlight moved strangely over her, for though her features were human, the light reflected from her skin as it did from wood. From this vantage, it was markedly more obvious that she was substantially larger than life. Her ample bared breasts were more obvious from this point of view as well. Wintrow found himself avoiding looking at them, and thus uncomfortable about meeting her eyes as well. A wooden ship, he tried to remind himself. She's a wooden ship. But in the gloom as she smiled down on him, she seemed more like a young woman leaning alluringly from a window. It was ridiculous.

“Aren't you coming aboard?” she asked him, smiling.

“Of course,” he replied. “I'll be with you in a moment.”