The wind picked up to a high pitched scree and still Richard stood there, arms locked to his sides, hands in fists as if he were holding on for dear life. Jimmy had no idea what he thought he was doing, and the pitching didn’t seem to be letting up. Richard just stood there, and Jimmy got more and more worried with every tick. It wasn’t until almost a half stan later that Jimmy focused enough to realize that the power barge was still in the same relative position out the port side glass.
Either the anchors had fetched up on something on the bottom, or the power barge was being blown back at the same rate. Jimmy leaned forward to see that the fuel barge was also still where it had been when Richard went up to the bow and started his “I’m bolted down” act.
Except, Jimmy knew, it wasn’t an act. He thought he caught a faint scent of wood smoke. It was gone as soon as he was aware of it, a wisp in the breeze. The hairs on his arms stood up
For the next stan, Jimmy clung to the couch. The sound of the wind rose in pitch even more and kept blowing. Jimmy marveled at Harve’s ability to sleep through it, and glanced over at where he lay curled up on the other sofa. Even as the barge lifted, tilting back against each wave front, hovered at the crest for a breathless heartbeat, and tilted forward again, sliding down to splash into the trough at the bottom, and digging into the foot of the next one, the wave breaking on the blunt prow and slamming the glass only a meter in front of Richard’s face, before rising with a shudder to repeat the cycle again. Harve just lay there, rolling back against the cushions as they pitched up and shifting only slightly forward as they pitched forward, his curled legs keeping him from rolling off the couch.
Jimmy tried to peer out of the windows, but it was very dark outside. The waves looked like dim mountains sliding by in the night, when they weren’t breaking against the glass. As the hammering continued, Jimmy began to wonder if the framework would hold. He was pretty sure the glass was solid, but he couldn’t help thinking about what would happen if one of the huge panes slammed through the frame under the weight of the heavy green water that battered the bow each time they bottomed in the trough of the wave.
For a stan, nothing else happened. Wave after wave. The screaming wind. Harve sleeping soundly on the other couch. Richard rooted to the deck, unmoving. Not even lifting his head to look at the waves as they crashed at him. Jimmy’s fear slowly melted as the stan wore on. The barge appeared to be holding together against the pounding. He couldn’t be sure if the barge was still drifting backwards or not because he couldn’t see anything beyond the dark glass anymore, except for an occasional flash of swirling green water as it sluiced off the bows and around the sides of the deck house. Harve slept on.
Two tense, exhausting stans later, the storm blew over, almost as suddenly as it came. Jimmy noticed the change in the sounds first. The wind’s scream sounded a little less intense. Even as they continued the roller coaster ride up one side and smashing down on the other, the screech reduced in pitch until after only a few dozen waves, it fell to a moan. The waves, without the wind behind them, lost some of their urgency. It took another stan before the cloud deck broke enough to let Jimmy see the night sky through the glass. The bow of the barge stopped digging into the following waves and the violence of the up and down movement began to subside.
Harve woke and sat up, yawning and stretching, scratching behind his ear and blinking blearily at Jimmy and Richard, and finally out at the heaving sea beyond. He nodded as if to himself and rose, a bit unsteadily on the pitching deck, and went into the galley. Jimmy felt suddenly like he was in some odd play, a kind of movie where he was the only one who could see the danger all around, and everybody else was walking in some other reality.
The wind had died enough that Jimmy could hear the sharp metal clinking of the kettle going onto the burner and a few ticks later, the sound of a spoon against the heavy china mugs. The high, clinking cutting through the moaning of the wind in a way that voices probably wouldn’t. In a few more moments Harve returned with three mugs of tea, the pungent aroma of the leaf smelling of land, cut by a bit of sweet honey. Wordlessly, Harve handed a mug to Jimmy. Jimmy had to uncramp his fists from where he’d been clutching the cushions under him and it took a moment or two for him to get enough feeling back in them to be able to reliably take the mug. Harve waited patiently, a faint grin on his face, swaying on the deck to keep his balance against the pitch.
Jimmy got his hands wrapped around the mug and the shocking warmth of the mug made him realize how cold it was in the mess deck. The temperature had dropped but in the literal heat of his terror he hadn’t noticed.
With only two mugs to balance, Harve made his way to where Richard stood and held out a mug to him. As Jimmy watched, Richard returned from where ever he he’d been. It was if he’d been some kind of statue–a fitting on the deck like a cleat or bollard–and no more alive. In the next heartbeat, he was there and reaching for the hot mug, suddenly not merely there and alive but somehow more than there. Richard took the mug with a grateful smile to Harve and sipped the hot, sweet tea, warming his hands on the glass and his face in the steam. Jimmy watched Richard look up and out across the sea, scanning from left to right slowly then back again. Harve stood with him, not speaking, although the howl of the wind had reduced enough that they might be able to hear each other speak. Richard looked satisfied with whatever his survey had revealed to him. He turned and walked back to the couch, Harve trailing like a collie at heel.
Richard plopped down on the couch next to Jimmy and Harve returned to his station across from them. Jimmy could see the exhaustion written large across the shaman’s frame in the way he leaned over his tea. Outside, the wind’s racketing continued to die down and the up and down pitching had smoothed to something more like large rollers. Jimmy wasn’t sure when the rain had stopped but he noted it only as a hole in the cacophony as it all faded down to sometime akin to normal. Glancing at Richard out of the corner of his eye, Jimmy wondered what normal might really consist of.
Richard sipped his tea, and smiled. “I think we’re okay now.” His voice louder and hoarser than Jimmy expected against the background of the fading storm.
Jimmy sipped his own tea and didn’t answer. After that, he wasn’t sure what he could answer.
Harve suggested, “Mr. Krugg? You look like you could use some sleep. The boats’ll be back in the morning and you’ll wanna be ready for them.”
Richard blinked, settling himself a bit more in reality, and nodded into his mug. “That’s a good idea, Harve. I think I’ll get some sleep.” He stood and walked down the passageway toward the bunk room, stopping at the galley to drop off his cup.
Jimmy just watched him, still too drained to move. Still too stunned by the experience. He noticed Harve observing him. “How could you sleep through that?”
“Why not? It was just a little storm.”
“We coulda died.”
“Yeah? How would my bein’ awake have helped?” Harve asked, his grin not fading.
Jimmy chuckled at that. “I guess it wouldn’t have, but between the noise and the thrashing around, I couldn’t have done it.”
“Mr. Krugg was on the job,” he said, as if that answered everything.
The more Jimmy thought about it, maybe it did.
“Why don’t you get some sleep, too, Mr. P,” Harve said. “I’ll keep watch.” His eyes gleamed in the faint light from the galley.
Jimmy looked out across the calming ocean. The starlight was enough to illuminate the rolling surface. The power barge was missing from the view to port and he wondered idly, almost numbly, where it could be. He hoped it wasn’t on the seamount. The fuel barge was still where he’d seen it last, more or less. He couldn’t be sure. His eyes burned and the adrenalin slowly leeched out of his blood stream, leaving him a bit sick to his stomach. He nodded at Harve. “I think I will.”
“Sleep well, Mr. P. Sleep well.”
Jimmy crawled into a bunk and dreamed an odd dream of fleecy storm cloud
s been butted by some kind of ram with black horns and huge shoulders. The ram stood, guarding something... One of those nebulous dream somethings that you know are there, but can’t quite see. The fleecy cloud would come to close and the ram would lunge once and butt it with his curved black horns. It didn’t disappear, exactly, but was broken up, it’s power diffused. But storm clouds weren’t fleecy, they were black or gray as iron, and these clouds didn’t seem to mind being fleecy white. The clouds kept coming and the ram kept butting, until a bang on the hull woke him with a start.
The sun streamed in. He heard voices down the passage and smelled bacon and coffee. He clambered out of the tangled sheets, stopped at the head to do the needful and rinse his face, slicking back his bed-tossed hair with wet hands.
A couple of the boats lay moored alongside the dormitory barge and their crews were enjoying a hot meal, courtesy of Harve’s talent in the galley. When Harve saw Jimmy emerge, he waved a spatula in friendly salute and offered a plate.
Jimmy shook his head. “Not just yet, Harve. Thanks. I need to wake up a bit.” He pulled a mug from the rack and helped himself to a cup of coffee from the big urn bolted to the counter.
The dragger crews were comparing notes on the long voyage to the south and back in boisterous voices. He wasn’t tracking too well yet, but they were in high spirits and anxious to get back to work.
Jimmy’s peeda vibrated and he pulled it out of his pocket. It was a message from Tony.
He grunted. “Good news, crews. We’re on track to make quota with next week’s landings. And we got a month left to go.”
They stopped briefly to listen and then cheer.
“That’s good news, Mr. P,” Harve said from the galley. “Will we be packing up here?”
Jimmy considered that. He still didn’t know what happened to the other barges in the fleet, nor the fates of the other draggers. “Depends, Harve. I need to see what we got left.”
He stepped up to the glass on the port side and looked to the south. He could see more of the boats heading in out on the horizon, but there was nothing where he’d last seen the power barge.
He stepped out of the door on the port side and found Richard standing there looking aft. Jimmy went to join him and looked back to where he was staring. Off in the distance to the east, he saw the power barge and beyond it, a couple of shapes that he didn’t quite recognize until his eyes adjusted to the morning light. Apparently the empty barges had taken on enough water to almost submerge. They would be salvageable with a little pump work. The processing plant barges were missing, though and Jimmy walked aft to stand at the after rail to get a full view of the eastern horizon.
“They’re gone,” Richard said behind him.
“Sunk?” Jimmy asked before he could stop himself.
“I don’t think so. I think they got blown off the mount. We need to check the radar but I suspect you’ll find them a couple hundred kilometers off in that direction somewhere.” He pointed off to the east. “A couple of the draggers should be able to bring ’em back. We’ll be back online in a day or so.”
They stood there, looking at the open ocean, not talking. The protection of the breakwater was gone, and the rollers rocked the barge more than before, but it wasn’t problematic.
“We’re gonna make the landings quotas,” Jimmy said.
Richard nodded. “Yes. I’ve been following them on the ’Net. We’ll be in bonus territory by the time we pack up and tow this all in.”
Jimmy sipped his coffee and smelled the fresh morning air.
In the end, he had to ask. “What did you do last night?”
Richard turned and looked at Jimmy. A smile, tired but filled with amusement and even wonder, slowly grew across his face. “I listened to the world.”
Chapter Forty-Seven
Callum’s Cove
December 4, 2305
Otto leaned down and picked up the bit of shell. He held it up to the light then showed it to his father. “Look at how purple that is.”
Richard leaned over to look. “They don’t get much richer colored than that.”
Otto slipped it into his gather bag and pulled his mitten back on. He straightened up and they continued their stroll down the half frozen, wind-swept sand.
“Father?” he asked. “When did you realize you were a shaman?”
They walked along a while in silence. Otto knew it wasn’t a simple question and waited patiently for the answer.
They walked a good ten meters down the beach before he answered. “When your grandfather died, I was automatically the shaman.”
“Son of the shaman is the shaman,” Otto said, stooping to pick up a bit of wood that proved to be just a bit of wood.
“Yes.” Richard’s poncho flapped in the wind as he kicked at pile of driftwood to see if there were any smaller pieces in it that were interesting.
They walked a bit further. Richard glanced at Otto. “When did you realize I was a shaman?”
Otto examined a gnarled stick with a knot on one end. “When they were flying you in from the boat. The box fish did something to you.”
Richard laughed. “Yes, well, it almost killed me.”
“Yes, but it didn’t.”
They walked on down the beach, the morning sun climbing higher in the sky, a bitter southwest wind blowing in off the water.
Richard asked, “So, when did you realize you were a shaman?”
Otto thought back, tracing the thread of time like a scent of smoke on the wind, back through the fall. Before the Crabby Patty. “I think it was when I saw one of your carvings and threw up.”
Richard’s laugh disappeared into the wind. “Yes, well, I haven’t carved the head off anything lately, have I?”
Otto chuckled and reached down to pick up a nice bit of driftwood that looked like it had something in it, but he couldn’t quite see it. He brushed it off, held it up, shook his head and slipped it into his bag anyway. “No, Father, not in a long time.”
After a few more meters Otto asked, “Were you scared?”
Richard stopped and thought. “No. I should have been, but ... no.”
Otto digested that for a time before asking, “But you could have died out there. They say you saved the dorm barge with magic, you know.”
Pausing to pry a chunk of driftwood up out of the sand, brush it off, and slip it into his own bag, Richard said, “Yes, they say that.” He walked a few steps on down the beach before adding. “And I could have died, but it didn’t matter.”
“Why did you go?” Otto asked a while later.
“It was where I was supposed to be. I don’t know how I know that, but ...” he shrugged.
“Did you save the barge through magic?”
Richard paused in his walking to consider that seriously. “I don’t know. I went out there to listen to the world. We were out there almost all summer long, right through the end of the fall season. I got a lot of chances to listen out there.”
“Yeah,” Otto said. “I keep listening, but I’m not sure what I’m hearing.”
Richard chuckled. “Yanno, your grandfather and I used to walk this beach and he’d try to tell me what it meant to be a shaman. I always got so frustrated when he’d never say what it is that shamans do.”
Otto laughed. “I think I can relate to that.”
They’d reached the arc of stones and each sat on a rock to rest a bit and decide whether they wanted to keep going or turn back. “So, what did you do out there that night?”
Richard looked out to sea, his focused all the way to the horizon, as if he could see over it and even back in time. “I just listened to the world,” he said at last.
Otto nodded as if that were enough explanation.
They stood up and stretched a little, each looking down the beach, but coming to the unspoken agreement that walking toward a cup of hot tea was a better idea than walking away from it.
“Something else happened that night, though, didn’t it?” Otto asked as they start
ed the long trudge back to the cottage, and Rachel, and hot tea.
Richard’s face took on an unexpected light as he remembered back. He looked over at his son, striding the beach with his staff, plucking shell and wood from the beach. He looked beyond him and out to where the sea slapped onto the smooth sand shore, and beyond it still to the crystalline horizon, a-shimmer in the frozen sunlight. “Yes,” he said, and looked down to where Otto looked up at him expectedly. “I heard it.”
Otto grinned broadly.
Together they turned to continue the hike back home. Otto’s staff rattled in the wind off the water and Richard’s embroidered red poncho flapped a counterpoint. Occasionally, one or the other would stoop and pick up a bit of something from the sand. Sometimes one would show the other. Sometimes they’d just slip it into a bag, or toss it aside to wait for the next tide. They were in no hurry, with nothing more important to do than listen to the world.
Other Works
Books in the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper Series
Trader Tales
Quarter Share
Half Share
Full Share
Double Share
Captain’s Share
Owner’s Share
Shaman Tales
South Coast
Cape Grace**
Fantasy Books by Nathan Lowell
Ravenwood
Zypheria’s Call
The Hermit of Lammas Wood
South Coast (Shaman's Tales From The Golden Age Of The Solar Clipper Book 1) Page 29
