Galen breathed. Lucy might be crying. He couldn’t tell in the rain. They passed under the span of the giant bridge. The unstill open sea stretched before them into the night. But there were still the stern waves of the giant ship. Galen was ready. Lucy turned the bow slightly into the stern waves. The sea was a mass of roiling currents as the stern waves countered the rolling seas of the storm. The turmoil waited to capsize them. He raced back to help Lucy pull on the wheel, both of them leaning back and heaving. Waves slapped their stern quarter. Water rolled over the boat. But they held to the wheel.
The boat came around and headed out to sea. He trimmed the sails again. Weariness had seeped into his bones along with the cold salt water. He felt apart from himself. The bridge and the city and the other ship faded behind them. It was only wind and sea out here, and through his weariness, or because of it, he could feel the swell of powerful water surging under him and the breath of the gods in their sails. It filled him with peace in the middle of the choppy midnight ocean. He sipped from the strength of wind and water until it filled his chest. And there, underneath, he felt a scraping deep down in the earth, the pressure building under the seabed. Tomorrow, it whispered. Tomorrow will the world right itself and become true again.
Galen listened and heard it clearly through the silence inside himself, in spite of the wind and the creak of the boat.
When he came to himself, they were out to sea.
“South!” he yelled to Lucy, and saw her shove against the wheel spokes. Poor Lucy.
But it was decided now. They would go where they must go. South. He saw in his mind’s eyes a quiet bay, south facing, smaller and shallower by far than the huge body of water they had left.
He set the sails. They would not need changing now. Scrambling back to Lucy, he took the wheel. “I sail now, Lucy. I know where we must go.”
She looked up at him, her pale cheeks wet, her lashes spiked together. She scanned his face. And then she let him have the wheel. “The wheel works opposite of a tiller I’ll tend the sails.”
He nodded. He had already figured that out.
“Ja.” But the sails would not need tending. The boat would run before the steady wind out here, south to the bay he saw in his mind. That felt right.
It must be two o’clock in the morning, Lucy thought through a haze of fatigue. They eased into the south-facing curve of Half Moon Bay up behind Pillar Point where they were protected from the wind by the curving spit of land. All Lucy had to do in the last couple of hours was sit on the windward side of the boat, though what her weight could do for such a big boat was doubtful. Galen sailed the Camelot like he was born to it. He knew how to keep a boat straight in the following wind, no mean feat as well she knew. They had gone faster than she had ever sailed before. It was frightening but also exciting now that the treacherous currents of the Gate were past and they’d narrowly avoided that tanker. God, but that was close. Thanks be to whomever Galen prayed in those last moments. Only divine intervention could have saved them.
The wind was dying, almost as though it had blown them to safe harbor and done its job. The rain only spit fitfully. A cluster of lights showed along the shoreline across from the cove.
“We anchor here,” Galen said.
“There’s probably a marina near the town,” she said. Oops. “Bad idea.” Showing up in a marina where people could identify them or their boat would be stupid.
“We anchor here,” he repeated.
She nodded. They took down the small weather mainsail and stowed it. They furled the jib. Lucy’s limbs moved sluggishly, as though disconnected from her will. They were about a half a mile from shore, she figured, maybe less. She hoped the Camelot had enough anchor line. They needed five to seven times the depth. Galen loosened the anchor winch and let it out. It reeled off for a long time. She started the engine and backed down on it at “slow” to set it, then nodded to Galen to release some more line. He leaned over the side to feel the line. She didn’t have to tell him you could feel whether the anchor was just bumping along the bottom through the line. Embarrassing that she’d not had faith in his assertion that he could sail. He was way better than she was, and on a strange boat, too. When he was satisfied, he straightened and looked around at where she’d been stowing the mainsail and furling the jib.
He nodded once. “We go under, Lucy.”
She had never heard anything so welcome in her life. She thought briefly of lighting the lights on the top of the mast that told other boats there was a craft anchored there in the dark and then decided against it. Better run the small risk of getting rammed in this out-of-the-way anchorage than reveal their location to prying eyes.
Vandal greeted them with eager whines. She’d forgotten about him totally. The poor thing had probably gotten tossed about pretty badly. She stumbled around and lighted the lanterns in the salon. The boat was still rocking. She’d never tried to sleep in an open mooring like this. She checked the floor. Not a seasick puppy. They were lucky.
Galen looked like a drowned rat, but he grinned at her, peeling off his dripping coat. “You sail well, Lucy.”
“You are even better. Your shoulder okay and your thigh?”
“Ja.” He rotated his shoulder and suppressed a wince. “Good.”
“Oh yeah. Just peachy.” The roll of the boat was getting less all the time. “Let’s get dry.”
They stripped and toweled each other off. Galen was very gentle with the livid bruises Brad had left on her arms and her cheek, and she in turn was gentle with his healing wounds. The scars were only lines now. They had really healed fast. Lucy wasn’t ready to think about that just yet. Her mind was numb. She unbraided her hair. When every towel in the boat was wet, but they were not, they dressed. Dry clothes were heaven. They needed something to eat, but you couldn’t really cook on a rolling boat. She rummaged through the galley and got out bread and cheese, a beer for Galen, some red wine for herself. Galen sat at the table in the salon.
The future loomed ahead, just like that Hanjin tanker tonight. Just because they’d gotten out of the bay didn’t mean they were safe. It didn’t mean Galen could get home again, or that she would ever be able to stop running from Brad and Casey.
“So, I guess tomorrow we head south. Go off the map like Jake said, where no one can find us. We’ll just have to hope that the world isn’t changed too much by you staying in this time.” That plan didn’t make her happy. As a matter of fact, it felt very wrong. She sat beside him and handed him a knife for the cheese. He didn’t look happy, either. Of course he didn’t. She wanted to think he could get used to being in the twenty-first century. But maybe he couldn’t. Maybe it was a tragedy that would stain his life and twist him into a bitter man.
“I am not sure of this,” he said, cutting off a slab. Vandal scooted up to the table.
She blew out a breath, then broke off a hunk of sourdough and handed it to Galen. “We can’t get to the time machine to take you back. I’m sorry. Brad and Casey have it. And we know they’re capable of killing.” She stared at her hands, thinking of Jake. She’d lost a friend. Two if you counted Brad. Galen had lost life as he knew it. Hell, she’d lost life as she knew it, too.
Galen chewed, lost in thought. His brows were drawn together as he tossed a piece of cheese to Vandal.
Lucy’s thoughts strayed back to Brad. “Was Brad always so much of an asshole?”
“What is this, ‘asshole’?”
She pointed at her buttocks. Galen suppressed a smile. “Earse. Ja. This Brad is asshole. He tells you that no man wants you, that you are not fair. Is a word, ‘fair’?”