She nodded, blushing. She didn’t think he meant “fair-minded.”
“He is a stupid man.” He tossed another piece of cheese to Vandal. “Are you sorry that this Brad is asshole?”
She chuckled then grew serious. “Maybe I did know, somewhere down deep, that he wanted to be more than friends. Women know. But I thought I could skate over the top and keep it just friends.” She looked up. He understood “skate.” Of course. That was a word from Danish. “Maybe I wasn’t fair to him.”
“You do not know men, Lucy. Men lust, always. Many men lust for you. I know this.” He took a swig of his beer. “I am glad you do not lust after Brad. I am andig for you, Lucy.”
The boat had nearly stopped rocking. He was jealous? She’d thought it was just protective. He hadn’t liked Brad hitting her, of course. But jealous? She wanted to dismiss it. She wanted to disapprove. But it made her feel . . . good.
“No rolling,” she remarked to give her thoughts new direction. “At least we’ll be able to sleep tonight.”
“It will be still until morning.”
“I guess I have to believe you. You sure were right about the weather today.” She exchanged the cheese he handed her for another hunk of bread for him. “How did you know it would storm? The weatherman said it would miss us entirely.”
She thought he would say something about obscure Danish weather lore, sailors’ warnings, or some old injury that told him the barometer was dropping. Instead he got quiet. He tossed another piece of cheese to Vandal and took another swig of his beer. When he remained silent, she raised her brows at him. “Galen?”
“I tell you before. Why should I speak it again?” He took a bite of bread.
Oooh. That hurt. She wasn’t very good at leaps of faith. “I promise I will listen.”
He took another swig of beer and cut more cheese. She wasn’t sure he was going to answer at all. At last he said, “Something happened, Lucy, in here.” He touched his chest. “In my heart. I know things, about the land, about the sky and water. They tell me things.”
Lucy pushed down her clamoring protestations. She had promised to be open to his answer. She doubted she could believe what he was saying in the end. He still believed that gods of the sea granted prayers, and she only called on hers in some half-mocking way. His was a simpler time with more direct beliefs. But she’d promised.
“Okay,” she said, nodding for him to continue.
“I think I become like a brother to the earth.”
He actually used the word “brother.” His longing to be special like his brother was at the root of all of this. But she hadn’t thought he’d be so blatant.
“I know things now about the world. In your time the earth is sick. Ice melts. Air stinks, like with many fires.” He looked at her.
“Smoke,” she said, a little stunned. “It smells of smoke.” He could see the pollution over the east bay, but how did he know about the melting of the ice shelves at the poles?
“Your bay is sick. Evil things flow into it. Fish die. The wyrts of the sea die.” He looked to see if she understood.
Wyrts? Like Saint-John’s-wort, maybe. Plants? She understood all right. Or maybe she didn’t. “How . . . how do you know this?”
“I listen. Since we lust together, they speak to me.”
Whoa. She wasn’t sure she could go there.
“I feel when the world is right and when it is not right.”
That struck a chord. She’d been feeling that rightness herself lately. Like being with Galen. Like when they made love. “I . . . uh . . . I have sometimes felt that rightness.”
“You have, Lucy?” His eyes lighted.
“Yeah. When we’re together, mainly.”
His face softened. “Ja. Then you know what I say is sooth.” He heaved out a breath in relief, though she hadn’t actually said she believed the whole “brother of the earth” thing. Suddenly she wasn’t sure exactly what she believed. She blinked at him as thoughts rolled around in her head as though the boat were still pitching. Did she believe she’d fallen in love with an honest-to-God Viking in six days? The pull toward Galen had been so strong, in retrospect it was almost uncanny.
She was in love with him. She wanted to be with him, enough so that the prospect of giving him up to his own time, knowing she couldn’t go back with him without changing everything, made her almost physically ill. She wasn’t sorry they couldn’t get to the time machine, no matter the consequences. That was the bottom line. And she didn’t care that he believed he was connected to the earth since they’d made love. If that made him feel whole and happy, fine. Hell, she felt more grounded since she’d been with him, too.
Guess she’d finally found out what love was.
She was in for a rough ride. He was a Viking. Probably not a monogamous bone in his body. They’d be stuck together on a tiny boat for weeks at a time. Their money would run out and they’d start to quarrel. In broken Saxon English. What a farce. It would be like a bad French movie where the plotters all ended up hating one another after they’d committed a crime, and got caught and thrown in prison in the end.
Just dandy.
But it couldn’t be helped. She loved him, whether he really loved her or not. And she’d try to keep him out of Casey’s hands, and Brad’s.
And to hell with the time machine.
Now why didn’t that feel right?
They ate in silence while Galen’s mind spun with possibilities, all more outlandish and impossible than the last. Somehow he had to protect Lucy. He had to make her world safe for her, even if he had to sacrifice himself.
He looked over at her. In the lamplight, her drying hair made a cloud around her face. She looked like the Valkyrie he had first thought her when he woke in that white room. Or an angel of the Christ Cult. An angel who still wasn’t sure she was beautiful, a Valkyrie who blushed.
He felt a surge of life course up his veins, as though it came from the very center of the earth. He reached his arm around her and tucked her in close. “Lucy,” he said, “we can do nothing until morning.”
She looked up at him, and he saw that she flowered with his thought as well. “We should sleep.” She didn’t mean it.
“We will sleep. After we lust.”
She grinned and slid out of his arms to rummage in her bag. “Then I have a surprise for you.” She pulled out a box and from it a small circle of strange material stretched across a ring.
“What is this?”
“A condom.” She unrolled it over her finger. “For your weapon.” She grinned.
“Why?”
She blushed. “No lytling.”
She didn’t want to make a child with him.
The thought struck him like a blow. He straightened his shoulders. Why should it? It didn’t matter. He wanted to make her happy, whether she wanted to make a child with him or not. “Ja, Lucy. I will wear your condom.”
Freya, the goddess of his father, who watched over the fertility of the earth, rose from a fiery chasm and spoke to him. The blast of hot air from below carried the stink of sulfur.
“The Earth is sick, Galen. And you will make it right. Go, into the jaws of death, and snatch it back from the brink of ruin. Time is a vortex. Now is your time.”
And Baldur, the sacrificed god, so fair of form he was blinding, strode through the blackened forest all around the crevice to stand on its edge. “You must go in my name, Galen. You must brave losing all.”
“Will I be sacrificed, as you were?” Galen called to him.
“Time will tell the sooth of things.”
“Will I make a child with Lucy?” That was not important to the gods, but it was to him.