Дэйв Дункан - Magic Casement

“Boy, if we’d met that…” Lin said, and shivered. Sometimes it could take hours to straighten out a meeting on one of the bends, backing the load down the hill—jackknifing it, even.

The oncoming team straightened up and began to move faster. Jik was the driver. He grinned and then showed surprise when he saw only Rap and Lin. Struck dumb by the thrumming of wheels, he pointed back down the hill and held up one finger. Rap nodded and signaled zero and tried to look as if he did this all the time. Then Iki had gone and Rap reached for the brake again.

“Rap!” Lin said. “How did you know?”

Rap hesitated. How had he known? His own team had been making far too much noise for him to have heard. Could the horses have heard and sent him a signal with their ears, a signal that he had seen without knowing? Not likely at all. Could he have caught a reflection in a window? The sun was shining on the windows, so that was not very likely; either. But he had known. He had been quite certain that there was a wagon coming at that corner. That was rather an eerie feeling. How had he known?

“Just one of the things you youngsters have to learn,” he said. “You go scout for me.”

Lin made an obscene suggestion. He studied Rap with a very puzzled expression for a moment before jumping down and heading for the corner.

They were losing time. Lin was clumsy with only one good arm, and Rap had to stop dead each time he needed to come aboard, then stop again to let him off before the next hairpin. They finally met the second wagon between twelve and thirteen, and then it was a fast run down to the harbor.

There were few ships there that day. The sun blazed hard from quicksilver water, the gulls were bobbing and preening, and the air bore the tangy scent of fish and seaweed. A very slight breeze was ruffling the surface, but there were no waves. Anxiously Rap eyed the causeway ahead.

“Too late!” Lin sighed.

“Not much swell,” Rap said stubbornly. “I’ll risk it.”

He stood up and thumped the reins on the horses' backs, urging them to a canter, wondering if Lin would demand to be let off. He would not be able to swim with that cast on his arm, but Lin probably did not know how to swim anyway. There was no point learning—a man died of cold in a few minutes in the Winter Ocean.

Then Rap remembered that he could not swim, either.

Lin did not speak. The wagon picked up speed, thundering along the top of the quay toward the long curve of the causeway that led to the distant shore. Most of it ran over land—low islands and rocks, dry land except in the big winter storms—but there were four low spots and the tide was already running over three of them. The wagon bounced and rolled and sent seabirds screaming; then there was water on both sides of the way and Big Damp was coming up ahead.

Rap took that one at full speed. It was straight and shallow and he did not sense any worry from the horses. Water shot out in silver sheets and salt spray splashed in his face and then they were safe on the other side, Duck Island. It had been deeper than he had expected, though.

Lin, still sitting and thus lower than Rap, had been soaked. He whistled and then laughed, a little nervously.

“I hope that new wheel stays on,” he remarked.

Little Damp was still dry, except for a few spray pools, where wavelets were starting to splash over.

Now they were climbing over Big Island, and Rap slackened the pace so as not to heat the horses. But he stayed standing.

The rocks and shingle alongside the road gave way to the harsh, stubborn grasses that enjoyed the challenge of living so close to the sea, and for a moment the water was out of view. Then the wagon rolled roughly over the crest and started steeply down. Ahead lay the main stretch of causeway… except that most of it wasn’t there.

Lin squealed, “Rap!” and straightened up.

Rap had not expected the gap to be quite so wide yet. Already the blue tide was pouring through, shiny and beautiful under the sunshine. He had never seen this, except from shore. The wind was strong now and cold, whipping the horses' manes, but the waves were very small. The raised roadway ran out into the sea ahead for a short way and then dipped under. Far away to the left, jutting out from Tallow Rocks, was the other end.

There were two bends in the road. Somewhere.

“Rap, you can’t!”

“Get off, then!” Rap snapped, without slowing the wagon. He was not going to sit for six or seven hours on Big Island and be laughed at for the rest of his days. In truth, he was already too late to stop, for the roadbed was raised and there was no room to turn; this part would be underwater in an hour or so. Backing up would be tricky. Then hooves started splashing and he saw eight ears begin to flicker with alarm. He could calm horses by singing to them—not that he had any sort of a voice, but horses were not music critics. He started singing the first thing that came into his head.

I traveled land, I traveled sea…

“Rap!” Lin howled. “You’ll go off the road! Stop, for the Gods' sake!”

“Shut up!” Rap said, and went back to singing. The horses' ears rose again as they listened to him. They kept splashing their big hooves and the wagon continued to roll steadily forward. A couple of swimming gulls watched intently, bobbing up and down as the waves flowed under them.

Maiden, maiden, maiden, oh…

Far off to his left, two fishing boats were setting sail from the quay, and Rap wondered what they thought of this strange horsedrawn vessel plying their harbor. There were a couple of big rocks coming up on his right, green with weed and purple with mussels, being lapped by the small waves, and he knew about how far those were from the road. A fraction more to the left…

There was just enough wind to make the water ruffled and impossible to see through, but he could tell where the edges were by the way the waves surged over them. It was safer than it looked, he told himself.

Lin was starting to whimper.

I gave her love, I gave her smiles,

I wooed with all my manly wiles.

The rocks floated past on the silvery water, and the swell was beginning to trouble the horses, coming well up their legs now, over the wagon axles. They were finding the wagon hard to pull. They were towing it.

The water was deeper. The waves no longer showed the edge very clearly.

“Turn, Rap!” Lin sobbed. “We’re at the bend, Rap! We must be! We’ll go off!” He rose to his feet, awkwardly holding the seatback with his one good arm. They were going to get wet boots in a minute. “Rap! Turn!”

Rap was not sure. Distances were deceptive when they were all covered with water and there were no landmarks at hand. He was thinking of the road itself, beneath the water, two stone walls filled in level with shingle and rocks, greeny blue, probably, with the strands of weed waving in the current. There would be shadows of ripples moving over, like cloud shadows moved over the summer hills. Fish? He had not expected so many fish, little ones…

“Maiden, maiden…”

“Shut up, Lin!”

“…maiden, oh.”

Now he could imagine that watery blue roadway making its turn. He pulled on the reins and the wagon curved slowly round and apparently he had guessed right, because they continued their slow progress.

Lin had started to pray to some God Rap had never heard of. A new one, maybe.

One of the fishing boats was heading in their direction.

The wagon had almost stopped bumping. The tide was stronger here, in the middle, leaving a wake as it flowed by the horses, and they were getting very nervous now, no matter how hard he sang.

“Maiden, maiden”