July 6, 1996
A brief -- but necessary -- diversion from the writing of "Shadow." This story was published in Now Voyager's collection of post-"Resolutions" fic.
THE
BOAT
For
days afterwards, he dreamed about the boat.
Usually it came to him amidst a chaos of images -- trees and tomato plants, thin shoulders in moonlight, the second plasma storm, the one that caught them asleep in their respective alcoves and forced them to take shelter in the newly-built log room. That ridiculous monkey. A whirl of dream-shapes, flashes of memory, or imagination.
But always they slowed and stilled, settled down into the boat, the one he never built.
In his dreams they sailed down the river, pushed by the current and the wind, rocking gently down the straight stretches, trembling through the little rapids. He sat behind her, steering the boat without ever taking his eyes from her hair, sometimes lifted on the breeze, sometimes hanging over her shoulders, sometimes lying still in a thick, damp braid. When he closed his eyes he could feel it against his palm; he would have leaned forward to touch it, but the gear stowed between them in the bottom of the boat prevented the movement. And so he sat and watched, and wished.
Wished some more when they pulled the boat onto the shore so that they could eat and rest, talk and bathe. He watched her; she knew he watched, but said nothing. She was a little self-conscious before him, even now, even still. She kept her back to him while she bathed in the middle of the river -- as if a few meters of water between them would keep him from noticing her. Often, she talked to him while she bathed, pointing out details of the flora around them, the unusual color of the sky above them, the texture of the pebbles beneath her feet.
Their feet. Eventually, after a week of bathing in the river only after she had dried and dressed and retreated to her half of the tent, he stripped and waded out after her. Slipped into the river behind her, shuddering a little at the unexpected cold against the heat of his skin. She turned to face him, her eyes widening a little, and he stopped, submerged to his belly, his head tilted to one side, questioning. The current swirled around him but he stood firm until she raised her chin and reached for him, her arms stretched toward him, her hands lightly skimming the surface of the water. He moved to her, his hands touched hers, their fingers laced easily, comfortably, as they had once before. Both of them smiling suddenly, they met in the middle of the river. Peering into her face, he laughed.
"What's so funny?"
"You have new freckles."
"I do not." But she reached to cover them, pulling her fingers from his. "You do. Right here." He leaned over and kissed the bridge of her nose, then pulled back to see her reaction.
She lowered her eyes and rubbed the spot he had kissed, then looked up at him with a mischievous smile. "Well, you have a tan line. Right here." She placed her hands on his shoulders and pulled herself a little out of the water, high enough to nuzzle his neck just above his collar bone. He felt her lips open on him for an instant only before she started to slide back into the water. He caught her before she could slip away completely, held her tight against him, the smile fading from his face.
"Kathryn..."
"No," she said softly, but almost in the old tone, the tone of a command. "No words. No ancient legends, no tribal sayings. Nothing. Understand?"
He nodded, let her slip away from him, let her guide him out of the water, let her pull him down into the soft moss at the river's edge. Let her lead him, over and over, until he lay exhausted with his head on her belly, sighing, sleeping, dreaming about the boat.