Many years ago in a ramshackle hut on the wind and wave-swept shores of Ireland, a women stood underneath the leaking roof of rusted corrugated metal, fiddling with the handle of a harpoon. The rain drummed on the metal over her head, dripped through the holes into puddles on the overgrown ground. It was a sparce hut, long abandoned and with few signs of previous occupations left under the weeds that grew up in the lap of civilisation, long lost.
A young women, in her early twenties wrapped in a thick layer of sealskin under an oilskin boat cloak, with the hood drawn back to reveal her longish face. Her face was thin, the kind of angular that could only be maintained by long hours of labour in harsh conditions. She was slim but chiselled in the way that most mariners were. Heart of oak, skin of leather, muscles and tendons made of coiled cable.
Her dark brown hair, almost black, was plastered to her head as the weather began to rage against the shores. A dangerous state of affairs. The weather on these coasts could easily wreak a fishing ship on the coast, smashing the floating sailboats against the reefs and cliffs, or grinding them high up on a beach at high tide, only for the larger boats to be stranded as the tide flooded out once more. She was more aware than most of the dangers of venturing out on the eve of weather such as this. Those who could predict such things, the few men of science that remained in Britain after the Great War had passed the warning the night before.
She had ventured out regardless. Now she was stranded on the shores of Ireland, the Isle of the Flesh-eaters and the despotic Clans that ruled here. By all rights, she should have been cowering in this building, with the small sailing boat she had manned to get here pulled straight up into the woods at the head of the beach or hidden among the sand dunes.
This women, young and strong of body and spirit, opened the shield on her oil lantern once more, shining the light out into the darkness before closing it once more. She wanted to be found. Found by one very specific Clan member and was willing to risk being discovered by the others and possibly dying to do so. For this reason, she had come armed appropriately. A bolt-action rifle leaned up against the corner, out of the rain.
Casting her mind back to that night, not so long ago. A night much like tonight, where wind blew, sending crashing waves up against the rocks in wild sprays of salt water. Sails slatting and banging in the wind as their small fishing boat had laboured under a half-press of sail and all hands to weather the storm that they had foolishly been trapped in. Her father, a stout man in oilskins and a soaking watch cap, bellowing above the tumult to be heard by those further forward.
Blown off course by the unexpected storm, they had steered out into the channel to avoid being thrown onto the rocks as they drew into port. This, while a responsible manoeuvre to prevent an accident in high winds, turned out to be the worst decision that he could have made. The wind shifted again, unexpectedly, and in contradiction to all they knew of the weather patterns at this time of year. It was now blowing towards the Irish coast, towards a coastline unlit by watchfires or lighthouses. Towards the regions untravelled by civilised men. The lands belonging to the Eaters of Flesh.
Against the storm they battled, under half-sail to ease the strain on their mast. But even this became too much as winds picked up and they laboured to keep their boat, The Oxford Mariner, from being inexorably pushed towards the leeward shore. Watching the cliffs edge closer and closer in dawning horror as they realised that they could only delay the inevitable. Men prayed for deliverance, her father looking grimly at her as his only child, realising that if he could not salvage this situation then his daughter would die. Her face twisted involuntarily at the recollection, and she opened and closed the oil lanterns shield once more to signal into the night and occupy her hands.
She recalled the crack as the mainmast parted company with the ship, fracturing half-way down its length and toppling over into the sea, still partially secured to the ship via the complex network of rigging, ratlines, mainstays, and preventor-stays. The rush as mariners grabbed axes, adzes, and knives to cut away what was essentially a giant, ungainly wooden anchor that was pulling them to the side, ever closer to the doom that awaited them.
Being the lightest of them, she had been the only one washed overboard in the wave that almost capsized them in the downpour, carrying her off the deck of the wildly yawing ship. She had been cutting away at the rigging that anchored the mast to the ship along with the rest, doing her duty to the ship, to her crewmates, to her father. Lost at sea. Her father's only daughter. They had cut away the mast and rigged a temporary replacement before they noticed her absence, her departure lost in the epic struggle to save the ship.
She, meanwhile, was washed up on a beach on the forbidden isle, the thick woodland of Ireland. And discovered. By him.
The women stared out into the night, willing the tall figure to appear out of the gloom and driving rain. It was unlikely that he would be out here, on a night like this, like she was. But she had been drawn here, almost inexorably by the memory of that night. That night, so very much alike to this one. Maybe, if he thought of her in his waking moments, he too would be drawn back to this spot as irrationally as she had been. Resting the side of her head against the stone wall of the hut, she sighed in resignation.
She was a fool. So what if he had saved her, pulling her up off the beach and into this hut? So what if he had nursed her back to health, warming and drying her beside a small fire that he had lit within these stone confines? Warming her with his own body when the fever set in, and she had been delirious for only he knew how many days. It galled her to admit that his lack of presence here proved that even a savage cannibal from the forbidden isles was smarter than she.
Her hand strayed towards the lantern, about to send out another signal into the night, but the mariner stopped herself. No. She had stayed here long enough, indulging in fanciful whimsies, putting herself in danger. And for what? For some savage she didn't even know? Where was the sense in that? Keeping the lantern shield firmly shut, she picked up the lantern and pulled up her hood, considering her next move. Would it be safer to spend the rest of the night in the forest where she had stashed the row boat, than in this ramshackle hut?
It was the only manmade shelter for miles around, and probably the driest. On the other hand, it was the only shelter for miles around, and probably the first place a cannibal would look for a stranded mariner. She reached for the rifle, deciding that if she was going to wait out the storm then it wouldn't be in this damn hut, torturing herself with immature fantasy. Her hand met empty air. Puzzled, she glanced at the spot in the corner where she had leaned the rifle. The spot was now empty.
She stood, frozen to the spot, as she heard the familiar ratchet of the bolt being worked. A bullet clinked to the earth as another dull thump announced the separation of the 10-round box magazine from the receiver. Her heart plummeted down into the depths of her gut, settling there like a weight of lead, ballast on a sinking ship. She still had her harpoon. Spinning around in a twirl of waterlogged hair and flapping hood, she came face to face with her uninvited guest who leaned against the wall on the other side of the room.
The harpoon's barbed head drooped down as she immediately recognised the face under the crudely cut black beard and long jet-black hair. It was him! Until now she hadn't been sure of his age, but his features had the distinct tint of youth to them. No older than herself, that much was for sure. The cannibal lowered the rifle butt to the ground, muzzle pointed upwards, and his weighty hand curled around the forward sight. Seeing that no violence was forthcoming, and more than a trifle overjoyed that he seemed to have been gripped by the same insanity that she had, the young mariner lowered the harpoon and smiled at him.
"I wasn't sure I would ever see you again," she said, the words painfully inadequate to describe what she felt.
"Ye wouldn't see much away in the Dream like ye were. You shouldn't be shinin' that light out into the darkness, lass. Yer liable to land yerself in trouble. An' ye should have kept a better watch. Just look at this," he said, tapping the butt of the rifle against the ground insistently, "A weapon ain't no good to man nor beast, spirit nor soul, if you keep it out o' arms reach and lose the damn thing before the fightin' even starts."
The Mariner scowled at his judgemental tone, feeling compelled to defend herself even if he was clearly correct. "I thought if a bunch of cannibals were going to jump me, they wouldn't exactly be subtle about it. How did you get it here, anyway? The only door is right there!"
She jabbed the harpoon at the doorway to the dilapidated hovel, a rotted wooden affair that barely hung from its rusted metal hinges. The cannibal pointed to the ceiling, in which she saw the many holes through which the water poured. One or two of them were, now that she noticed, more than large enough for a man to drop down through. She blinked, wondering how she could have missed that. "People see a door and they naturally think it's for walkin' through. But when people see a hole in a ceiling for some reason, they don't think of the door. Suppose that's the difference 'tween what things are, and what they could be," the cannibal answered with a sly grin, full of white teeth.
"What kind of guy comes in through the roof, anyway," she grumbled, realising that she had been made a fool of.
"The smart kind," the cannibal said through his fading grin, "If I do say so myself. Or the kind lookin' to do a pretty young lass harm. Would be a shame if ya got cut up by my kin, lass. When the spirits stop rilin' up this storm, you should scarper quickly."
"I never thanked you," she said, looking to keep the conversation going, "For saving me, I mean."
The cannibal shrugged bashfully, rubbing the back of his neck. He was dressed in a variety of conflicting styles of clothing. A pair of heavily patched and repaired trousers with many pockets stitched on with mismatched colours of thread. A woollen undershirt beneath a sturdy canvas jacket that had clearly been cut out of sail canvas, likely washed up on Irish shores from a shipwreck at some indeterminate point in the past. And an oilskin boat cloak, very similar to her own. His was in a dull olive green, however, while hers was in a bright yellow. She recognised the dull olive boat cloak. It was the colour the Old Guard wore.
And seeing as how this young cannibal was obviously not one of the Old Guard, he must have stripped it off the body of one. A sobering thought. The Old Guard were the law and order in post-war Britain. To kill one was no easy task. To do so and get away with it was another one entirely.
"No trouble, lass."
"Maybe," she conceded, still smiling at him. "Why did you save me, though?"
"Saved a rabbit once," the young man answered cryptically, "Fox caught it, tore up its leg. Wanted to see what it would do."
She snorted as she leaned the harpoon up against the wall and sat down with her back against it. The cannibal cocked his head to the side, watching the way the boat cloak she wore pooled in her lap, revealing her legs encased in tight canvas trousers. "So, I'm the rabbit? What did the rabbit do?"
She patted the ground next to her, offering him a seat. He accepted, crossing over to her side of the room to let the rifle join her harpoon against the wall with a gentle click of metal on stone. His giant frame slide down the wall next to her, and she fought the crick in her neck to look up far enough to meet his eyes. His distinctive steel-grey eyes.
"Nah, yer a woman," he re-joined with a bit more enthusiasm than might be socially acceptable, "An' a Seafolk women at that. Only times I've met yer kind face-to-face, we were tryin' to kill one another. I was curious, see. The rabbit stayed and mooched off of me for a bit, then it left. Went back to its clan I suppose."
"Why didn't you…you know, eat me?" She asked the question in a softer tone, unsure if she wanted to know the answer.
The giant man hesitated for a moment, then smiled blithely and shrugged. "I watch ye Seafolk in yer boats sometimes. From the shore, to see if any o' ye land so I can do some huntin'. Ye pull in all those nets o' fish out of the water, right?"
She tensed at the unspoken but implied confession to his murder and cannibalism, maybe of people she knew. People she liked. But she wanted to know despite herself, so she acknowledged his statement and listened as he spoke. "Yes?"
"An' when you catch a small fish you toss it back in, right?" He nodded his head a few time, quite obviously pleased with his impromptu analogy.
"I was the small fish?"
"Aye, yer a tiny fish," he said, poking her playfully in the ribs with a wide grin. For a man with such a horrifying vocation, his grin was infectious. She giggled despite herself. "Am not," she protested as she pushed his hand away, "You're just huge fish."
"Massive feckin' fish," he mimed the standard mariner motion for 'It was this big', spreading his long arms out in an expansive gesture that covered the room with dull olive oilskin. His grin grew wider as he looked at her to judge his reaction. She, for her own part, looked back at him with her genuine smile still present.
"You're not what I expected for one of your kind," she commented, "I didn't even know if you would be able to speak my language. We've only ever heard stories about you."
"Same," the cannibal agreed. "Though I knew ye couldn't speak our tongue. Most o' us learn yours, though."
The Mariner decided she didn't want to know why the cannibals learned her language, leaving it aside to be asked another time. Instead, she asked the question that had been at the back of her mind all along. One that she had desperately wanted to know the answer to, in the hopes that it would be the same as her own. "Tonight is like that night. The night we met," she began cautiously, "I couldn't stop thinking about you. I don't know why."
She looked sideways at him, narrowing her eyes at him accusingly. "You're a cannibal. You eat people like me. People I know. People who I like…"
The cannibal blinked, looking at her consideringly, as if he were seeing her for the very first time as how she was. "But you saved me. Kept me safe from your people, kept me warm so I wouldn't freeze to death. And…"
The memory of their naked bodies pressed together in the dark, his strong arms enveloping her in order to lessen her fever and keep her from exposure to the elements being a bit too personal to voice aloud. "…I wanted to know if you came back here for the same reason I did. Why did you come back here? Tonight?"
He paused for a long moment; his eyes fixed upon hers. Then he leaned in abruptly and kissed her. It was necessary for him to lean down quite a ways to do so, but he managed it in one smooth motion that crossed the distance before she even realised what was happening. Involuntarily shocked by his forwardness, her hand moved of its own accord as she recoiled away, slapping him with a mighty crack of flesh upon flesh. He blinked in surprise, looking at her face which was openly shocked with both her own actions and with his.
His tongue worked its tip into the cut his canine tooth had cut into the inside of his lip, the copperish taste of blood in his mouth. "Damn lass, ye hit hard," he commented.
She blinked at the benign reply, then, overcome with what seemed to her to be a flood of insane daydream-like fantasy, she lunged forward and mashed her lips against his. Her arms clasped themselves around his neck, one hand working its way into his long hair to tangle itself in the wet strands. His huge hand found her slim waist, granite hard from the coiling and stowing of heavy ship ropes and cargo, and the hauling of fishing lines, while the other found the side of her face. His surprisingly gentle fingers brushed away the hair plastered to her skin, caressing the exposed cheekbone under their calloused pads.
They stayed like this for a long moment, until they eventually separated for air. The two of them looked at one another, eyes wide at their simultaneous discovery of a feeling so strong that it threatened to overwhelm them. "This is a bad idea," she said through bruised and puffy lips, licking them to savour the tinging feeling his bristly hair had left on her chin.
"Too right," he agreed.
She cupped his face in her hands and smiled at him. He returned the gesture without thought. The storm raged outside, rain drumming on the roof and running through the holes in the ceiling in sheets. Neither seemed to mind. They stayed together until the sun rose the next day, and the rain had ceased to pour.
Authors Note: Well, In the last main storyline chapter you got a glimpse of the Couriers past from before he came to America. This is the girl that his father was referencing in Lantaya's flashback. Non-story essential, so I'm fitting it in as a sidestory. I also thought I'd write something romance themed for Valentine's Day: So, Happy Valentine's Day! Especially to all you lonely guys out there, like me, who didn't know what day it was until Google reminded them! And to those of you who do have a better half and still forgot: Ohh boy, you're in trouble now!
Addition: To those of you reading on , the schedule for updates is every Saturday. I operate on Greenwich time, so I might be posting at inconvenient times for those of you in the States or further afield. Sidestories like this will come whenever I have something that doesn't fit into its own chapter or is flavour-content to flesh out a particular characters background.