VESTMEN'S GALE - Chapter Two
Vestmen’s Gale
All words are my own, not AI -David McCaleb
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I rolled head over heels into the boat, falling between deck boards and splashing into bilge water pooled about the keel. Must’ve lost my balance, though it had seemed cold fingers had gripped my skin. The vessel surged forward. I shoved myself up. Grabbing a beam, I braced myself upright. Another surge, this time with groans of wood against wood, like pine trunks during a windstorm. The cicada moan of rope stretching. And men. The grunts of jocks pushing a football sled. The sweaty stench of a locker room mixed with…wet wool.
Rowers lined each side of the ship. They sat on rough-hewn planks, bracing their feet against the legs of the bench ahead of them. They must’ve just…appeared. No way I could’ve missed them before. I stared, unable to comprehend the sight. Linen and leather wrapped their waists. Loose, coarsely woven black and brown trousers covered their legs. Bare, suntanned backs and sinewy arms strained against oars in unison, their growls blending into a coxswain’s rhythm. Muscles bulged against their load in synchrony, as if the entire ship were a behemoth preparing to plunge below the surface.
Must be a professional team from a Norsemen’s museum headed to a boat show. That’s how the tall ship festival had been, folks dressed in period garb. But these guys were built like athletes, and each sported a beard, longer ones braided or bound below the chin with a thong of leather.
The navigator was a huge gym rat with a dappled gray-and-white wolfskin draped over his shoulders. He stood astern leaning against an oar lashed to the gunwale as a tiller. White hair tufted straight up from his scalp in a topknot, like a ponytailed child pretending to be a unicorn. The sun was sinking low behind him in the west. But that was crazy—it was morning. Had they turned around? No, we were still headed away from the storm.
Topknot narrowed his eyes, then stomped toward me down a gangplank lashed between the rows of men. He grabbed me by the hair and lifted me from the bilge with one arm. My scalp seared, like it was about to tear loose. Vertebrae in my neck popped as I hung like a doll.
I pointed toward the rocks. “You guys need to—”
Crack! I gazed over the shields at an empty beach. But I hadn’t turned my head. Needles stung my jaw, and my nose throbbed. He’d hit me!
The huge man tossed me onto one plank and lifted a long oar like a mere stick. I raised my arms to deflect the coming blow. He’d crack me like a twig. Instead, he shoved the grip into my chest. “Put your back into it, witch-boy!” His voice was gruff and hoarse. “Pitch another wave with your paddle and I’ll cut your corpse into chum.”
The words came to my ears as gibberish, a foreign language, like a squall of German and Old English. Still, I somehow understood their meaning.
I hadn’t done anything wrong. All I’d tried to do was help these guys ashore, but one of them must’ve pulled me into the boat. Must’ve had ice in my eyes. Yeah, that’s why I hadn’t seen them. I stood, several inches taller than him, bent my neck till our noses almost touched, and yelled, “You can’t just—”
Crack!
This time, I’d seen the fist coming but had only managed to close my eyes before it struck the other side of my face. Red dots floated in the air, as if projected upon the sail. My chest warmed in anger, but another swing and I’d be knocked out. Mind numb, I fumbled with the oar. Didn’t he tell me to row? Anything to stop the beating.
Topknot gripped a thick twist of rope, turned his back, and stretched a long arm toward the blackness behind us. “Row! All you dogs. Your life depends on it.” He drew a short bronze-colored sword from a sheath of leather, its leading edge gouged deeply. “If the storm catches us and spares your life, make certain I won’t!” Wind blasted his beard and ponytail, whipping them like flags in a gale. “Thor sends his blessing to speed us down the coast. Now prove yourself men! But know he’d rather chew you up for dinner.” He jumped back to the small deck astern, sheathed his sword, and gripped the tiller again.
The butt of an oar jammed into my back. “Get rowing, Matok! Halfdan wants a reason to kill you. Don’t give him one.” I peered over my shoulder at a tall, pale man with shiny skin and a thick, curly black beard. He was tugging on the oar behind mine. One of his little fingers was completely missing. Lightning flashed, reflected in his eyes. His broad smile was absent several teeth. On the return stroke he jabbed the oar into me again. “Row! We need you.” His arms were thick, but flabbier than those of the rest of the crew. A paunch hung over pants sewn of brown deerskin, bound around his waist with a rope of flax.
I glanced at the long handle he gripped. How was it even possible to manage one of those things? Must be twenty feet long—and solid wood. Dad had always maintained the motors well. I’d never had to use an oar on a boat. But if it kept me from being beat unconscious…
I turned, and lightning flashed behind Halfdan as he strained against the tiller. That’s the name Little Finger had called him. Thunder boomed, reverberating through my chest, never so loud as then, the shock wave a blast of heat. The line of boiling water still churned a few hundred yards behind us. There was no escape. If I jumped overboard, the passing hail would knock me out. I’d drown in the rough seas. Maybe we could stay ahead long enough for it to die out.
Make fast and ride it through.
Kidnapped or otherwise, I had no choice. I shoved the pole across the gunwale in front of a hook-shaped oar stop till it hovered over the water the same distance as the others. Its weight less than I’d expected. Leaning forward, I tried to match my rhythm to the bobbing, sweat-streaked back of the man before me and the growls of the others. I dropped the end into the water and pulled back. Far too easy. Must not have lowered the paddle enough. Peering between shields, I dipped the oar, pulled back, and a miniature whirlpool formed at the tip. Just like everyone else. I was rowing, all right.
I adjusted my grip and—Wow! These couldn’t be my hands. They were huge. Thick calluses bridged my palms and ran down my fingers, skin dense as a leathery turtle shell. My arms were long and wiry. Lumpy biceps coiled on each stroke. A cold breeze blasted my chest, bare and sun splotched. I glanced down. My stomach tensed flat as a board, skin ridged tight across it. What? My belly button was an outie!
I stood and glanced at my own foreign body. Another blow sent me sprawling forward, this one to the back of my thigh. Little Finger again. “Keep rowing. If not for your own hide, then for ours.”
I spun and held up a clenched fist. “I swear I’ll break your oar in two and bludgeon you with it if you hit me again!” I clamped a hand over my mouth. Where’d that come from?
Little Finger smirked. “The way you’re rowing now, my sister could pull better. Get with us.”
I glanced at Halfdan, who was scowling back at me. I sat and coordinated my strokes. In a couple of minutes, my back burned across my shoulders and down my arms. A pain as intense as when my gut cramped last year at a cross-country meet. But I was already used to this new sensation. A familiar heat. This body—whatever it was, whoever I was—enjoyed the rhythm. I could keep this up all day.
I inhaled, and my lungs swelled larger than bellows. The bow crashed into a wave, and salt water peppered my back, stinging like beach sand in a gale. With every breath my body recharged, as if the air were rich with oxygen, forcing itself into my blood. With each stroke, the ship lunged forward, almost breaking out on plane. Was I dreaming? No. I’d never been more alive than at this moment. I was certain of it.
Gabby’s laugh floated to me as if upon a lapping wave, from the direction of the shoreline. A flash from her copper red hair zipped between the trunks of soaring pines atop the berm. But wait. What happened to the hardwoods? And no houses. Where am I? The trees grew all the way up to the water’s edge, massive, brown, and tall as radio towers. Like the stories in American history class, how many coastal virgin forests had looked before being cleared. No underbrush sprouted beneath, so I gazed deep into the forest, following the distant bounce of her red hair as she turned inland and disappeared.
Had the spirit of my dead sister called me to this place? We’d always enjoyed a close bond, not the typical siblings-are-evil relationship my friends complained about. When we’d been ten, she’d told me to quit being a wimp when I’d hooked a four-foot mako. Even grabbed the rod and finished reeling it in. She was my twin, her bright red hair matched only by her fiery personality. My curls, black and dull as my own.
Had her spirit escaped to another world? Then found a way to bring me here?
Our boat veered toward land. Halfdan aimed two fingers at a spot on the shore where the rocks were smaller. “We’ll beach. Pull ashore. Wait out the storm beneath shields.”
The jagged stones appeared only slightly less hostile than the crags that rose on either side. As if this were a new land, still with rough, sharp edges. What if a gust blew us off the mark? We could survive under shields, but the vessel would lose rigging and sail at a minimum.
I craned my neck around and—Froggy Rock! A huge boulder cracked in two that resembled a squatting amphibian. Only a half mile down the beach from our vacation home. I’d taken Nikki exploring there just yesterday—she was the one who’d named it. Only now, it was missing its slimy greenish-brown coat. I’m still in the same place. But a different time? The huge trees. Sharper rocks. Were these real Vikings? If so, I could be a millennia in the past. Either way, in another mile we’d hit Prouts Neck, with its towering southerly cliffs that dropped straight into the water. A much better harbor than a small patch of rocky beach.
My shout was hoarse. The words I bellowed out sounded like muddled nonsense, in the same accent as Little Finger’s and Halfdan’s. Still, my mind knew their meaning. “Another mile and there’s a high bluff to the leeward side of this storm. Anchor close enough, and it could shield us from the hail.”
Halfdan scowled. Had he even understood what I said? “Shut up, witch-boy!” Still, he stretched on tiptoes to peer over the tossing bow.
I turned my head as well, but the storm’s haze had overtaken us. No way he could see that far.
Little Finger’s oar handle slammed into my back again. “Ow!”
He glared at me, cheeks flushed, breathing twice as labored as my own. “What’s wrong with you? You have no idea what’s down there.”
“I do! I’ve been there. I…I can’t explain.” I turned back to Halfdan and shouted. “There’re three sides, all steep. The southern is tallest, with deep water. As long as you keep us off the cliff, it’ll be safe harbor.”
Halfdan frowned and maintained his course to the rocky beach. “Idiot. We’ve never sailed this far south.”
I glanced at Froggy Rock, now behind us. No way could I have mistaken it. What had Dad yelled at me as I tried in vain to throw a simple loop of line over a dock piling during that gale last summer? “You’re useless as pearls on a boar!” I yelled. Both lines of rowers turned their heads and peered back at me, frosted breath streaming from their mouths, disbelief stitched into contorted faces.
Halfdan leaned hard on the tiller and the vessel turned away from the shore. “Better not be wrong, witch-boy!” Long, white hairs of his moustache curled up in a wicked sneer, as if he hoped I was.
We screamed by the coastline thirty feet away. Must’ve been making fifteen, even twenty knots with the wind. A few minutes later, he peered over the side and steered us farther from the beach. Prouts Neck stuck into the water, a miniature peninsula. Massive, dense pines grew across the land bridge and filled the overlook, as if the forest were marching in war out against the white-capped ocean. As the boat shot past the eastern wall, their green tops swayed like ruffled grass stalks. Halfdan leaned hard on the oar and turned inland. Two lanky men, one with an empty eye socket, sprang up and gathered in the sail. We heaved on the oars and pulled along the massive blue granite wall. Once we were in the lee and protected behind the natural windbreak, the waves calmed. The plateau loomed forty feet above, higher than I recalled. The trees atop it, though not as impressive as the giants on the other shore, rose at least another five stories and caught the slanted sleet and rain, spraying the vessel with thick, cold mist. I propped my oar tip against the rocks along with the rest of the rowers on the starboard, maintaining our vessel’s distance. The ones on the port stroked gently to ensure we didn’t drift out of the protective covering.
A low grumble rose, like a hundred bulldozers chewing up the trees above us. The shotgun blast of snapping limbs. A wall of hail marched past the edge of the cliff only fifty feet away. In seconds, the murky brown of a boulder’s north face was blasted a clean, bone white. The sea spewed salt spray in a thick haze. Hailstones the size of baseballs screamed overhead, thick as a hundred flocks of snow geese, carried by the wind, splashing into the water beside us. Lightning flashed somewhere beyond that crystal curtain, blazing the boat in prism colors. The wild crack of a cannon and a half-trunk plunged into the water at our stern. Shards of hail pelted us, but the pines and bluff had absorbed most of their fury.
Only minutes, and the attack rolled slowly down the coast, ending as abruptly as it had begun. Cold rain showered and pine needles fell like green snow until they coated the ship an inch thick, perfuming the air in a sharp phenolic scent. I snatched a clump from the breeze as it drifted down, stuffed a wad into one cheek, and chewed on the resinous mash. But I’d never done that before. As if this body had belonged to someone else and remnants of their memory and habits remained. The same way rowing had been familiar, despite the fact I’d never crewed a longboat. And if so, what else was I now capable of?
A red berry the size of a small grape bobbed on the water. It could be poisonous, but I snatched it up and popped it in my mouth, trusting my newfound instincts. After all, this body must’ve been here longer than I. I flinched at my reflection in the water. When the ripples calmed, I stared down at a man with long neck, hard jaw, and young, light skin. The same age as I, but somehow the tan of this new face betrayed a depth of experience I’d only seen in the oldest watermen. Young, but already full of stories. A short, dark beard grew from my cheeks and chin, bound with a tie of white wool. My hair hung to my shoulders, wild and raven black, tight curls tied behind my neck in an unruly ponytail. Like Gabby’s. My eyes glinted green as emeralds.
I bit down on the hard berry and it popped open. A bitterness even more intense than the pine needles shocked me from self-absorption. Cranberry. I’d always hated tart candies before, but now I savored this fruit and swallowed the skin. What other tastes was I to expect? And how do I get home?
Why was I called witch-boy?
Sun glimmered over the forest above, warming my face. I turned to it and glimpsed a flash of Gabby’s copper hair as she disappeared atop the cliff.
Drop your questions and comments below!
Hope you enjoyed chapter two! How’d you like that transition from empty boat to fully crewed vessel? Were you able to smell the ship as Michael peered about? What impressed you about this chapter?
Subscribe (free or paid) to read chapter three next Tuesday as Michael (now Matok) continues chasing Gabby and learns why he’s called witch boy.
-David McCaleb
Or purchase VESTMEN’S GALE on Amazon.