Gareth man's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

The boatman named his price before Gareth could speak. "The channel almost killed me the last time. I'll run it again, but not for three coins. I want twenty." He set his needle down. "Twenty of your strange gold, up front." Gareth counted what he carried. Nine coins. He had spent the rest on the bed and the bread that kept him alive this week. "I don't have twenty." "Then you don't have a boat." The man returned to his net. "The rocks don't care how sad your face is." Gareth walked the harbor wall to think. The kitten glowed inside his coat. He needed coin the island would take, and he had none. Then the water shifted below him. Something pale rose under the surface. A long white shape, bigger than any boat, slid past the pilings. Gareth saw a sweeping body and wide fins, bone-white in the lamplight. The creature turned one eye toward him and sank again, calm, ancient. The water settled. He stood very still. He went back to the boatman. "There's a leviathan in your cove." The man's hands froze. "You saw the white one?" "Just now. It looked at me." The boatman set his net aside and stared at the black water. "Men here pray to see it. They say it marks safe passage. Sailors who sight it live through the channel." He rubbed his jaw. "I've worked this cove thirty years. I never saw it once." Gareth pulled out his nine coins and laid them on the boatman's crate. "Nine. That's everything I have. But you have a sign now. You have the white one swimming your water tonight." The man looked from the coins to Gareth's face. Fear and want fought across his mouth. "Nine won't fix my boat if the rocks take it." "Then take the sign instead," Gareth said. "You wanted the channel safe. It just showed you safe." The boatman was quiet a long time. The lamp hissed. At last he swept the nine coins into his palm. "Low tide, two nights from now. The water's kindest then." He pointed a thick finger at Gareth's chest. "If the white one's still with us, we go. If it's gone, we don't. I won't die for your daughter." "It'll be there," Gareth said, though he did not know. The man spat in his hand and gripped Gareth's. The deal was struck. Gareth had a boat at last. But the price had taken his final coin. He walked back to the inn with empty pockets and a bill still owed for his room. The innkeeper would want paying soon, and Gareth had nothing left to pay with. Two nights stood between him and the lighthouse, and he would have to spend them with no gold and no roof he could keep.