The Gathandrian Trilogy 01 - The Gifting

been possible. He swallowed down tears for them both. There was no time for that. The job would be completed sooner if Simon helped.
    So, stepping around to the other side, he knelt down and took one or two deep breaths. Then he began to copy Johan. Warmth began to tingle along his fingers and upwards over his arm. It gave an impression of sunlight, grasses, singing. In spite of the situation, he found himself smiling at the heady mixture of memory and dream drifting through his blood. The boat, too, was healing. As Johan had said. Splinters smoothed themselves, cracks vanished and the body of the boat became rounder, fuller, as it had for Johan. The magic caught hold and he was half-dazed, unsure whether he was imagining these things or not. More than anything he wanted to stay here, part of the boat, the shore, the air, the sea, joined more deeply than he had ever thought possible to the world around. He wished it would last forever. He knew it would not.
    When finally he reached the end of the boat, Simon saw that Johan had already finished and was waiting. For a moment, he allowed his fingers to rest on the final section of wood, feeling its life pulsate beneath the skin, hearing the singing beat through his heart, and then he let go.
    Johan was at his side in an instant, holding him steady.
    “The song the boat sang with you was beautiful,” he said. “I have never heard its like before.”
    “It felt good. You heard it?”
    “Yes. Just as you could hear my humming when I began the life-thoughting.”
    Life-thoughting . Simon pondered the phrase, grasping at the sense of it as he nodded to Johan that he was ready to stand alone. He had so much to learn.
    When he shook the dreaming out of his vision, he saw that the night was almost over. Along the sea’s horizon, the glimmers of dawn were just coming into view. Soon it would be morning. The time they—or perhaps more accurately he —had spent with the boat had been longer than he’d imagined. Perhaps however, in balance with the time lost, the dangers might be fewer.
    “We should go,” he said.

    Johan
    That will be more difficult than Simon realises.
    “There is still so much of Isabella here,” Johan sighs. “It will be hard to cast off without her.”
    Simon grips his arm. “I understand. Perhaps before we leave, you can bury something in memory of her, here in the sand?”
    He makes a sound, half-sigh, half-laughter. “My people do not set such store by death rituals as your father’s people do, Simon. It is not…”
    “Yes, I know. It is not your way. I have learned much from you. But here is something my father’s people can teach you in turn. Something about the loving and the letting go. It is a gift I, too, need to learn, but I believe it might help. If you think there’s time?”
    Johan casts his mind about but senses no immediate danger. What is the enemy waiting for? No matter. The scribe might be right. “There is wisdom in what you say. Yes, I will do it.”
    He rests both hands on the side of the boat. The wood beneath glows a deep orange at his touch. As Simon watches, he leans over and reaches inside, under one of the two benches in the middle. A moment later, he brings out a small cloth bag and opens it. The smell of wintergreen and rosemary fill the night air and he almost cries then.
    “The dreaming potion,” Simon says.
    “Yes. Though in my world, its effects are greater. And more lasting. There are crushed rosemary leaves here too.”
    “For remembrance?”
    “Yes.”
    Taking a handful of the grains in his fingers, he closes the bag and drops it gently back into its hiding place. Bending his head, he breathes in the scent, its purity a sharp contrast to the salt tang of the sea.
    “She loved mixing herbs, as our mother used to do,” he says. “My sister was always more skilled in the art than I. Even though I tried so hard, I never had either the delicacy of her touch or the harmony of her mind. Until…until Petran was killed, she would blend a potion or a tincture almost every day. We had so many of them stored in the house that sometimes it was hard to find room for more. My mother used to laugh, tease her about it. After Petran died, I hoped… I wanted so much for Isabella to find that skill again. I thought there would be time for healing, but I was wrong. Now, all the herbs we had stored and which we have used on our journey are almost gone and I would give my life for there to be no room for more