Читать книгу Draca - Geoffrey Gudgion - Страница 20

He ’ s standing in Draca ’ s bows, and in the scrambled way of dreams there is no bowsprit, but the dragon rises high above the stem. Impossibly, though naturally, Draca is propelled by great sweeps of oars, a motion he feels through his cheek where it rests against the dragon. It ’ s a slow surge – pause, surge – pause that has water bubbling under the forefoot with each stroke. On the port side, vague in the mist, Freshwater Bay stretches beneath the shelter of Witt Point, and he knows but does not know this harbour that he has sailed since childhood; he only senses that the inlet is a place where deep water comes close to the land. Ahead of him, unseen in the mist, must be Furzey . Furze Oy, in Anglo- Saxon, Fyrsig in the old tongue, the island of gorse.

Surge – pause, and the pause is marked by the sound of water raining from the blades as the oars swing back to bite again. There is a tension, an excitement in the ship as they approach the land; the same, creeping, hunter ’ s bloodlust that he ’ d felt with the troop around him, awaiting his command in the moments before action.

The carving against his cheek jolts to a blow, a sound so loud that they must have struck a rock, and his first thought is of failure; he had not foreseen such dangers in this place of soft mud and winding channels.

Jack grabbed the dragon for support, his eyes flying open and blinking, disoriented. His father stood above him, framed by the arch of the boat seat, with fury tugging his jaw into angles that were sharp as broken porcelain.