The woman should not have known such sounds. She had never heard the groaning of wet, salted timbers on the hull of a ship. Nor the high, hysterical cries of white-and-silver gulls perched in bunches on rocks slapped by restless waves. Her bare feet stood upon earth that felt alien in its warm, grainy softness. There were pebbly shoals and gooey mud on the banks of Breeish streams. This stuff was heated by a shadeless, sun-bright sky, and her toes were sinking into it as if it wished to hold her in place.
"Time to go," said a voice from behind. She lifted her head and blinked, blinded by the brilliant sunlight. Were there no trees here? The voice was not familiar. It was deep and musical and rang with confidence.
Turning her head, she saw several men standing in a loose cluster nearby. They were all wearing the same garments, and seemed very tall to her. Their chests shone with hues of deep blue and silver. She realized with a startling spasm in her gut, that she recognized one of their faces.
"Tairy?" Her voice sounded faint and tremulous. Weak. She hated it.
The spoken name drew the gaze of the man to her. His eyes met hers, and her chest was filled with a blissful warmth that seemed to burgeon and spread out through her limbs. He smiled, and she knew she was smiling broadly in return.
"It is time to go," he said, repeating the words that one of the other men had just uttered. And he looked away from her, to the proud, dark-haired, broad-shouldered figures on either side of him. He smiled at them, too. One of the men clapped Tairy on the back in a brotherly fashion and nodded.
"...go where?" she asked, and her voice was still that thin, fawn-like mewling sound. She wanted to strike herself for it. Why was she speaking like a scullery maid making eyes at a prince? He was her husband! There was no need to beg for his eye or his smile or his hand! Why wasn't he standing beside her? Why was he dressed in this way?
"Home, of course," Tairy replied. His voice was the same; kind and deep and soft, like the mysterious pits of the sea he knew so well, but she had only ever pictured in ignorant fantasies.
"Home", he had said. Her mind leapt immediately to their ivy-covered cottage in Knotwood. A forested haven of blissful, young love and endless hopes. She smiled a little. Yes, she wanted to go home, too. This place was strange and odd with its blazing light and foot-sucking sand and screaming birds and men all dressed alike. She turned towards them and began to reach out her hand towards her beloved. But the sand was like a warm casing around her ankles now, and it was a struggle to pull her foot upwards. She lost her balance, her arms windmilled, and then her knees struck the yielding soil with a wet slap.
"It is just there," said Tairy brightly. And when she lifted her eyes again, he was pointing past her. She turned to see a gargantuan beast bearing down from above, and for a moment she thought she might cry out. The thing was blotting out the sun, casting her into a cool patch of shadow while it bobbed up and down, side to side, groaning and croaking. But it was no living thing. It was a ship, moored to the rocks. The gulls scattered around it, circling and wheeling and laugh-crying down at her all the while.
This wasn't right. That wasn't their home. She could hear the men chattering to each other. Their voices were moving. She heard bootfalls, heavy and echoing on wooden planks as they climbed onto a pier that ran beside the rocky cleft. Her head swung around, eyes frantically trying to pick Tairy out from the others. From behind, they looked the same. All the same.
"Wait!" she cried, crawling forward, grunting as she yanked repeatedly on her poorly leg, struggling to free her sunken foot. "Wait for me! I'm coming, too!" Her fingers squished into the grey-brown sand, and sun-warmed water puddled in the crevices.
The men were vanishing through a gap in the side of the ship. One at a time. Where was Tairy? There! He was at the back of the line. Surely, he was going to stop and wait. He would come back and bend down and offer his hand and smile and assure her it was all in jest, and they would be on a waggon bound for Bree by nightfall.
When the rest of the men were passed from her sight, she saw Tairy pause and look down at her. He seemed so high above now. As if he were far up in the sky. The sun was behind him, and she squinted against the blinding rays. She wouldn't look away. She wouldn't let him out of her sight. "Tairy," she cried. "Wait for me!"
He set a hand against the frame of the doorway that led into the dark underbelly of the beast. Suddenly, his garments were gone. His torso was bare, his legs covered in ragged shreds of cloth. She could see the lines of the scars around his wrists, as sharp and clear as if he were only inches away. "Wait!" she said again. "Don't go! Not without me!" That black portal was suddenly terrifying, a gateway to unimaginable suffering. There was a dreadful certainty that if he stepped through, she would never see his face again. Her hands and feet were crawling, scrabbling, churning uselessly against the sand.
"I am sorry, Taite," he answered, in a voice filled with pity. His head tilted the slightest bit, and she could sense that he was looking not at her face, but at her crippled leg, caught in the soil. "You are too slow. You have encumbered me enough, do not you think?" Behind him, the ship listed beneath the push of the current, moaning so deeply that she felt the sound in her bones.
She was crumbling from within. Her arms quivered. Her head dropped down, an exhaustive weight upon her neck. He was leaving. She couldn't bring herself to watch him go.
