On Leaving
The second time I saw the ocean peeking over those sand dunes as we crested a hill did not fail to thrill any less than the first one did. The driver took a sharp turn onto a dirt road that ran along side the beach, and we bumped our way down it. It seemed as if the car was on auto pilot, and the driver was there just in case of an emergency. His turns were quick, smooth, and clean, like someone who had come from a race track. He didn’t just drive the car, he piloted it through the sand dunes on the narrow road.
After another silent, exhausting space of time on the dirt road the driver slid the car to a stop and turned it off. It was quiet, too quiet. I could hear the wind rustling through the dune grass, and see the ocean and smell the salty air. I heard the lapping of the waves as they washed up on the shore but I couldn’t see them breaking below the dune we were on.
Loki opened the car door and got out so I followed. Without saying a word to either me or the driver he shut the door. The car started and roared down the path through the dunes, not even bothering to turn around. The whole thing felt extremely odd, dangerous, secretive. I had never taken a half day car ride with someone who had not said anything to either of his passengers before.
Loki began to walk down the steep dune towards the ocean and I followed, sliding in the sand. It ran over the tops of my shoes and I hesitated, wondering how far we needed to walk and whether or not I had time to take them off. I figured it would probably be okay to do so. The car ride out had taken long enough so I plunked down on the dune and started fidgeting with the laces of my shoes.
“Autumn, what are you doing?” he asked.
“I’m just taking my shoes off,” I explained. “There’s a ton of sand in them.”
“Ok.” He didn’t say anything further, just patiently waited for me to finish untying them.
“Here,” he said, holding his hands out. “I’ll carry them for you.”
I gave them to him and he knotted the laces together and swung them over his shoulder and continued walking towards the ocean.
The sand was warm on my feet, but not too warm, like the day we had gone surfing. The air seemed colder at this beach, coming off the water faster, whipping and tangling my hair. In just a little white longer the vast, empty shoreline was in sight.
“The boat’s down there” he said, gesturing to a small craft sitting up on the shore out of reach of the tide.
“It’s just as beautiful as you told me it would be,” I exclaimed, remembering that he had told me last night that it was something from Asgard he had picked up in the intermittent time between his escape and his return to come get me. He had tried to describe it but I had a hard time putting it into context because I didn’t know what it was supposed to look like and had no frame of reference. It sat on the white sand, heavy dark wood, ornately carved, sleek but ancient looking.
“Just like a viking boat from the ancient days.” he had cheerfully said. I hadn’t told him I didn’t know what an ancient Viking boat looked like
We approached it and I stood next to it, wondering what I should do and how we were going to get it to the water some fifty meters in front of us. It’d be another fifty, in this shallow part of the ocean, before the water would be deep enough for it to float on it’s own.
I didn’t need to think it over, because Loki got behind it and started pushing it, without any trouble at all, towards the water.
“Do you need any help?” I asked, more out of courtesy than anything else.
“No.”
“Suit yourself.”
“I will” he said, pausing to take my shoes off his shoulders and throw them into the boat. He continued pushing but stopped right before the breaking waves on the shore.
“Get in. I’ll push us out so you don’t have to get wet.”
I stood next to the boat where the edge of the gracefully curved sides were the lowest. The wood side came up to just over my waist so I jumped and did an awkward nosedive over the edge, landing with a thump on the perfectly varnished mahogany flooring of the boat. I righted myself, walked over to my shoes, which had fallen haphazardly on the floor and poured the sand out of them as Loki smoothly pushed the giant boat out to the surf. The nose hit it first, and I felt the boat start to lift and settle with the rhythm of the waves.
Loki kept pushing the boat, walking right into the waves, guiding it out as the water got deeper, incrementally, step by step. Once the boat was fully floating with about two feet of water under it he stopped, hopped in much more gracefully and looked down with dismay at the sand from my shoes on the floor of the boat.
“Seriously, Autumn? You couldn’t have dumped that overboard?”
“I didn’t want to lose my shoes in the water!” I said.
“Of course not,” He tutted at me.
Loki walked back to a control panel by a long, thin, and graceful rudder at the back of the boat, pressed a few buttons, and I felt and heard a soft humming begin from the bottom of the boat.
“Ready?” he asked over the gentle noise.
“Yep.” I said.
“Then hang on!”
With a gentle nudge to the throttle the boat zipped forward, silently and gracefully leaving the shore behind. I could see the water over the edge turn from a blue green to an almost black as we hit the ocean shelf about a mile from the shore.
I looked over at Loki, who was concentrating on guiding the boat in a line completely perpendicular to the shore and decided to just let him think about doing that for a while. I had never been on a boat before, not in Hel, at least. This one didn’t look like any of the boats I had ever seen, though, in pictures or at my week at the beach. It was smoother, cleaner, quieter. It had no sails, no oars, and a futuristic, ornate digital control panel, unlike anything I’d ever seen before. Loki sailed it deftly, and I barely felt like I was moving, though the shore receded from my sight in a speed faster than I was comfortable with. We were out of sight in mere minutes.
“You would think,” I finally said, “That a boat this fast and fancy would have some automatic way of getting into the ocean so that you wouldn’t have to get all wet and drag it from the shore.”
“”They’re not meant to be taken out of the water,” he answered. “Much less where I got it.”
“Where did you get it?” I asked, wondering if we were heading there this very moment.
“I can’t tell you that right now. Remember how I told you I can only tell you things one realm at a time last night over dinner?”
“Yes.”
“When we get out of here I’ll tell you all about it, but just in case...” he trailed off.
“Just in case what?”
“Just in case this doesn’t work out the less you know the better.”