Charon's Crossing

She looked at him and smiled. "You?"

"Aye, me."

"Did you learn when you were a boy?"

"In New England?" He laughed. "Nay, sweetheart, such frivolity was out of the question. I did my learning in a warm South Pacific cove, with the trade winds sighing through the palms."

"Taught by a golden-skinned native girl in a grass skirt?"

He chuckled, wrapped his arm around her waist, and tugged her towards him.

"Jealous?"

She was, that was the damnedest part of it, though she knew it was ridiculous to be jealous of something that had happened almost two centuries ago.

"Of course not," she said primly. "I'm just curious."

"Let me see... ah yes, I remember it well. My teacher was an incredible sight."

"Was she?" Kathryn mustered up a smile.

"Oh, indeed. Brown hair, slender, five foot nine or ten with a shiny bald head—"

She swung towards him. "What?"

Matthew grinned. "I got my swimming lesson from a mean-tempered captain, who decided the stench of his cabin boy was bad enough to offend even his nostrils."

"Ah, I see."

"A golden-skinned girl would have been much more to my liking, especially since I damn near drowned. But after I'd swallowed half the sea, I surfaced and found, to my amazement, that I could keep my head above water. What about you? Do you swim?"

She nodded. "I can't remember when I learned, it was so long ago. I just know we lived in this wonderful old house on Cape Cod I think, and..."

"What's the matter, sweetheart?"

"Nothing. Well, it's just that I always thought of that house as miserable but

now, for some reason, I thought of how much I really liked it. And how my father used to put me on his shoulders on summer mornings, and carry me down to the water where we'd wade and search for shells."

"You loved your father a great deal, did you?"

"No," she said, frowning. "Why would I? He left us, my mother and me, and forgot all about us."

"I don't think so, love, not if he left you this—God almighty, what is that?"

Matthew's voice had turned sharp with fear. He knocked Kathryn to the sand and fell on top of her, protecting her with his body as two dark shadows swooped over the island and roared out across the sea. When they were nothing but black dots on the far horizon, he rose slowly to his knees.

"What in hell were those things?"

Kathryn sat up. "Airplanes," she said gently. "Ships that fly."

"Ships that fly?" he whispered. "Like what Montgolfier flew in Paris back in '83? No. They were more like the drawings by what's his name, the Italian... Leonardo da Vinci?"

She smiled. "Very much like his drawings."

Matthew shook his head, rolled onto his back, and threw his arm across his eyes.

"Your world is like a magic box," he said quietly. "The more I look, the more there is to see."