100 Things #1: Why would you be named after a snail?

[niko]

(It occured to me that I really ought to be cross-posting here for completeness sake.  No spoiler-formatting DW?  *is bummed and must edit my post instead of just copy/pasting :) )

So...  *drum roll*

Source: The Changeling Sea, by Patricia McKillip
Moment: Peri Meets Lyo
Warning? Extremely Minor Spoilers from early in the book

As a point of order:  I'm thinking many of my favorites will involve spoilers in either the scene or as setup to the scene, so I'm going to plan on Cutting the main body of my posts and going with a simple header as above to start things off.)



Setup:  Our heroine, Peri, is a young woman who lives in a seaside fishing village that has recently had troubles with a sea dragon.  She works at a local inn, and is scrubbing floors when a magician arrives to answer the village's call for someone to deal with the dragons.

The Scene: 

Peri grunted, shoved her bucket farther down the hall. The frown crept back over her face. The wave of suds she sent across the floor turned into tide and foam.

There was a sudden crash. The inn door, with someone clinging to it, had blown open under a vigorous puff of spring wind. Peri looked up to see a stranger lose his balance on her tide. He danced upright a moment, and she noticed finally the blazing thunderheads and the bright blue sky beyond him. Then he tossed his arms and fell, slid down the hall to kick over her bucket before he washed to a halt under her astonished face.

They stared at one another, nose to nose. The stranger lay prone, panting slightly. Peri, wordless, sat back on her knees, her brush,suspended, dripping on the stranger’s hair.

The stranger smiled after a moment. He was a small, dark-haired, wiry young man with skin the light polished brown of a hazelnut. His eyes were very odd: a vivid blue-green-gray, like stones glittering different colors under the sun. He turned on his side on the wet floor and cupped his chin in his palm.

“Who are you?”

“Peri.” She was so surprised that her voice nearly jumped out of her.

“Periwinkle? Like the flower?” he asked.

“Is there a flower?” His eyes kept making her want to look at them, put a color to them. But they eluded definition.

“Oh, yes,” the stranger said. “A lovely blue flower.”

“I thought they were only snails.”

“Why,” the stranger asked gravely, “would you be named after a snail?”

“Because I didn’t know there were flowers,” Peri said fuzzily.

“I see.” His voice was at once deep and light, with none of the lilt of the coastal towns in it. He regarded her curiously, oblivious to the water seeping into his clothes. His body looked thin but muscular, his hands lean and strong, oddly capable, as if they could as easily tie a mooring knot as a bow in a ribbon. 

He was dressed very simply, but not like a fisher, not like a farmer, not like one of the king’s followers, either, for his leather was scuffed and the fine wool cloak that had threatened to sail away with him on the wind was threaded with grass stains. He popped a soap bubble with one forefinger and added, “I heard a rumor that someone here needs a magician.”

She nodded wearily, remembering the tattered fortune-tellers, the alchemists in their colorful, bedraggled robes. Then she drew a sudden breath, gazing again into the stranger’s eyes. That, she felt, must explain their changing, the suggestion in them that they had witnessed other countries, marvels. He looked back at her without blinking. As she bent closer, searching for the marvels, a door opened somewhere at the far side of the world.

“Peri!”

She jumped. The stranger sighed, got slowly to his feet. He stood dripping under the amazed stare of the innkeeper.

“Good morning,” he said. “I’m—”

“You’re all wet!”

“I’m all wet. Yes.” He ran a hand down his damp clothes, and the dripping stopped. The flagstones were suddenly dry, too. So was the puddle outside the door. “My name is Lyo. I’m a—”

“Yes,” the innkeeper said. He bustled forward, clutched the magician’s arm as if he might vanish like Peri’s scrub water. “Yes. Indeed you are. Come this way, sir. Peri, go down to the kitchen and bring the gentleman some breakfast.”

“I’m not hungry,” said the magician.

“A beer?”

“No,” the magician said inflexibly. “Just Peri.” He added, at the innkeeper’s silence, “I’ll see that her work gets done.”

“That may well be,” the innkeeper said with sudden grimness. “But she’s a good, innocent girl, and we’ve promised to pay you in gold and not in Periwinkles.”

Peri shut her eyes tightly, wishing a flagstone would rise under her feet and carry her away. Then she heard Lyo’s laugh, and saw the flush that had risen under his brown skin.

He held out his hands to the innkeeper; his wrists were bound together by a chain of gold. “I only want her to take me to see the sea-dragon.”

The innkeeper swallowed, staring at the gold. The chain became a gold coin in the magician’s palm. “I’ll need a room.”

“Yes, your lordship. Anything else? Anything at all.”

“A boat.”

“There’s the Sea Urchin,” Peri said dazedly. “But it needs oars.”

The odd eyes glinted at her again, smiling, curious. “Why would a Sea Urchin not have oars?”

“It lost them when my father drowned.”

He was silent a moment; he seemed to be listening to things she had not said. He touched her gently, led her outside. “Oars it shall have.” She was still clutching her brush. He took it from her, turned it into a small blue flower. “This,” he said, giving it back to her, “is a periwinkle.”

Commentary:  OK, so I said in my intro that this is gonna be very id-dy, so swoony stuff out of the way first.  The descriptions of Lyo here are *so* the kind of words that turn me to goo...  dark-haired, *WIRY*, lean, strong hands (hands seem to be a *thing* for me, so just specifically mentioning them gets extra points), "oddly capable"  (not to mention my competence kink, which I'm sure will be another running theme :) ).   So... predisposed to madly love this guy even before he starts engaging in adorable banter and blushing and throwing around casual magic.  Yes.

Beyond that, this is one of at least two examples I MUST include in this of why I absolutely adore Patricia McKillip.  I can't say that her modern work has ever *quite* captured the magic of Changeling Sea and The Forgotten Beasts of Eld (example #2) for me, but there's something so... evocative in her writing - the way she captures that mythic sort of tone, and yet, is still so intimate and filled with charming little details and powerful emotions.   Every time I re-read this section, I can't get that periwinkle exchange out of my head for days.  It's so sweet and funny and PERFECT.