She stood next to Zigana, utterly impervious to his previous warmth or current coldness. “I’ve promised Ziga a ride home.”
“As you wish. Until later then.” He bowed once more, this time to both women, before swinging into the saddle to guide his horse toward the bluff. Zigana resisted the urge to watch him leave. Despite her bedazzlement, it was inappropriate to stare after her sister’s husband like a moonstruck calf, even if Jolen found him contemptible.
Jolen dusted her palms of imaginary dirt and instantly brightened. “Well, now with that unpleasantness over and done…”
“I didn’t know you had a daughter!”
Jolen giggled, obviously thrilled at catching her sister off guard. “I was planning to tell you.” She switched subjects with the speed of a hummingbird sipping nectar from flower to flower. “Do you want that ride? We’ll be there in no time. That gelding is skittish but fast.”
Just like his rider, Zigana thought. She wanted to know more about the child Tunde. A faint yearning settled in her breast. She had hoped to give Lukas a child when they married. Fate had decreed otherwise.
She accepted Jolen’s offer of the ride. Once they got the gelding to stand still long enough, he was a lot easier to mount than Gitta. Not as tall and not nearly as wide, he made up for the lack of bulk in speed. Jolen’s boast hadn’t been idle. The horse practically flew over the dunes and paths, Jolen reining him to a stop in front of the cottage so abruptly, it threw Zigana against her back with a hard “umpf.”
She swung down, feeling as if someone had ripped away newly sprouted wings when her feet hit unyielding earth. “You’re right,” she told Jolen. “He makes you think you’re flying.” She gestured to the front door. The twitch of a curtain at the front window caught her eye. “Mama is likely stuck to the glass at the moment to see what we’ll do. Do you want to come in for tea?”
Jolen shook her head. “No, I’ve duties to attend.”
She sounded so melancholy, as if the tasks ahead of her broke the backs of the strongest men. Zigana rested a hand on her knee. “Should you change your mind and come back, I’ll put a kettle on.” She straightened the salt-crusted hem of Jolen’s skirt where it caught in the stirrup. “I know fate hasn’t been kind and the circumstances not as you might have wished them, but I’m glad you’ve returned. Will I see you again?”
A sheen of tears glossed Jolen’s eyes, and her mouth curved into a feeble smile. “Yes.” She inhaled, straightened in the saddle and winked at Zigana. “When you’re done with your shrimping and don’t reek, come to the house. I’ll send a messenger with a time that’s good. Or I’ll come back to the beach and we’ll race the waves.” She turned the gelding around and tapped its sides where upon it launched into a canter. Jolen half turned in her seat and waved. “Until daylight, Ziga!” she called out before breaking into a full gallop down the village’s main road.
Unlike the last rider to leave, Zigana kept her eyes on this one until she disappeared over the dune. “Until daylight, sister mine,” she said softly.
She didn’t have long to wait before Frishi yanked open the door and strode to her side. “What did she tell you?” She mopped her damp brow with her apron. “I never thought to see that girl again once she married and moved to the capital.”
“She’s to live at Banat with her husband and daughter for now.”
“Jolen has a child? Well, that’s a surprise.”
Zigana didn’t reply. Was it truly? Her sister was mercurial, vain, and sometimes arrogant, but at no point had she ever expressed a hatred for children. Zigana could easily see her as a loving, albeit, flighty parent at times. What did surprise her was the knowledge she only had one child, especially married to a man like Andras Frantisek.
She shook her head to rid herself of his image. “My sister’s husband,” she murmured.
“What did you say?” Frishi eyed her, frowning.
“Nothing, Mama. I’m just thinking what else I need to do this afternoon.”
“Well, if nothing comes to mind, I have enough of a list to keep you, me, and half this village busy for a week.”
Though Zigana had no problem remembering the numerous chores waiting to be done, Frishi made good on her promise of providing more. By the time supper finished, she was happy to collapse in a chair next to Odon and help him mend nets.
“Any more talk about Solyom?” She wove a bar through the meshes, making sure they lined up straight for the needle and twine.
Odon cut a small hole in another patch of broken knots. “‘Tis said he walked into the sea to the sound of his wife calling his name. How Red Jana knows this, I can’t say, especially since he’s telling folks he didn’t actually see Solyom go into the water.”
Zigana scowled. “He gossips worse than that pack of fishwives who gather at market day.”
“Poor old man,” Frishi said, tending to her own repair work of darning a stocking from a basket of mending. “Maybe it isn’t such a bad way to go, knowing your love is waiting for you.”
No it wasn’t, Zigana thought, except it hadn’t been Trezka waiting for Solyom in the water.
The parlor was quiet after that until Frishi put her mending aside and announced she was going to bed. She kissed Odon on the lips, Zigana on the forehead, and closed the bedroom door behind her.
Zigana waited for a moment before speaking. “You didn’t tell her what I saw?”
He side-eyed her. “I’ll leave that up to you. Just bear in mind that when she finds out, she’ll do her best to nail your feet to the floor and not let you within a league of the sea if she can.”
“I’m not a little girl anymore, Papa.”
