“If you don’t want,” Zaria said, “then you’re not living,far as I’m concerned.Life’s got too much to offer for you to spend it feelingsorry about what’s gone or what never was.”
“It’s not that easy to let things go.”
“Oh, course not, love, but life wouldn’t be worth living ifthat were so.Pleasure would mean nothing if you’d never known pain.”There wasa pause.“Truth is, I like being alive.Suffering and all.Won’t die with noregrets, but I’m starting to think no one ever does.”
They lay in silence for a while.
“Isaac,” she said.“Thanks for mixing your herbs.I feelbetter now than I have in days.Weeks, really.”
He had used many of his most important reagents.It waslikely that he would be unable to craft any other potions, should the needarise.
“Sure,” he said.“Happy to help.”
They lay in silence again.Isaac tried to calculate thedimensions of each of the giant ribs.A single one could’ve walled a village.He tried to imagine what was causing the cartilage to glow as it was.He wantedto climb up to the top of the body cavity and walk along the ribs and gaze downat the necropolis and see it as no one had seen itbefore.
“Hey,” he said.“What’re you going to do with your half ofthe treasure?”
“Ain’t you worried I’ll stab you for it?”
“I just assumed the stabbing would be for some otherreason.”
“Wise of you.”There was a pause.“I’m gonna learn to read.”
He glanced over at her.“Really?”
“First thing on the docket, once I’m outta the waste.”
“Any reason why?”
She blew a raspberry.“Oh, none at all.Proud of myignorance, really.I love having to ask direction while standing next to asign.Warms my heart when I’m cheated for not reading a contract.”Her face washeld in profile, staring up at the cartilage light.“My father always promisedthat’s what he’d do for me, the second he was able.Every time I handed him abag of coin, he’d go off about me attending some academy in the upper districtsso I wouldn’t have to pinch off the streets.Make something better of myself.Always wondered what might’ve happened, if things had been different.Who Icould’ve been.”
“Are you doing it for him?”
“In some way, sure.Not all of it.It’s like—” She waved ahand in the air.“It’s like you said, actually.I don’t know what I don’t know.My ignorance is such that I don’t even have a true notion of it.Right?That’swhat you said?”
“More or less.”
“How can I be better if I don’t know better?How can I besomething other than a pirate if I don’t have no other talents?My lack ofletters has restricted me my whole life.Even now, it’s a struggle to fix mywords to my feelings ‘cause I don’t have the words themselves.”She paused.“You tell me, Isaac.Is there a word for something ...not becoming?Something that never got the chance to exist?”
“Unrealized,” Isaac said.
“Could you ...write that down for me?”
He ripped off part of his bandages, grabbed some charcoalfrom his pack, wrote the word as legibly as he could, and handed it to her.Shelooked down at the torn bandage, blinking.
“That’s it, then,” she said.“I want to learn my lettersbecause I don’t want to be ‘unrealized’.I want to have potential.I want tosteer the course of my life clear as I can.I want the tools to figure out whatI want in the first place.You get my meaning?”
“Yes,” he said.“I know exactly what you mean.I feel thesame way.”
“Never wanted to be a pirate, myself.Did you want to be amage?”
“I wasn’t given the choice.”
“And you never understood what you were missing, did you?”
“Not really, no.”
“Do you know better now?”
