When he will not answer honestly, I go back to staring at the jellyfish. He can keep his secrets, but then I will keep mine.
We watch the jellyfish for a long time, both lingering in silence. It is the kind of silence that acknowledges we are two ships sailing different courses, even if we are temporarily thrown together. He sighs as the stars are coming out.
“You would not be so beautiful if you were not so furious with me, I think, Queen Coralys,” he says mildly.
“Then I shall strive to remain so,” I tell him, but his acknowledgment and compliment have served to soften me. “Better angry than sorrowing.”
He nods. “Sorrow is the gift you give what cannot be or is not anymore. It is a gift to the past. Anger is the gift you give the future, a sacrifice offered to unrelenting gods in hopes they’ll choke upon it and you can rebuild the world as you like it from their bones.”
I look at him sidelong. “How long have you been waiting to share that thought with someone?”
He waves with two fingers, dismissing it as nothing. “Oh, not more than a decade.”
I snort a laugh and it breaks the tension between us, and when he looks at me again, he has softened, too.
“Be as furious as you like. Burn me to cinders with your fiery gaze. But know this, Coralys. I hide nothing from you that I will not eventually expose when the moment is ripe.”
Something about how he has worded that makes me have to swallow hard and I hardly notice when he takes the tiller back from me and steers us to land.
He leads me up from the shore and then we go and clean fish.
“Like this,” he says gently, all traces of belligerence gone when he puts his big hands over mine and shows me how to slide the filleting knife through the fish more smoothly.
We pile the flesh of the fish up silently together, mymovements flowing into his as if I have worked alongside him all that decade he was thinking up his theory of sorrow and fury. We move from one task into the next in tandem.
“We work well together,” he suggests with a beguiling quirk in the corner of his mouth when, after the fish are clean, we coil ropes side by side so smoothly that it is as if we can read one another through movement alone.
I remain silent, lest a single word betray the conflict churning in my heart. It is not enough that we can laugh at the same dark jokes. It is not enough that we seem made to be harnessed together like a pair of draft horses. None of it is enough if he will not speak the truth to me.
“I’ll buy you new clothing when next I am near a market,” he offers as we make our way home. And his cheek dimples when he says it. He’s being charming. And accommodating. Generous, even. But none of that is enough to fully cool what burns like a hot ember in my chest.
I do not trust a man who keeps secrets from me. And were I able to trust, there would still be the yawning gape in my heart to contend with. Every kind thing he says, every compassionate gesture hurts because it is someone else who is supposed to be here saying these things to me, doing these things with me, and my real husband will never be here again.
We eat together and we retire together—both once more to our separate sides of the massive bed. I try with all my considerable will not to shudder my way into the sobs that try to catch hold of me. But when I inevitably cannot sleepand he is shifting and suppressing groans once more in lieu of rest, I do not wait for him to go out in the boat alone like he did before. Instead, I am the one to abandon the bed and creep out into the night.
When I was a little girl, I used to find the call of the sea comforting. I imagined I could almost hear a voice in the tides whispering my name. My mother would leave my window open, laughing gently at her fanciful child, but despite her laughter I was convinced that the sea was my friend and as long as it was nearby I would be safe.
I cannot feel the same way anymore. As I stumble out of the cottage, choking on the tears already falling in a patter and splatting hot on my bare feet, all I can think is that the sea has taken from me everything I loved. I do not find comfort in the sound of it. Its crash and murmur is a cruel taunt.
It’s bright enough in the spill of moonlight that I need no light to make my way out across the island. I do not follow one of the paths—not even the ones I haven’t trod yet. I crave the risk of walking where I can barely see. I want to do something dangerous. I do not know if I do it as a defense to keep Oke from following me or if I half wish hewouldfollow. I crave being told I am a fool. I want to have someone to yell and rail against. I want to fight. And there is only one other person on this heap of an island.
But by the time I find a steep, jutting cliff that ends in nothing but furious surf below me, I no longer want to be found. I want only to rage alone. And I do.
I glare at the surf and I hate it for being so vast andunfeeling, so impossible to make pay for what it stole from me. I weep bitter tears and let the sobs shake my body and I creep out to the very edge of the cliff to where the balls of my toes cross just over and curl around the lip of rock. My belly is tight with emotion, my eyes glazed over and breath sharp and painful.
And then a fear-roughened voice breaks over the roar of the ocean: “Coralys!”
I whip my head around, and I must still be glaring, because Oke flinches back. He’s come close to me without me even realizing and I regret ever wishing he would follow me. Grief is a cup I must drain alone.
“What are you doing?” he asks, looking from me to the sea and back, and the look on his face is so horrified, so panicked, that I nearly choke on a dark laugh.
“I’m standing on the edge of a cliff,” I say acerbically. “What are you doing?”
“I am watching you.” He huffs a self-deprecating near-laugh as if he realizes his mistake, but his eyes—almost black in the moonlight—are on my face and I know he can see the tears gleaming and giving me away. He takes a half step forward, his voice uncertain. “You loved him very much. Your husband.”
“I would gladly take his place and give him mine,” I say fiercely.
“I had not met your husband,” he says gravely, “but I am certain he would have made an easier wife than Queen Coralys.”
