The boards beneath our feet are newly set, the bindings still pale where they have not yet darkened with salt.
Callie walks at my side. Her steps are light and careful, her head turning as she takes everything in. She doesn’t hunch, or lower her gaze. I’m sure the tribe notices that too.
Good,I think, and then I am not sure why.
The bay is quiet.Tooquiet. The water slides against the posts with a patient sound, like breath taken and released. As we passthe inner platforms, I feel it again—the awareness of what lies under the platform farther in. The place I don’t look at, and try not to think about.
I move closer without touching her.
The new hut stands solid. The roof is thatched, the walls newly braced. The men worked well. They don’t always do, but the krai scared them, and I think they wanted Callie to see them at their best. I secured this place for us before the fire was lit, before the meat was passed around, before the tribe decided what tonight would mean.
Sprub’ex himself suggested it. He’s not all bad, just cautious on behalf of the tribe.
I duck inside first, checking shadows, listening. The waves cluck under the floor. Nothing moves within.
“This is the safest place in the village,” I say, and only then does she step past me.
The hut smells of wood, sea, and the faint trace of oil from a lamp. Callie exhales, a small sound she likely doesn’t know she makes. It does something to me. Everything does something to me now.
I turn away under the pretense of checking the door lashings, and give myself a moment to breathe.Control,I remind myself. This could be part of the test.
When I turn back, Callie is seated on the edge of the sleeping platform, her hands braced on either side of her. Flickering light from a torch outside reaches through the thin gaps in the walls, painting her skin in warm stripes. It should not look like this. Nothing in my life has prepared me for this.
“You were very quiet,” she says.
I start wiping the salt off my spear with its leather sheet. “I was listening.”
“To them?” She tilts her head toward the Circle, where the men are getting noisy.
“We have no choice but to listen to them. But I was also listening to the ocean. And to you.”
Her mouth curves. “I not say much.”
I chuckle. “True, but you said things that the tribe will ponder for days. And so will I.”
She studies me for a long moment. There is a question there. There are several. Including the one she already asked. She chooses another one. “Why you bring me out there today? The jungle?”
I finish with the spear and set it within reach. The motion puts me lower than her. It brings my eyes level with her knees, to the line of her leg beneath the thin fabric of her garment. Oh black Deep, how can a thigh be so round…
Heat surges through me, sharp and unwelcome. I focus on tightening my belt.
“I wanted to get you away from all the eyes. And I wanted you to see,” I say.
“See what?”
“The iron. My iron. The rock that you say comes from the sky. Themidoryde. Well, it was something to show you.”
Her fingers tighten on the edge of the platform. “All the men are talking. Also the other tribes. Soon, all jungle will know about me. You did not tell the men that other tribe saw me, too.”
I get back up and lean on the wall. “Now they know we have a woman. Some may think you aretheWoman. The one from their silly myth. I didn’t see a reason to tell our men about it. During the Day of trade, they will all see you anyway. Unless we hide you. Perhaps we have to.”
“They were staring at me.”
I nod. “They always will. You’re the only woman anyone’s ever seen.”
She looks down at her hands. The firelight gleams on her hair, on the soft curve where her neck meets her shoulder. The urge rises again, stronger now. The thought that has been circling me since the river, since the iron, since the way she thought fast before the rekh, and trusted me to understand what she was doing.
Worship.The word surfaces unbidden. A foreign thing, learned in fragments, in warnings. A practice of the land tribes. Taboo and wrong, like everything the jungle tribes do. A man kneels. A man gives himself over to a woman’s pleasure as an act of reverence. The old men scoff whenever it’s described. A weakness from the Dry, they said. But what do they know? It is done only with women.
