“I have to go,” I whisper. “Crat'ax is not the way you think.”
“You’ll see,” the dragon yawns. “Anyway, you’re not sure if I would leave these lesser creatures alone if I had gold. Let me try to prove it to you, as well as I’m able in this prison. Just to help pass the time.”
“How?” I ask, shuddering in the cold night air.
“I will make something good happen to the tribe. That’s it. Just a sign of my good will and pure intentions. Go now, little Callie. Your captor may notice you’re gone. If he does, he’ll put you in a cage of your own. As you well know.”
I quickly paddle back to the village, mind racing.
As I sneak back into the hut, I hear Crat'ax’s calm breathing. He’s still in the same position I left him.
When I lie back down, he stirs. “Were you gone?”
“Just had a need,” I tell him truthfully. “I’m back now.”
“Mm,” he grunts and pulls me to him.
I lie still beside him, listening to the deep, even rhythm of his breathing, and for the first time it doesn’t calm me the way it always does. His arm is heavy and warm across my waist, solid, possessive without meaning to be, and I try to decide whether that comforts me or traps me.
The dragon’s voice echoes in my head, smooth as cold water, stacking doubts where trust used to live so easily. Crat'ax smells of smoke and the ocean, and earlier tonight that scent meant safety and desire and belonging. Now it tangles with the image of the cage, the dark water, the green eyes watching and waiting.
I tell myself that Crat'ax would never lie to me, that he has only ever been gentle and proud of me, that he will keep his promise.Still, guilt pricks at me. About Theodora, about the dragon, about how good it feels to be here when maybe it shouldn’t. I stare into the darkness of the hut and wonder what price will eventually be asked for this happiness.
I wake up to fast running on the planks and excited voices outside. “Splix! The splix run has started! Get to your boats!”
Crat'ax is awake and on his feet at the same moment, pulling his loincloth on, grabbing his spear and pulling the leather sheet off it. “Callie! Come on! We have splix to catch with your alien net!”
19
- Callie-
Outside the sun has just risen. Many canoes are already making for the opening of the bay, their crews paddling fast.
Crat'ax and I jump into his boat, and as we push off, I ignore the boys who’re quarreling about who tied their boat in the wrong place and with the wrong knot.
Crat'ax paddles calmly, and I examine the net, making sure the right pieces of driftwood and rocks are in the right places. At this speed, the cold drops splash my face more than yesterday, but I don’t mind it. I’m excited to see how the net works.
Ahead, the men pull their oars in and throw the hooked lines into the water. Immediately, they pull them back in, full of silvery, writhing splix, five or six to a line.
Crat'ax paddles us farther out. When he puts his oar down, he gives me a little smile. “Look down.”
I look over the side of the boat and gasp. Below me, right under the surface, are millions upon millions of alien fish, so near and so many that I’m sure I could reach down and come back with a handful of them. It’s as if the water of the ocean has been replaced by them. It’s so mesmerizing I could just stare at it.
“The net!” I exclaim when I remember why we’re here. Together, Crat'ax and I toss it overboard. It barely seems necessary—I’m sure I could pick these things out of the ocean one by one.
After about a second, the net is so heavy with splix that it sinks. Crat'ax heaves on the rope and pulls it in, having to use considerable strength.
The net is chock-a-block with splix, spraying droplets as they still try to swim with their thin fins.
Crat'ax and I quickly pull them out of the net and dump them in one of the wooden boxes we brought. Then we toss the net back out.
Crat'ax takes his spear and rams it straight down into the immense mass of splix and harpoons maybe fifteen of them. He shakes his head as he picks them off, then puts the spear down. “We have a better way now.” Then he hauls the net in again. “This is the greatest splix run I’ve ever seen. And our catch will be by far the biggest anyone’s heard of.”
The splix are probably so different from Earth fish that there’s no comparison, but to my non-zoologist eyes they look like fish are supposed to. Except for the number of eyes and the shrimp-like segments they have around the middle. They’re cold to the touch and as slippery as I remember trout being back on Earth the one time I went fishing there.
We work frantically until the boxes are full and the boat floats so low in the water that the waves are only about an inch below the sides.
We’re the first to turn back home. In all the other boats and canoes, the men are hauling up their lines and struggling with picking hooks out of splix mouths.
