“As long as I found you on the beach,” I say again, slower now, testing the words, “you are mine.”
Her hand flashes out. She knocks my fingers away from her knee. “No,” she says. “Not your. Mine.”
I lean back at once. Confusion floods my chest. The Deep gives, and we accept. That is how it has always been. Driftwood. Splix. Shells. Even enemies, sometimes. The Deep does not argue.
But she does.
She sits rigid with anger now. Her breath is fast, her eyes bright. She does not feel given, I think. She feels wronged.
If she is given, why does she choose to fight? The thought twists inside me. It leaves no place to stand.
I notice her shaking. Not from anger, I hope. It may be from cold. The ocean is often much colder than the jungle, especially when it’s a bit windy, like now. Or it could be from shock. Dark bruises mark her arm where the sea-Big gripped her. One thin line of blood runs from a scrape on her shoulder. The Big was overgrown with seaweed and small living things with hard shells.
The ocean rolls beside us, restless and hungry.
“I will keep you safe,” I say at last. She must know it. She’s safe in the boat. She’s not safe if she jumps out again. But she must understand that. She’s not stupid, this one. Not at all.
Her eyes flick to the water, and she swallows.
“The Deep is not done with you,” I add. “With us. Stay in the boat. I have my spear, and all the Bigs fear it. That one will fear it, too, now.”
I reach for the sheet at my feet, used to wrap the spear so its edges stay sharp. I hesitate, because I do need to protect the blades, too. But she needs it more. I place the sheet around her shoulders. My hands brush her skin by accident. It’s cool and smooth and soft in a way that I can’t quite grasp. Heat jumps up my arms. I calm my hands at once, but the moment lingers between us.
She does not pull away. She watches me instead. Her gaze moves over my chest, my arms, and the scars along my ribs. Her breath changes. I recognize the shift with a shock of my own.
Plik chirps and wedges himself between us, offended by the pause. He presses against her hip and then against my knee, as if he belongs in both places.
She touches his head again. Gentler this time.
“Friend,” she says. Then she taps her chest. “Callie.” She points back toward the dark stretch of coast behind us. “Ship.” Another word follows, softer. “Theodora.” And now she looks at me. “We go.”
Her meaning lands clear enough. She wants to go back.
I grip the edge of the boat. The beach is coming closer because I’m not paddling, and the boat drifts slowly toward the shore. The coast ahead waits in shadow. The safer waters lie that way. So does the village. A place that will not know what to do withher. A place that may see her as proof against everything we believe. Or proof for it.
I turn the boat. We’re not going back to where I found her. There would be no point. I’m not giving her to the Plood.
“The village is safer,” I say. “You might like it. Or you might hate it. I sometimes do.”
She studies my face, and I look right back at hers. So soft, so smooth… There are no stripes, no scars, and no blade. No, she can’t survive on her own. Not in the Deep, and certainly not in the jungle. She needs someone. Yes, she was given to me. To protect, no doubt. And to…
I stop myself from thinking more about what I might do for her. That is heresy. We don’t believe in the Woman.
But she could still be Worshipped, comes the unwanted thought.Any woman could. Mated, too.
I glance at the ropes that I used to bind her thin wrists. They’re half-rotten and fragile. Tying her up again would serve no purpose. She knows what will happen if she goes back into the water.
I force myself to turn my back and paddle on. “You know, the Deep has given me many things. But none of them have ever looked at me the way you do.”
3
-Callie-
I wake right before the sky changes its mind.
Night still lies heavy on the water, but the black has thinned to a bruised blue, and I can tell by the rhythm of the paddling that we have been moving for a long time. Long enough that my body has stopped screaming and settled into a wary ache. Long enough that the saucer is not coming back into view, no matter how hard I stare behind us.
We are going away from it, pretty fast. That fact lands in my chest like a dropped plate. Not shattering, just a sharp, spreading crack. There must be a current that helps speed us away.
