‘Fine,’ she concedes, clearing the sink. ‘Help me prepare these, will you?’
‘We’ll have to gut them all now,’ I say, hauling the net into the sink.
‘We can salt what we don’t eat now.’ She pauses. ‘The salt is still dry, isn’t it?’
I make a non-committal noise. ‘I think so.’
She sighs, raising her eyes to the skies. ‘Paranish, just give me a knife.’
I raise my eyebrows. ‘You want me to furnish you with a weapon?’
‘You want me toonlygut the fish?’ she asks, leaning past me to grab a knife and a slippery candidate from the net.
We work in amiable silence for a while and when Ris next opens her mouth, I’m surprised to hear her tone is sincere.
‘Where did you learn to chop like that?’
‘Why, are you intimidated?’
‘No, you’re making a mess of it.’
I look down at my handiwork and then at Ris’s neater pile of innards. ‘Where does a farmer get off telling a sailor about fish?’
‘By Aistra, your pride is a bruised mango.’ She laughs. ‘Come here.’
She takes my knife and nudges me playfully aside, standing before my work and demonstrating. ‘You’re too fast; you need to slow down and hold this bit here so it doesn’t tear away. Peel it back, layer by layer. Like undressing a lover.’
My face must be an open book; she laughs at my discomfort. ‘Are you confessing that Biba’s father was a siren?’ I jest.
Her body stiffens, and I step back from the heat of her body. I hadn’t realised we were so close to one another.
‘Try to keep it cleaner with the next one,’ she says, but the warmth and levity is gone from her voice.
‘Did I do something?’ I ask, gently.
‘Just realised how hungry I am,’ she says, with a tight smile. ‘Let’s get some of these ready for eating.’
chapter thirty-six
ris
I can’t help butlaugh when I remember Finlyr’s distressed face trying to gulp down that foul porridge. It’s what he deserves for his oversight with the storeroom.
‘Swabbing the deck is all fine and good but cooking requires human hands,’ I insist, sorting through the goods to be stored once the cupboard has been cleaned. ‘People who can actually taste if something’s going to poison us.’
Finlyr rolls his eyes at me. ‘If you’re prepared to do it all, that’s fine by me.’
‘Hey, that’s not what I said. We can take it in turns; everyone will pitch in.’
‘I’d like to see you try and make Sinigang pitch in.’
I sigh. ‘He can be moral support.’
Finlyr raises his eyebrows. ‘A real improvement on a skeleton.’
He’s finally got the hang of preparing the fish. It’s only taken until most of the net was empty.
‘Have you heard the kids have named them?’
