“I have an idea,” the witch said, and disappeared before I could say a word. When she returned, she had prepared a large clay bowl with warm water, steam still rising from it. She knelt beside me and began dabbing the cloth on my chest.
I grit my teeth, knowing I shouldnotbe reacting to her touch the way I was. This was ridiculous, yet it felt so… good. I reasoned it felt good because I was finally beginning to feel clean again.
I’m not clean,I thought and frowned to myself.
When she moved to my back, her fingers skimmed my scars. “What happened here?” she murmured, and I knew which scar she referred to, but I closed my eyes to try to dispel the memory.
“Huntsmen don’t live soft lives.”
Why were her fingers still touching it? I turned, though it caused my teeth to grit, before I caught her wrist and asked, “Enjoying yourself, witch?”
Her eyes widened, her cheeks blossoming with color as she pulled her hand away, breaking the moment. “Just trying to keep you alive, huntsman.”
And my heart never felt so alive. This was ridiculous.
She worked in silence for a long while before trying to figure out how to clean my hair. We decided that if I could prop myself up on my elbows, she’d be able to wash my hair in the clay bowl. Part of me wanted to just forget it, but the other part desperately wanted the grime out of my hair. I’d feel more presentable, more like myself than a half-alive corpse.
“Your whalebone necklace is on the mantle,” she said quietly, as if she’d been deep in thought. And it bothered me that she had probably been deep in thought aboutme.
Her fingers brushed through my hair, sometimes touching my forehead. She had to change the water out twice because my hair was so dirty, a thought that made me feel more embarrassed than it should.
“It was from the first whale I killed,” I said, and when she didn’t press me any further, I decided to not share anymore. But, after a moment, she asked, “Did it scare you?”
“What?”
“Killing the whale?”
I pursed my lips. “I was mostly afraid I’d miss or not kill it, and the thing would have the harpoon stuck in it, living a miserable life in pain…”
More silence. “You’ve killed so many of them.” It sounded as if she spoke more to herself than to me.
“I don’t glorify it,” I said. “I’ve killed them–many times. They’ve fed my crew. Built my fleet. Given me power and independence any man would dream of.”
“But they’re sacred,” she said. “Living, breathing spirits. What did they do to deserve the torture and murder you’ve done to them?”
So she was one of those people. Most saw whalers as just sailors, a cog in the great wheel of ocean trade. But some saw us as killers. They preached about the “rights” of whales, as if beasts could understand rights. To them, we were the lowest of the low.
Normally, I’d roll my eyes and let their words wash off like seawater. But I found myself saying, “I haven’t raised a harpoon in years. My men do all that now.”
“You haven’t raised a harpoon,” she said, and left the rest in the air between us:But you haven’t walked away, either.
“I’m not leaving the whaling business.”
She didn’t argue. Just finished drying my hair, the towel catching gently at the ends before her fingers combed through it. My heart lurched. It was foreign, unwelcome. I braced against it like I would a storm.
What in the briny seas was that feeling?
“We’re from two different worlds,” she said, standing. And I knew what she meant: when I healed, I’d go my way, and she’d go hers.
Yet the thought needled at me. And the fact it bothered me—that leaving her bothered me—was even more irritating.
By the second week,I could sit up long enough to pretend I wasn’t completely useless.
I had attempted to bathe in the washroom but I was too weak. Ginger gave me towels to wipe my body, but I truly just needed a good bath.
I felt like a beached whale: a mass of deadweight that didn’t move and smelled like rot. How the girl could stand to be around me was truly a mystery.
The sun filtered through the jealousie windows like gold dust, and a soft breeze stirred the scent of ginger and salt through the little cottage. I’d grown used to the rhythm of this place: simple meals, soft-footed care, and the quiet hum of her voice as she moved about. It was maddening, in a way. Gentle. Easy. Dangerous.
