“Oh, sweetie,” Eadie said.
Ulina kept opening and closing her mouth, fishlike, as if she wanted to say something but didn’t know which words to say. “You don’t know him like we do. You should know . . .”
Eadie interrupted her. “We should have this conversation over tea. And toast with jam? Can we buy some of your raspberry jam?”
Kiela ushered them inside the cottage. “You don’t need to buy it.”
“As your business partner, I say you shouldn’t argue when people want to give you money,” Bryn told her. She softened her words with a smile as she stepped inside. Kiela backed up so that Eadie could squeeze through the door after Bryn. The shelves rattled as Eadie clip-clopped into the kitchen.
While Kiela lit the stove, Eadie filled a kettle with water. Ulina retrieved teacups from the cabinet and set them on the table. The four chairs were placed around, and in a few short minutes, the water was hot, a loaf that Bryn produced from her vast pockets was sliced and warmed, and the air smelled like pine tea, raspberries, and bread.
It was all so homey and lovely that Kiela wanted to cry again.What’s wrong with me?She rarely ever cried. She wasn’t an ups-and-downs emotions kind of person. Usually she was quiet and calm and even-keeled.
For a little bit, while the tea steeped, they chatted about inconsequential things. Bryn talked about Tobin forgetting the fountain was functional again and falling straight into it, and how all the winged cats would cluster around the fountain every morning to drink from the cold, clear water. Ulina told a story that her great-aunt had told her, about how the fountain had come to be—the man who’d commissioned it had been saved by a mermaid once, when his ship was capsized by one of the giant squids that lived out in the deep. He’d been responsible for the law that prohibited gill nets to be used on Caltrey. Before then, fisherfolk would leave nets in the water unsupervised, suspended off of jetties, and occasionally merfolk, particularly curious merbabies, would become tangled in them, leading to tragedies. The fountain was installed to celebrate the law, and his wife had cast the spell to make the water flow. Back in those days, that wasn’t forbidden. “Used to be, islanders looked out for one another,” Ulina said, “and the empire let us be. Better that way.”
“You can’t let Radane hear you say that,” Kiela said. “You heard her talk about the uprising—the revolution. The fact that imperial inspectors still exist means it failed. And post-revolt, she’ll come down extra hard on anyone who says anything that sounds anti-empire.”
Ulina snorted. “Never been a law against being opinionated.”
“Yet,” Kiela said. She had no idea what laws were being passed in the wake of a failed revolution. “We can’t take chances. That’s why I have to go. If I stay—”
“Are you happy here?” Bryn asked. “Do you want to stay?”
“Yes,” Kiela said. Her voice was a whisper.
She thought of her parents and wondered if they’d have understood why she felt that way—they’d been so excited to leave, so happy in Alyssium, so certain they were in the right place to pursue their family’s dreams. Initially, she’d only come back to Caltrey because she had no other choice. She’d started the shop because she hadn’t wanted to starve. But now . . .It’s more than that.She thought of the garden and the orchard and the willow in the woods and all she’d done in such a short period of time.It’s not just that either.It was Bryn and Eadie and Ulina and, of course, Larran. And it was the way she felt closer to her parents now in a place they’d wanted to leave than she had in a place they’d chosen for themselves.
She answered again louder, “Yes.”
“Larran wants you to stay,” Eadie declared.
“That boy . . .” Ulina shook her head. “He hasn’t had an easy time of it. His parents . . .” She trailed off and shook her head again.
“I know they weren’t kind to him,” Kiela said. “He’s told me as much.”
Eadie snorted. “Not kind. Ha! You’re sugarcoating it, Ulina. Hasn’t had ‘an easy time’? She should know the truth, as tragic and ugly and terrible as it is.”
Ulina stirred her tea with one hand and spread jam on toast with another. “Larran’s parents were dung in the form of people. Exactly the kind that should never have kids. If we’d realized sooner . . . Well, we didn’t. They hid it, and poor little Larran didn’t know he could trust other adults for help. How could he have known? The ones who were supposed to care for him, protect him, love him . . . If they were still here now . . .”
“Here’s the long and the short of it,” Eadie said. “His father was a yeller. We all knew that. We’d hear him from the street, but there wasn’t a thing anyone could do about it. I remember asking him about it once—I was always the nosy type—and he said he had a right to his emotions and it was healthy to get them out. Besides, it let his family know where he stood. It was a form of love, he said. If you don’t yell, how do they know you care? Healthier for all of them to let it out, rather than bottle it up.”
Bryn snorted. “Self-indulgent bullcrap.”
“We all considered it a different parenting style,” Eadie said. “But yes, I believe you should showmorecontrol with the people you love, not less.”
Kiela couldn’t think of a single time she’d ever heard either of her parents yell. Maybe once, when she’d almost fallen off a bridge into a canal . . . But never in anger, at least not in any of her memories. They’d be disappointed sometimes, yes, but no worse than that.
“Some people are yellers,” Eadie said. “It’s not pleasant. Heck, I’ve lost my temper a few times. Also, I can be a bit too blunt, and excuse it by saying I’m just an honest person, but if I’mtrulybeing honest, sometimes blunt is just mean. Honesty can be an excuse for bullying.”
Ulina patted her mane. “You try. Larran’s father didn’t try.”
“Nobody knew it wasn’t just yelling,” Bryn said, “or so I’ve been told. Everyone swears that no one knew what was happening or had a clue as to what was coming—they kept it behind closed doors, and no one ever was allowed to see how much darkness that family was hiding.”
Kiela wondered if her parents had suspected. They’d allowed young Larran to use their cove, which implied they must have known things weren’t right in his family. “What happened?”
“It wasn’t pretty,” Eadie warned. “One night, after a day of fishing when the fish weren’t schooling—none of the fisherfolk came back with anything in their nets. It was dinnertime . . .” She trailed off, as if searching for the words that would make the story nicer.
Bryn cut in. “There’s no gentle way to say it: he killed her.”
