Of Sea and Stone (Secrets of Itlantis) (2 page)

I had only two options—obey her now and leave the wash for later, a scenario in which I might have time to finish it before suppertime and thus avoid a slap from Nealla, or ignore Tagatha and get slapped now. Tagatha slapped harder. If I was smart—and I was, usually—I would take the lesser evil.

Before she could shout my name a fourth time, I pulled myself from the water and left wet footprints as I crossed the lip of stone to the doorway carved into the rock face. I hurried up the cool stone steps carved in the rock to Tagatha’s room.

“Weave these pearls in my hair,” she commanded, turning back to her polished bronze mirror. I moved to stand at her back, wiping my hands on the driest portion of my tunic. I caught strands of her soft brown hair between my fingers and began to weave them together in a four-strand braid, something my mother taught me before she died.

“I’m going to see Nol tonight,” Tagatha said, watching my face in the mirror.

I shifted my feet but didn’t reply. Did she know about our altercation the previous day?

Tagatha’s lips lifted in a smirk. “He’s very handsome, don’t you think?”

I bit down on the inside of my cheek and didn’t answer. She knew as well as anybody in the village that Nol and I harbored a special dislike for one another. We threw sand in each other’s eyes as babies, and the pranks and tricks had only increased in scope with age. His stealing of my fish-creature was merely the latest offense in a long, long list.

“Hurry up,” she snapped, bored with my silence.

I picked up one of the strands of pearls and wove it into her hair.

“My father says we might marry, so it’s important that I always make a good impression on him,” Tagatha continued.

She pressed her lips together and studied her reflection, and I wondered what she saw when she looked at herself. She was thinner than she used to be, because of the famine that had plagued everyone for the last several months. The village hadn’t suffered as much as some. I’d heard rumors of people eating their dead on some islands, or selling their children for bread. Here, in the isolation of the sea and the rocks, we had fish and crabs aplenty, but there was less fruit and sugar from the merchants that came in their boats from the other islands, and everyone had had to take smaller portions at mealtime.

“Grandfather was almost inconsolable this morning,” she said after a pause. “He was going on and on about Sea People and other nonsense. I wish Father would have him kept in his room. I don’t want Nol to see it and think insanity runs in the family.”

I said nothing. The Old One was the only member of the family I liked. I didn’t want them to lock him away.

“Are you going to be at the spear-throwing competition before the start of the Lighting, Aemi?” Tagatha asked, a little too sweetly.

I kept my face neutral and said nothing, and thankfully she didn’t ask again. When I’d completed her hairstyle, I helped her dress into the gown she would wear to the competition, the first event in a week of celebration of the Lighting, a yearly time of commemoration for the dead. Most of the villagers would be in everyday dress, with perhaps a few shells strung around their necks or a ribbon in their hair, but families like Tagatha’s could afford to dress with style for such events. Her dress was made of the softest sealskin, beaten and scraped until it had the suppleness of fish scales, and the bodice embroidered with seed pearls and other bits of shells in wave patterns. Most enviable of all, Tagatha had a violet silk scarf from the merchants that came from the northern shores to tie around her delicate, freckled throat.

I wished for such a scarf.

The sound of tinkling shells alerted us to a visitor’s entry, and Tagatha jumped up and rushed around me to the main room of the house.

“Come, Aemi. I’m not done with you yet,” she called over her shoulder.

I trailed behind her, stopping when I saw who the visitor was. My stomach twisted into a knot.

“Nol,” Tagatha said. “You’re early.”

He was bare-chested, with a medallion of carved stone hanging around his neck that marked him as a mayor’s son. The second mayor’s son, but a mayor’s son nonetheless. His good looks grated at me, as always. One so obnoxious should not be so handsome. It was an injustice.

Nol looked past Tagatha at me, and his eyes narrowed in an amused squint. “Caught any more fish lately?”

I loathed him.

Tagatha looked between us. She frowned. Did she feel jealous of his obnoxious harassment of me?

The thought made me want to laugh, and I had to swallow a smile. Tagatha saw it, and her frown deepened.

“You should fetch our guest some refreshment, Aemi.”

My smile disappeared.

“Now,” Tagatha said.

I went to get a cup, my bare feet padding on the worn rock floor. I felt Nol’s gaze on me, judging me, and the hairs on the back of my neck prickled. I squeezed a handful of bluefruit into a cup. The squishy fruit popped beneath the pressure of my fingers, and juice spilled over my hand and into the cup. Reluctantly, I returned with it.

Nol reached to take it from me with a smirk on his face. He knew serving him rankled me. Our fingers brushed, and I yanked my hand away. The cup sloshed, and some of the juice splattered his chest. Nol’s smirk vanished.

“Aemi!” Tagatha crossed the room in two steps and pulled me back with bruising force. “I’m so sorry. She’s so clumsy,” she babbled to Nol. “Here, let me get you something to clean up with.”

“Don’t bother.” Nol shot me an indecipherable look as he stood. “I’ll see you at the Lighting, Tagatha.”

He left, and as soon as he’d gone, she whirled and slapped me across the face. “Don’t ever embarrass me in front of him again. Now get downstairs. You have work to do.”

Humiliation mixed with fury in my stomach as she left the room. I snatched up Nol’s cup and threw it against the wall, where it shattered with a satisfying smash. I stood still a few moments, breathing hard, letting the anger settle as sanity set back in.

If I hurried, I could finish the wash before sundown.

MY FINGERS ACHED from scrubbing by the time I’d finished getting the household’s dirty clothing clean and stretched out to dry. I hurried back into the lower level of the house to wash so I could help serve the meal. Dinner would be light tonight, probably just bread and fish, because everyone would want to stuff themselves at the Lighting.

The cook, Nealla, crouched over the fire in the center of the kitchen. “I heard you made Tagatha furious again,” she said with a click of her tongue, by way of greeting. “She’s been shouting at everyone.”

“I worked my fingers off all day with the laundry, and then I had to deal with the mayor’s son too. She should be grateful I didn’t throw the drink in his face for the way he was acting.”

Nealla rolled her eyes. She’d been listening to my excuses for years. She’d never given me an ounce of sympathy either.

“He treats me like—”

“Like a thrall?” Nealla’s tone was pointed.

“Like a child,” I snapped back. “We were raised together. I’m older than him by half a year, I have skills and talents despite my status, and yet he treats me with utter condescension. He’s rude, obnoxious, and a thief!” I thought of my creature-fish he’d taken.

“Can’t you just keep half your brains in your head around him? You’re asking for punishment every time that boy walks through our door.” She dropped the chunks of the fish she was gutting onto a hot stone to cook and sprinkled a handful of sea salt onto them from the bowl in her lap. “And Nol is not as bad as you like to pretend. He’s inexplicably interested in Tagatha, of course, which makes me wonder about his good sense, and he’s perhaps a little persuaded of his own importance.”

“A little?” I snorted.

“No more than you, missy. But his attitude is to be expected from a mayor’s son, even if he is the younger one whose only use will be making a good marriage to a wealthy village family. You, on the other hand, are just a thrall.”

I sighed heavily.

“Your problem,” Nealla said, “is that you don’t know how to act like a thrall.”

“My mother taught me to want more than this life.”

Nealla clicked her tongue at the mention of my mother. She’d loved my mother—everyone had. She shook her head.

“You have to be more predictable, girl. This is a small village on a small island. Everyone has a place, a job. But you’re a puzzle to everyone—Nol included. And the mayor’s second son doesn’t like puzzles. He wants things orderly and in their place, and you never were good at being orderly or being in your place. Even when you were a wee one, you were throwing spears with the boys and trying on Tagatha’s clothing when your mother’s back was turned. You throw everything off balance. Nobody likes that.”

“The Old One likes me.”

“The Old One is crazy. He believes the Sea People are going to get him. You’re not arguing in your favor.”

“Kit likes me,” I said.

“Yet another example!” she exclaimed. “Kit is a strange boy, having a thrall as a best friend. Lucky for you, he’s from a wealthy family. The wealthy get away with everything. But you’d better have other friends for when he tires of you.”

“He isn’t going to tire of me,” I said, stung. But worry swirled in my chest at her words.

“Here,” she said, shoving a few beads into my hands. “Take these and buy some more fish for tonight’s supper.”

The conversation was over, apparently.

~ ~ ~

I walked to the marketplace, letting the sun wash over my face and shoulders as I passed through the center of the village, past the pools where children splashed and laughed.

The marketplace was located on a thin spit of sand where the visiting traders could pull their canoes right onto the sand and sell goods—spices, jewelry, silks, dyes, grain, and small livestock—straight from their boats. A line of carved stone caves served as shops for the People of the Rocks, who also offered goods for sale, like salt, fish, sea pearls, and bits of glass that had been weathered to smoothness by the sea. Most people brought things like food or cloth to barter, but as I was shopping for a wealthy family, I would be dealing in beads carved from precious stones.

I stepped onto the hot sand of the marketplace and took a moment to look around. I spotted a likely vender, a thin, curly-haired man with a scarf bound around his neck and over part of his unruly hair. His small canoe was piled high with fresh fish, both redmouth and orange-spotted. He turned his head and spotted me as I approached, and for a moment, he looked at me, eyes narrowed and he went still.

I stopped, uncertain, but then he smiled.

“Fresh wind to you,” he said in greeting as I reached the side of his boat. He sat in the sand with his hands clasped around his knees. “What can I interest you in? Redmouth? Or some orange-spotted fish?”

I wasn’t sure if I was more surprised by his friendliness to me, a mere thrall, or by his wares. Redmouth were rare in our waters, and orange-spotted were exotic and hard to come by. I wondered how he’d acquired so many.

“The redmouth, if you please.” I gave him the bead, and he studied it between his thumb and forefinger.

“I’m not from here,” he said, although this was obvious due to his canoe, “and I’ll admit some of your people’s customs are strange to me. But this stone is quite rare. Where I come from it would buy more than this fish, I can tell you that.” He took six redmouth and wrapped them in dried seaweed before handing them to me.

“Where is this place you come from?” I was curious now. His skin was the color of polished driftwood, darker than that of the People of the Rocks’ freckled, amber-brown complexions. His eyes were as dark as his hair, which was curly like Kit’s. Something about him intrigued me.

The vender smiled again, and it made his eyes crinkle. “A city so far away that I’ll wager you’ve never even heard of it.”

“And what is this city like?”

“Cold,” he said, laughing, but he sounded wistful. “So cold that snow covers everything, and the water is as blue as this stone.”

He handed me the fish wrapped in leaves, and I took them carefully. As he drew his hand away, I saw a raised scar on his wrist, a brand-mark in the shape of an eye.

“I’m called Myo,” he said.

“I’m Aemi.”

“It was pleasant meeting you, Aemi.” He nodded at his canoe. “You should come again; you’ll always get the best redmouth from me.”

“Thank you.” I stared into his eyes a moment longer than necessary, suddenly stilled by the look he gave me. The look held a knowing within it, like sand between cupped hands. It said something to me, something I didn’t understand. Rubbing my arms warily, I started for the bread vender. “I shall.”

He waved goodbye, and I glanced back at him once more as I walked away.

I wondered.

~ ~ ~

I returned to help Nealla cook the fish for the family’s dinner upstairs, which she served to them, and then we cleaned the cooking stones and banked the fire. We ate our meal hastily, stuffing bits of roasted fish and leftover bread into our mouths while we tidied the kitchen. I rinsed the stone with seawater and sprinkled it with salt, and Nealla put away her various cooking shells and baskets. When we finished, she thrust a broom into my hands and went into the little room that we shared, set off to the side with only a single hole in the rock to let in the sunlight. She emerged a few moments later wearing a necklace of sea shells.

I stared at the shells with a mixture of amusement and surprise, and she seemed embarrassed by my perusal.

“Well?” she snapped. “Finish sweeping and then clean yourself up. If you want to make it to the opening festivities this year, you’d better hurry.”

I swept the fish bones and burned bread crumbs into the fire and then went to wriggle into my only other piece of clothing. It was a little bit too small, since I hadn’t gotten an extra garment this year from the master, and I’d grown a little in my chest and my hips. But it was clean. I ran a bit of broken comb through my hair, and then hastily plaited it in a four-strand braid.