“I’m sorry, daughter. She’s safer with you.” He tried to smile, but even that effort failed him. He reached out with a trembling hand and laid it on her shoulder.
“You were my last hope,” Star Shell murmured. “And now it’s as if I don’t even know … ” You. But she couldn’t say that.
Not to this empty husk of a man whom she still loved so much.
Tall Man had stepped up beside her. He peered at Hollow Drill. “I’m sorry, old friend. I hope that one day you will forgive me for all the terrible things I’ve done.” He paused.
“Sometimes we learn too late in life.”
At that, Tall Man reached out, touched her father’s unresponsive fingers, then walked slowly past them to stare out over the narrow ribbon of sinuous brown river.
“Not even for one night?” Star Shell asked.
“It would be too dangerous, girl. Does anyone know you’re here? Did anyone recognize you?”
“We stayed with—”
“Then go. Go now! Quickly.” His gaze wavered. “Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?” “Mama?” Silver Water asked. “Are we going now?”
Star Shell nodded. “Goodbye, Father. May the ancestors bless and keep you.”
“And you, daughter.”
For a moment, she tried to see him as he’d been when she was a girl, but failed. The present, this vacant husk, couldn’t be denied.
Her feet had gone stone-heavy; nevertheless, she started toward the Magician and the trail northward. Everything in her life had rotted out like an old log. She forced herself to turn and look back one last time. He stood motionless, shoulders bent, as the misty rain spun down around him—a testament to futility.
She understood then that she would never see him again.
Thirty-eight
Wave Dancer rose and fell on the endless cycle of swells. Otter had never seen water as blue as out in the middle of the Fresh Water Sea. He’d grown so used to it that at first he didn’t recognize the change in the horizon. A slight band of green had separated from the blue water by a thin white cord.
They’d cleaned up most of the storm damage, thrown the broken pottery overboard, scooped up the wet seeds and cast them into the water as if in some sort of offering to the depths.
Packs had been shuffled so that the last of the seeds could be wiped up. Rags soaked up the last of the water and were wrung out over the side. Then packs were turned to air lest they mildew, matting dried, and at last, a tidy Wave Dancer followed the undulations of wave and wind—the only spot of color in a blue world.
How does it feel? Otter rubbed his jaw and squinted at the greenish haze on the horizon. You’ve found land.
Where were they? He had no idea. What sort of place was this? Did the inhabitants recognize Traders? Did they even know Trader pidgin? And why couldn’t he shake the sudden feeling that danger lurked behind those white dunes ahead?
“Look.” Otter reached forward to point past Pearl’s shoulder.
Unease had haunted them throughout the night. She’d begun to obsess him. She filled his dreams, and during the waking hours, he watched her. His imagination conjured erotic thoughts of her breasts against his chest, her arms around him. Her dark, secretive eyes warmed as her full lips parted in anticipation. If he closed his eyes, he could feel her long, silky hair falling around him as she leaned over him and smiled.
Stop it! The last thing you can do is let her know that you have those kinds of thoughts about her. She’ll feel like she’s back with the Khota again.
Throughout the night, silence had proven a more comfortable solution.
“Do you want to make land?” she asked. “If not, I’d stand off, follow the coastline. We need to head north, don’t we?”
“I think so. At least we do if this is really the eastern coastline, not just some island.”
She gestured at the graying dawn. “You can’t get any more east than that.”
“Then north it is.”
Black Skull woke at the sound of their voices, sat up, and studied the shore with obvious relief. He shot a crooked grin back toward Otter. “Well done, Trader.”
Otter used his paddle to steer Wave Dancer’s course northward.
“If you need to thank someone, thank Pearl. We’d be nothing more than waterlogged corpses and drowned souls but for her.”
“We all use what we have—” she glanced sadly at Otter “—and we do what we have to, don’t we?”
Black Skull turned sober eyes back to the shore. “We do what we have to.” He nodded to himself, then kicked at Green Spider’s blankets. “Get out of there, fool.”