Kelp untied her blanket from her pack and knotted it around her shoulders against the night’s deepening chill. She stared out at the shoreline. Dark waves washed the starlit white sand. A gull fluttered up, squawked, then sailed sideways and vanished out over the water. They had camped on the south side of a small inlet, which meant they had ocean on two sides and open sand behind them. Trees formed a solid black wall to the west. Despite their relatively safe location, Tailfeather had posted six guards to watch over every conceivable route of attack.
Kelp dug into her pack and took out her wooden bowl, then she slid her squirrel off its roasting stick. It plopped into the bowl sizzling. It would be cool soon, though, the cold wind would assure that. She set the bowl before her and sank back on the sand to extend her legs. Her calves hurt. Strands of long black hair blew around her face.
Loneliness taunted her. These men were her people. She had grown up with them, played with them. Yet out here, on this war walk, she sensed resentment. She had never given the other warriors any hint that she might, one day, want to join them. As a result, none took her seriously. They considered her a burden to be ignored. She couldn’t go home. Wouldn’t go. If Pondwader were alive, he needed her desperately, and nobody in the world could force her to abandon her duty to her brother … . Not even if her own clanspeople treated her like an invisible ghost.
The silver shimmer of starlight danced across the sea for as far as she could see.
Someone broke away from the group of warriors and walked toward her. Tall and lean, he’d braided his long hair. It hung over his left shoulder. He wore only a breechclout. Kelp bit her lip as Black Dace crouched on the opposite side of the fire. She hadn’t seen him since that day he’d called their mother “a whore who would trade her souls for a clamshell necklace,” and fought with Pondwader. Actually, Dace had fought, Pondwader had sort of hunched and swung when he had an opening—and that had not been often. At the age of ten-and-five summers, Dace’s broad shoulders bulged with muscles. He’d been one of Pondwader’s best friends less than a summer ago. But as they grew older, they seemed to grow apart. Pondwader turned inward, cutting himself off from friends, searching for spiritual things that Kelp didn’t really understand, and Dace turned outward, seeking his souls among his peers. Not many moons ago, Kelp had loved Dace almost as much as Pondwader—mostly because Dace had treated her as much like his own little sister as Pondwader’s. In the past summer, Dace had blossomed into an extremely handsome boy, with a strong jaw, pointed chin, and a straight nose.
“Good evening, Kelp,” he said, a little nervous. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” she answered, surprised. “Why do you ask?”
He shrugged awkwardly. “It was a hard day. My muscles are all aching, and I thought if mine were, you must be in agony.”
Kelp reached for her bowl and set it in her lap. “I’ll be all right.”
Dace studied her as she pulled off one of the squirrel’s legs, and lifted it to her mouth. She hesitated, then handed the leg to Dace. “Help me eat this, will you, Dace? It’s too much for me.”
A smile split his young face. “Gladly.” He sat down across the fire and bit into the succulent squirrel. “Um, it’s delicious. I didn’t see you go hunting. When did you dart this squirrel?”
Kelp tore off another leg and sank her teeth into it. It did taste good. Grease smeared her fingers. “Just before dark. He was standing on his hind legs on a branch, chittering at me. He made too good a target to turn down.”
“He must have been fat,” Dace said as he wiped his hand in the sand. “This meat is as greasy as an opossum.”
Kelp nodded, and wondered why Dace, of all people, would come to join her. They were of the same clan. There could be nothing more than friendship between them. Besides, she wasn’t sure she liked him anymore.
Dace saw her discomfort and his smile waned. He finished his squirrel leg and tossed the bones into the fire where they sputtered and charred. He looked up at her from beneath his lashes. “Are you still angry with me?” he asked.
“Angry?”
“For saying what I did about your mother? I’m sorry, Kelp. I should not have called her names.” His brows lowered, and he squinted at the flickering red coals.
Kelp tore off one of the squirrel’s forelegs and handed it to him. He took it hesitantly, as though wanting to make certain she meant it.
“Does this mean you’re not mad at me anymore?”
“Not for calling my mother a whore,” she said. She adjusted the blanket around her shoulders where the wind had flipped it back, and tore the last leg from her squirrel. As she bit into it, she said, “My mother is a whore. I was angry with you for beating up my brother.”