I hate that he is teaching her all the things I should be, and instead I am sitting in the sun and mending nets like my mother’s mother’s father, who is so ancient he cannot even walk straight and spends most of his days seated under a nut tree, napping.
“What did that net ever do to you?” my mother asks, sinking down to sit next to me.
“Eh?” I look over at her in surprise.
She brings a conch full of juice to my side, sinking down next to me and offering it. “I’m not sure if you’re repairing that net or trying to tear it apart with your hands. Does something trouble you?”
I scowl down at the net I’m working on, because my knots might be a little tighter than they should be, and the rope might be stretched, just a little. “I wasn’t paying attention.”
“Oh, you were. Just not to the net.” My mother indicates the shell in her hand. “Drink this. It’s good for you.”
I roll my eyes at her pushiness, but I take the shell and drain it. Vali’s laughter echoes over the flotilla and I lower the drink so I can watch her. She has a sling spear in her hands, and Dorran is trying to show her the proper way to fit the sling around her wrist so she can fire it through the water at great speed. Vali tries again, and instead of launching itself, the spear clatters to the ground. Balo and my uncle burst into laughter, and Vali holds her sides, giggling wildly.
I scowl down at the shell in my hands. Does she laugh so brightly when I talk to her? It seems that Balo makes her giggle all the time.
“I have decided I like her,” my mother declares in a lofty tone, as if sensing my thoughts.
“She is my bride whether you like it or not,” I tell my mother sourly. Well, as long as Vali accepts me in marriage. I have not broached it again.
“I know, but it makes it easier that I like her.” My mother is unruffled. “She works with Balo every day to learn how to swim, and she has made great strides in it. She gathers water without asking, and refills the canisters if she sees them. She helps clean the fish and she never complains or demands to be given easier chores. She is a hard worker. It is a good thing to have in a wife.”
“Mm.” Vali could be lazy and I would still want her in my bed, so my mother’s reassurances annoy me. She does not know that Vali is a people pleaser and thus works herself to the bone in order to ensure that everyone is happy with her. “Don’t give her too much work, Mother. She is still a guest. I don’t want her to think the seakind are testing her.”
“But we are,” my mother says lightly. “Do you know how much fishing your father had to do to win my hand? It wasn’t until he brought back three swordfins in one day that I relented and agreed to be his bride. You have it easier. I think if you snapped your fingers, the human woman would fall at your feet.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“No?” Mother tilts her head, her earrings tinkling as she does. Her expression is one of utter casualness as she holds her hand out, examining a bangle on one wrist. “She watches you when you think she is not looking. And she comes into your tent many times a day to make sure you’re sleeping well and that you haven’t woken up or require anything.”
I am stunned to hear this. “She does?”
“Well, not as much now that you are awake more. But Daidu’s potions worried her, I think. She’d hover over you and one time I caught her with her finger under your nostrils, checking your breathing.”
Interesting. It could mean nothing, but this time when Balo laughs heartily, I no longer want to cram the shell in my hands into his face.
“Have you told her how you feel?” My mother prompts. She reaches out and touches my ear fin, the fussing of a parent. “I have noticed you struggle to talk to her. You have always had such difficulty with words, my son. Just like your father.”
Have I told her? I have tried, but words seem to only make it worse. “I do not think Vali will listen.”
“Then you must make her listen.”
My mother makes it sound so simple. As if nothing more is required than putting a hand on Vali’s shoulder and demanding that she listen to my words.
My words have been the problem all along. I have to show her how I care without them, or else I am doomed. “Thank you, Mother.”
She pats my arm. “I’ll let you get back to strangling your nets.”
Chapter
Twenty-Seven
VALI
Inever knew that slingshot fishing could be so much fun. It’s not something that ever occurred to me—I thought fishing always happened with a net or a fishing pole. I know Ranan uses a trident, but he swims underwater so I figure the rules are different for him. But slingshot fishing makes me feel powerful and strong, like a water goddess of fishing.
“You’re getting pretty good at this,” Balo tells me as we tread water at the side of one of the older turtles. Its head is covered with fuzzy seaweed that drifts in the sea around it and I’m told her name is Sjaata and she likes chin scratches. I rub the enormous chin while I hoist my spear into the air, a wriggling blue fish on the forked end.
“I love this,” I gush to him, and I mean it. I kill the fish and toss it into the large hole-strewn basket on Sjaata’s side. There, other fish float in the water while waiting for someone to come and prepare them. I’ve seen the elders and some of the children go and grab the fish to clean and gut. No one declares ownership of a catch. It’s assumed that if it goes in the basket, it’s for anyone to use. It all gets used, too.
And I’m happy to contribute. After a week of being on the flotilla with the others, I’m starting to get the hang of things. I can swim now, and while I can’t tear through the water like Dorran or Ranan, I do all right. Balo has a pair of long reinforced leather flaps that he straps to his feet to help him paddle, but I don’t have those yet. It’s not the speed of my swimming anyhow. No one cares if I’m fast or slow, they just want to make sure they don’t have to rescue me. Now that I know how to swim, Balo’s been teaching me how to do some of the chores. I’m not great with fish leather; it requires extremely careful handling and very fine cutting, and after I mangled a skin, we decided I’d be better at other things. For the last few days, I’ve been practicing with Balo’s sling spear. It’s a thin spear with a two-pronged tine at the end, and the other end has a rubbery strap that I’m told is made from the guts of a particularly nasty deep-sea squid. The band is wrapped around the lower arm and elbow and made taut, and when I see something I want to spear, I release it and the spear goes flying through the crystalline waters. There’s a second, longer leash on the spear that keeps me from losing it in the depths, or else it’d have disappeared several flubbed “throws” ago.
But today, I speared a fish. Today is awesome. It’s just a little one, but as I get more comfortable in the water, I can go deeper and get the bigger fish.
Maybe if I work hard enough, the people here will accept me. They’re already giving me easier looks, but I want more than that. I want to be loved and accepted. If they love me, maybe Ranan will, too.
Ranan. I wrap the sling around my arm again and contemplate my failing relationship with my not-quite husband. We sleep together every night, but things are off between us. I want to beg him to love me, to forgive me for getting upset at his words…but at the same time, I’m trying to be stronger than that. Braver than that. Because Ranan is always saying I should want things for myself.