Page 63 of Sky in the Deep
“Fiske.” I said his name in a voice that wasn’t mine and it hung between us in the silence.
He pressed his lips together. “What?”
I stood at the threshold of the thought. The thought of Fiske that had been buried alive in the back of my mind. I looked over the edge of it, peering down into the darkness. It called to me. It screamed my name.
And I jumped.
I found his mouth with mine again, the breaths coming like the waves in a storm now—crashing into me and pulling me under. I grabbed hold of his armor vest and his hands pressed into me, pulling me forward. I slid across the stone, trying to get closer to him.
The writhing, bleeding hole inside of me closed up.
I let him erase it. I let him make it go away.
His lips moved down to the hollow at my neck and when he stopped, breathing there, his chest rising and falling against me, the silence came back. And it was just long enough for it to erupt again. That pain.
I fell into him, the weight so heavy that I couldn’t draw another breath. His arms slid around me and I pushed my face into his shoulder. I wept. A dark, sacred cry rising up out of me. He held me together, keeping the pieces from falling down around us. And I cried until I couldn’t feel. I cried until I couldn’t think.
The moon rose up over my broken home and I broke with it.
THIRTY-SIX
Iwoke up in my father’s cot with the blanket tucked in around me as the seabirds called out over the water and the smell of the dead found me again. It brought me rushing back. Back to Hylli.
I sat up, swinging my legs to the ground, and my head pounded inside my skull. I rubbed my swollen face, looking around the small house. It was empty.
The sun was already halfway up the sky, sending the light casting down through the house in beams hazed with ash and dust. I pulled my sheath and belt on and walked down the path to the dock with my arms wrapped tightly around me.
The dirt turned to gravel and when I reached the water, the familiar crunch of my boots over the round black stones broke the silence of the village. I pulled the clean sea air coming off the water into my lungs and crouched down, scooping itup and splashing it over my face. My fingers raked back into my hair and I looked out to the horizon.
The green of the water hugging the shore melted into blue as it deepened. I closed my eyes and opened them again. It was just the same. The same sea. The same beach. But then I looked back to the village. And the truth resurfaced in my mind. Nothing would ever be the same again.
A splash sounded over the whisper of the wind and I looked up to see Fiske. He stood on the dock at the other end of the beach, pulling a net full of fish up out of the water. He had his knife between his teeth, his arms hinging against its weight, leaning back until it slid onto the dock. The fish were like crystals, glittering as they flicked back and forth in the sunlight.
When he looked up to me, I blushed, still feeling the warmth of him on my lips. Remembering him touching me. Remembering feeling like I was so small that I could vanish into him. It was an arrow in my chest.
I walked along the water’s edge until I reached the dock and watched him pull four fish from the net and let the rest spill back into the water. He walked to meet me halfway, stopping in front of me with the knife clutched in one hand and a pail in the other.
The hair blew around my face and I caught it with my hand, holding it over my shoulder. “I’m sorry.” I squinted against the sunlight.
His eyes searched mine. “For what?”
I looked down at the water, trying to find the words. “For last night.”
He smiled and the heat came back up into my face.
“I—”
“How long will it take to get to Virki?” he interrupted, saving me the embarrassment of finishing.
“We can be there tomorrow morning if we leave now.”
He nodded, looking over me, to the village. “Then let’s go.”
I should have told him that he didn’t have to come. That he’d repaid whatever debt he thought he owed me twice over. But inside, I was weak enough that I couldn’t hide from myself.
I didn’t want to be alone. I didn’t want him to leave.
“Thank you.”
