Chapter 5
Ireached Neris Island at mid-tide, the missing sailor still heavy on my mind.
The ebbing sea rocked my va’a. Water was often restless when the moon waned. I nudged the shallows with an oar. “Hush.” It swiped at me like a restless kitten before shrinking from the shore.
Nori and Olinne had not yet arrived, so I set about my daily routine. My main garden lay in my yard in Leihani, but I made use of the expansive moist ground here on Neris for my herbs, spreading red volcanic mud to enrich the soil with iron, refining phosphorus by burying bone meal and mushroom compost.
It was too early to dig for clams, so I walked through the aisles of spices planted next to the beach. Kava for pain-relieving tea, a staple for my father’s knees each morning. Nettles for cough. Turmeric for swelling, sinuses, and sores. Noni berries for burns and infection. I weeded and propagated, thinned and watered. The sun was hot against my forehead as I sat back on my heels, surveying the mother plants for infant shoots to stretch my rows.
“Little creature.” I glanced up, and a prickle of goosebumps fell down the back of my neck—a chill that washed over me whenever I met eyes with the Naiads after being apart. The Naiads sat on the tall rocks over the water, preening as they readied to sunbathe.
Dusting my knees, I stood and joined them. Olinne shuffled just enough for me to climb up beside her, but I didn’t try to squeeze in further. Sometimes, while swimming, I accidentally grazed the Naiad’s tails with a passing knuckle or shin, and it always made me shudder. Their lower halves were smooth and densely packed with muscle. Touching them was like running my hand over the body of a snake.
Olinne leaned forward, gazing at me from across Nori’s shoulder. “Your turmeric starts are yellowing. Their roots need acidity. It’s not enough to create life, you must preserve it as well, to be a Steward of the Land.”
I turned my arms over, leaning forward for the silver-tailed Naiad to view the evidence that had stained my skin up to my elbows. “Added volcanic ash this morning.”
Nori nodded her approval. “If you simply lived on our island, you wouldn’t need to divide your time between here and there.”
I leaned against the cool stone, closing my eyes. “I have too much to care for in Leihani.” It was true. Though Olinne and Nori had posed the suggestion before, I was unwilling to make a permanent move to Neris. I loved traipsing the Leihani mountains, higher than Nahli’s volcano with denser forestry. I’d claimed small areas to leave seeds for birds and garden insects for toads.
Besides, my father could never make up the difference if I left my home island and no longer brought him clams to sell. Most Leihaniians occupied their homes with multiple generations, everyone pitching in and sharing work.
But it had only ever been my father and me.
“We know, creature,” Nori said. “We simply see you at home when you are here. Would you not walk the eternity of Perpetuum, whispering your regret to Theia and her stars, had you only spent more time doing what you wished to do?”
Uncertain whether this was a question that invited an answer, I pretended to not hear, burying my legs and feet in the tide.
The Naiads had found me on the beach of Neris Island when I was nine. I’d braved the Nahli channel to the forbidden island for reasons I didn’t understand at the time. Reasons I now knew fell between curiosity and the need to abandon the other islanders, as they’d abandoned me.
I hadn’t expected to find Naiads.
Rotating a hip, I watched the water thrash against my knee. “Another sailor is missing. He was gone before his ship arrived at port this morning. They think he wandered off the deck in the middle of the night.”
The Naiads exchanged a furtive glance.
“Good.” Olinne wriggled, avoiding the water that inched past her silver tail.
Nori pursed her lips. Since Irah disappeared, I’d shared more than one conversation with the Naiads about the islanders, whose suspicions grew with each vanishing man. This was the sixth lost sailor in as many years. “Your people cannot think you took this one, if he went missing before the ship moored.”
I shook my head. “If they think I had anything to do with it, no one has said so.”
Yet.
Studying my legs, I pondered how to phrase my next question. “This missing sailor carried the keys to his ship’s cargo hold.”
Nori’s gaze snapped to mine. “They must break through the lock, then.”
“The lock is iron, and nothing on the ship or island will breach it.”
“They must cut into the wood around the lock.”
“It”s built into the framing of the hold. It would damage the ship’s structure to rent a hole through,” I argued, quoting my father’s words from that morning.
Nori narrowed her eyes. Olinne, following the exchange with a look of bewilderment, raised her brows as she waited for a point easy enough to follow.
“If we could only locate the man…” I said, allowing my voice to trail.
Nori lowered her chin. “You jest.”
I smiled shyly. “How deep can you dive?”
A light flickered across Olinne’s face. “You wish us to find him? A humanman? An ugly, filthy, slimy traitor?”
I hopped down from the rock, deciding the tide was low enough to begin hunting clams. Wading to the sand, I pressed a toe into a nearby depression, watching as bubbles surfaced a moment later. “I’m not asking you to save his life. He’s already dead, I’m sure.”
Olinne balked. “It is unheard of.”
Fishing a clam out of the earth, I bit my lip, bracing against the sensation of Naiad eyes boring holes in my back. “The ship is one of our best merchants,” I explained, keeping my voice cautiously level. “They spend a great deal of time trading here. If they can’t access the hold, they can’t carry our fish to their custom. And if they can”t carry the fish, they won”t buy the fish.”
Olinne flicked her tail. “It is not our trouble.”
“Perhaps not,” I said, turning to look the Naiad in the eye. “But I am an islander of Leihani. We depend on our exports. It’s my trouble.”
Olinne opened her mouth, and Nori silenced her with a hand in the air. Long and graceful, she contorted herself sideways, spine twisting from the rock. “It is against our laws, the aid of man.”
I pursed my lips, tearing my gaze away to scowl at the surf breaking over my feet.
The same happened the year I was born. I don’t remember any of it, but I often heard the stories. A sailor who carried the keys to his ship’s hold went missing. The fish had been abundant, but without a locksmith on the island, the ship had left without its purchase during the peak of fishing season. Leihaniians could only stare at barrels of unsold tuna, too much to eat before it all spoiled, and in the following months the island suffered under the weight of Calderian taxes.
It had taken three years to climb out of the debt of lost fish. Three years of selling our own meals, just so the crown could take its coin. Three years of losing infants and the elderly to starvation.
They’d blamed my mother for the missing sailor, even though she’d had her own child to worry about. I didn’t have a child, leaving me with an even weaker defense than she’d had. I knew who’d suffer the blame if the sailor wasn’t found.
“If we discovered the man and brought you his keys,” Nori reasoned, “It would be unwise for you, Maren, to be the one to deliver him.”
I’d already considered this. Though the man had disappeared before the ship entered the harbor, the whispers of the islanders trailed my heels as I climbed into my va’a that morning.
Witch. Enchanter. Seductress.
I dropped the clam gently into the bucket. “His body would need to wash ashore. Preferably overnight. When the other women can’t claim I was involved.”
I sensed their appalled stares, and my neck grew warm from a heat that didn’t fall from the sun. It was unfair to ask such a favor, knowing how they feared humans—especially men. Even worse to ask a favor at night, interrupting their Naiad rituals.
But I was desperate.
Nori tilted her chin, gazing down at me from her rock. “We would need something in return.”
I stilled, my eyes flicking to the Naiad. Suddenly, I felt nine years old again.
Who are you? I’d asked the fish-women the first time an icy chill trickled down my spine, thirteen years ago.
Naiads, Nori had said simply. Born from the waters of Theia herself. We number two, but we search for a third. A Steward of the Land. It’s through the Triad we will find balance.
In my formative years, the Naiads had spent hours educating me. They spoke openly of my desire for Stewardship, as if it were a meal laid bare on a table for them to eat and drink at will. But in recent years, I’d matured from such hopeful and candid speech. I’d been waiting ages for the Naiads to tell me I’d finally accomplished the task they’d given me the day we met. That I’d mastered how to create and preserve life. That I was ready to become their third—whatever that meant.
Straightening over my bucket, I gazed at Nori, ignoring the wind as it played with the rogue strands of my braided hair.
“What must I do?”