Chapter 7
The island woke to find the missing sailor the following morning.
Flesh white and bloated, he’d been spotted by the fishing boats on the eastern coastline, as far as he could have been from my house, the iron keys to the cargo hold still secure in his pocket.
I walked down to my va’a, deciding to paddle out to Neris Island early to thank the Naiads, but my footsteps slowed as I meandered through the grass, finding Kimo and his little sister plucking a chicken at the water’s edge. Annoyance danced under my skin.
Kimo’s family owned their own corner of the beach. He could pluck his chickens there, but feathers were a nuisance that no one enjoyed littering their shore, so whenever an islander killed a chicken, its plume ended up here.
“Don’t throw its head in the water,” I heard him chide the girl as I pushed my va’a into the waves. “Juile sharks can smell chicken blood all the way from the Luaahi reef.” His eyes carved into my back, and even facing away from him, I knew he watched me warily.
Tall, slender, with glossy black hair, Kimo was a handsome islander. He’d caught the eye of my cousin Nola in the wet season, and a romance had sparked between them, though that had done nothing to help raise his low opinions of me.
I climbed in and set off without a word to either of them.
The Naiads weren’t on the beach when I arrived.
I waited for them as I watched the tide recede over rocks and sand. The palms swayed, long shadows swinging over my arms. Somewhere beyond the surf, a petrel called to its mate, the seabird’s voice high and strident. With a sigh, I filled my buckets with clams then weeded in my herb garden until the sun began to sink away. Uprooting a final vine from my turmeric, I stood, glaring into the horizon.
They weren’t coming.
Loading my buckets into my va’a with a heavy sigh, I cast off just as the first star winked into the pink sky.
Most days, I came and went only around low-tide, too aware of the danger swells posed for an ill-timed journey between islands. My mother had perished under an angry sea, after all. But the outrigger of my va’a kept me afloat over the restless surf, and I knew how to turn into a wave. How to ride it as it propelled forward, oars steady under my grip. Flecks of salt spray cooled my neck, and I leaned into the force of the sea, basking in the ache between my shoulders, the burn across my chest as I flexed muscles I rarely had to use.
The surf brought me cleanly into Leihani at dusk, waves breaking as I rounded the corner of my own island. My private beach lay ahead in a small inlet stocked with sea weeds that danced under the surface. Hidden in the natural curve of the island, the reedy shallows sat protected from the crashing tide. Tired and sore, I jumped at the face that suddenly gazed up at me from the water as I neared the shoreline.
Kye stood alone, squatting to his shoulders in the soft waves and scrubbing himself with sand. He spied me and went still, his chin an inch over the surface. Golden-brown eyes darted to the beach and back to me. His burn had faded even more, barely discernible now. He’d come from the fishing boats. I knew because a long, slender fishing knife sat trapped between his white teeth, lips peeled back to avoid the steel blade.
I slowed my oars, gazing at him with surprise. Islanders might dump their waste along my father’s section of beach, but no one chose to swim here.
“Hello again,” I said slowly, aiming my va’a through the reeds. My gaze flicked to the pathway through the trees, making sure if anyone poked their head through, I’d remain hidden from their view. I didn’t need anyone catching me speaking alone with the Calderian.
He pulled the knife carefully from his mouth. “Who, me?” he asked somewhat sarcastically, pretending to cast his eyes around for the person I was actually speaking to.
I’d ignored him enough that I probably deserved such a greeting, though my teeth clenched slightly at his mockery. “Why are you here?” I asked as smoothly as I could manage.
Had someone sent him here as a joke? Were they trying to bait me by leaving the innocent foreign man within my grasp? Of all places, why was he scrubbing himself on my patch of beach?
“I slipped in oil and needed to wash off. Your father had the boat drop me here.”
Oh.
“Well, you should probably hurry and finish so you can leave,” I said, dipping my oars back into the water. “My father means well, but no one would be happy to find you here.”
He tilted his head. “Why not?”
I blinked at him. How long had he been in Leihani? Two weeks? There was no possible way he didn’t already know the answer to that question. I’d heard Kimo myself, warning him to steer clear of my part of the island.
It’s not safe for sailors here. That’s the witch’s garden.
I’d be shocked if there were a single islander who hadn’t cautioned Kye to stay away from me, except perhaps my father and Naheso.
Still, I had no idea what to say. My mind blanked, filled instead with a strange fuzziness that grew and crackled with warmth as the stranger stared at me with gold-flecked eyes, liquid and smoldering. I forced myself to meet them, though it was almost like trying to watch molten lava swirl in a barrel, so bright and fiery it hurt to stare too long.
“I’d have thought you would’ve left the island by now,” I choked out instead.
What in the name of the sun and moon and all the strands of time between here and Perpetuum was this? I’d never gone speechless at a pair of stupid eyes. Withheld my own speech, sure. I’d swallowed more noxious outbursts than I could remember. And I’d seen my fair share of attractive sailors before. Been approached by plenty of sailors, though I’d always lashed out with knives for words, then scurried away to safety before any islander could see me speaking to one, while the poor fools stood stunned, trying to work out why I’d verbally accosted them in the first place.
Damp curls caught in his lashes, he shook his hair away from his face. “It’s summer in Calder. High trading season. There’s no room on the ships for me. I’ve asked every captain, but they’ve all told me to wait until the cooler months when the merchant ships are less full of goods.”
“You could send a message home,” I prompted, realizing my mouth had gone dry as I held his gaze. “Would your family hire a ship to collect you?”
“Yes, I’m sure they would…”
He paused to gnaw on his lip, and I realized I should leave. I shouldn’t be sitting here like a mindless dolt in the water, intrigued by the rest of his sentence. I didn’t care about whether his family would send a ship for him. My beach was right there. I should just paddle to the sand and forget the man gazing at me with open curiosity and molten irises. Before anyone peered through the trees, I should go.
Instead, I rested my arms on my oars, eager for the other half of his stupid thought.
“The ships have offered to deliver a letter for me, but they know I’m stranded and at their mercy.” He smiled sardonically. I leaned forward in my canoe, almost eye-level with him, but his gaze settled over my mouth. “So, they’ve requested a high fee. I lost my coin purse in the ocean on my way here, so…”
My mind stirred for something cruel to say. If I couldn’t tear myself from his grasp, maybe I could cut into his ego instead. But my thoughts mercilessly scattered out of reach. Cursing myself, I threw my gaze away from him.
Mihauna, if you had to send a man to my beach, you could have at least made him ugly.
I offered a stiff nod. At least he was trying to leave the island. “That’s why you’ve been fishing on the boats. To pay your way home.”
He watched me under dark lashes, the plane of his forehead a tight valley over the thicket of his brows. Behind him, a red haze floated under the surface, the waves murky and dark. I tilted my head, staring at it.
“Why do they call you a witch?”
Well, that did it.
The fuzziness in my head sharpened into pointed barbs. It was a simple question—warranted even, in his position. But that didn’t help the sneer that pulled my upper lip from my teeth, or the flare of my nostrils as I gazed down at him.
He waited, eyes shifting darkly over my face, as if he, too, were agitated by the question.
“Because I lure unsuspecting men to the water so I can kill them and drink their blood.” I stretched each word, my tone dripping with venom and sarcasm alike, and he worked his jaw as he sorted whatever thoughts I”d left hatching inside his head.
“Hey, boy.”
Our eyes snapped up at the voice that cut through the ferns along the beach. I bent in my va’a before I remembered I was hidden by the reeds, but Kye craned his neck, leaning in the water to see who was there.
“My wife said she saw sharks an hour ago on this side of the island. You should get out of the water for now.” My uncle’s familiar voice floated through the trees, and the sudden tension loosened from my shoulders. It was only Naheso.
Kye nodded at Naheso, and I waited until the rustling leaves announced my uncle’s departure, watching Kye covertly. He hadn”t moved an inch. The poor fool. The moon had spent too much time on his face and not enough on his brain. He swerved his gaze back to me, something like disappointment twitching between his brows.
“You know what sharks are, don’t you?” I asked, hands finding my oars.
“Do you find everyone beneath you, or am I just lucky?”
Something between a sputter and a scoff left my throat. For all the stares and whispers that followed me around the island, the islanders were rarely so direct. Except for my aunt. Dipping an oar into the reeds, I aimed the nose of my canoe toward the distant beach. “You’re just lucky,” I said sweetly. “You’re welcome, by the way.”
“For what?”
A muscle flexed in my jaw. “That I risked my life to save yours.”
The furrow in his brows lifted. I waited for him to mock me, or perhaps deny I”d done anything to help him at all. But his lips parted on an inhale, and he stretched his shoulders absently, as if trying to work a memory back into cognition.
He didn”t remember.
Mother moon damn me, he didn’t remember. Of course, he wouldn’t remember. My stupid luck. Kye hadn”t seen me when he”d landed on the beach of Neris Island, and by the time I’d reached him, he”d been unconscious. He’d only woken after the danger of drowning was gone, and he”d been delirious, trying to tell me something about his mother in the water. He hadn’t even been alert enough to realize he couldn’t row.
Did he recall anything from Neris Island? Or was I a blurry shape in his memory? Did he believe my father found him?
It didn’t really matter. Whatever memories were left intact from his near-drowning weren’t enough for him to trust me. He’d been on Leihani long enough to have heard the rumors.
That sailors here vanished, especially those that stared too long in my direction.
Because I lure unsuspecting men into the water so I can kill them and drink their blood.
The sudden urge to shrivel into myself hit without warning.
Why had I said that?
Warmth climbed up my back and neck as a receding wave swept away from him, pulling the water line with it. Sculpted shoulders rose from under the surface, a peaked vein on his left bicep disappearing below. He pulled himself lower and glanced down at his feet, bringing one dripping hand out of the water to scratch his neck. The flash of his side, wavering under the surface, became clear.
Mihaunahelp me.
I hadn’t realized he was naked.
He raised a brow at the connection that I’m sure became blatant across my face. Eyes wide, my gaze landed on the bamboo boathouse across the inlet, and I ignored the blazing fire that crawled into my cheeks. To his credit, he didn’t balk or shrink away. He rested his hands on his hips in the water, his back straight and proud, watching as I paddled around him.
My skin radiated with heat as I passed, his eyes sharp on my back.
At the edge of the reeds, my oars slowed.
The turquoise water had gone scarlet, too thick to see the sand below the surface. The scent of rusted metal tickled my nose. Something bobbed in the water ahead, white and round.
Water splashed behind me as Kye waded to the beach, but I ignored the sound as I neared the strange shape. Stilling my oars, I stopped in the center of the inlet, leaning over the edge of my va’a.
Feathers lifted as wind dragged the lifeless body of a chicken toward me, its talons curled into each other. Tilting over my hull, I realized it was missing its head just as something bumped into the back of my canoe.
Something big.
My hands steadied on my oars as I grasped on, my body rocking with the sudden motion of my boat.
I glanced over my shoulder to see a tall, steel-gray fin slide past me.