Chapter 11
My eyes darted to Kye.
My father had left me alone on my front porch with a Calderian man, right where everyone could see.
At my side, Kye carefully retrieved the wrapped fish packets from their stilts, reaching in closer to the fire than I”d have dared. Orange danced around his fingertips, as though the fire avoided burning him. He set the fish down between us, adding dry wood. Flames nuzzled against the old lumber, the cloud of dark fumes lifting out from them. Satisfied, he sat down to divide fish from leaf.
“Thanks,” I muttered, the nicety leaving my tongue against my will.
The corner of his mouth twitched, though he kept his gaze on his fingers, separating brittle bone from flesh with his knife. His hands were deft and smooth with a small blade, and I found myself curious as I watched him work. How had he honed this particular skill?
A single split in his bottom lip had almost healed, the pink membrane a crescent on his mouth, likely to scar. The rest of his burn had faded into a golden tan.
“How long have you been in Leihani?” I asked.
“Three weeks.” He held out my portion of fish on a plate of leaves. I took it from him, grudgingly inspecting his work for bones. I couldn’t find any.
“Where are you sleeping?”
Kye jabbed the air with his knife in the direction of the village. “Akamai’s house. After she treated my sunburn, she said I could stay. I’ve been fixing things up for her since it’s hard for her to get around. She has stiff joints.”
I chewed my tuna, trying not to imagine him patiently fulfilling tasks for the elderly woman—domestic duties like rethatching her roof and cleaning cobwebs. Glancing toward the well, I wondered how long my father might be.
“What did you mean earlier by everyone can see?” Kye asked. He hadn’t touched his own fish yet. Watching me, he sank down on one hip, his opposite knee bending into an arch that he used to rest his arm.
My jaw slowed. “You’ve heard that my mother was a witch.”
“No,” he replied in a voice that beckoned me to continue, his brow arching in my direction. He flashed a crooked smile, so handsome he liquified my waning patience.
My eyes snapped to his. “Don’t lie.”
“Alright. Yes.”
I glowered softly at him. “The islanders think I am one too.”
“Are you?” he asked, unbothered by my hot stare.
I scoffed. “No.”
“Why does it matter?”
I exhaled, setting my plate of leaves on the floor, my appetite gone like the smoke in the air. Poking the inlets of my teeth with my tongue, I looked at him expectantly, then flicked my eyes to the neighboring houses.
He followed my gaze in time to see several faces drop into bushes.
Smug, I licked my lips, allowing him to choose whatever impression that might make on him. “My father worries about me.”
“Have you tried making friends?” he asked the way a parent might ask their child whether they”re playing nice with their peers. I stared at him, trying to decide whether he enjoyed asking rhetorical questions or if he was openly mocking me.
He simply watched the neighboring houses, though I could feel him waiting for my answer.
How could I explain? The years of wary glances, of whispers behind my back. The accusations that, every time a sailor fell off a boat in the harbor, I was to blame. That my Anake had been so desperate to be rid of me, she’d once tried to convince my father to sell me to pirates.
To my surprise, Kye didn’t look back at me. His eyes narrowed, his gaze fierce, waiting to stare down at anyone else who looked our way.
My chewing stopped. What did he expect glaring to do? “That doesn’t help.”
He didn’t move. “It might not help when you do it. People don’t care if you defend yourself. But when someone else defends you—” He stopped as he caught my stare.
I shook my head. “Maybe that’s true where you’re from. But here, it won’t work. They’ll just think I’ve seduced you.”
His lip curved into a dark smile, crescent scar paling as it stretched. “Have you?”
I blinked, taken by surprise. Was that an honest question?
Kye laughed, and I glared at him. Unbothered, he gazed down at his plate of fish, a dark smile on his lips that stirred a strange hunger in my chest.
It was an odd sensation, being so easily disarmed by a smile. Slippery—as though my feet might slide out from under me without warning unless I stepped sure and slow.
“I’m sure it’s hilarious to you,” I said, satisfied as his smile fell away.
Kye rotated his wooden plate. “Where I’m from, everyone wants to press their advantage. You either learn how to manage people or you let them control you.”
Biting back a sharp retort, I leaned against the house. “And where’s that?”
“Here and there, up north. All the way east to Ascento, all the way west to Merriam. I can’t stay anywhere too long. It’s too…” He rolled his neck and shoulders, as if warding an itch from his back.
“Did you come to Leihani on purpose, Kye?”
His movements slowed as he hesitated, considering his words with careful thought. “In a way. I’m always looking for something I can’t find at home.” His eyes slanted to the side as he took his first bite, dusting fishy crumbs from his fingers and onto the plate.
I’d simply wiped mine on my leg. Something inside me cringed. “What can’t you find at home?”
He tilted his head, chewing as he gazed at me. “What does being a witch have to do with me?”
His evasion of my question didn’t go unnoticed, but I latched onto his words, anyway. “I’m not a witch.”
He shrugged, as if to say suit yourself, and I reeled in the impulse to reach up and smack him. But staring at me sideways, he cracked a smile that cooled my annoyance just as quickly as he’d fired it.
“Alright, lout.”
Kye raised a brow. “You make jokes?”
Crossing my arms, I waited until he mirrored me, leaving his plate next to mine. I ran a hand through the ends of my hair, taming fly-aways, stalling as I chose my words with care.
“My mother washed up here after being shipwrecked with nothing but her dress and a book. A lot of the island men were interested in her. She wasn’t mute, but she could only say a few words. Yes, no, hello, thank you. She might have chosen anyone, but she liked my father.” I raised a shoulder, implying I didn’t know why, and Kye’s mouth quirked. “After they married, men began to go missing.”
Kye rubbed a knuckle under his chin. “Island men? From Leihani?”
“No. Sailors, traders. Men who left their ships to go on walks around the market, then vanished without anyone knowing why.”
“How many?”
I bit my lip to avoid the question, though I knew the answer. My mother had only lived in Leihani for three years before a rogue tidal wave claimed her life, and a sailor had been lost for every year she’d spent here.
Kye’s eyes trailed from my face, across the wood floor to his bare feet. His white linen shirt, unbuttoned and open, was clean. I wondered whether Akamai washed for him or if he did it himself.
“Is it still happening now that she’s gone?”
“They stopped disappearing after she died. But six years ago, it started happening again.” When the cabin boy, Irah, disappeared.
“So, the thought is, since I’m a man, and an outsider, I’m going to disappear if I spend time with you?”
I offered him a small smile.
Something rebellious sparkled in his gaze, amusement playing at his mouth.
Across the field, my father emerged, lumbering with water-filled pitchers. I caught his eyes in the distance, searching to see if the two of us were still on the porch. He stopped to peer with sudden fascination at a banana leaf in a neighboring yard.
We watched my father meander through, slowing along the path to say hello to neighbors and friends, ducking onto stairwells and verandas to try a bite of something someone was cooking, laughing at well-intentioned insults slung over railings and through the trees, pretending not to send side-long glances at us every few minutes.
Kye took another bite of his fish. “Do you still have the book?”
“My mother’s?”
He inclined his head.
“It probably wouldn’t interest you. It’s an old romance novel.”
Kye chuckled. “My mom read them, too.” He waited. I wasn’t sure why I didn’t want to show it to him.
Besides the fact that it was old and worn, its pages crinkled, the ink blotchy from seawater, and the binding likely a single finger stroke away from falling into tatters, it was the only book in my house. The only thing I had of my mother.
Someone had given it to her. An inscription had been etched onto the inner side of the cover with ink that hadn’t withstood the sea as well as the print. Only the first two words remained clear enough to read. For Alana. The rest looked like a watercolor painting, hues of gray and black, but my father had once told me she used to open it up and stare at the ruined handwriting, reading it to herself from memory.
My uncle Naheso had taught Nola and me to read with it. Few islanders could read, but Naheso’s parents had left Leihani before he was born and returned when he was a teenager. He’d learned in Calder.
Sensing my hesitation, Kye stretched, sending his gaze out towards my neighbors once again. “So. What can I do to help?”
I bit my lip, holding back a smirk. “Not sit on my porch for the world to see.”
He blinked, a slow smile carving through his mouth as he finally understood. “Ah. So, if I visited you in private, would you be less inclined to tell me to leave?”
Mihaunahelp me, I couldn’t stop myself from smiling into my fish, feeling his eyes on me as he waited for an answer. Warmth trickled into my cheeks, rippling down my spine at the thought of meeting him alone.
In secret.
But the thought quickly whisked itself from my head.
Kye wasn’t looking to make a home on the island. He was waiting for a ship to take him home. He was a spoiled boy. Kind, curious—but spoiled. Even if I might, maybe, grudgingly like him, I knew his future was forecasted in the fair weather of work without labor. Overseeing production. The blood of a pampered life. He wouldn’t stay in Leihani. He’d leave—a day, a week, a month from now. And I’d still be here, living out the consequences of a foolhardy friendship like the one I’d made with Irah.
I swallowed, the final bite suddenly flavorless in my mouth. Wiping my hands on my knees, I stood. “Low tide has been coming in after dark,” I lied, reaching for the buckets I’d already filled with clams and sold earlier that day.
Kye opened his mouth to say something but seemed to think better of it. His jaw tightened as he watched me descend the veranda stairs, into the quiet grass beyond.