Chapter 10
- Crat'ax -
The firelight fades behind us as I lead Callie away from the Circle. It does not vanish all at once. It thins, stretches, and clings to the edges of the platforms, as if reluctant to let her go. I feel the weight of it on my back. The men are watching, and measuring.
I don’t look back, and I don’t answer her question. It’s something I’ve been wondering, too.
The boards beneath our feet are newly set, the bindings still pale where they have not yet darkened with salt.
Callie walks at my side. Her steps are light and careful, her head turning as she takes everything in. She doesn’t hunch, or lower her gaze. I’m sure the tribe notices that too.
Good, I think, and then I am not sure why.
The bay is quiet. Too quiet. The water slides against the posts with a patient sound, like breath taken and released. As we pass the inner platforms, I feel it again—the awareness of what lies under the platform farther in. The place I don’t look at, and try not to think about.
I move closer without touching her.
The new hut stands solid. The roof is thatched, the walls newly braced.
The men worked well. They don’t always do, but the krai scared them, and I think they wanted Callie to see them at their best. I secured this place for us before the fire was lit, before the meat was passed around, before the tribe decided what tonight would mean.
Sprub’ex himself suggested it. He’s not all bad, just cautious on behalf of the tribe.
I duck inside first, checking shadows, listening. The waves cluck under the floor. Nothing moves within.
“This is the safest place in the village,” I say, and only then does she step past me.
The hut smells of wood, sea, and the faint trace of oil from a lamp. Callie exhales, a small sound she likely doesn’t know she makes. It does something to me. Everything does something to me now.
I turn away under the pretense of checking the door lashings, and give myself a moment to breathe. Control, I remind myself. This could be part of the test.
When I turn back, Callie is seated on the edge of the sleeping platform, her hands braced on either side of her.
Flickering light from a torch outside reaches through the thin gaps in the walls, painting her skin in warm stripes.
It should not look like this. Nothing in my life has prepared me for this.
“You were very quiet,” she says.
I start wiping the salt off my spear with its leather sheet. “I was listening.”
“To them?” She tilts her head toward the Circle, where the men are getting noisy.
“We have no choice but to listen to them. But I was also listening to the ocean. And to you.”
Her mouth curves. “I not say much.”
I chuckle. “True, but you said things that the tribe will ponder for days. And so will I.”
She studies me for a long moment. There is a question there. There are several. Including the one she already asked. She chooses another one. “Why you bring me out there today? The jungle?”
I finish with the spear and set it within reach. The motion puts me lower than her. It brings my eyes level with her knees, to the line of her leg beneath the thin fabric of her garment. Oh black Deep, how can a thigh be so round…
Heat surges through me, sharp and unwelcome. I focus on tightening my belt.
“I wanted to get you away from all the eyes. And I wanted you to see,” I say.
“See what?”
“The iron. My iron. The rock that you say comes from the sky. The midoryde. Well, it was something to show you.”
Her fingers tighten on the edge of the platform. “All the men are talking. Also the other tribes. Soon, all jungle will know about me. You did not tell the men that other tribe saw me, too.”
I get back up and lean on the wall. “Now they know we have a woman. Some may think you are the Woman. The one from their silly myth. I didn’t see a reason to tell our men about it. During the Day of trade, they will all see you anyway. Unless we hide you. Perhaps we have to.”
“They were staring at me.”
I nod. “They always will. You’re the only woman anyone’s ever seen.”
She looks down at her hands. The firelight gleams on her hair, on the soft curve where her neck meets her shoulder.
The urge rises again, stronger now. The thought that has been circling me since the river, since the iron, since the way she thought fast before the rekh, and trusted me to understand what she was doing.
Worship. The word surfaces unbidden. A foreign thing, learned in fragments, in warnings.
A practice of the land tribes. Taboo and wrong, like everything the jungle tribes do.
A man kneels. A man gives himself over to a woman’s pleasure as an act of reverence.
The old men scoff whenever it’s described.
A weakness from the Dry, they said. But what do they know? It is done only with women.
Women, who the Deep has only given us once. Apart from Callie, the Deep has never told us anything about women.
The urge is not to take. It is to see all of her, and to give her pleasure. The thought rattles me with its clarity.
I curl my hands into fists to keep them from moving on their own.
“You’re thinking very hard,” she says.
I want to turn so that the bulge in my loincloth wouldn’t be so obvious. “A man should think at all times. Especially at night.”
“About me?”
I should deny it, but the evidence is too clear. “It’s difficult not to. You’re right here.”
“Why am I here?” she asks again. There’s no challenge in her voice, just seeking.
The old answers rise and fall away before I can speak them. The Deep sent you. You are a test. You are given to me. They ring hollow now, thin as shells tapped together.
“Because I wanted you,” I say truthfully.
“I paddled my boat along the shore for two days. The Deep let me do it, showing me a part of the shore that no tribesman had ever seen before. Finally, I had to rest, and I went ashore. I made a fire and enjoyed the freedom. The silence. Being in a new place. I grilled a smoked splix and walked along the beach.”
I think back. I was about to get back in the boat and sleep when I decided to see if I could find some fruit. Or maybe some kind of evidence to show the tribe how far away I’d been.
“And then I saw you, and I wanted you. So I took you away from the Plood. If there are any in that ship.”
Her lips part. “There are not. Only Theodora and Riley and Morgan and I. The Plood were not in the ship.”
“But it was a Plood ship,” I protest.
“The ship came here with women from Earth. And a… droun. Called Dex. It was Dex who brought the ship here. It crashed. No Plood.”
So now I know she was not sent by them. My mind goes a little brighter.
I clear my voice. “I didn’t know that then. I was sure there were Plood. And, of course, you would want to get away from them. You were all wrong in the jungle—too soft and delicate. I wanted you safe.”
She stands up, close enough that I can smell the faint salt on her skin, the smoke in her hair. Her hand lifts. For a moment, I think she will touch my face. Instead, her fingers settle on my forearm, just below the elbow. The contact is light, and yet it burns.
“Crat'ax,” she says, and my name has never sounded like this before.
Every instinct in me leans toward her, toward the press of her body, the warmth, the place where my mouth could go if I allowed it.
The place my mind has traced in the dark.
Worship is not about taking. It is about giving until there is nothing left to give.
The other tribes may be fools, or they may be wiser than we are.
I bend down so that our lips can meet.
I do it slowly, giving her time to pull away, to change her mind.
She doesn’t. Her mouth is warm, softer than anything I have known, and when she exhales against me I feel it all the way down my spine.
It is not a hungry kiss, not yet. It is careful, deliberate—a question and an answer at once.
I keep my hands where they are, on her arms, grounding myself in the strength it takes to stop. When we part, her eyes are bright.
She lifts a hand to her mouth and hides a yawn, small and unguarded. The moment breaks gently, like a wave losing itself on the sand.
“Sleep,” I murmur, and there is no argument in her.
She turns and lies down on the platform, curling onto her side as if she has done it here a hundred times before.
I pull the leather sheet over her, tucking it around her shoulders the way I have seen mothers do with children, careful not to wake what is already fading.
My hand settles on her hip, protective rather than claiming, and she smiles with her eyes closed, leaning into the touch. I lie down on the floor beside her, close enough to feel her warmth through the boards.
My body is heavy with exhaustion after days without real rest, but my mind will not quiet. I stare into the dark, listening to her slow, even breathing, and let my thoughts run where I didn’t allow my body to go.