Chapter Five
Her home island looked like a cat curled up in the sun. Marin couldn’t help but smile as she and Perri sailed closer. She loved her home.
Years ago, the stories said, Flicker was only barren rock, a hiccup from a volcano that didn’t mean to explode and felt a bit embarrassed about it so never did it again.
It sat forgotten in an empty stretch of sea, far away from the other islands, and felt sorry for itself until the first winged cat flew onto its shore.
The stories didn’t explain what that first cat ate—fish presumably?
But by the time people came to settle Flicker, the island had transformed itself into a cat paradise, complete with trees to perch in, beautiful, brightly feathered birds and purple mice to hunt, and copious sunshine to nap in atop the rocky peaks.
All the people who lived there worked their lives around the cats.
No one owned a winged cat on Flicker, but very often, a cat would decide it owned you.
I should have known what Iovar was because of the cats.
He’d always tried to pet them and pick them up, ignoring every cue that they wanted to be left alone unless they decided otherwise. He never gave them enough space to come to him. He assumed he was owed their affection. Yeah, that should have been a major clue.
Unfortunately, she’d been blind to it. She’d liked his attention, especially when it had been all praise and promises.
Ugh, and this was why she hated coming home as much as she loved her home: every time she saw the black lava rocks, the trees with their flocks of winged cats, and the houses each with cat windows in their roofs, she was flooded with this swamp of regret, guilt, and flat-out horror with herself for falling for a man who wasn’t cat-worthy.
She’d thought she was so smart. So clever.
Such a good judge of character. But it was abundantly clear to her after everything with Iovar that she had less actual sense than an orange winged cat.
She’d just been lucky she hadn’t made any catastrophic mistakes in the last two years.
Keeping her distance from everyone was the only way to continue to ensure that.
Her parents’ unpaid debt—and the fear that they’d lose their home if she failed to repay it—was a constant reminder of her unforgiveable failure of judgment and how much pain it had caused not just her but also her parents, who deserved only good things.
I failed them once; I’m not going to fail them again.
As she sailed closer, a flock of winged cats burst out of the trees and flew in a V formation toward her and Perri. Shoving all thoughts of Iovar down, Marin grinned. “Have fun,” she told the sea serpent. “We’ll leave in the morning, okay?”
She tacked away sharply, avoiding the buoys that marked the channel into the harbor, but she kept looking back.
Staying in the deeper water, Perri began to writhe and dance, diving down and then flinging himself up.
As the flock of cats flew closer, his dance grew more elaborate.
Soon, silver flashes appeared in the air as he flung himself upward.
The winged cats dove for the silver flashes, catching the fish with their paws and mouths. They circled above Perri as he continued to toss dinner into the air for them. Marin grinned as she watched the delight of both the cats and the sea serpent.
The fish were most likely less delighted, but she was fine with that.
She steered her sailboat beyond the harbor.
She had no intention of docking where anyone could see her—her silver sails weren’t unique, but paired with a sailor with silvery skin who traveled with a friendly sea serpent …
word would spread fast that she was home.
If she avoided the main harbor and didn’t leave her parents’ house, then by the time anyone knew she was here, she’d have come and gone.
It was admittedly not the bravest choice, but it was the simplest. She’d successfully gone two wonderful years without seeing Iovar.
Marin kept a safe distance from shore as she circled the island before tacking toward a cove that held a beach with black sand.
It sparkled in the sunlight, as if it were mixed with shards of diamond.
She sailed toward a skinny dock that stretched out beyond the breakers, and she tied off next to her parents’ sailboat, also with silver sails.
Its hull had been cleaned recently, as well as scraped of barnacles and polished, and every inch of it gleamed.
A cat with golden wings perched on top of its mast and made chirping-clicking noises at seagulls who flew just offshore.
She tied off, lowered the sails, and then headed toward the steps that led up to a little pink house perched just above the beach.
A half-dozen cats lounged on the roof, and Marin spotted bright-colored laundry drying on the line out in the garden.
The peach trees were full of soft-fuzzed fruit, weighing down their branches, and she smelled cinnamon wafting out the windows—her parents were baking.
All is well.
She climbed the steps up from the beach. By the time she reached the garden, her father was bustling out the door. He was half-covered in flour, with flecks dusting his hair, and his smile was huge. “Mariner!” he cried.
Two of the cats launched themselves off the roof and flew in circles around him.
Laughing, he flapped his arms to half-heartedly shoo them away. “You had breakfast already. Remember?”
“They definitely do not remember,” Marin said with a smile.
“Humph.”
“In fact, they’re certain they’re starving,” Marin continued, watching them circle and meow plaintively. “No one has ever fed them or will ever feed them again. It’s tragic.”
One of the winged cats landed on the table beneath one of the peach trees.
Leaning out the kitchen window, Marin’s mother cheered, “Mariner! You’re home!” She then scowled and made shooing motions. “Psst-psst! No cats on the table!”
Looking her straight in the eye, the cat lifted his hind leg and began to lick.
“You look tired,” Pa said to Marin, wrapping his arms around her and squeezing her so tight that her ribs compressed.
He released her and leaned his forehead against hers to peer into her eyes.
“Are you sleeping enough? Eating enough? Bellis, she’s not taking care of herself properly! We need to intervene. She needs pie!”
It was the same dance every time she came home, and she loved it. “I do need pie,” Marin agreed.
Her father bustled her inside to the kitchen. She was immediately enveloped in warmth, spices, and her mother’s arms. She was then given a basket and scooted outside into the fresh air. “How many do you need?” Marin asked.
“Fill it to the brim!” Pa cried.
Inside, he made the pie crust while outside, Marin picked peaches.
She braced the basket on her hip, holding it with one arm, while she plucked the sun-ripened peaches with her other hand.
Testing them out, she focused on how they felt, not how they looked.
It didn’t matter if they were pink or pale—it was the light squeeze that told the story.
If the skin dented beneath her fingers, it was ripe. She twisted the orb off the branch.
“How are you both?” Marin called to them through the window.
“The sun rose again,” Ma said.
That was the answer she always gave when bad things happened. Stomach sinking, Marin froze halfway to reaching for another peach. “Tell me.”
“Eh, your mother is being dramatic,” Pa said.
He came outside with a cutting board and a paring knife and laid them on the table, scooting the winged cat off.
Offended, the cat flew into the peach tree overhead.
Pa dipped his hand into the pocket of his apron and pulled out a bit of dried meat.
He offered it to the cat, who nibbled it and then proceeded to ignore him.
“It may be for the best. World needs shaking up sometimes. Rich folk got to be reminded wealth doesn’t equal importance. ”
Ah, they were talking politics. “You heard about the revolution?” Marin guessed. Her muscles began to unclench. She was worried it was worse, personal: illness, for example.
Coming outside, Ma joined them, carrying a bowl and a basket with other ingredients: flour, sugar, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and a bottle of lemon juice. “You’re a day late with the news. You didn’t come straight here? The fall of the empire didn’t seem important enough?”
“I had a delivery.” Marin began to peel and slice the peaches, while Ma and Pa mixed together the other ingredients. “Wait, what did you hear? Did the revolutionaries win?” That seemed unlikely. Rijes Velk had been certain that wasn’t the end of it.
“You should have come straight here,” Pa said.
Marin flinched. She should have. “I didn’t think it was an emergency all the way out here.
Alyssium is so far from Flicker…” She thought of Dax in Alyssium and wished she’d tried harder to reach the conservatory.
He’s all right. She wished she could be sure.
The imperial reaction to the emperor’s assassination was bound to be swift and brutal, as well as overreaching.
Still, there was no reason for them to touch the conservatory.
“It’s all one world,” Ma said. “And while we do think, in the long run, a new government—one that serves the people—will be what’s best for the islands, it will be dangerous for a lot of people for a while, until new systems are in place.
It’s an adjustment—no more empire. No more imperial investigators.
Lots of new laws. All sorts of changes to come.
” She peered over at the cutting board. “Slice them walnut size.”
“We worry about you, Mariner,” Pa said.