Chapter Nine #2
What could he do on a boat? He didn’t know how to sail.
Looking away from his hopeful eyes, Marin gazed across the harbor.
Out in the waves, Perri had amassed a flock of seagulls that was thick enough to blot out the sun.
He was having the time of his life flinging them fish.
One foolish bird got overeager and nipped his front fin.
Irritated, Perri swatted it away, which sent the bird sailing beyond the flock.
It flew back, eager for more fish, and Perri made it a game: keep the fish away from the bird who bit.
Every time that bird would try to dive for one, he’d use a fin or his sinewy body to knock it toward a different bird.
It was rather hilarious to watch, the contortions he’d pretzel himself into, but far kinder than he could have been.
She’d also seen him snatch birds out of the sky mid-flight when it was his dinnertime.
She remembered when she first met him, how she felt when she saw him stuck between rocks. This shouldn’t feel the same. Dax had a perfectly reasonable place to live with people who clearly cared about him. So why did it feel the same?
“I’ll think about it,” Marin said again.
She knew what Perri would say if she asked him.
She wondered how Ree would feel about another crewmate.
The myrtle had climbed to the top of the mast again.
As they sailed closer to the public dock, Ree shouted, “I’ll tie off!
” He then flung his leafy body into the air, somersaulted, and cried, “Wheee!”
Marin felt her entire body tense. “Ree, you’re not—”
He arched toward the dock …
… and overshot it.
He splashed into the harbor just beyond the dock.
Without thinking, Marin launched herself toward the side of the boat, dove into the water, and swam toward the bush, who’d bobbed up onto the surface.
“I’m okay,” Ree sputtered. “I’m okay.”
She gathered him up and hoisted him onto the dock, then she pushed herself up, ran to the end of the dock, and leaped onto the bow of her boat in time to steer it so it gently bumped into the pylons instead of ramming into them. Rapidly, she lowered the sails and tied off onto the dock.
Ree waddled back onto the boat, leaving puddles behind. “I almost made it.”
Dax knelt next to him. “Are you all right? The salt water…”
“I’m a halophyte,” Ree informed him. “Salt-resistant plant.”
“Ah, great. Do you need a towel? Or … I don’t know.” He looked up at Marin, who was also dripping puddles on the deck. “I’ll get a towel.” He scurried below.
Sopping wet, Marin summoned up a smile to greet the islanders on the dock. She wasn’t sure what to say when she was delivering people, not goods, or how to explain her overeager leafy crew member. Luckily, she didn’t have to figure it out.
Shiare shouted, “I’m home! And I brought friends!”
The islanders on the dock cheered.
Well, okay, I guess that’s fine. To Ree, she said, “You did almost make it.”
“Next time I won’t miss,” he said.
“Next time I won’t dive in after you,” Marin said. “You miss, you swim.” A thought occurred to her. “Do you know how to swim?”
“Um…”
“I’m teaching you how to swim.” She wondered if Dax knew how to swim.
It seemed absurd to her that anyone who lived on an island would not know how, but he had spent his entire life inside the conservatory.
Plus the canals of Alyssium were a terrible place for swimmers—they were too narrow, too junked up with debris and runoff from the buildings, as well as who knew what from their sewage system, which was supposedly enchanted to transport the manure to a farming island …
Wait, did that mean she was seriously considering letting him stay on board?
A woman with magenta skin, wearing a purple wrap dress and no shoes, ran toward the end of the dock.
“Shiare! You don’t write. You don’t send notes.
We’ve been so worried!” As Shiare stepped off the boat, the woman enfolded her in her arms. “Your drumbeats were sloppy. There was too long a hesitation between the twenty-ninth hit and the thirtieth.”
Shiare tried to pull back. “It’s an acceptable variant—”
“You nearly insulted your uncle,” the woman, who had to be Shiare’s mother—she had the same chin and the same nose—tsked. She wrapped her arm around Shiare and bustled her toward shore.
Shiare dug her heels in. “Mother, I didn’t come alone.”
Her mother clasped her hands over her heart. “You’re married!”
“Wait? No, I’m not married. Mother—”
“Engaged?”
“No, Mother, I—”
Her mother pointed at Dax, who was trying unsuccessfully to wipe Ree’s leaves dry with a towel. He was now nearly as wet as the myrtle. “Him?”
Oblivious, Dax offered a towel to Marin, and she thanked him and draped it absently over her shoulders. She was more interested in how this little drama played out than in being dry.
“Not him,” Shiare said. “Daxicend is a friend.”
Her mother looked him up and down, and Dax glanced behind him to see who she was looking at before realizing she was evaluating him.
He gave a little bow. “Hello, ma’am. I’ve heard a lot about you, and it’s an honor to meet the mother of one of the most impressive drummers that the Crescent Islands has ever seen. ”
“I like him,” Shiare’s mother said. “You should choose him.”
“Mother!”
While they’d been talking, the other musicians had begun to unload their belongings from within the boat.
They carried them onto the dock. Shiare, talking quickly before her mother could start again, explained what was happening in Alyssium and why they’d left: they all needed sanctuary for an unknown amount of time.
“Of course, of course,” Shiare’s mother said, “but you know I only want your happiness. What am I going to tell your aunts, returning home with all these friends and not one single lover? Unless they’re all your lovers?
No judgment, but that would be delightful!
” She greeted each of the musicians with a hug and then gestured to the flock of onlookers who’d gathered to help them carry their belongings to shore.
The mayharp was hauled off the boat, as well as Shiare’s drums. As someone carried Dax’s three-necked lute, he plucked it out of their hands.
He looked helplessly over to Marin, and it occurred to Marin that Dax wasn’t as oblivious as he acted—he knew that Shiare’s mother was gleefully plotting his future.
And Marin had an idea.
It wasn’t a good idea, but she kind of liked it. “Agree to come with me to my island’s End-of-Harvest Festival and tell everyone there we’re engaged, and you can sail with me.”
Dax looked at her. “What?”
Marin felt herself blush, heat rising up from her neck.
She regretted saying anything, but it was too late now.
She pushed on. “Pretend engagement. It’ll help me deal with family matters.
” She waved a hand at Shiare’s mother, implying that the problem was with her parents, which wasn’t true—the problem was everyone else, all the busybodies who’d be clucking their tongues at poor Marin who’d been tricked and heartbroken.
And then, of course, there was Iovar, who would certainly be there.
Seeing her with a new lover would knock the wind out of his metaphorical sails and make it far easier for her to handle seeing him.
“Our festival celebrates the last harvest of the season—the final peach to fall from a tree. It’s a big deal on Flicker, even bigger than winter solstice, and I stupidly promised my parents I’d come this year. ”
He started to grin at her.
Gah, she was blushing so hard that she thought her face might burst into flames. “It would be a business arrangement, not a romantic … thing.”
Smothering his grin, he nodded solemnly. “It’s a deal.” Without another word, Dax extracted his bags from the collection that had been unloaded onto the dock.
One of his friends, the sour man with feathers instead of hair, noticed. “Daxicend? What are you doing? You’re not staying?”
He beamed at them. “This is my chance to see the world. Of course I’m going to take it.”
The friend frowned, his usual expression but enhanced. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. You should stick with us. It’ll be fun—and you can still work on your opus. How are you going to get anything done on that boat?”
Marin wondered if any of them deserved the title “friend.” Had they been looking out for his best interest, or had they been looking out for their own skins, keeping him contained in the conservatory and clueless about the world outside?
Wouldn’t a true friend want him to spread his wings?
What kind of friend caged their friend? Again, she thought of Iovar.
I’m rescuing Dax. It’s decided.
Shiare slipped out of her mother’s arms and returned to the dock. “What’s going on? Daxicend? What do you mean ‘see the world’? Of course you’re going to stay with us.”
“Yeah,” his feather-haired friend said. “What are you thinking? You’re not a sailor. You’re a composer.” A few of the others gathered, echoing him.
“I could learn…” Dax began.
“You could drown,” the so-called friend cut in.
“You could damage your hands. You could waste your time. This is absurd. Shiare, tell him he’s being absurd.
He can’t want to hang out with…” He glanced at Marin.
“Apologies, no offense meant—we appreciate you transporting all of us, but Daxicend doesn’t belong working as a supply runner.
He’s the greatest composer of our generation, did you know that? ”
She didn’t know that.
Embarrassed, Dax said, “Reyer…”
“You have no clue how famous he is,” the friend, Reyer, continued. “Or how important. He has natural abilities that surpass any of us. Anyone in the conservatory. The emperor himself—”
Watching Dax shifting uncomfortably, Marin interrupted. “You mean the emperor who was flung out a window? I don’t see how he gets a say in what Dax wants to do.”
Reyer opened his mouth to argue.