Black Sun (Between Earth and Sky, #1)(49)

“And no men? The stories said that, too.”

“And I came from a fish egg,” she said, her sarcasm thick. “What else?”

He recognized that she hadn’t answered his question, and that a bit of nervousness had come back into her voice. She was hiding something. He could tell by the lift at the ends of her sentences, the way she tapped her heel. He was curious to know her secret, but he was enjoying the conversation too much to push. “That you ride on the backs of manatees.”

“We do that,” she said solemnly, before bursting into another laugh. She sounded relieved. “But we ask permission first. We call them our siblings. We would never ride our siblings without asking first.”

He understood she had made a bawdy joke and let the side of his mouth lift in a half-smile. He was rewarded when she said, “Ah, so you do have a sense of humor.”

“There’s something I want to know,” he asked, ignoring her jibe.

“What, that the stories don’t tell you?”

“The stories are too limited to ask the right question.”

“And what is the question?”

“How do you navigate at night, with no hint of the horizon? How do you know we are still headed to Tova when everywhere you look, it is the same?”

She was quiet, but he felt the energy thrumming from her, remnants of the Song she had Sung to the sea. It had something to do with that, he knew. Some part of her magic.

“It is a Teek secret,” she finally said. “It is why I am a captain despite their superstition.” He felt her fling her arm out toward the crew behind him. “And despite the fact that I am a woman and young and all the things they cannot tolerate on land.”

“Yet they revere here on the sea.”

Her breath caught, like he had surprised her. “Yes.”

“Will you teach me?” he asked.

He could feel her eyes on him. Studying. Assessing.

“You’re blind,” she said, like he was ignoring the obvious. Her voice was apologetic.

Now he let himself smile, knowing his red teeth flashed in the moonlight. “A woman who knows the waves by the way they move beneath her feet and the wind by the way it kisses her neck wonders how the blind man might learn about the sea?”

“But these are stars…”

He leaned forward, pressing a hand against her leg and moving close enough that he felt her startled huff of breath against his cheek. Her magic scented the air. “Did you not hear, Xiala, that I am grandfather crow? You may study the stars, but I am made of the shadow between stars. Tell me what you see, and I will understand it.”

He felt her heartbeat quicken, her breathing accelerate. From fear or simply because he was so near, he wasn’t sure, but he didn’t move away.

She cleared her throat. “All right, then,” she said, voice trembling slightly. “Give me your hands.”

He held both hands out, palms up. He felt her fingers against his right palm, tentative at first. But as she spoke, her touch steadied, became surer.

“You told me the stories your people tell of mine,” she said, “but let me tell you what we say of ourselves. We are Teek, which means ‘the people,’ and our ways are Teek, and our islands Teek. Do you understand?”

“That all is the same,” he said, understanding immediately. “There is no difference between yourselves and the land.”

He could almost feel her smile. “Good.”

“And the water?”

“Ah…” Her breath was soft with reverence. “We call the water Al-Teek. Our mother. Constant, life-giving, sustaining.”

He followed a hunch, thinking of how she had spoken about the stars. “And the sky is your father?”

“No,” she said flatly. “Teek do not have fathers.”

He frowned, confused, but did not ask the obvious question, sure he would only get another quip about fish eggs.

“We call the sky her lover,” she corrected. “Fickle, ever-changing, sometimes cold and sometimes very hot, indeed.” She ran her finger along the lines of his palm in a way that made him shiver. She laughed, low and suggestive, and for a moment he was caught off guard by the lust it roused in him, an emotion so rare as to feel foreign. His face felt hot, and he shifted on the bench.

He felt her pause as if registering his response before she continued, her finger still pressed against his bare skin, her breath mingling with his. “We are a floating nation, not moored to land. That is why we cannot be found unless we want to be found. And since we travel the tides, we learn to read the night sky with our mother’s milk.” Her finger moved again, this time tracing a circle against his open hands. “The sky is a dome. The sun rises here”—she pressed a point near his right thumb—“and sets here.” He thought to tell her that being blind did not make him unaware of where the sun rose and set; he had watched it rise and fall for twelve years, and after that, he could feel its heat against his skin and knew from which direction it came, but she was still talking, still tracing her finger over his palm, so he let her continue. She drew another point, a straight light across to his left. “North is here, south here.” She made a small popping sound with her lips, as if releasing a secret that lingered on them. “Now you hold the sky in your hands.”