The Deepest Blue(11)
“You should go,” Grandmama croaked.
Mayara swallowed, a scratchy lump in her throat. She’d be gone soon enough. It wouldn’t take long for the queen to hear of what had happened in the spirit storm. She probably sensed it the moment I took control of the sea dragon.
“Before the Silent Ones come,” Grandmama clarified. “You should run.”
Impossible, Mayara thought. “You know I can’t. They’ll catch me. Besides, my parents need me. My mother—”
“Run and hide. You know this coast. Find caves. Take that pretty new husband of yours and flee!”
Mayara shoved back the wild hope that flared inside her. As tempting as it was, it wasn’t possible to run and hide forever, not from the Silent Ones. They were the queen’s enforcers, and they used the island’s spirits as their eyes and ears. “No one’s ever escaped.”
“Oh, my little Mayara, pearl of my heart, if no one has done it, then you be the first. Like one of your dives. You’ve been the first to do the impossible before.”
Mayara shook her head, stepping backward. “I . . . I . . . I have to take this to my mother.” Clutching the blanket, she fled back to her parents.
Kelo was already with them—he’d brought more blankets, as well as candles. Lit candles ringed the plaza. Seeing him, she felt her knees buckle, but she didn’t let herself collapse, as badly as she wanted to fling herself into his arms. First, she had to take care of her mother. She tucked two blankets around her and felt her forehead. Cold and clammy.
As Mayara straightened, Kelo wrapped a blanket around her shoulders. “You’ll catch sick like this,” he scolded her. “Can’t do that, not now. Let me take care of you.” He glanced at her parents, as if asking their permission.
“Go with him,” Papa said. He summoned up an almost-smile, and it was tinged with so much sadness that Mayara felt as if her heart were shattered glass.
His arm around her, Kelo led her away.
“I don’t need ‘taking care of,’” Mayara told him, “but my parents do. Promise me you’ll look after them. I need to know they’re safe. Mother . . . she isn’t going to take this well. Papa will have his hands full watching her.”
He didn’t seem to be listening, though. “Let’s hurry. You’re shivering. I’ve spare clothes in the studio.”
His studio wasn’t with the rest of the village on the shore, so it wouldn’t have been swept away. And protected as it was by all his charmed art, the spirits wouldn’t have touched it. Any damage would be from ordinary rain and wind. I’ll change into dry clothes, and then I’ll help as much as I can . . . until they take me away. She was still in her sopping-wet wedding dress. It chilled her skin everywhere it touched.
As they passed through the plaza, Mayara spotted her aunt Beila. She dragged Kelo toward her. “Aunt Beila . . . don’t respect her privacy. Make my mother be with you. She’ll need you, all of you, whether she admits it or not.” Last time, with Elorna, her aunts had given her mother space. Mayara had always thought that was a mistake. She wasn’t going to let it be repeated. “Promise me you’ll annoy her so much that she has to find the will to live, just to tell you to stop.”
Aunt Beila clasped Mayara’s hand. “Oh, Mayara . . .”
“Please, promise me,” Mayara begged. “I have to know she’ll be okay.”
“We’ll be more annoying than fruit flies,” Aunt Beila promised. “But you have to promise us you’ll try to live too. Make the smart choice.”
Gently, Kelo extracted Mayara’s hands from her aunt’s. “She needs to get into warm clothes, or she won’t be fit to make any choice.”
Though Kelo was trying to hurry her through the plaza, Mayara paused again and again as she passed more aunts, uncles, and cousins. All of them wanted to wish her well, express condolences for her fate, thank her for what she’d done, or simply say goodbye.
“Why do you have to have so many blasted relations?” Kelo growled.
“I’ll change before I freeze, don’t worry.” Mayara picked up her pace so he’d stop fussing.
They started up the path toward Kelo’s studio. It was strewn with debris. Limbs had been torn off trees, and leaves and branches had been flung everywhere. The rope railing that had run along the edge was gone. Mayara wondered how much worse the damage was down in the village.
“I want to be back before the Silent Ones come,” she told him. “I want to be surrounded by everyone I love when they”—she swallowed hard, not wanting to complete that phrase—“when I have to go.”
He was concentrating on his footing and didn’t reply, but she knew he’d heard her. The winding path veered up along one of the ribs of the ancient leviathan’s skeleton. His studio wasn’t far, but much of the path had been washed away.
“Kelo, you know your art . . .” She wasn’t quite sure how to say it. His art was his life, his heart, his soul. He was going to be devastated to see it storm-ravaged. “It might not still be there.”
“I have a trunk beneath the floor—that will still be there even if everything else was washed out to sea. It has the spare clothes. And I can make new art.”
She hoped he meant that. Ahead, she saw his studio. Half the roof tiles had been torn away, and the door had been ripped from its hinges. It lay several yards away, broken against a boulder. Around the studio were remnants of his art and his materials: shells, pebbles, driftwood, all tossed together as if one of her toddler cousins had thrown a tantrum. But the structure still stood. His charms had protected it from the worst the spirits could do.