The Deepest Blue(13)
It was the law: the Silent Ones had to sever all contact with their families. Supposedly, this was to encourage people to try to become heirs instead of choosing the safer route.
Kelo cupped her cheeks in his hands. “I know how much you worship your sister, but you aren’t her. And you won’t be alone. I’ll be with you, and we’ll find a way to see your family again, once it’s safe.”
She kissed him, her lips sweet and salty from the rain or her tears. “Oh, my Kelo, sweet Kelo, it won’t ever be safe again. Everyone knows. My family. Yours. Everyone in the village. The spirits themselves.”
“So you just want to give up? Because I won’t. Not on you. There is nothing I wouldn’t do, nowhere I wouldn’t go, to be with you.” He wasn’t arguing—Kelo hated to argue. He was begging, and she loved him for it, even while she wanted to shake him for making this so much harder. “You’re my wife. We’re supposed to have forever.”
“No one gets forever,” she said gently.
“Well, I’d like longer than a day,” Kelo pleaded. “Call me selfish, but I want as many days as we can get. Now will you stop being so noble and fatalistic and run away with me? Before it’s too late, and we lose any chance to choose what happens to us?”
“They’ll punish you if they catch us.” Maybe even kill him. Death was a common punishment for those who tried to help their loved ones evade their duty. She couldn’t let him risk his life.
He was looking at her as if she’d said the most absurd thing ever.
“You don’t think they’ll catch us,” she said, and she couldn’t help it—a grin began to tug at her lips. This is all absurd. I shouldn’t even be considering it. But he’d been thinking about this for years, he’d said, and she knew Kelo. He’d have thought through every aspect meticulously. Maybe I should trust him. I did marry him, after all. “You have a plan?”
He knelt again by the hole that had held the packs and pulled out two rolls of sail wrapped in rope. Unfurling one of the rolls, he showed it to her.
Mayara frowned. “I don’t understand. That looks like—”
“We can’t hide in the village,” Kelo explained. “Even if it weren’t so badly damaged, that would be the first place the Silent Ones would look. And we can’t hide in any of the nearby caves. Every inch of those tunnels has been explored and mapped—they’d know exactly where to send their spirits to search for us. We also can’t flee over land—if we tried to cross the island on foot, we’d leave tracks, and the Silent Ones would be close behind.”
“So where does that leave us?”
“We hide with the dead. And sail away with the tide.”
It was a crazy plan.
Mayara loved it.
He’d constructed two fake shrouds out of old sail and net that mimicked the simple shroud that all islanders used. But these were designed to merely look as if the body inside was bound. In truth, they’d fall open at the tug of a rope.
“All we have to do is lie in the boats and wait for dawn. When the b-bodies”—he stumbled over the word, and she saw pain dart across his face; he’d known those who’d died as well as she had—“are carried down to the bay and loaded into the boats, we’ll already be there. Just two more dead, indistinguishable from the rest.”
Mayara nodded. “They’ll row us out to sea and dump us over.”
“And then we remove the shrouds underwater.” He pointed to the loops of rope on the net that would cradle rocks. “All the shrouds will be weighted to sink the bodies—so they’ll sink without us, and we’ll swim.”
“East,” Mayara said decidedly. All the mourners would face the south, toward the open ocean, toward the blue of death, as the boats were rowed out, and then as the bodies disappeared beneath the waves, the villagers would face north, toward land and hope. If she and Kelo swam east before turning back toward shore, they’d not only be swimming in a direction that no one would be looking, but they’d also be heading into the sun—the glare would help hide them. “You’ll have to stay under, though, until the mourners turn.”
“You’ll help me,” he said, with such unwavering confidence in her that she felt like crying. Except she had no more tears left.
“Always,” Mayara said. She took a breath. All right, she was going to do this. We, she corrected herself. She thought of Grandmama urging her to flee. Maybe we should do this. “It’s hours until dawn, and if we don’t return, the villagers will send out a search party. So we’ll go back to the plaza, be with our families for a while longer, and then slip away near sunrise.” She wanted to spend as much time with her family as she could before . . . well, before her life changed. Or ended.
Kelo’s brow furrowed—it was how she could tell he was unhappy with something she’d said. He didn’t like to disagree with anyone. It occurred to her it must have been difficult for him to try to persuade her to run away, knowing how she’d feel about it. She felt a fresh rush of love. “Mayara . . .” he began. He stopped.
“You want to go now?” she guessed.
“We don’t know when the Silent Ones will come,” he said, regret in his voice. “It could be tomorrow, but it could be sooner. If it’s sooner, it’s better that we’re gone. And if it’s tomorrow . . . everyone will think we have a head start. They’ll search farther away. They won’t think we’re still here. Besides, we can’t guarantee we’ll have another chance to slip away. And we might need time to find or repair the boats, if they were damaged by the storm.”