Ivory and Bone(51)

Instead, I focus my attention on the boys at the edge of the crowd. My eleven-year-old cousins are showing off a handful of spear points they made to a younger boy—Tram. Just seven years old, Tram sits wide-eyed, oblivious to the presence of the man who killed his father. His mother is also dead, having plunged into the cold sea from a kayak in the middle of a moonless night not long after her husband’s burial. She left the boy in my family’s hut while we all slept, unaware, as she walked down to the shore alone. It was his cries at daybreak that woke us to the horror of the abandoned kayak, floating empty, a dark blue shadow on the dark gray water.

I’m pulled back to the present by the loud cheers of your little sister Lees. Roon has just beaten Kesh in a footrace down to the beach and back, and as my aunt Ama declares him the winner, Lees throws her arms around his neck and kisses him on the cheek.

Poor Roon. He has no idea what kind of pain she will inevitably cause him.

I turn to head back to our hut. I am in no mood for drinking mead and singing songs anymore tonight.

I hear footsteps behind me and spin around, somehow expecting to see you there, but find Shava instead.

“Aren’t you staying?”

“I’m tired,” I say. “I think I should go in and rest.”

“Did Pek go back to your hut?”

What kind of question is this, I wonder. After all, for most of the evening, Shava has been getting reacquainted with Kesh.

“He might have,” I lie.

“Well, if you see him, tell him I wish him the best. Now that Seeri’s brother has allowed her to break off her betrothal—”

“What? When?”

“His announcement, just before Kesh and Roon raced. Didn’t you . . . You saw them race, right? I felt so bad for Kesh. He says Roon cheated when they were on the beach—didn’t go all the way to the water, like he was supposed to—”

Behind her, from the layered gloom of evening shadows, Kesh calls her name. She turns and slides away, offering only a vague wave over her shoulder to me.

I head back into my family’s hut, and as I pass through the door I’m surprised by a murmur of voices and the rattle of beaded bracelets on a wrist. My lie to Shava wasn’t a lie after all. Pek stands in the center of the rug, right where your cup of honey had been. Seeri is with him, and as I step in through the door the two of them spring apart.

“Sorry,” I say, but Seeri nearly knocks me over on her way to the door. The mask of happiness on my brother’s face shatters as she moves out of his reach.

“No, don’t apologize. I . . .” Seeri searches for something to say, and my heart aches. I hate to be the one coming between them. If what Shava says is true and Seeri will be breaking off her betrothal, the two of them should have a bit of privacy together.

But before I can say another word, Seeri has said a hasty good night and fled.

I fall onto my bed. “I’m so sorry,” I say. “I swear, Pek, if I’d known the two of you were in here—”

“Did you hear? He’s going to do it. Chev’s breaking her betrothal. He said he didn’t want it to stand in the way of a possible alliance.” Pek picks up one of the ivory harpoons and twirls it. “Father will speak to him for me soon—I’m sure. But Kol, our parents won’t let me marry until you are at least betrothed. You know that, don’t you?”

I remember what you said earlier—that Seeri would not marry until you were betrothed. “Pek, I will do everything I can.”

He’s at the door. It’s so dark inside the hut now; he is little more than an outline. “I’m going to go find her and head back to the feast. I’d rather sit with Seeri in a big crowd than sit without her in here.”

And then he’s gone.

Songs and laughter go on long into the night. The hut, though empty, feels crowded with ghosts—your mother, Tram’s father, your betrothed. Even Tram’s mother lends her presence, stirring a sense of regret, both for the things that have happened and for the things that never will.

Voices still ring out from the feast when I finally fall asleep.

In the morning, I pretend I’m still asleep when I hear my mother rise to start cooking. She moves around noisily behind the hides that divide the hut into a separate sleeping area for her and my father. She groans as she dresses; I can tell that last night’s mead is hurting her a bit this morning. It takes her longer than usual—her feet shuffle a bit more slowly—and I hear my father’s voice, deep and rough, asking her a question I can’t quite make out. It may be a request to be quieter so that he can sleep.

Eventually, the rustling stops, and she finishes her routine and heads out into the early light.

It isn’t long, though, before she returns. I hear her speaking my father’s name, in a loud whisper designed to wake him but not the rest of us. “Her mother,” she says. “She wants to speak with you. You better wake up because I believe it’s serious.”

My first thought is that she is talking about Seeri—that Seeri is the “she” my mother refers to. But she said her mother wants to speak, and Seeri has only a brother. Whose mother wants to speak to my father?

After an extended exchange, my father finally asks in a voice loud enough to be heard by the entire hut, “Well, what’s so important that she has to wake me before dawn?”