Ivory and Bone(75)

I watch the flame grow until the fire spreads from the kindling to the larger branches. Then I let my eyes fall shut. The light of the fire dances on the backs of my eyelids like the sun overhead on a summer day.

“I lie in the grass with my eyes closed,” I start, “listening for the whir of honeybee wings. . . .”





THIRTY


I don’t know how long I talk, but I tell Mya everything. Every moment since we met in the meadow—she relives it all through my words.

She sits still, her back against the wall. All the while she hardly moves. At times she flinches, pulls her knees a bit closer to her chest. Everything I tell her—our story—she already knows, yet it’s all still new, all seen through my eyes.

Pulling her from the water and carrying her, half conscious, to this cave—those are the last things I describe for her. My words trail off. There is nothing more to say.

The rain has finally stopped. Silence surrounds us. For a moment we sit without speaking. Drips fall at intervals across the mouth of the cave, creating a pattern of sound almost musical in its cadence.

All at once, Mya shifts away from the wall as if reacting to a distant voice calling her name, then wobbles and sags forward onto her knees. I lurch toward her and catch her by the elbow, but she draws away. “The fire.” The words slip from her lips with a vague agitation so that I immediately turn and check the fire pit.

“It’s fine,” I say, but she turns away.

“The fire at your camp, the fire . . . what Lo’s people did . . . I wish . . .” She trails off. “And Chev . . . he’s all right? He will survive?”

“Yes—”

“And the others of my clan?”

“Most . . . most appeared to be doing well,” I say, not wanting to lie. The truth is, I don’t know if any have died. I saw many hurt, but why burden her with that now?

Mya crawls away, moving toward the opening of the cave. Like last time we were here, I am left with only her silhouette. She sits cross-legged, looking out into a mist that rolls up from the sea, a thick warm haze pushing in to replace the fleeing cold.

Something about the hard, dark shape of her against the billowy clouds is so sad that it sends a shiver through me and I crawl up beside her and sit. Looking over, her profile is fixed and unreadable—neither relaxed nor tense, just intent and focused, though nothing, not even the foam on the waves, can be seen through this fog. She must be focused on something else, something unseen.

I lean toward her, sliding my hand across the cold, damp space between us. The tips of my fingers graze the back of her hand, trace a slow circle on her cool skin, then come to rest, draped across her fingers. I wait, counting my breaths—one, two, three. When I get to five and she hasn’t pulled away, I wrap my fingers around hers.

Her face turns toward me, her brow furrowed, her eyes darkened with concern. Strands of damp hair zigzag across her forehead and hang in her eyes, and unbidden, my free hand moves to her face and smooths them back, tucking them behind her ear. I hardly need to move to reach farther around her head, to feel gently for the spot where the dried blood still clings, and to cup my hand at the nape of her neck, rocking toward her and touching my lips to hers.

Mya’s lips move under the pressure of mine, bringing a rush of dark warmth to my heart and flashes of yellow, green, and gold, as bright as summer sunshine, to the backs of my eyes. A cool hand presses lightly to my cheek, slides along my jaw, and a blaze of heat runs across my skin as her fingers trace down my throat, skim my collarbone, coming to stop, palm flat, against my chest. I’m lifting my other hand, ready to wind it around her waist, when I feel the pressure from that palm, subtle but firm.

Her head tips back, her hand pushing me away.

She draws away, and I watch her through eyes that ache to return to her the way I imagine a drowning man’s eyes ache for the receding surface. But there’s no use in trying to coax her back. Her eyes are already focused beyond my shoulder. She stares into the mist, at something inside herself, something only she can see. Whatever it is, she stays silent about it. Her lips are pulled tight, a fine, straight line, with no hint of my kiss left on them.

Finally, as if she’s waking from a dream, the darkness ebbs from her eyes. Her gaze meets mine and she gives me a weak smile.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “It’s not that I don’t want you to kiss me. I want you to, and I want to kiss you back. But kissing you just now made me forget everything else. And right now, there’s too much I need to remember.”

Her eyes burn with an intensity that magnifies her words. I nod and try to return her smile before dropping my eyes and turning away.

And I realize that the one thing I need from Mya—the one thing I’ve needed from Mya all along—is for her to let go of the past. And I realize that that may be the one thing I cannot ask of her.

Little time passes before we are on our way, hiking the same trail we hiked this morning. It’s easier now that the rain has stopped—easier, but far from easy. We scramble up the cliff, shrouded in hazy vapor, then ease our way onto the rocky path above the ravine. I thank the Divine that the fog clings to the cliffs on the sea-facing side of the trail. Once we are descending into the valley, the mist is gone, though everywhere, on all sides of the rocks beneath our feet, water streams, rushing from the summit to the ground below.