Ivory and Bone(80)

But now I know. Now I know he is dead.

I hear voices coming from the beach, though my view is obscured by the trees. A man speaks in a steady, commanding voice. Chev. He is answered by the voices of my father and mother. They are thanking him for the gift of the pelts. They wish him blessings as he heads across the bay. “As you return the dead to the Bosha,” says my mother, “may the Divine protect you.”

Her words ring in my ears as I descend the remainder of the trail to the beach. I wonder what will happen to Chev when he arrives on the Bosha’s shore. What if some of the Bosha still hope to kill him? What if their elders are not able to intervene? Is he brave to come and face them, or is he reckless?

I reach the beach as Chev is saying his final good-bye to my parents. I step clear of the last of the trees and the three of them come into view.

Only then do I see that there are not three people on the beach, but four. Chev is not facing the Bosha alone. He is taking the girl who stands beside him, dressed in an ill-fitting parka.

Mya.





THIRTY-TWO


Mya’s eyes meet mine.

When I left her camp early this morning, hadn’t I worried that when she next saw me, she would be transported to the moment of Lo’s death? Hadn’t I worried that I would be, too? But instead of that awful moment by the stream, I’m carried to the ledge outside the mouth of the cave.

I’m transported to the moment we kissed.

I feel her fingers, thin and cool, wrapped in mine. The pressure of her lips. The heat rising in my chest. The trail her fingertips traced along my jaw . . .

“Kol!” my mother shouts, and the spell is broken. I blink and Mya drops her eyes.

Chev steps toward me and acknowledges me with a nod. “I wanted to thank you for everything you did—I may have died if not for you—but when I looked for you today you were already gone.”

My mother’s eyes slide to my face. I’m sure my parents were not aware that I’d left without saying good-bye. “I wanted to hurry back to let my family know I was all right. And to share with them the other news—that you had all survived, and that Lo . . .”

“Of course,” Mya says. “I’m sure your clan was happy to have you back, safe and well.”

“Yes.” My eyes sweep over the water, taking in the canoes floating a short distance from the edge of the sand. Urgency rises in me. I have to speak up. “They were happy to know that the Bosha had failed in their plans. That despite the fact that each of us—you, Chev, even me—had come so close to death, we had all survived. Yet here you are, preparing to board these boats. By the will of the Divine, the Bosha’s attempts to kill both of you failed. Why would you now climb into these canoes and deliver yourselves to their shore?”

“It was not the Bosha who tried to take our lives,” says your brother. There is a softness in his words, an uncharacteristic compassion in his tone. “It was Lo and it was Orn. Both of them came to kill, and both of them died. But the others of their clan left—”

“They left to preserve their own lives!” I’m startled by the force of my own voice, by the tremor of anger in my tone. I glance at my father’s face, expecting him to raise a hand, signaling me to back down. Instead, he nods, so I continue. “What do you think will happen when Lo’s followers learn that Lo and Orn are both dead? Do you think they will put aside their desire to kill you? To kill Mya? And can we trust that the Bosha elders would be able to stop them if they tried?”

Chev does not reply, and at first, I worry that I have overstepped my bounds. But then I see that he is watching something, and all five of us turn toward movement out on the bay.

A kayak. A long, two-person kayak carrying a lone paddler.

One of Lo’s people is approaching our shore.

Time slows down as we stand, as rigid as a row of spears stuck in the sand, watching the kayak draw closer. As the face of the paddler comes into view, I can see that our visitor is a woman. With the long, deliberate strokes of someone who is seldom on the sea, she steers her kayak toward the waiting canoes. She is trying to pull close, craning her neck, stretching to peer over the sides of the boats. Once she is close enough to see into them, close enough to recognize the faces of the dead they carry, she lets out a cry that shatters the silence above the bay.

Not a cry of anger, but of loss.

“Dora,” Chev says under his breath. “It’s Dora.”

He strides out into the water without hesitating, wading right up to the side of the small boat. He throws his arms around the woman. Still strapped into the kayak, she falls against him and sobs into his chest.

This is Dora, the mother of Orn. The mother of the boy I killed.

It isn’t long before Mya has waded out beside her brother. The rowers, too, turn their attention to the kayak, to the woman who they would all have known until five years ago. From where I stand on the sand, the distance is too great to hear the conversation, but it appears that Dora protests the care being offered to her. I watch as she pulls away from Chev’s embrace, unties the sash of the kayak, and climbs out of the boat. She reaches into the opening at the front of the kayak—the empty seat for a second paddler—and withdraws what appears to be a pile of sealskin pelts. As the three of them wade into shore, I get a better view of her. An older woman with a small, pointy face and long white hair pulled back in a traditional braid, Dora accepts Mya’s extended hand as she carries the pelts up the steep slope at the water’s edge.