Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 76583 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76583 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
I don’t know how to prove this, though. I do not need to make clever conversation to the rocky shores and the waves. I do not need to entertain the fish I catch. I certainly do not need to please the humans I rob with my presence. I am good at being alone, and I bring my wealth back to my family’s flotilla. It is an arrangement that suits both of our parties well.
And yet now I have a wife, and I must change something, because it is growing increasingly clear to me that she will not be able to survive with the few amenities I keep stored on Akara’s back. I think about the look on Vali’s face when I offered her cloth—the sheer wonder when she touched the silks, the way she held the burgundy fabric as if she had never caressed anything finer. It makes me want to find the nearest human settlement and shake them all, one by one, for treating such a pleasant female in such a manner.
It makes me want to find more pretty things to please Vali, too. That urge annoys me, because she should be grateful I am keeping her, and yet I am the one eager to please. Hmph. I do not need to do anything to give her a better home than she had.
I tell myself this even as I spend all night hunting the seagrass fruit.
I tell myself this as I make the swim to shore and cut down more cattail pods for her.
I tell myself this as I spend half the night swimming ahead of Akara to my grotto, where I store the goods I steal from humans and look for things that might please her. I have jewels and weapons and a few statues and vases, but nothing that seem as if they would appeal to a woman in pain. Frustrated, I dig through the fabrics I have stolen from laden ships and use them to make a large, soft pile that will act as a bunk. I normally drift in the water at Akara’s side when I sleep, but she clearly needs a bed.
I remember that she mentioned raw fish, too. The humans cook their meat, I recall from the few human settlements I’ve passed through. They cook their meat and cover it with salt and add roots, as if they are trying to make up for all the flavor they have burned out of it. She will want to cook her food once I bring her to the grotto, I suspect. She liked the raw fish I gave her before, but she could have been pretending. I look around at the treasures and pick up a jewel-crusted pot, wondering if this is used for cooking. My people do not cook. We eat what the sea provides, cold and raw. It irritates me that I must go to such lengths to suit her, and I toss the pot aside with a huff.
I swim back to Akara, my mood sour. Through our mental bond, I know automatically how to find her, letting our link guide me to the hamarii despite the endless sameness of the open waters. I climb back up onto her back as dawn nears, and glimpse into the tent at my human wife.
She lies upon the floor in a huddled ball, curled around her limbs. Cattail pods are emptied, the shells neatly lined up by her feet, and the scent of cattail fluff—and blood—is everywhere inside the tent. The burgundy fabric is carefully folded under her head, acting as a pillow, and she uses her torn dress over her loins instead of the fabric I gave her. Vali is asleep, her breathing regular. Even in her sleep, however, her brows are furrowed, as if she cannot escape the pain even then.
All of the annoyance I have felt at having to accommodate her vanishes in a moment. She hurts, and I want to make it better. She has been all smiles and eagerness since I met her, and I do not like seeing her like this. I do not like how helpless it makes me feel.
I drop my bags of cattails and seagrass fruit just outside the tent, hitch one of the pouches of gold to my belt, and head into the waters again. Perhaps I can find a place where they will trade gold for this “willow bark.”
As I tend to move along the same stretch of shoreline, I also have a few villages that I visit from time to time for trading. They provide me with supplies, and I trade them necklaces and gold and they do not ask questions. It works well for both of us. There is a village not too far from my grotto, so while Akara continues her leisurely swim towards my home, I head farther up the shore to Godsthorne. It’s a peaceful, tiny village at the crossroads of a major Aventinian trading route. While few farmers live here—the soil is too rocky for most crops—there’s a small population of traders, and an inn that stays busy.