Then, the next morning, I’d woken to find he’d vanished.
And every islander’s finger had pointed to me.
5
Ireached Neris Island at mid-tide, the missing sailor still heavy on my mind.
The ebbing sea rocked myva’a. Water was often restless when the moon waned. I nudged the shallows with an oar. “Hush.” It swiped at me like a restless kitten before shrinking from the shore.
Nori and Olinne had not yet arrived, so I set about my daily routine. My main garden lay in my yard in Leihani, but I made use of the expansive moist ground here on Neris for my herbs, spreading red volcanic mud to enrich the soil with iron, refining phosphorus by burying bone meal and mushroom compost.
It was too early to dig for clams, so I walked through the aisles of spices planted next to the beach. Kava for pain-relieving tea, a staple for my father’s knees each morning. Nettles for cough. Turmeric for swelling, sinuses, and sores. Noni berries for burns and infection. I weeded and propagated, thinned and watered. The sun was hot against my forehead as I sat back on my heels, surveying the mother plants for infant shoots to stretch my rows.
“Little creature.” I glanced up, and a prickle of goosebumps fell down the back of my neck—a chill that washed over me whenever I met eyes with the Naiads after being apart. The Naiads sat on the tall rocks over the water, preening as they readied to sunbathe.
Dusting my knees, I stood and joined them. Olinne shuffled just enough for me to climb up beside her, but I didn’t try to squeeze in further. Sometimes, while swimming, I accidentally grazed the Naiad’s tails with a passing knuckle or shin, and it always made me shudder. Their lower halves were smooth and densely packed with muscle. Touching them was like running my hand over the body of a snake.
Olinne leaned forward, gazing at me from across Nori’s shoulder. “Your turmeric starts are yellowing. Their roots need acidity. It’s not enough tocreatelife, you mustpreserveit as well, to be a Steward of the Land.”
I turned my arms over, leaning forward for the silver-tailed Naiad to view the evidence that had stained my skin up to my elbows. “Added volcanic ash this morning.”
Nori nodded her approval. “If you simply lived on our island, you wouldn’t need to divide your time between here and there.”
I leaned against the cool stone, closing my eyes. “I have too much to care for in Leihani.” It was true. Though Olinne and Nori had posed the suggestion before, I was unwilling to make a permanent move to Neris. I loved traipsing the Leihani mountains, higher than Nahli’s volcano with denser forestry. I’d claimed small areas to leave seeds for birds and garden insects for toads.
Besides, my father could never make up the difference if I left my home island and no longer brought him clams to sell. Most Leihaniians occupied their homes with multiple generations, everyone pitching in and sharing work.
But it had only ever been my father and me.
“We know, creature,” Nori said. “We simply see you at home when you are here. Would you not walk the eternity of Perpetuum, whispering your regret to Theia and her stars, had you only spent more time doing what you wished to do?”
Uncertain whether this was a question that invited an answer, I pretended to not hear, burying my legs and feet in the tide.
The Naiads had found me on the beach of Neris Island when I was nine. I’d braved the Nahli channel to the forbidden island for reasons I didn’t understand at the time. Reasons I now knew fell between curiosity and the need to abandon the other islanders, as they’d abandoned me.
I hadn’t expected to find Naiads.
Rotating a hip, I watched the water thrash against my knee. “Another sailor is missing. He was gone before his ship arrived at port this morning. They think he wandered off the deck in the middle of the night.”
The Naiads exchanged a furtive glance.
“Good.” Olinne wriggled, avoiding the water that inched past her silver tail.
Nori pursed her lips. Since Irah disappeared, I’d shared more than one conversation with the Naiads about the islanders, whose suspicions grew with each vanishing man. This was the sixth lost sailor in as many years. “Your people cannot thinkyoutook this one, if he went missingbeforethe ship moored.”
I shook my head. “If they think I had anything to do with it, no one has said so.”
Yet.
Studying my legs, I pondered how to phrase my next question. “This missing sailor carried the keys to his ship’s cargo hold.”
Nori’s gaze snapped to mine. “They must break through the lock, then.”
“The lock is iron, and nothing on the ship or island will breach it.”
“They must cut into the wood around the lock.”
“It's built into the framing of the hold. It would damage the ship’s structure to rent a hole through,” I argued, quoting my father’s words from that morning.
