For her father, she had carved his name on a wooden cross and the trading company had then commissioned an actual stone. Father had commissioned one for Mother as well, expensive though it was. With both of their markers stone, she could hardly have Kallias’s mother’s on wood, especially with no body.
But even though she probably had enough savings for it, how could she commission one without everyone growing suspicious? They all knew her. They knew her family and probably everyone she had ever come in contact with her entire life. There was no subtle way she could ask them to make a tomb stone for someone they had never heard of, lest they think she was killing off imaginary friends.
But she had gotten Kallias to tell her a name: Arete. She imagined Arete had been as beautiful as Kallias.
Kallias had told her to go inside when she started shivering, and it was only once she had been in bed in dry clothes sipping warm tea that she realized that he had originally offered to spendthisnight holding her, and she had never felt so cheated in her entire life. Her and her big mouth! One moment they were having a romance rivaling legends and suddenly she was leading them down a road of painful subjects full of tears.
But in truth, she knew it was still good for their relationship. Romance without substance was more fickle than the sea.
And clearly, there was so much more for her to learn about him and his past; there were chasms of pain behind his gentleness that she wouldn’t have guessed.
She hadn’t realized how harsh the ocean could be. It always looked so beautiful from the outside. The dolphins looked so fun and friendly, the fish so carefree, the rays so relaxed, the gulls so free. She had never thought such hurt could lie beneath the surface. Apparently looks really could be deceiving. She hoped that was not true of anything else, especially her mermaid.
She chided herself for even thinking it. In every way, Kallias was proving to be even kinder than he perhaps ought to be being raised in such a harsh world.
But no more. She would not let the world hurt him anymore. They’d stay here near the lighthouse, together forever and happy.
She suddenly wondered how long mermaids lived or how old he even was now, but the thought faded from her mind as sleep claimed her, thankfully before the pebbles rang the gong, and she fell asleep to thoughts of Kallias.
CHAPTER 37
“Please do not feel obligated by what we talked about last night.”
Those were the first words he said to her as she bounced over the rocks, platters of biscuits in hand. Her tired brain wondered how he learned such words as ‘obligated’, but when she thought of the books she had read him, it quickly faded.
“Well, I wanted to buy her a stone plaque, but I don’t know how to do it without raising suspicion,” she admitted. “Everyone knows I’m alone here so they’ll know I don’t have anyone to bury. I’m thinking I’ll ask Mr. Wilson in a few days about how to carve stone. I mean, he’s a carpenter so he mainly uses wood, but I’m sure he’ll know.”
Kallias’s face said he wished shewouldn’tsee him, but he didn’tsayanything about it, instead choosing to say, “Honestly, Daria, it’s the thought that counts. I just appreciate that you would offer.”
“But it’s more than an offer!” she exclaimed. With the way he had lit up about it when she offered last night, how could shenotdo it? “I’ll find a way. Please trust me.”
“There’s no one I trust more. But you mentioned wood ones. We can make one together.”
So that was what they did over the course of the next few days. Since he knew of no symbols from his own culture, she explained how most human graves that she knew of used a cross and he said that that would be fine. So she nailed two pieces of wood together in the form of a cross, and then after she wrote his mom’s name in the sand for him to copy—as he did not know a written language for his own tongue—he chiseled it into the wood while she dug a hole to stake it in. She put it closer to the sea than her parents’, the closest it could bewhere there was still dirt for her to dig, so that he could be near to it too.
And when he was done carving, she buffered it a bit and painted it with polish to make it more weather-resistant, and on the day they put it in, she said they should have a bit of a ceremony. She read some verses about life and death and some poems that had comforted her when her father had died.
Kallias said very little until the memorial was in the ground, and then head bowed to it, he spoke quietly in that language she had come to recognize but not understand.
And when he was done, he put his hand in hers and said, “I introduced you as the love of my life. I hope you don’t mind.”
She tried—unsuccessfully—not to blush. “I don’t mind. I’m honored.”
“And I won’t ever leave you,” he said. “Never. I mean, unless you want me to.”
“Why would I ever want that?” she said, kissing his cheek.
“Daria?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you.” His smile was warm as he smiled over his mother’s marker. “You have no idea what this means to me.”
“I’m glad I could help. Even if only a little.”
His grip on her hand tightened. “Daria?” he repeated.
“Yeah?”
