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It was then that I felt the appeal of the cliffs, the sweet relief that waited for me at the bottom. Just one step and I would be with Larka again. I could explain to her what had happened. I could apologize. We would laugh at the absurdity of a cigar lighting an entire ship on fire.
It would be so, so easy.
Ma waited anxiously by the door while Da was gone and I tidied up. “He will be fine,” she murmured, more to herself than to me. “He walks the same route every night. Solise said this wasgood.”But her fingernails were quickly chewed to nubs, the skin of her cuticles picked to shreds. He’d soon round the corner onto our street, clumsily climb the steps, and fall into my mother’s arms.
It was enough. It had to be enough.
???
It had been a shit day. A single skein of yarn was all I’d managed to lift. A hobbling old woman had a canvas bag filled to the brim with yarn. I told myself she wouldn’t miss one when she had yards and yards of it, quickly silencing any whispers of guilt surrounding my source of income and replacing them with a creeping thrill.
The man at the shop lifted his brow, eyeing me from behind his counter. I hadn’t bothered to learn his name, hadn’t wanted to, because if this all went to shit, I refused to implicate anyone else. “Tough out there today?” he said, pulling the skein toward him across the counter and running his fingers over the yarn.
I didn’t answer, instead taking the half coin he placed on the counter and stalking out of the shop.
I turned the corner to my street, paying little attention to anything but my thoughts of my next trip to Solise, when I was suddenly on the ground, my cloak splayed around me.
“Watch where thefuckyou’re going,” I snapped, the bite in my voice so unlike me. I gathered myself before looking up to see who I’d collided with.
Those eyes. One blue, the other half blue, half green. I raised my eyebrows in disbelief. “You,” I whispered.
His sharp honey-brown cheeks lifted up in a smile, the smell of smoke and cedar clinging to my clothes. “Didn’t I tell you to be more careful?” There was that smoky voice, full of low burning fire and melted chocolate and early autumn leaves and earth.
My heart seemed to remember before my brain did, because it began to beat wildly before the memories flooded in. I remembered the day, the fact that he had been nearby just before everything happened. The blue and green collided in his eye the same way the burning ship collided with the seawall. I needed to go, I needed torun.His stare set me back on the gravel by the harbor. His stare sent me back to when Larka was alive.
I quickly stood, saying nothing and hurrying toward my house. He called from behind me, the same way he had that day. “Are you okay?”
I froze, my moth-eaten cloak fluttering at my sides. Turning, I spat back at him. “What?”
“Are you okay? Were you hurt that day? In the explosion? In the stampede?” Genuine worry flashed across his face as he clenched his jaw.
I searched his face. He looked to be a few years my senior, towering almost a foot over me. I remembered Larka’s words as she told me men are pigs, that they aren’t trustworthy. “What’s your game?”
“What?”
“What’s your fucking game?” I repeated, irritated.
“I don’t... There is no game. I just want to know if you’re okay. You had a pretty nasty gash on your forehead.” What? I only had a few scrapes and bruises, no gash. But the sincerity of his words struck me. No one had asked if I was okay after that day, understandably so since I was still breathing.
And the truth was that no, I absolutely was not okay. I replayed Larka’s final moments in my head every Saints damned day, her screams echoing through my skull. I heard the snap of her leg, saw her clawing at the rope. I heard the gunpowder ignite, saw the bodies of sailors floating face down in the harbor.
I had made it out with nothing but nicks and scrapes and an aching head. My torn cloak was the only lasting evidence that I had even been in attendance that day.
“I’m fine, thank you.” I spun back toward my house and walked as quickly as my legs would carry me.
“Wait!” he shouted, the same way he had on the day of Cindregala. I clenched my jaw, just wanting to get home. To get away from any reminder of that day.
“What’s your name?” he called.
I debated turning on my heel and ignoring him, afraid that if I told him, it would invite him in again. Some small part of me urged my mouth to speak. “Petra.”
“Calomyr,” he said, placing his hand on his chest. I nodded and turned once again.
“Do try to be more careful, Petra,” he called after me, his voice taunting but tinged with the sorrow of someone who had witnessed a soul leave a body, a life coming to an end.
I threw a hand in the air, waving him away as I walked toward the house. “Watch where you’re going,Calomyr.”He answered with a low chuckle, like church bells dripping honey.
