Salt Storm: The Salted Series: Episodes #31-35 Galvin, Aaron (classic fiction txt) 📖

because you are a Dolan . . . and, like your father, guilty or no, you would never leave another person behind.”

Lenny cringed at his father’s words used against him. “That’s where you’re wrong, Henry. Can’t say as I ever thought of you as a person. To my mind, you’re just one more monster in the Salt.” Lenny rose to leave. “Aye, and another one that I’ll be glad to put in my past and forget about.”

“And yet here you are,” Henry called him back. “Because you know the debt is not repaid . . . and, if you leave me now, you will never have another chance to repay what is owed.”

Lenny wheeled on him. “I don’t owe you nothing, Henry. I wouldn’t free you even if I did.”

“And I do not require my freedom,” said Henry. “I ask only a simple favor of you in repayment for saving your life before.”

Lenny glanced at the shattered door, a voice within him whispering he should have never come inside. That he should turn around and leave without hearing Henry’s final request of him. Lenny sighed when looking back to his former crewmate. “What is it?” he asked. “What favor?”

Henry’s face broke, then, his lip quivering in such a way that Lenny had never seen before. When the fallen Frenchman did speak again, his voice was broken and soft. “If you should ever see my Chidi again,” Henry hesitated. “Tell her for me . . . tell my Chidi that I love her without end.”

Is he being serious? Lenny thought, his brow furrowing at the sincerity and weakness in Henry’s voice. The same manner he had often heard Paulo wax on about when speaking of Ellie. Henry really thinks he loved her? That Chidi ever loved him?

His chains rattling from his shaking, Henry’s chin trembled too, tears staining his bloodied cheeks as he went on. “Tell my Chidi that I would have done anything to be with her again . . . and tell her . . . tell my Chidi that I will wait for her in the green waters. Aye, that we might be rejoined again forever more.” Henry sniffled as he looked up at Lenny. “Will you do that for me, little capitaine? Please, little Lenny? Promise me . . . swear to me that you will find my Chidi and tell her for me?”

The sincerity in Henry’s shattered voice and his hopeless position begged Lenny to consider the request. One he would have readily agreed to had it been near anyone else to ask it of him. Yet the longer Lenny stared at Henry’s broken and blood-stained face, all that he could think of was the others who had bled and died at the Frenchman’s hands.

“You’re not going to Fiddler’s Green, Henry,” Lenny whispered, the elation he once dreamed of having when telling Henry off now drowned in hollow reality. “And if I ever see Chidi again, there’s only two things about you that I’m gonna tell her – one being that ya got what was coming to ya . . . and the other being that she don’t have to look over her shoulder for you ever again.”

Henry snarled, then, his chains rattling as he tried and failed to fight against them. “Dolan!” He shouted when Lenny turned to walk away from him. “Dolan! You look at me, you nipperkin! Dolan!”

Lenny ignored him, focusing on the door and the ideas of what lay beyond the threshold.

Henry’s shouts, curses, and threats followed him all the way outside of the crematorium and then as he crossed the diminishing, burning field of Selkies pyres too.

Lenny Dolan kept Henry Boucher’s predicament in his mind, even as he rejoined the other Selkies at the train. And, when all the remaining former Selkie slaves and prisoners departed Bouvetøya several hours later, Lenny Dolan swore to himself that he would keep the memory of Henry Boucher’s final request alive and well in his mind, if only so that he could one day seek out Chidi Etienne and tell her how the monster from their shared past had finally met his end.

23

CHIDI

Far beneath the surface, Chidi tread water alongside the one-eyed, mystic Nomad, Watawa. Some twenty yards away from the other grouping, both had kept their distance from those among the Hammer tribe.

Surrounding their leader, the collective bodies of Hammerheads and their brethren in half-human form shielded any sight of Atsidi Darksnout and his fallen son.

Chidi turned toward Watawa. Will Allambee die? She asked, searching for truth in his one good eye, remembering how he seemed to see and know such things from their time spent together on the road to the Indianapolis Zoo.

Watawa sighed, exhaling a stream of bubbles to float into the above. If the Ancients will it, then, aye, he replied. How did you come to meet and travel with the boy, Chidi? He was not with you when last you parted ways with my brother and I at the zoo.

I met Allambee on land before I ever knew you and Quill, said Chidi, going on to explain to Watawa how she had come to meet Allambee through the events of the Shedd Aquarium in her initial pursuit of Marisa Bourgeois. A lifetime ago, she thought, remembering her admiration for Marisa’s defiance and boldness, and her later curiosity and concern for Allambee ever after.

Watawa nodded when Chidi had finished her tale. For all your encounters, you did not know this boy was the son of Atsidi Darksnout when we rescued his father from the Dryback zoo?

No, said Chidi. But Marisa did . . . she thought to herself, glancing back in the direction of the boat where the elusive runner awaited with Bryant. She’s seen all of this . . .

The notion tormented Chidi, recalling so far back even as to when Marisa had swapped places with Allambee at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago to thwart Lenny Dolan’s crew of Selkie catchers.

Then came a worser, pervading thought Chidi had