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

Chidi’s grip when they fled from slavery and Henry Boucher. As Chidi descended alongside Watawa, she filled her mind with memories of her fallen companions in preparation of witnessing another lost far too early.

Below, Atsidi Darksnout still clung to the remnants of his son.

Chidi’s muscles stiffened as she forced herself to heed Watawa’s plea. Her gaze quickly swept over the mortal wounds that the Orcinian seawolf, Arsen, had given to Allambee. Like a rising, icy tide, the fear and grief within her threatened to overtake once more. Chidi might have given in then also, but she glimpsed Allambee’s face at the last. Though her mind warned that he wore no expression in death, Chidi imagined her friend carrying the same hint of a smile she remembered of him in life. That of a satisfied boy, unabashedly proud of his accomplishment and reveling in the notion of finally meeting his father.

As if sensing himself watched, Atsidi Darksnout looked away from his son and directly at Chidi instead. Though she remembered the sternness in his gaze at the zoo, Chidi saw none of it now, nor any sign of malice either. Chidi, he said, nodding. My son shared his life with you, it seems. Of his mother and all that she told him of me also. Tell me, Chidi, in all your time together, did my son say nothing of the love I bore him? The Hammer chieftain asked, his voice catching. Did his mother tell him nothing of the pain it caused me to leave them?

Chidi chose her words carefully. I can’t speak to that, she said. But Allambee did say his mother told him that you trusted no one . . . that it was no way to live . . .

No, said Atsidi, frowning as he looked upon his son’s broken body once more. And it seems to me now that there are many ways to die . . . far fewer to live. Allambee stroked his son’s face, even as he spoke to Chidi once more. How did my son and you come to this, Chidi? For all the whole of this watery world and the above, how did you come to be together in this place and with me so near?

Chidi nearly spoke the words she had come to parrot so often in her life with Henry. To utter such safe words of ignorance, or else pretending to not know. Yet the longer she looked on Allambee, the more she dwelt on the pain in Atsidi’s voice, Chidi recognized a twin soul in desperate search of truth and answers. Marisa . . . Chidi whispered. Marisa Bourgeois led us here. Her mind stumbled with the admission, even as she knew it for true. She thought back on all the interactions she’d had with infamous Silkie runner; from chasing her at the Shedd, to finding and traveling with Allambee thereafter, and all the times since leading to their reuniting in the depths of Orphan Knoll. Every one of Chidi’s answers ended with Marisa Bourgeois. She brought us out here . . . just like she brought us all together.

Atsidi’s gaze flickered. My people spoke her name when they came to me. She is near, then? This Silkie, Marisa Bourgeois?

Chidi hesitated. I didn’t say she was a Silkie.

No, said Atsidi. And yet I know her for one all the same. Aye, he said, petting Allambee’s face once again. Indeed, it seems that Marisa Bourgeois has seen much and more than I first credited her for. Atsidi’s expression gave nothing away as he looked up and beyond Chidi, toward Watawa instead. Open Shell, go and fetch the Silkie, Marisa Bourgeois, from their ship. I would speak with her again.

Again? Chidi wondered. They’ve met before?

No sooner than Watawa sped off, Atsidi refocused on Chidi, scoffing as he did. Your seal face hides much, child, yet I sense your questions all the same. Ask what you would of me. His shoulders slumped with the weight of his son and his grief. Ask, Chidi, and I will answer that which I can in honor of my son’s kinship with you.

Again, Chidi felt the old ways of silent obedience creeping upon her. The need to retreat from her questions and allow them linger on instead. But when Atsidi Darksnout would not break his stare of her, Chidi recalled another Nomad of similar stoic nature; Watawa’s brother, Quill, bidding her to speak out or forever suffer in silence. Forgive me, she started carefully. But, for one who lost his son, you don’t seem—

Overwhelmed with grief by the loss of him? Atsidi cut in. You think me heartless?

No, said Chidi quickly. Only that . . . well, I wouldn’t imagine you would want to speak with me any longer. Or Marisa either, knowing that your son died because of us.

For you, perhaps, said Atsidi. He did not die because of you, child.

He did though, said Chidi. He died protecting me.

No, said Atsidi. My son died because we are all of us trapped in whirling, tidal pools that the Salt and destiny sweep us in. Each of us funneling round and round until it becomes our turn to venture further in and dive below into the depths unseen that we might discover what awaits us on the other, darkened side, Beyond. Believe you me, child, I long spat in the face of such talk as destiny in my younger years. But, when I see you before me now, aye, and that I were allowed to hold my son in his final moments? I understand now there be at least some little truth to such fateful speech . . . and far greater things beyond my understanding. He looked on Allambee yet again. Like waves at war upon the sand, the Salt forever gives and takes in eternal ebb and flow.

All I’ve ever seen it do is take, said Chidi quietly.

So thought I, once, said Atsidi. And yet I see clearly now that the Salt and destiny both