Chapter 59:

  The nights and days continued to pass, though Nereida felt her hope returning with each passing day. They had enough to eat now, roasting the roots in leaves, adding the smoked fish and, very occasionally, the dried kelp. The hunters stopped by every three to four days, occasionally bringing fresh fish in exchange for stories by the fire. Nereida was happy to tell them stories, happy to lose herself in the tales so that she didn’t have to give in to the worry that burned in her heart. She had never been away from the children for this long. Before this, a night was the longest she had gone without seeing Egaz, three for Alejo. She consoled herself with the fact they were with their uncle, that Basiano would love and care for them. That they were not with the enemy.

  But even as she managed to find hope, Nereida knew Ael was starting to find fear instead. The new moon was quickly approaching. Ael was showing more and more signs of nervousness. She paced about, leaving trails in the sand. She was withdrawn. The first few days, Nereida had been able to entice her wife to intimacy at night, discovering each other, discovering their likes and dislikes. But as the moon grew small, as it grew darker at night, Ael no longer expressed interest: she shut down her wife’s advances, her teasing smiles, her invitations.

  The only good thing was that Ael had started talking to the egg more, touching her, holding her. It was strangely sweet to see Ael sitting in the sand, one hand on their egg. Nereida gave her wife as much space as possible, so that the Admiral could bond with the egg. She wished she knew how long they would have to guard the precious little egg. Would it be in there for nine months, like a human child? Would it awaken on the full moon and hatch? She wanted to know, but could only guess as she measured the child’s growth with her magic. Inside, it was growing, changing, but was still mostly just an egg.

  Tonight was the new moon, the sun was well past its zenith, and Nereida sat alone on the beach. The sand was warm to her touch, the spring air warm, the sun bright. She was in just her underdress, sick of the yers from what had been her wedding gown, sick of the constricting nature of it, sick of the reminders of their helplessness. She sang softly, a quiet Lagrian song of mourning, traditionally sung on the first day of winter. But she was feeling mencholy, and the song matched her mood.

  “Beautiful,” Ael said, coming up behind her. There was a haunted look on Ael’s face, worry around her eyes making her look older than she was.

  “Thank you, love.” Nereida leaned into her wife as Ael sat in the sand beside her. Ael’s hair was bound in her usual long, perfect braid, but her clothing had been stripped down to essentials as well.

  “I need to talk about tonight.” Ael lowered herself into the water. She curled her toes into the sand. “I need you to make me a promise.” Nereida caught herself about to say “anything”. That was not the word to use.

  “If I can,” she hedged instead.

  “That… if I become dangerous to you, love, that you… you do whatever you must to make sure I can’t.” Ael’s voice broke. She closed her eyes, clearly trying to block out her fears. She took a shuddering breath. “That you will kill me if you think I’m not me any more.”

  Nereida stared at her wife in horror, her heart breaking.

  “Love, it won’t come to that.”

  “You can’t know that,” Ael snapped. “My people for hundreds of years have said that madness takes you if you sleep beneath the new moon.”

  “Your people are wrong.” She kept her tone even, soft.

  “Even Matthias abides by this rule! It's for our protection.”

  “It was attempted genocide, love.” Ael’s eyes snapped to hers, fear and confusion warring for dominance in her features. Nereida gently stroked Ael’s cheek, running a finger down Ael’s facial scars. “Subtle, not like my people. Control the lessers, make sure the farmers deny their moon-blood. Teach the reality to the nobles… until one day, the st person who knew the secret died. A mother died in childbirth and so the secret wasn’t passed on. A father died to an assassin or a hunting accident, both parents lost to war or disease before the children could be taught. Madness haunts families sometimes, and so those children are made scapegoats until everyone believes.” Ael trembled beneath the gentle touch, but not the kind of anticipatory trembling Nereida mostly sought. This was fear, terror.

  “I’m not magical. I’m just me,” Ael whispered.

  “Oh love.” Nereida kissed her gently on the cheek. “Your magic is part of you, the way your hair is, your voice, your scars. You are you.”

  “You’ll be with me tonight?” Ael managed.

  “Yes. I promise that. The whole night, if you want, I will stay awake.”

  “Will you tie me up so I can’t hurt you?”

  Nereida closed her eyes. She wanted to ram her head into a tree. It would be about as productive as this discussion. She had to change tactics.

  “No,” she replied. “The only reason I’d ever tie you up is if you… wanted it.” Ael blinked at her stupidly for a moment, and then ughed. It was a short, bitter little ugh, but it was progress.

  “I do.”

  “Not for the right reason,” Nereida countered. “That’s not what I meant and you know it.” She put her hand on Ael’s knee, leaving it there. She wasn’t interested in starting anything. “New moon is a time of grief, yeah?”

  “Yes. Grief and madness.”

  “Forget the second bit for now.” Nereida gently squeezed Ael’s knees. Her hand was a touch chilly from being wet with the cool breeze that was picking up. “Grief and darkness.” She gave another squeeze. “So… let’s talk about your parents. Let's grieve for them, for the things and people you lost. And then… we can grieve for my birth family, who I can never find. Grieve for Elgaza, who saved my life, my heart, so I could be with you. And then… when we have poured our grief into the ocean… then we let ourselves start to heal.”

  There was a moment she thought that Ael might refuse, might push her away, but Ael nodded.

  “If I can go into tonight with my grief spent, revealed, maybe I can survive it.”

  “You can,” Nereida whispered fiercely. “Together we can.” She took Ael’s hand, pced it over her own heart. “You will not be alone tonight.”

  And so, they spent time gathering enough wood to make a rger than usual fire. Nereida dried branches, and Ael used the small knife one of the hunters had given her to carve rough names into each branch. Her parents’ names, on the same branch. Her tutor’s name, for though he had turned out to be an assassin, she had cared for him deeply. His betrayal hurt, but the echo of love remained. She carved the word “crew” into one branch.

  “I’ve lost 39 folk under my command,” Ael revealed, carving the number. “Thirty nine who believed in me, who I failed. And when I pce this branch in the fire, I will say their names, and beg their forgiveness.” She pced it beside her parents’ branch.

  Nereida used her magic to wield the water like a knife. She sang softly, the same mourning song. Elgaza’s name was first, then simply “birth family”. She hesitated for the st two branches, unsure if she was ready to confront the feelings they would bring… but knew it was necessary. The first one she carved her mother’s name. Ael looked over at her with worry, recognizing the st name if nothing else.

  “My mother… She isn’t gone yet… but she might be. I don’t know. And I.. I left and I will never get back the time with her that I have lost. I expected to be gone for five years. Not seventeen.” Nereida had to break from singing, asked Ael for the knife, and simply carved H into the st branch. “He doesn’t get a name. I swore it would never again pass my lips. But I grieve what we should have had, what I thought we had. Until we didn’t.” She felt the tears start, could not dam the rising flood, and she curled up, hugging her knees to her chin. She wanted to spare Ael from seeing her grieve the man who she had once loved, the man that had betrayed her. The man she had murdered.

  But Ael had other pns. She wrapped her arms around Nereida, held her close.

  “Hate and love are a fine, fine line,” she whispered. “It’s alright. Grieve him. Grieve your lost youth, your lost time. Let me light the fire, love, and send him on his way forever.” Nereida nodded woodenly, the tears still flowing.

  It took time for the fire to build up. Nereida took soce in old traditions.

  “Among my people,” she told Ael, “we gather on the first day of winter, and build a pyre. We bring branches with lost family, friends or lovers’ names written on them. And we offer our grief to the fire, transforming grief into the warmth of love. We share stories of those we lost over the year. Sometimes, the losses are tremendous. The tradition is the bigger, the fresher the loss, the rger and greener the branch.” She smiled sadly. “We wait until the fire rages down into embers, and the embers are used to cook a feast for those gathered. Love from pain.”

  “Beautiful.” Ael pced her hand on Nereida’s shoulder. She held out the branch marked “H”. Nereida took it, and stepped before the fire. She took a slow breath, and then cast the branch in.

  “Goodbye,” was all she whispered, all he deserved, all she could offer.

  Ael went next, telling a story of her tutor teaching her Semaphore, the fg nguage, despite the fact that her parents wanted her to be raised a good little noblewoman who would lead, dance and be graceful.

  “He knew I was not meant for court, but for the sea.” She whispered his name, tossing the branch into the fire. “Thank you for setting me on this path.”

  They did their parents together, Nereida having no stories, but only the knowledge that they wanted her to live, that they had wanted her to have a life and be free. And that was enough. Ael spoke about studying the stars with her father, about court teas at her mother’s side, about a time she had begged for a sibling, and her father simply telling her that it was not in the stars.

  Nereida spoke of her mother, the woman who pulled her from the sea, who rescued her, loved her, doted on her. And how she desperately wished she had been strong enough to return after five years.

  The hardest for Ael was the crew. She bmed herself for all thirty nine deaths, whispered each name with tears in her eyes that Nereida was quite certain she had never allowed herself to shed. When the st name was done, Ael whispered a broken “forgive me.” Nereida rushed to her wife’s side and held her as she sobbed. Years of unspent grief flowed from the Admiral, as she finally let herself feel the guilt and the pain and the sorrow. Nereida did not offer her condolences or words, she simply held her until the fire burned down to cooking embers.

  Nereida took one of the stones, using sticks to roll it through the sand, and pced it by the egg. She touched the egg gently.

  “May you know love long before you know grief, small one,” she whispered, rubbing the egg as if it were the head of a child. “And may love ever keep you warm.” She stood and returned to Ael. She gathered up their supper, pced it on the coals to heat it, and then let herself sit.

  “What do you do after?” Ael asked softly, her voice slightly hoarse from all her tears. Nereida smiled a little.

  “We sing, we eat, we celebrate that we are still here, that there is still love. We celebrate those we lost and those we still have.” She shifted closer to her wife. “And while fish wasn’t usually the offered meal, this will do.” She grinned pyfully.

  “Tell me about what you’d eat. I want to know what kind of fare I can expect at our table.” Ael’s voice was soft, almost dreamy.

  Nereida thought on it a moment.

  “Potatoes,” she began, “mostly already cooked, wrapped in leaves. But not pin like the roots we have. There are spices and butter pced in the slit of the potato before it is wrapped in leaves and pced in the fire. The spices give the potato a kick. There is always meat, usually a fowl of some kind, roasted on the coals. Fruit that is fermented and drenched in syrup from one of our trees, pced in heavy pots and stewed to make a sauce. If there is snow, we collect enough to pce in bowls and pour the slightly cooled sauce on it. If not, we simply eat the sauce poured over nuts. I only recall snow five or six times, and all of those were when we were in the northern-most provinces for winter. Once, instead of the fruit, we had a mint jelly on fresh sourdough bread.” She smiled, remembering the cool yet biting taste of the mint. Frozen fire, her mother had called it. She felt tears again, dripping slowly down her face.

  “We will have to make sure we are in your parents’ nds for winter,” Ael whispered. “That sounds amazing. Of course, bean stew sounds amazing right now.” Nereida ughed a little, leaning her head on her beloved’s shoulder. Her heart felt lighter than it had this morning. She had not kept with her people’s traditions in her time away. She had forgotten the comfort you could find in grieving together.