“Why, then?” I asked softly. “Why did you come to Leihani?”
I’d asked him numerous times while we’d still been on the island. He’d always skillfully evaded the question.
“Drop it,” he said, his voice lost against the wind.
I swallowed, reeling. Hand over my stomach, I blinked at him, unable to close my moon-forsaken mouth.
Are you alright?
Am I dead?
No. You're alive.
Is this the afterworld?
You’re alive—
My mother—
Do you think you can sit higher?
I saw my mother in the water.
Can you stand?
My mother—
His sobs echoed from the corners of my mind. Cold air burned my throat, and I drank it into my lungs as icy wind cut the moisture from my eyes, leaving me to blink the dryness away. At least that’s what I told myself as I waited for a response.
Kye sighed through his nose, gently peeling my hand from his arm, though he didn’t immediately release me. He frowned as though mystified by my reaction, his eyes finding tracks to follow in the lines of my face. His mouth opened, and I waited, absorbed in whatever explanation followed. Hopeful that it wasn’t what I thought it was.
“We’re losing daylight,” he said, tucking an errant strand of hair behind my ear. Then he began walking again.
I closed my eyes, a ghost in the hillside breeze.
He’dseenhis mother in the water. She’d come to guide him to Perpetuum. And I’d pulled him out of her grasp, back to the land of the living.
6
Maren
“Is every western coast made of rocks and heights?” I asked, watching water thrash fifty feet below. I missed the warm, golden beaches of Leihani.
Beside me, Kye’s mouth quirked. “Just about.”
He estimated we’d traveled halfway through the channel. We hadn’t seen anyone—ship or human. We hadn’t seen any sign of life either. The sparse creeks we’d happened across had run out, and we hadn’t found one for two days. Nothing came and went but the hum of the tide and the breath of the wind.
I called water vapor into the glass bottle we’d emptied. If Kye noticed our water supply seemed unusually healthy despite our meager success in finding freshwater—and I suspected he did—he didn’t mention anything.
Kye shifted, throwing driftwood onto the fire. It wouldn’t burn for more than a few hours. There were more minutes left in the night than there were branches scattered across the rocks, and the flames ate through the dry wood, as ravenous as we were. I’m not sure how he even coaxed the flames to stay as long as hedid. Fire had never cooperated with me the way it did with him, though I suppose it made sense that it didn't.
I was born for water.
“Better get started,” I muttered, climbing to my feet to hunt for fish in the sea, although my expectations were low.
Kye’s head turned sharply, though he didn’t look at me. “Leihani.”
Pausing at the edge of our camp, I waited.
