Page 6 of Born for Lace

My senses run wild.

Practically blind, I blink at dark fabric, but the wind is loud and circling, and my fear is a heavy thud in my neck. Yet, it is the warmth of the hard body I am pressed to and the scent of a Xin De man that seems to overwhelm me most of all with its metallic but soothing tones. As if safety and strength is an odour, like the word impenetrable can be smelt.

And it makes me feelstrange.

I’ve never been touched by a man besides my Ward, and the only time I remember being pressed to his chest, I was falling into the Deep Sleep.

I walk when the man behind me does. One step. Two steps. Without sight, I can only trust him.

After no more than a few minutes, an arm scoops around my middle and lifts me from the ground, but before I can panic, my shoes hit a solid surface.

Something is different. The air around me is suddenly still and the roaring wind is muted. Are we inside? No—the floor waves beneath my feet… We are on the boat! I made it.

Wemade it.

PartTwo

The Lace Girl

ChapterTwo

Dahlia

I feel like the living dead, mindlessly interacting with the world around me. I’m certainly in shock. Maple’s death, The Trade Marshals’ murder, and the infant in my jacket are all too much for my brain right now.

So, I followed a stranger because of a name uttered from my dying friend’s lips: Tomar. I’m nothing like Maple, not effortlessly confident or spontaneous like her, but I’m not stupid. Naïve, perhaps. Without all the information and with little experience, sure —but I’m definitely not stupid.

Usually…

“Head down into the blade,” Tomar says, gesturing toward a set of steps, and I don’t look at him as I move down into the hull.

I inhale slowly, steadying my pulse. The air is sharp with salt from the sea and heavy with the whispers of the ten or so strangers hidden in dark pockets inside the blade.

A smuggling boat? By the shape of this space, I would say it is a catamaran. What is the exchange for this passage across the water? What does Tomar want from them? What does he want from Maple—me?

Unasked questions roll around in my mind as I tuck myself in a corner, pull my mask off, and unzip my jacket enough to see the infant’s pink face.

He is making shapes with his lips, suckling at the air; he will need food soon. Food I don’t have! He has only been alive for a few hours, but he has unknowingly altered the course of my life.

Spero—hope.

In this moment of quiet, my first moment of reprieve fromrunning, I feel grief wrap around me and squeeze, making each breath harder than the last.

Grief—I let it surface.

Maple…When she changed her Lace Girl tea, I told her this would happen. If only I had stopped her. If only I had reported her. She may have hated me for it, but she would still be alive. Regret twists my stomach. I failed her.

And then she got pregnant, and we knew it would be a difficult labour, but she had Trade intervention. They were going to deliver her baby.Oh,why didn’t she go to the Medical Hub? Why didn’t I make her? I could have, but I was scared. Fifty percent of births end in a Xin De Maternal Death. The Xin De are too big for us Common humans. Their offspring are larger than we can carry, but I thought?—

She’s different…

Maple is, was, special and strong. She didn’t want to go to the Medical Hub—now I know why. She didn’t want them to have her baby.

Life without her seems unimaginable.

Sorrow glides down my cheeks in thin rivulets. I think about her body being discovered by The Trade Marshals, and panic punches me. What if she wasn’t dead? What if she wakes, alone, and crawls for help? Will she come to find me?

I shake my head.No.She was dead. I am sure of it. The Trade will inspect her injuries and figure out what happened. They will come looking for their property—for us.

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