I marched over to the helm and immediately started barking demands at the men. Whether the ship was the Cornwallis or not, a familiar itch coiled around my spine. Something was off about it and I was going to findout what it was.
~ 9 ~
Dahlia
Wronged by a man upon the sea
now sharp as a knife and vengeful is she.
~ The Broken
With a sharpened blade, I made a clean cut across the red meat of a freshly caught tuna. A thin piece separated from the body and I held it up, smiling as I sucked it into my mouth. The fresh fish melted between my teeth.
The young girl sitting in front of me was bundled in one of the furs from the storage and smiled at me as I exaggerated my enjoyment of the food. We were sitting on two small crates on the deck with a third crate between us where I continued cleaning fish and showing the girl how to carefully strip the meat. We couldn’t speak the same language, but she was observant, watching every bit of the process. She even tried a piece of the raw fish and the way she ate it made me think she was no stranger to the taste.
“Ahnah,” she said once she swallowed. Then she followed that with more words I couldn’t understand.
“I wish I knew what you were saying, otessi,” I said.
Her little hand reached out, surprising me when she pressed two little fingers to my chest.
“Mm,” she said before pressing her hand to her own chest. “Ahnah.”
“Your name? Ahnah?” She smiled, showing off her two missing front teeth. “Ahnah,” I repeated, pointing at her with the tip of my knife. Then I pointed it toward myself. “Dahlia.”
“Da’ya,” she said, unable to form the sound properly without teeth. She pointed at herself once more saying, “Ahnah,” and then gestured to me. “Da’ya.”
Language barriers were thick, but somehow, knowing her name had cracked a hole in it. It excited me. Smiling had become foreign to me, but I felt my lips wanting to do it before I started carving the fish again. Ahnah began talking, her tempo sped up with excitement, but I understood none of it.
“Getting comfortable?” Voel asked, her tone a bit accusatory. I turned to find her standing at the railing as if eager to get off that ship.
None of us liked ships. They brought death and torment, but I couldn’t leave the girls to drift into the ocean. I was still unsure what to do with them, but my damn conscience hadn’t learned its lesson yet.
“Not getting comfortable, Voel,” I sighed, setting strips of tuna to the side.
Ahnah took a handful and ran off, likely to distribute them amongst the others while Voel moved into my space.
“How long are you going to take care of these girls?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“You know what they are, right?”
“I don’t, actually. Kea knowsofthem, but she doesn’t know much else. None of us do.”
“I’m not talking about that. No matter what, they’re human and they’ll be just like the others one day.”
“They’re young girls,” I said, slicing through another piece of tuna.
“Young or not, you know what happened last time you took pity on a young human with sad eyes.”
I slammed the tip of my knife into the wooden crate and stood to face Voel. Despite her smaller frame, she never cowered in my presence when I was agitated. I never wanted her to. We were equals, but I wanted her to know she’d ventured somewhere she shouldn’t have. We all had our boundaries. I ground my teeth and stared at her, waiting for her to realize her mistake. Voel was defiant, though. She was like me. She’d endured plenty of torment from humans and her own kind just like I had. It took her a moment, but eventually, she bent. Whether disappointed or not, we’d always respected each other.
“I shouldn’t criticize your decisions,” she said.
“You can leave anytime you’d like,” I clarified. “Any of you can.”
“I know.”