Page 59 of Odder Still
Her weight shifts, turning back toward the ignit, but she pauses halfway through the motion. “I am Beileag, head of Glenrigg’s governing committee.” After another moment of hesitation, she inclines her head. “Come. I will take you to the lodge.”
As we follow her, I snake my arm through Tavish’s. A bit of the tension slips out of his shoulders. After all he’s lost today, I want to make this one night the happiest possible. Tavish may not have his home or his bodyguard or his siblings or his coat—he may even think he has too little ability to pull himself out of this—but for now, he has me. And for now, I still have him.
CHAPTER TWENTY
A Taste for Seal
Teach me what it means to let go.
I feel you
in my cells,
in every ridge and plateau,
and I cannot,
I cannot
surrender.
BEILEAG LEADS US THROUGH the town, over bridges and along second-story boardwalks, passing houses with walls of brush and hanging planks of bark and a thousand dried leaves stitched together. As we walk, my eyes adjust to the subtle light that streams from beneath the firth’s surface. It comes from sheets of multicolored curtains hanging throughout underwater buildings that mimic those constructed above them, all simple support frameworks with nets and fabrics and seaweed forming the basis for walls and floors. Finfolk swim along them, their fully extended feet-fins propelling them gracefully through the water.
I watch it all in awe. “You’ve put together a lovely place here.”
When Beileag remains quiet, I worry I overstepped, but she finally sighs. “We are a town of refugees, but I have never wanted that to stop us from creating something beautiful. We have peace here, at least. But our wounds still heal slowly.”
It leaves a little ache in my chest. If Manduka had such a society, I might not have spent so much of my life alone.
A few shops spring up as we near the center of the town—a general store, a bakery, and an apothecary—but in terms of size and life, the lodge dominates them all. Half a dozen little rooms—perhaps temporary housing for new refugees while more permanent housing is built—fill the highest story, while some kind of council chamber sits on the lowest, but a communal dining hall takes up its central floor, visible through the trailing loops of the vines that take the place of walls. The smell of fresh bread seeps through the place. Brown rolls appear from the kitchens alongside cooked vegetables and whole fish, set into the center of family-sized tables. My stomach gurgles.
Tavish stops, though, his cane trembling against the threshold of the lodge. “Sheona should be with us.”
“She should.” I could say more: That she sacrificed herself so he could be here instead. That she would want him to make the most of this time. That she loved him more than life. But she practically raised him. He knows their relationship deeper and more intimately than my words could ever describe.
Instead, I pull him into my arms. He cries without tears, but the motion seems to force a few of his fragmented pieces to seal back together. Not many, I think. But maybe enough for him to survive the night.
It seems as though everyone in a mile radius cranes their heads to look at us as the staff leads us through the crowded dining space. We’re given a table in the back, a tiny ball of bioluminescent algae at its center. The whole place is a little disjointed—a chalkboard along the far wall lists its staffing and resources on a rotating system so complex that much of the town must participate in it—but it holds a kind of cheer that neither side of Maraheem possesses.
We’re brought two portions of the evening’s simple meal of bread, butter, and vegetables, along with a cooked fish with scales and fins intact. Its hollow eyepits stare into me. Its gaze is almost as hard to avoid as those around us, theirs ranging from bitter to cautious to curious.
The beer only comes after I shout for wine twice, each request receiving an odd look and no reply. I down the first glass they bring in one guzzle. It’s too light and starchy for my taste, nothing like the dark, heavy stuff Ivor Reid supplies at his bar in the lower. I immediately wave back the finfolk serving us.
Tavish shovels food into his mouth as though there’s somewhere else he needs to be, only to chew too slowly, swallowing like he can’t quite get it down. Every attempt he makes at a conversation sputters out, and he ends up gnawing on his tongue as much as his food.
I finally order him a beer too.
“I’ve never had much of a taste for it,” he protests as I slide his into position at the right upper corner of his plate and set to work on my second.
“You don’t have to drink it. But it’s okay if you want to just live for tonight. It doesn’t mean you aren’t mourning her, that you don’t miss her, or wish with every piece of your being that she were here. It doesn’t mean you won’t shatter a little, next time you need her advice, or her love, or just her arm wrapped around you. And by drinking it, you aren’t denying that. You’re just existing in the moment. The moment is a precious thing right now.”
“I can’t—” he starts, only for his lower lip to tremble. “I can’t stop imagining it—what it must have been like. The sound of her dying. I didn’t even know it was happening.”
My chest aches, the effects of alcohol not yet strong enough to mute my own anxiety and sorrow.The rebels still would have framed Tavish, whether you were here or not. One way or another, Sheona still would have died helping him escape. This is not your fault.
But a part of me, a part that might be me, or might just be curling through me in black strands, retaliates:Maybe I don’t care whose fault it was.Maybe, I can wish I had changed it even if I didn’t cause it.
The thought leaves an acidic taste in my mouth. I wash it away with the beer. “She was just the same as ever. Strong, brave, loving you like you were her own flesh and blood. Because you were safe, she was happy. The sound of death isn’t always ugly. Some elegies are beautiful even while they tear you up inside.” Sometimes mothers died beneath flowering trees, bleeding out in a rain of petals. “So, if you want, then drink to Sheona.” I lift my glass before downing the rest of it.
