Page 79 of The Lost Child

Twenty-Seven

Canavar jumped into helping the sea witches finish burying the dead without a word, easily able to carry three bodies where the sea witches could only drag one or two. In no time the beach became a macabre sight of butchered men lying out in the sun, awaiting their turn to be wrapped and dragged out to sea.

I helped wrap the bodies, recognizing men who I’d known since birth. Some had been as cruel as my father, and others had been kind to me. In the end, they’d all died the same. In the end, it hadn’t mattered who’d been kind and who hadn’t.

I shook my head, not allowing such black thoughts to take root. That wasn’t even true; it had mattered. It had mattered to me.

Canavar’s expression didn’t change as he dropped the bodies in the sand. Whether it was a soldier he’d never met before or someone he’d known in the company, he lined each up side by side without emotion.

I wasn’t as unaffected. As I went down the line of bodies and netted heavy rocks around them, I saw their faces and cried.

Gerrick, my father’s right-hand man, lay before me with a bullet hole in his head. I had assumed he’d died in the ocean when I accidentally blew everything up. That meant my father had lied when he said I was the only survivor. That didn’t surprise me.

I wasn’t even angry; just numb.

Gerrick had been my father’s man through and through, and yet he’d ended up on the doom boat with me and my other friends all the same. Perhaps he wasn’t as close to my father as either of us thought. I wrapped the seaweed net the sea witches gave me around him once, then next was a layer of stones. I wrapped them up in the net and repeated this until I could barely make out his face. I rolled him on his stomach, the indication that another body was ready to go.

A sea witch grabbed him by his feet, and started to drag.

I moved to the next body.

Four soldiers later I came upon Jagger, lying like a pale imitation of the lively young man he’d once been, his ripped and faded leathers looking comical next to the rich fabrics of the soldiers on either side of him. His throat was slit from ear to ear, his eyes wide open in disbelief, unseeing as they stared at the sky above me. He was normally a good fighter; perhaps a soldier had caught him unawares. He was a dick, but no one deserved to be ambushed and slaughtered like a pig.

I closed his eyes and wrapped him up. He was another chapter of my life I would close the book on forever.

Faces passed by, and the sun blazed high in the sky. Flies started to gather, the stench of the dead calling to him. Fortunately, there were only a few left. I let the sea witches take over as I took a break to rest on a rock.

Canavar jumped up on top of it, then rested his head on my shoulder, glaring moodily at the world.

“Are you alright with being back here?” I asked him because no one had.

“It will be different. There will be different people. I will build a house and sleep in a bed with my mate.”

He perked up at the thought, already eyeing a few of the trees around us.

I laughed. My man needed a project to always keep him busy, it seemed. Elsewise the dark thoughts crept back in.

“Go on, then.”

He leaped off the rock and spread his wings, gliding a distance away before loping off toward the woods.

I stared out at sea, thinking about the bodies I hadn’t found, and likely wouldn’t.

It wasn’t likely, but it was nice thinking that perhaps some of the pirates had escaped somehow. They weren’t all terrible people; just men trying to live their lives. I smiled slightly, imagining them signing over to the Cantradian Navy and wearing those stiff, powder blue uniforms.

Then guilt swirled in my chest over Toby. He hadn’t deserved to get blown apart in the crow’s nest. Canavar hadn’t deserved to be locked in a cave most of his life.

I turned and faced the future.

* * *

“It is easy to forget the power water has. Where I grew up, there wasn’t much of it. There weren't any lakes or large rivers, let alone an entire ocean.”

Kaida watched in awe as the sea witches pushed wave after wave at the east end of the island, smashing away the ships that had served to shield pirate companies for generations. I wasn’t as sad as I thought I’d be.

Nasi put a hand on his mate’s shoulder. He’d been hovering more than usual about her today, which was saying something. “The ocean is very powerful. It kills many every day.”

Kaida swatted away his morose tidings. “It is also very beautiful.”

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