Beautiful Wild - Anna Godbersen Page 0,69
both all-knowing and bent with amusement.
“I know a good place to put that, by the way.”
“Oh?” He laid the trap down and leaned back on his arms.
“By the rock that is shaped like a big grayish, pinkish egg; the fish are always in frenzy there in the morning for some reason. Not the really big fish. Just, you know, those silver ones about the length of your arm.”
“Then we will put it there,” he replied easily.
“You’re not going to guess?”
“The Queen of England.”
“No.”
“A troop of traveling circus acrobats.”
“No.”
“Circus lions?”
“Wild pigs!”
“What?” Sal said. Vida felt very warm and gratified to see his face, which never went very north or very south of perfect equatorial placidity, as it broke open in true surprise. “How many?” he asked.
“Twenty, maybe.”
His smile was so beaming with private light that he looked away from her shyly, as though meeting her eyes with that sort of happy expression was more than either of them could bear.
“Well?” she demanded.
“Well what?”
“What are we going to do now?”
He brought his knees up, propped his elbows on them, squinted at the waves. “I don’t know . . . what should we do now?”
“About the pigs, I mean.”
“Oh, well—you have what you need, don’t you?”
The spear that she had spent all morning on was indeed still in her hand. “Well, but . . .” How curious that she had, in the course of the last few hours, stood at the top of a mountain and felt no real fear, and now, talking with Sal, before a gentle sea on a calm day when the wind just nudged meaningless little clouds from here to there, she should have the precise sensation of standing before a cliff.
It was like leaning out over a great height, not being told what to do—it sent a violent shudder up her spine, and made her feel helpless.
How baffling, how utterly irritating, how characteristically Sal, that he should continue to be such a difficult person, and never, not once, just do what she expected of him. It was perhaps on account of this whirl of emotion that she spoke without thinking. What came out of her mouth surprised her. “No,” she said, “not all I need.”
“Oh no?”
“Well, I mean, let’s just say for instance that I was able to spear a wild pig—just for a joke, let’s say I could do it—then how would I ever get it back here?”
“That’s a good question.”
Vida glanced where he was looking—out at the sleek gray back of a dolphin breaking the surface of the ocean. “I’d need help. Jack, I suppose. You’re much too gimpy to be of any use.”
“Yes,” he said, his mouth bending downward in self-deprecation, “that makes sense.”
“Even so, we couldn’t carry it all the way back. There’s a reason those hogs are on their side of the mountain. The ridge that separates us from them is high; there’s no easy way around it that I can see.”
“Is there nothing here that you could use?”
“Must you talk to me like some child about to take a grammar school test? Of course there is. Rope—we could haul our prey back. And the old tablecloth—we could wrap the thing, suspend it from a pole.”
“That’s a good idea.”
“Oh come, you’re not going to send me off on a hunt. Didn’t Fitz specifically tell you to look after me while he was gone? Aren’t I to be protected at all costs from such rough stuff?”
“I don’t think Fitz knew who you were when he said that.”
Vida was so surprised that Sal would speak thusly of the dead, not to mention the dead young man he’d served most of his life, that for a moment she could think of no reply.
“You don’t have to go.”
“Well, who would you send in my stead?”
“Jack and Brinkley, I suppose.”
“But—” Her heart rebelled so furiously at this notion that for a few moments she had no vocabulary at all. The whole mission had been her doing—he couldn’t just give it to somebody else.
“But?”
“Well, you see—it’s my spear.”
Sal grinned and she saw his gleaming, slightly askew teeth. “Then I guess it’ll be you, won’t it?”
Vida beamed.
“As the captain of this mission, I have a request.”
“Anything.”
Without a wince, Sal was on his feet. “I am pretty much healed, and I want to see what’s on the other side. May I be your second in command?”
The afternoon had advanced some by the time Vida, with Sal close behind, found the surest path down the escarpment on the far side of the