morning, and you don’t want to give him a reason to suspect anything. He’s already angry with you. Don’t provoke him, however much you want to. Let him lord over you. Let him gloat. He doesn’t know what’s coming, which is how you want it to stay. I’ll make some arrangements meantime. Go on now.”
She shuffled her feet, made a lopsided bow, feeling idiotically in his debt for something she’d forced upon him. She withdrew before she could embarrass herself in some other way.
The boathouse was strange to her then. She lay in her bed, conscious that it would be her final night here, curling her toes against the coarse blanket as if she’d never felt it before, listening to the surf outside crackle and hiss upon the sand.
Sleep took forever to arrive. It had to catch her unawares.
The restive night delivered her to the morning tired, dreamy, and distracted. She saw everything as if in a mirror, all of it real but lacking its former substance—as if an interloping spirit had taken residence in her head. Her preoccupation blinded her, until she was climbing down the stairs, to the silence. She stopped.
Nothing called to her from across the sea.
She strained to listen. Gulls screeched. Waves spread upon the shore. Her curtains flapped. The sound beneath the sound was gone.
She was still listening for it as she wandered down the beach toward the village, not really aware of her surroundings until she saw Kusahema on the ridge. Quickly gathering a few strands of seaweed, she carried them to the pregnant girl. Kusahema refused to meet her eyes, and held her basket out shyly.
Perplexed but wishing to follow Soter’s admonition, Leodora asked, “How are you this morning?” and reached to place her hand on her friend’s belly. Kusahema jumped back, wild-eyed, shoving the basket between them. With her head tilted, she looked as if she were cringing from an attack.
“What’s wrong? What is it?”
The girl made no reply. She shook her head, shrank away, backing into the surf in order to get around Leodora. Then she hurried up the beach, a desperate waddle, while casting backward glances to make sure Leodora wasn’t pursuing her.
“Yesterday’s blessing is today’s curse,” she muttered—a line from a shadowplay that suddenly made sense to her. Gousier’s arrangement had altered her relationship to the whole village, even more than she’d imagined. Who knew how many proscriptions now weighed against her?
She walked over the ridge but refrained from approaching too close to the fishing party gathering their nets on the beach. She’d come to bid the dragons farewell, not the people.
Tastion had promised many times to take her with him to fish, but it had been another child’s promise made first in ignorance and later in mock-defiance. He would never have dared, not really.
The men unfurled their nets and waded into the choppy sea. Tastion glanced her way nervously, then kept his back to her. The women stared straight at her, a gazed barrier.
She saw Koombrun. He could only bring himself to look at her askance, shy now, maybe even fearful. His mother saw her and began slapping him, driving him away. He ducked and clutched his head and shrank back with the speed of someone who’d been beaten many times before. She regretted the misery she was bringing to him. None of this was his fault. When I’m gone, she thought, they’ll punish him for that, too. She’ll be more humiliated by that than by the union itself. The island’s no more your friend than mine, Koombrun. I’m sorry.
The other women watched him driven away. A few looked back at her as if to say, See what you’ve done? There was no point in remaining. All she was doing was defying some other rule that she was about to abandon anyway.
She glanced out at the dragons again. To her astonishment, the creatures had all turned and were facing her. Their riders, nonplussed, were gesturing helplessly. The dragons beneath them just floated in place. For a moment they seemed to acknowledge her estrangement. Then the moment passed, and the creatures swung about as one and headed out to sea. The women’s stare after that was furious. Leodora turned her back on them and set off for Fishkill Cavern.
The Coral Man stood upright in the back of the cave. The glow seemed to have left him altogether. The cold had probably killed all the tiny creatures living within him. His dullness should have made him less imposing, but she