Total pages in book: 98
Estimated words: 91775 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 459(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91775 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 459(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
“Tomorrow,” I echo, using his word for it instead of mine. “Don’t forget.”
We practice language a bit more, and I find out that he has a father (who is chief) and no siblings. His mother is dead. He asks me about my family, and it makes me a little sad.
“All dead,” I tell him. It’s true. If what Daisy said was correct, Earth is long gone and only a distant memory. I have to focus on the here and now. So I lift a piece of food and ask him about it. “What’s this?”
“Fire lizard,” he tells me. “My favorite.”
I regret asking, doubly so because it’s delicious. I lick the grease off my fingers and try not to think about what I just ate, and notice that Rem’eb is watching my actions like a starving man.
I offer him a piece of the food he brought me, but he shakes his head. “I have eaten. I was just thinking…if we could do the mouth touches again before I must go.”
My face grows warm, even as I give my hair a confident toss and put on my flirtiest smile. “We can kiss.”
“And I will bring you a loom tomorrow,” he promises.
My smile falters a little. I’m not sure I like the thought of being so mercenary with my affection. If this were a different time or place, and Rem’eb wasn’t my captor…
But he is. There’s no point in moping about it. So I just give him a coy look. “Loom tomorrow, yes.”
Chapter
Twelve
REM’EB
That night, as I leave Tia’s hiding place, I am followed.
At first I think it is nothing. The hour grows late and most of our village is abed, but someone is always awake at all hours of the night. There are guards that walk the tunnels. Weavers who cannot stop thinking about their current project. Fishers who swear that the fish bite best at tide-fall instead of tide-rise. So when I pass others on the streets, I nod at them and think nothing of it.
My thoughts are full of Tia and her sweet, lovely mouth. I touch my own, wondering at how two mouths and two tongues can make such intense pleasure. Lost in thought, my sandal catches on one of the taller cobblestones and I stumble. Chuckling to myself, I bend down to fix the laces across the arch, and notice a small movement out of the corner of my eye. When I turn, there is no one there. The light-moss lanterns providing light to travel by darken the shadows between buildings, concealing anything or anyone in their depths.
The hairs on the back of my neck prickle. Surely I am imagining things.
I continue walking, deliberately taking a different path than the one to my dwelling, crowded in amongst all the others. I head for the gardens instead, deciding that if anyone asks, I will tell them I needed a change of scenery to clear my head of troubled thoughts. It is not entirely an untruth, as I am worried about Father. But my thoughts are far more focused on Tia.
Tia and her pink, inviting mouth.
I make it to the edge of the gardens, walled off by an old, crumbling waist-high wall. I pick up a stone that’s fallen to the ground and pretend to consider the wall and where it might be returned, when I see someone slip into the shadows once more, only the ripple at the corner of my eye telling me that someone is there, but camouflaged.
So I am being followed. It is not my imagination. Do they know where I go, then? Do they know of Tia’s existence? Or are they simply being curious?
It does not matter. They do not need to be following me. It cannot be allowed. I turn and march into the shadows after the person, heading into the quiet alley between the houses of the thread-slingers. There, skin mottled to match the shadows, I spot a familiar shock-white mane and the three knots perched between two horns like a lizard’s back-sail upon his head.
My old friend and now enemy, So’ran the Bitter. He jerks when he realizes I have caught him, as if he is wanting to slink into the shadows again, and then decides to face me.
“Why are you following me?” I keep my tone even, calm.
He straightens, throwing his shoulders back. “I am simply taking a walk.”
“In an alley? At this hour? Beside Vol’don the Thread-Slinger’s home?”
“Yes,” So’ran says baldly. “Why are you so worried about where I walk?”
I say nothing. I cannot respond. I simply narrow my eyes at him and stalk away, heading straight for my home this time. The chief’s son is supposed to take a dwelling near the large chieftain’s lodge, to show my importance to my people. Yet the thought of doing such a thing— setting myself above the others I work and hunt with every day—seems wrong. I took a home amongst the rest of the adult men in our village. I do not spend much time in my house. I have no mate, no family, and my hand at arts and crafts is poor. If I were a carver, perhaps my home would be littered with projects, like Vol’don the Thread-Slinger’s is. Since I am a fisherman, I have a variety of nets hanging on their hooks, a few neatly tied fishing lines, and the skin of the largest fish cured and stretched on a frame, proudly adorning the wall. I have a stool near the unused firepit, because rarely does the temperature change below the mountain, and I eat most of my meals at the main hearth or with my father. I have a pallet for my bed, the fabric atop it unadorned and undecorated. I think of Vol’don’s home and the wild, creative patterns he knots into the fabrics he wears.