Then I crawled in beside him.
When I touched his back, he didn’t respond.
“I’m sorry you’re unhappy,” I whispered.
I didn’t expect him to answer, but he said, “I’ve been sent from my home, by my father, at your bidding. What did you expect?”
Sighing softly, I had no answer.
The next morning, a loud knocking sounded on our door.
Without invitation, the door opened.
“Breakfast!” Uncle Andre called in. “We need to be on the Iris by dawn.”
Kai sat up. “What?”
“Get dressed or we’ll be late,” Andre ordered him.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Yes, you are. No one lives here for free. We all work. Megan will help tend the nets, and you’ll help haul in the catch. Now, on your feet.”
“No.”
Andre didn’t move. “You’ll be on that boat with the rest of us, or I’ll throw you out, write to your father, and tell him you were too lazy to pull your own weight.”
He closed the door.
Kai was breathing hard. I hurried out of bed and grabbed a gown from a travel chest—my old blue wool. Within moments, I was dressed and out the door, leaving Kai to think a moment on his own.
As I hurried to the kitchen, I called, “Emily, can you braid my hair while I eat?”
Not long after, I heard a drag-step-drag-step coming toward us, and Kai entered the kitchen wearing his canvas pants and wool shirt.
“Good morning,” my aunt said brightly, handing him a plate of scrambled eggs and toasted bread. “Eat up.”
As Kai had had almost nothing the day before, I knew him well enough to know he’d be starving—and he liked scrambled eggs and toasted bread. I got him a mug of tea.
He ate.
After that, Uncle Andre, Kieran, Emily, Kai, and I headed down for the docks. Aunt Margaret stayed home with the children.
A saltwater breeze blew off the ocean, and I took in the air with pleasure. As we reached the Iris, I scrambled up the short plank from the dock leading to the deck. Kai came more slowly behind me, but he had no trouble.
“You ever been on a ship, lad?” Uncle Andre asked him.
“No,” Kai answered. “I’ve only been to the coast when we visited Partheney so I could enter in the tournaments.”
“You’ve fought in the Partheney tournaments?”
Kai nodded.
I found this line of conversation sad, but it was the most Kai had said in days, so I didn’t discourage it.
Two sailors had been prepping the Iris, and we were ready to sail. Uncle Andre called it a boat, but it was really more of a small ship. As the vessel drifted from the dock, I wondered if Kai would become seasick. I was never troubled, and I liked being out on the water.
Emily’s husband, Kieran, motioned to Kai. “Up here.”
I’d only met him a few times. He was a slender, quiet man, but I knew enough to know that he made Emily happy. Kai joined him at the bow as the Iris picked up speed, and in spite of everything, I could see Kai’s interest, his fascination with the sight of the prow cutting through the rushing waves.
Then Uncle Andre called to them, “You two, come grab this net.”
A long, thick net had been laid out on the starboard side. Sections of it were attached to the rail.
Another pile of nets waited near the aftcastle, where one of the sailors was steering. Emily and I would spend our day going through those, checking for any breaks and mending them for when they would be needed.
Looking somewhat puzzled but not reticent, Kai came back to join Andre.
“What do I do?”
“This is a drift net. Grab that end. We’re going heave it over, let it run along the side of the ship for a while and then haul it back in.”
Kai was openly interested now, and the sight made my heart race. Turning away, I focused on my own task.
The day began to slip past.
When Kai, Kieran, and Andre hauled in the net, the deck came alive with wriggling fish, and the men set to sorting them, throwing back what couldn’t be sold or used. From the corner of my eye, I watched. Kai caught on quickly.
“Good,” Uncle Andre said, nodding.
For lunch, Emily broke out a large basket Margaret had sent. We ate sliced apples and some delicious fried cakes made from cornmeal and cheese. Kai ate four of them, all the while asking Kieran and my uncle questions about the fishing process.
No one noticed his limp, and so neither did he.
Hope rose inside me.
In the afternoon, we headed back toward shore and made dock. Uncle Andre held back a large halibut, but turned the rest of our haul over to his sailors to sell to the fishmongers in Avingion.
As we started up the beach, Uncle Andre turned to Kai. “Try sinking your whole weight onto that leg in the sand. I had a first mate who’d taken a cut like yours, and he used the sand to heal himself.”
I felt myself tense. This was the first time anyone had mentioned Kai’s injury quite that bluntly. But Andre sounded a good deal like Captain Marcel, and Kai was not offended.
“How?” he asked. “Like this?”
Stepping forward, he placed his right foot firmly into the sand, shifting his weight as his foot sank slightly.
“Yes, good,” Andre said. “Now, try to step as normally as you can with the left.”
Kai tried to take a step. It was awkward, but the softness of the sand helped to ground his right leg, and I could see that the movement didn’t pain him much.
“Keep that up,” Andre said. “The leg will strengthen.”
We arrived at the cottage, and the children ran out to greet us. Aunt Margaret came on their heels, taking the halibut from her husband. She kissed him. “How did things go?”
“Well,” Andre answered. “Young Kai is a born fisherman.”
For dinner, Margaret rolled pieces of the halibut in an egg batter and fried them in a cast iron pan. We had raspberries from the garden and roasted potatoes as well. Kai ate like man who’d put in a hard day’s work, and he no longer seemed to mind the constant chatter all around him.
Later, once the dishes were done, we gathered in a sitting room for what the family called “story hour,” where they took turns entertaining each other by telling stories. Aunt Margaret was the best at this, and she told a tale of a handsome lieutenant besotted with a haughty girl who spurned him. He befriended her handmaiden, with the hopes of learning secrets to win the haughty girl’s heart . . . and ended up falling in love with the handmaiden.
As Margaret told this story, Kai leaned forward in his chair, and I remembered how much he’d liked hearing my story of the wolf hunters in the tapestries.
As Margaret finished, Kai looked about the room in a kind of wonder, and I realized he’d never known anything like this. His mother died the night he was born, and he’d grown up with a cold father and two brothers at each other’s throats. He’d never known a loving family who enjoyed eating together and gathering like this in a parlor.
Not long after dark, Andre pronounced it to be bedtime.
I headed off to the guest room I shared with Kai, and a few moments later, he came inside and closed the door.