If one looked hard enough, just moments after dawn, the faint whisper of our neighbouring isle could be seen dancing over the horizon. But it was far past dawn, and all I could see were the wispy pinks and reds of a nearing sunset.
That isle couldn’t have been much different to mine. Still, I wondered sometimes what it would be like there. Closer to the Gods, if only by a little.
Numbly, I turned my gaze down at my hands, wrapped tight around a splintered broomstick.
“The farther away from the Gods, the better,” I told myself.
Maybe one day I might have believed myself, rather than feared—and I did fear myself.
My secret that had to stay hidden.
“Valissa!”
I jolted out of my thoughts.
At the sound of that familiar grating screech, my slender shoulders stiffened and my grip tightened even more. White dots began to blot along my knuckles.
“Valissa!” she called again, so loud that a watchful crow that was perched on the cabin’s fence suddenly took flight.
I watched it go for a moment, wishing I could fly away with it. To escape many things, but in that moment to escape her—the dreaded sister-in-law.
With a huff, I let the broomstick fall and I shoved through the front door to the chilly cabin. Even with the day’s whisper of warmth still lingering, the cabin would be cold always, and the moisture from the sea would stay trapped inside.
“What?” I snapped, and kicked the door shut behind me.
My vexed glare found Tahmir kneeling by the dwindling pile of firewood.
Straw-like hair was piled messily atop her head, her bun so heavy that it was starting to droop down the side of her squared face. My brother’s wife was no looker, but that wasn’t a problem I had with her. And I had many.
Tahmir looked me up and down with an obvious sneer before she slapped her meaty hand down on the firewood basket. “Didn’t fill it up today?”
I folded my aching arms over my chest. “Clearly not.”
It took all I had to not throw in some unkindly words. But we’d all agreed—me, Tahmir, and my brother, Moritz—that in front of their son, we would bite our tongues.
Last time Tahmir and I went at it, hands were thrown, not just words. If we were all going to live together, we had to find ways to tolerate better.
“Well, I don’t know what your brother will think about that,” she shot back at me.
Petal, my whiny snot-nosed nephew, snored on the lumpy couch by the fireplace. Only because he slept did Tahmir let some disdain slip into her venomous tone.
“He’ll probably wonder why the Gods sent him you.” I shrugged. “Since you’ve done nothing all day, and you’ll do nothing all night.” My arms dropped to my sides and my stare turned withering. “Everyone else on this isle manages to balance work and chores just fine. Why can’t you?”
That was what grated on me most with Tahmir.
She was entitled. There was no reason for it. She wasn’t born into wealth, or destined for great things.
Gods, we lived on the smallest of the Commos Isles. Still, she found a way to hold onto that bizarre fussiness of hers.
“Being a new mother isn’t easy, Valissa.” Tahmir shoved up from the floorboards, her thin, cracked lips twisting into something ugly. “It’s the hardest work there is. I don’t always have time to run the errands, so you will have to.”
Maybe she was right. Petal wasn’t an easy child to care for. But I was no mother or wife, yet I did the work of both and more.
Still, ‘new mother…’
“Petal is three, he’s not a new-born.” At my sides, my hands fisted. “Besides, I already do most of your chores, my own, and I work,” I added. “All you have to do is go to the market and buy some firewood and sustenance. No one’s asking you to cut down a tree, Tahmir.”
“Work!” She cackled a rough sound, like tree bark breaking off in the Frost Season. “A dancer of the night is not a job, Valissa. It’s a filthy hobby. One that will make sure you never marry on this isle.”
Maybe that was why she hated me? Not so much me, but my work.
I had no shame in it.
I danced at the tavern some nights and at the rare midnight party we had on the isle. Now that I watched that sneer on Tahmir’s face turn into something grimmer than I could have imagined, I was sure of it. She loathed me for my work.
I shrugged with as much care as I had for her, which was none.
“Not everyone dreams of marriage,” I said, and turned my back on her.
Just as I made to go through the door, Tahmir muttered a word that froze me on the spot.
“Avsky.”
For a moment, I stood there, staring at the cracks in the door. A lump swelled in my throat. I was choking—on the rage flooding me, the hurt gutting me.
Abomination.
Not a word thrown at someone for their type of work. Not a word heard on Zwayk, or anywhere for that matter.
Tahmir risked my life by speaking that word. She could have exposed my secret. The very secret my mother died to protect.
Tahmir might as well have spit on my mother’s grave.
Slowly, I looked over my shoulder at her and let all my calm rage flood my stony face.
“If you ever say that word again,” I hissed, “I’ll cut your tongue out while you sleep.”
