“You brought me something?” he wondered aloud. “Really?” He tried to keep the excitement out of his voice. “I don't think anyone has ever brought me anything before.”
She sat up straight. “What, never? No one's ever given you a present?”
He shrugged. “Where would I keep a possession?”
“Well… I did think of that. This is something you could wear. Like this. Here, give me your hand. Now, I'm very proud of this, so I want to show it to you a piece at a time. It took me a while to do this, I had to oversize them, to get them to scale, you know. Here's the first one. Can you tell what it is?”
Her hands were so tiny against his as she opened the fingers of his hand. She set something in his palm. A piece of wood. There was a hole in it, and a heavy braided cord ran through it. The wood had been sanded and smoothed and shaped. He turned it carefully in his fingers. It curved, but here there was a projection and at the end of it, a fanning out. “It's a dolphin,” he said. His fingers followed the curve of the spine again, the flare of the flukes. “This is amazing,” he laughed aloud.
He heard the delight in her voice. “There's more. Move along the cord to the next one.”
“There's more than one?”
“Of course. It's a necklace. Can you tell what the next one is?”
“I want to put it on,” he announced. His hands trembled. A necklace, a gift to wear, for him. He didn't wait for her to reply, but took it by the cord and shook it open. He set it carefully over his head. It tangled for a moment against the chopped mess of his eyes, but he plucked it clear and set it against his chest. His fingers ran rapidly over the beads. Five of them. Five! He felt them again more slowly. “Dolphin. Gull. Seastar. This is… oh, a crab. And a fish. A halibut. I can feel its scales, and the track where its eye moved. The crab's eyes are out on the end of their stalks. And the starfish is rough, and there are the lines of suckers underneath. Oh, Amber, this is wonderful. Is it beautiful? Does it look lovely on me?”
“Why, you are vain! Paragon, I never would have guessed.” He had never heard her so pleased. “Yes, it looks beautiful on you. As if it belongs. And I had worried about that. You are so obviously the work of a master carver that I feared my own creations might look childish against your fineness. But, well, to praise my own work is scarcely fitting, but I shall. They're made from different woods. Can you tell that? The starfish is oak, and the crab I found in a huge pine knot. The dolphin was in the curve of a willow knee. Just touch him and follow the grain with your fingers. They are all different grains and colors of wood; I don't like to paint wood, it has its own colors, you know. And I think they look best on you so, the natural wood against your weathered skin.”
Her voice was quick and eager as she shared these details with him. Intimate as if no one in the world could understand such things better. There was no sweeter flattery than the quick brush of her hand against his chest. “Can I ask you a question?” she begged.
“Of course.” His fingers traveled slowly from one bead to the next, finding new details of texture and shape.
“From what I've heard, the figurehead of a liveship is painted. But when the ship quickens, the figurehead takes on color of its own. As you have. But… how? Why? And why only the figurehead, why not all the ship's parts that are made of wizardwood?”
“I don't know,” he said uneasily. Sometimes she asked him these sorts of questions. He did not like them. They reminded him too sharply of how different he was from her. And she always seemed to ask them just when he was feeling closest to her. “Why are you the colors you are? How did you grow your skin, your eyes?”
“Ah. I see.” She was silent for a moment. “I thought perhaps it was something you willed. You seem such a marvel to me. You speak, you think, you move… can you move all of yourself? Not just your carved parts, like your hands and lips, but your planking and beams as well?”
Sometimes. A flexible ship could withstand the pounding of wind and waves better than one fastened too tightly together. Planks could shift a tiny bit, could give with the stresses of the water. And sometimes they could shift a bit more than that, could twist apart from each other to admit a sheet of silent water that spread and deepened as cold and black as night itself. But that would be unforgivable, cold-hearted treachery. Unforgivable, unredeemable. He jerked away from the burning memory and did not speak the word aloud. “Why do you ask?” he demanded, suddenly suspicious. What did she want from him? Why did she bring him gifts? No one could really like him, he knew that. He'd always known that. Perhaps this was all just a trick, perhaps she was in league with Restart and Mingsley. She was here to spy out all his secrets, to find out everything about wizardwood and then she would go back and tell them.
“I didn't mean to upset you,” Amber said quietly.
“No? Then what did you mean to do?” he sneered.
“Understand you.” She did not respond in kind to his tone. There was no anger in her voice, only gentleness. “In my own way, I am as different from the folk of Bingtown as I am from you. I'm a stranger here, and no matter how long I live here or how honestly I run my business, I will always be a newcomer. Bingtown does not make new folk welcome. I get lonely.” Her voice was soothing. “And so I reach out to you. Because I think you are as lonely as I am.”
Lonely. Pitiful. She thought he was pitiful. And stupid. Stupid enough to believe that she liked him when she was really just trying to discover all his secrets. “And because you would like to know the secrets of wizardwood,” he tested her.
His gentle tone took her in. She gave a quiet laugh. “I'd be a liar if I said I wasn't curious. Whence comes the wood that can turn to life? What sort of a tree produces it, and where do such trees grow? Are they rare? No, they must be rare. Families go into debt for generations to possess one. Why?”
Her words echoed Mingsley's too closely. Paragon laughed aloud, a harsh booming that woke the cliff birds and sent them aloft, crying in the darkness. “As if you didn't know!” he scoffed. “Why does Mingsley send you here? Does he think you will win me over? That I will sail willingly for you? I know his plans. He thinks if he has me, he can sail fearlessly up the Rain Wild River, can steal trade there that belongs rightfully only to the Bingtown Traders and the Rain Wild Traders.” Paragon lowered his voice thoughtfully. “He thinks because I am mad, I will betray my family. He thinks that because they hate me and curse me and abandon me that I will turn on them.” He tore the bead necklace from his throat and flung it down to the sand. “But I am true! I was always true and always faithful, no matter what anyone else said or believed. I was true and I am still true.” He lifted his voice in hoarse proclamation. “Hear me, Ludlucks! I am true to you! I sail only for my family! Only for you.” He felt his whole hull reverberate with his shout.
Chest heaving, he panted in the winter night. He listened, but heard nothing from Amber. There was only the snapping of the driftwood fire, the querulous notes of the cliff birds as they resettled awkwardly in the dark, and the endless lapping of the waves. No sound at all from her. Maybe she had run off while he was shouting. Maybe she had crept off into the night, ashamed and cowardly. He swallowed and rubbed at his brow. It didn't matter. She didn't matter. Nothing mattered. Nothing. He rubbed at his neck where the necklace cord had snapped. He listened to the waves creep closer as the tide rose. He heard the driftwood collapse into the fire, smelled the gust of smoke as it did so. He startled when she spoke.
“Mingsley didn't send me.” He heard her abruptly stand. She walked to the fire and he heard the shifting of wood in it. Her voice was quiet and controlled when she spoke. “You are right, the first time I came here, he brought me. He proposed to cut you into bits, purely for the sake of your wizardwood. But from the first time I saw you, my heart cried out against that. Paragon, I do wish I could win you over. You are a wonder and a mystery to me. My curiosity has always been greater than my wisdom. But largest of all is my own loneliness. Because I am a long way from home and family, not just in distance but in years.”
Her words were quick and hard as falling stones. She was moving about as she spoke. He heard the brush of her skirts. His quick ears caught the small sound of two pieces of wood clicking together. His beads, he suddenly thought in desolation. She was gathering them up. She would take her gift away.
“Amber?” he said pleadingly. His voice went high on her name and broke, as it sometimes did when he was afraid. “Are you taking my beads away?”
A long silence. Then, in a voice almost gruff, she said, “I didn't think you wanted them.”
“I do. Very much.” When she didn't say anything, he gathered his courage. “You hate me now, don't you?” he asked her. His voice was very calm, save that it was too high.
“Paragon, I…” her voice dwindled away. “I don't hate you,” she said suddenly, and her voice was gentle. “But I don't understand you either,” she said sadly. “Sometimes you speak and I hear the wisdom of generations in your words. Other times, without warning, you are a spoiled ten-year-old.”
