“She is at home.”
“Is she?” I expect the half smile I so often see on Kol’s face, but instead there’s something else—closed lips in a flat line.
“Of course she is.” I stop. Kol’s eyes are dark. He’s gone within himself. “I want to go down to the beach,” I say.
Without asking why, Kol walks beside me. Together we sit down on the edge of the dunes. His eyes trace the horizon. I can’t gauge his mood. Sad, yes—from the burial, I’m sure. But something else. Lost. Or hurt.
“This view makes me think of death,” I say. “I’ve never told anyone that before.”
Kol lays his hand on mine. I turn my palm up to touch his and lace our fingers together. “The first time I stood here was the day we landed, after leaving your camp. My mother was in a kayak coming in behind me. I ran to her, but she was already dead, and Chev chased me away.”
When I pause, Kol doesn’t feel the need to fill the silence, and I’m grateful for that. The sea breeze that’s rippled in all morning has sharpened to a cold wind. Kol moves closer to me. “My mother, my brother, Morsk. None of them died here at home. And before the burial I worried that I would always feel like they were still out there, trying to come to this shore.”
I close my eyes momentarily and I see it, the place my mind traveled to while I stood at the head of the graves and the drum beat on and on. I see again the fires set by my loved ones in the Land Above the Sky.
“But now I see it differently. I see them together in a new place, with a new clan. A clan that includes your father and mine, maybe even Manu and Bosha from long ago. Great hunters, great leaders, not yearning to come to the place they left behind, but instead waiting for us to come to them.”
“So you think that Bosha and Manu—the founder of your clan and the founder of mine—might live together in one clan in the Land Above the Sky?”
“I think maybe they do,” I say.
“Does that mean . . . ?” Kol’s voice flickers like a flame in the wind—faltering and flaring. “Are you thinking maybe then our clans might merge?”
“I think it might be too late for us to make that decision,” I say.
A flinch runs from Kol’s shoulder down the length of his arm to his hand. In response, I raise his hand to my lips. “I think the Divine may have already made that decision,” I whisper, my lips never leaving his skin. Somehow he still understands my words. “I think you and I are already sharing the role of High Elder, with her blessing.” I turn my eyes to his. “We worked together to get our families home from the island. We worked together to fight back the Tama. I can’t deny that our clans are stronger—we are stronger—when we’re together.” I stifle a laugh against his palm. “Even our honey tastes sweeter together.”
Kol turns toward me and there it is, that half smile. He leans close to me, pressing a kiss to the hollow just below my ear. “The Divine has heard my prayers,” he whispers.
His breath is warm on my throat. His lips trace the line of my jaw, flutter over my chin, stopping to cover mine. We fall back against the dunes and he draws me into his arms. His kiss is light and playful, but I pull him closer, deepening the kiss until I feel my heart pounding against my chest as if it’s trying to break into his. I tip my head back. My eyes sweep over Kol’s face, but he keeps his gaze fixed on my mouth.
“Mya . . .” Kol swallows, and I feel the vibration run into me, he holds me so close and so still. “I need to tell you . . . I didn’t want this just to . . . our clans . . . it’s not . . .” His eyes move to mine, and something inside him opens wide and pulls me in. For a moment I’m scared, but then I let everything that is Kol surround me and enclose me. “Mya, I love you.”
“And I love you. With all my heart.” My words are half spoken, half gasped, but I know Kol understands.
I tilt my head forward, touching his brow with mine. Our bodies relax. The tension between us slowly unwinds as we settle into the sand.
“Now,” I say, partly to myself, partly to Kol, and partly to the clan that right now is sharing a meal, not knowing the plans that are being made. “Now we just need to give our new clan a name.”
THIRTY-TWO
Lying here on the sand wrapped in Kol’s arms, I try to memorize every detail of this moment—the sound of the waves, the wind in the dunes, Kol’s breath coming quick, his chest rising and falling against mine. When I stand on this beach from now on, these are the memories that will stir in me. This place will no longer remind me of death.
“I wonder,” I say, thinking out loud, “if the Manu-Olen would be the best name.”
“I like that,” Kol says, “but maybe for a clan that’s so new, we should choose new names. Names of the leaders we want to remember every time we say the clan’s name.” Kol slides away from me and sits up. He looks down at his hands, bruised and cut in the battle with the Tama. “What would you think of the Chev-Arem clan?”
Hearing the name of my brother, so soon after standing at his grave, brushes my nerves, and for a moment I’m unsure. But bound together with the name of Kol’s father, it feels solid and strong, like rock beneath my feet. Like something to build on.
“It’s not like we’ll forget Manu or Olen or Bosha,” Kol says. He watches my face closely. He must see that I am happy with the name, because a smile lights in his eyes. “Their stories will be told forever, their songs sung and their dances danced at all the celebrations of the Chev-Arem clan.”
“Yes,” I say. “Beginning with a wedding.”
Four days. At first I say it’s too long, but after the first two days are behind me, I say that we will never have enough time.
“You want the good luck,” Ela says. “You want to be blessed by all that the Divine promises to those joined under a full moon. We could wait for the next one, I guess—”
“No,” I say, my voice so quick and sharp, Ela laughs.
“I didn’t think so.” Her fingers dance across pieces of a tunic—my betrothal tunic—as together we work to increase the intricacy of the pattern into something worthy of a bride.
“It should still look like a meadow,” I say, “but now it needs to have no boundaries. We can add to it a piece of the sea and the beach . . . and maybe a cave on a cliff.”
“All that on this one tunic?” Ela asks. Her eyes reflect the light of the seal oil lamp. It’s far too dark in this hut to do this work, but still we persist. In two more days the wedding will be upon us and we will be out of time. “You may be right,” I say. “What if we simply add a few sections to suggest a bee? Stripes of light and dark and two wings?”
“A bee?” Ela asks. “Why a bee?”
“Because bees make honey,” I say. “Don’t worry. Kol will understand.”