“After I found it, I was feeling pretty good—I’ve practically been living on boneset—so I decided to explore the peak. And you know the rest.” She resheaths the sword and rubs her ankle. It’s swelling again. Too much running and walking today. Thinking about trudging to her pond makes it ache more. “I think I should stay here,” she says.
“Your pond would make for a better camp,” Jeryon says, flipping the crab. “Water, probably shade, certainly no crabs. And the ground has to be softer.”
“I meant for tonight,” she says. “So I don’t have to walk back.”
“Yes, of course,” he says. “We should stay close, though. And pool our resources.”
“A Hanoshi sharing? We are in desperate straits.”
“Given the circumstances, it’s rational. Provided we each do our part.”
“I’m sure you’ll keep track.” She looks out to sea. “Someone should be here when a boat comes by.”
Jeryon pours some crab onto a clean shell for her and gives her two freshly cut bamboo shards to eat with. “A smart captain would give this island a wide berth. Too many rocks and sandbars. He’d never get close enough to see us.”
“Then let’s make a sign that could be seen. After all, ships came here once. They could come again.” She eats some crab. It’s tastier than she gave him credit for. She could probably find some herbs and spices to complement it. “This is good,” she says.
“You make do,” he says. He serves himself the rest and sits across the fire from her.
She points at the cross-staff propped against the lean-to. “What’s that?”
“A failed experiment.”
“It’s perfect, though, for a signal,” she says. Her shoulders straighten. She likes a project. “It’s unnatural. The eye would pick it up. Someone would want to investigate. If we put some on the peak, larger ones, they could be seen far out to sea. We could build a fire, too, as a beacon.”
“A beacon could cause a ship to wreck,” he says. “And something like that would be unstable in the wind.”
“Then we can prop up big X-frames.” She puts down her bamboo shards. “Start saying ‘yes.’ ‘No’ just gets you nowhere.”
He stares at her plate. She won’t eat.
“Let’s see what’s up there first,” Jeryon says, “then maybe. If your ankle’s better, we can go tomorrow. In the meantime, we’ll build you a lean-to and dig another fire pit to keep the crabs away.”
That night, after Jeryon falls asleep, Everlyn remembers when she was fourteen and her father sent her around the League with one of his caravans. He described it as a chance to see not just the cities, but also the world in between: the plants and the landscape, the husbandry and agriculture. This was a compelling argument, and she loved him for it even though the real reason for the trip was obvious: She was the caravan’s chief trade good.
For every useless son she met, for every dreary nephew and lonely old man, there was a bloom beside the road she had to investigate. She hated to sit in her red-wheeled box and would have demanded to walk the entire route had her father not predicted this attitude and filled her wagon with books on plants from around the League, boxes and bottles for samples, and blank journals for her notes. Thus she was kept busy, the caravan was kept on schedule, and she understood why her father was respected as a trader.
She filled every journal and bought more on the way. She had to find room in another wagon for her samples. And she wrote her father scores of letters describing what she’d found, seeing as none of her suitors cared half a whit.
But one night on this island had been worth the hundred on the trip. The fragrance of so many strange flowers was intoxicating. For every plant she knew, there were ten she didn’t. She could spend endless days learning about the flora, just as she had with her herb master in the forests around Ayden, not to mention naming the birds and bugs she’d never seen. Everlyn should have been indescribably happy, but lying there in her lean-to she couldn’t help thinking, What’s the point of learning something if you can’t teach it to someone else? Knowledge must propagate, her herb master would say. It dies in isolation. And so might she. Everlyn knew she could survive on the island. She didn’t think she could survive being alone.
She’d bet the captain could. On the Comber he’d rarely spoken except to give commands. He’d kept to his cabin when he had no duty, even in Chorem with all its wonders, and when he ate he ate alone. His only pleasure seemed to be in routine. That afternoon, after they’d attended to all their tasks, he’d retreated to his lean-to without a word to her. He’d barely spoken during dinner. Everlyn can’t imagine what that must be like. Dreary. Lonely.
How her father would laugh. At the end of her tour, he lauded her research and bound three copies of her notes and letters: one for her, one for her herb master, and one for his library. He was less congratulatory about her suitoring. He said if she didn’t find a partner soon, she’d likely be left with the last man in the League.