Alexandra Duncan - Salvage

Soraya straightens herself in her chair. “So you flew here?”

“Right so,” I say.

“By yourselves?” She glances at Miyole and pulls a handkerchief out of her pocket to mop up the yogurt Miyole has dripped all over her shirt. “Here, dear.”

I nod. “Miyole’s mother showed me.” I stir my tea. It seems wrong to say Perpétue’s name now, as if the sound of it is still too loud for human ears.

“You poor girl,” Soraya says, still dabbing at Miyole’s collar. And then to me. “You should have come to me sooner. Straightaway.”

“I couldn’t.” I talk down into my tea. “I mean, I wasn’t sure . . .”

“Of course.” Soraya lays her hand awkwardly over my own, then pulls away again quickly.

“Iri said something, before they . . . before she . . . when I left,” I fumble. “She said you helped her with something, something worse than . . . I mean, something secret.”

Soraya purses her lips. “Yes, Iri. And Laral, too. They’re the ones who showed me your mother’s body. They told me she was my sister.”

My great-grandmother Laral? I see her body again, waiting peaceful for the Void to accept her. Her bone-white hair in marriage braids, her skin thin and yellow like aged rice paper. “But what did you help them do?”

“Bury your mother,” Soraya says. “You know that. But it’s not the way you think. Your great-grandfather Harrah didn’t want her buried ad astra. He wanted me to bring her body back here and bury it beneath the earth or burn it, the way we do—”

A small sound escapes my throat. Even with all the crimes on my head, my crewe still meant to give me over to the Void. They never would have done me the shame of burying me beneath the earth.

“But Iri and Laral couldn’t let that happen,” Soraya continues. “They found me and brought me to her body. They told me what it meant, and together we buried her with the stars.”

I work my mouth. “But . . . why?” I finally push out. “Why would my great-grandfather do that to her?”

Soraya picks a piece of lint from her lap and flicks it away. “Harrah said she was cursed. Her looks made her hard to marry off, and then she had trouble getting pregnant. He said her ghost would tail your ship and bring everyone bad luck.”

Her words hit me full in the chest. I touch my hair. Some bad matter. Everything comes together. Modrie Reller dying my hair. My father and brother trying to marry me off-ship. My kinswomen so eager to send me into the Void. They were trying to sever the ties to me, too. First my grandfather, and then all the rest of them. Did no one want us?

“The important thing is, you’re here now. You don’t have to worry anymore.”

That brings my head up. “You’ll help us?”

Soraya nods. She taps her spoon against the lip of her teacup—clink clink clink. “You’ll have to come and live with me. Both of you.”

“You mean it?” I sit stunned, my tea forgotten. After all this time, so easy . . .

“Of course.” She leans back in her chair. “We can enroll you both at Revati Academy. The headmistress is a friend of mine. I’m sure we can work something out so you won’t have to wait until the next semester begins.”

“Thank you, so missus. That’s some kind, but I couldn’t go. I’ve got my job to keep up with.” Miyole would love that, but me?

“Your job?” She blinks. “How old are you?’

“Sixt—no.” I was only some few months shy of my birth date when Modrie Reller told me I was to be a bride. “Seventeen.”

Soraya huffs. “You don’t need to work at seventeen. You need to be in school.” She checks the time on her crow. “You can give them your notice tomorrow.”

“But how will I pay back Rushil?” My voice sounds panicked. “And what about the ship?”

“The ship?”

“The sloop,” I say. “What we came here in. We’ve got it docked nearby, and I still owe Rushil some weeks’ rent.”

“How much do you owe?” Soraya asks.

“One hundred and fifty,” I say. “Plus another two hundred if we’re going to keep it there another month.”

“Oh, that’s nothing.” Soraya waves her hand. “Don’t worry, I’ll cover the docking fees until we figure out what to do with the ship. Is it in salable condition?”

“Salable?”

“Is it ready to sell, or will it need repairs?”

Sell the sloop? Maybe I’ve made an awful mistake coming to Soraya after all. She doesn’t even know me. How can she ask me to stop working, sell the sloop, and go to school? What if things don’t work out with her, or something happens to her? I’d have nothing.

“It . . . it needs repairs,” I say cautiously.

“Well, we can have someone take a look at it later.” Soraya smiles over at Miyole. “Did you get enough to eat?”

Miyole slurps the last of her drink and grins. “Yup.”

Miyole. I’m not doing this for me. If I have to sell the sloop to keep her safe, so be it.

The sun has sunk below the rooftops by the time we leave the tapri. Even though I’m still some angry with Rushil, I mean to tell him what’s happened, where we’re going. But he and Pala aren’t in his trailer when we go to collect our things. Even the shipyard cats are hiding. A patchwork of plastic and metal cover the gaping hole in the fence. Soraya stands awkwardly inside the gate, clutching her shoulder bag and darting her eyes at every dog barking or shout from the street while I stuff our few possessions in a rice sack and seal up the ship.

“Aren’t we going to say bye to Rushil?” Miyole asks as I turn the hand crank to close the loading ramp. Rushil and I haven’t finished replacing the burned-out power couplings to the door motor yet. We had planned to fix the coolant conduits first, but now I don’t know if that will ever happen. I had gotten used to spending my off days and evenings with him, tearing out the old lines and scraping crusty coolant residue from the ship’s inner hull, but the Wailers put an end to all that.

“No,” I say, glancing at Soraya. “We can’t wait.”

“But I was making a present for him,” Miyole says. She clanks through the rice sack and pulls out the dragonfly she was making the first day I found her up and about. “He won’t know where we went.”

“You can leave it for him,” I say. “We’ll write him a note so he won’t worry.”

I scribble out a few lines on a scrap of cardboard—found my mowdri. leaving. will send pament for ship dokking. miyole wants you to hav this—and leave it and the creature on his doorstep. My eyes prickle as I stand. If it hadn’t been for him, Miyole might still be curled up in the dark, wasting away. I didn’t want it to come to this. I want nights singing the coffee and tea song by the bay and Miyole playing with Pala and the dignity of earning my own keep. I want to bring Perpétue’s ship back to life. I want Rushil to make me laugh. But I make myself walk away anyhow.

This is all his fault, I remind myself, wiping furiously at my eyes. If he hadn’t coaxed me away from the shipyard, if he hadn’t convinced me to leave Miyole alone, if he hadn’t ever taken up with the Wailers. . . .

The train that carries us up to Soraya’s house is smaller and less crowded than the ones I ride most days, all clean white steel and unscratched windows. We pass quiet houses, some with deep-shaded porches and an old look to them, others new and round, with gardens on their roofs. My modrie must be rich someways, I figure, living on higher ground in the north city. I doubt the lines ever flood here.