Was it Grof, or had she gotten terribly off course?
As she finally neared the land, she aimed herself at one of the long docks, a stretching granite splinter sticking out into the sea and surrounded by the smaller splinters of little fishing boats.
She almost made it.
About twenty feet from the edge of the dock, the wind gusted again, thrusting her forward and throwing off her aim. Mariah crashed into the edge of the wooden planks and fell backward. Her right shoulder and the side of her head slammed into something hard. She fought to orient herself, but it was like fighting her way out of thick syrup. Pain and exhaustion won out, and she slipped into black unconsciousness.
CHAPTER 12
THE HERRING HIDEAWAY
“Hey, there! Hey! Are you okay?”
It was a woman’s voice, muddled and far away but persistent.
“Hey! Lady! Are you all right?” There was an even more muddled string of—curses maybe?—before the words became clear again. “Come on, lady. I don’t want to have to come down there and fish you out.”
Mariah blinked. The sky was bright around her, and she closed her eyes against the light.
“Oh, great!”
Mariah just wanted to sleep some more, but her shoulder began to ache.
She opened her eyes again.
“Oh, hey! Are you awake?”
The pain intensified until she swore someone was driving a spike through her shoulder. She squeezed her eyes shut against it.
“No, no. Don’t go back to sleep. That ain’t no bed, lady.”
It occurred to her that the voice coming from above might be able to help. Her eyes drifted open again, and the world seemed a little clearer. She was lying in the bottom of a small, wooden fishing dinghy. It was cold, and her clothes were heavy with water. Agony shot through her shoulder when she shifted, and she gasped, grabbing at it with her other hand, trying to stabilize it. The boat rocked beneath her, bringing more pain with it, so she laid back down and stiffened her body as much as she could. Along the top of her shoulder, there was a ragged bump that hadn’t been there before.
“You okay?”
“My shoulder,” she croaked. “I think I broke something.”
“I guess I’ll have to come down there. Give me a minute.”
Mariah let her eyes drift shut again, trying to keep her movements as small as possible. The boat now swayed gently in the water, encouraging her to slip back into unconsciousness, but memories of the night before surfaced, finally catapulting her mind into full consciousness.
“Xae!” She sat up, and pain lanced through her again. She screamed, and the little boat rocked precariously, threatening to dump her into the water.
Through the haze of her aching shoulder, Mariah heard splashing nearby.
“Hey! Are you okay? Calm down. I’m almost there.”
She tried to calm her breathing and push the pain away but was only partially successful. One hand on her injured shoulder, she turned ever so slowly to the side to see a woman sloshing toward her through the shallow water and past a long line of boats similar to the one she was in. There were only a few as small as hers. Most were big enough to fit only a half a dozen people. Water seeped through Mariah’s boots from the bottom of the dinghy, but the throbbing in her shoulder made it seem unimportant.
The woman who had been calling her was younger than Mariah by at least a few years and a little shorter. Her thick brown hair fell past her shoulders, and she wasn’t even trying to keep her plain cotton dress out of the water as she trudged toward Mariah.
Her features were soft, and Mariah could see the concern in her dark eyes.
“My … my … my little brother,” she groaned. Despite her injury, she was desperate to know if Xae was okay.
The woman grabbed the side of the dingy, the water now up to her thighs, and held it steady. “Let’s get you out of there and onto dry land. Well, mostly dry. Everything is a little soggy after that storm last night. Then, we can talk about your brother. Think you can walk?”
Mariah tested her legs, moving them up and down by turns. Everything seemed to be in proper order, so she nodded.
“Your shoulder hurt?”
She nodded again. Her face twisted in pain. She tried but couldn’t quite manage to relax her features.
“Okay, it’s gonna be hard to get you out of there with only one good arm, so I’m going to pull you to shore. That way, the boat won’t rock too much while you’re trying to step out.”
She watched as the woman untied wet ropes from the algae-coated posts supporting the dock several feet above their heads. The pier began at the level of the beach and stretched out over the water for at least twenty feet, staying level as the shore sloped downward and the water deepened.
After just a few moments of steady movement, the bottom of the boat scraped the ground and came to a stop.
“Okay, miss, Let’s get you out of there.”
The woman offered her a hand, and Mariah, reluctantly letting go of her shoulder, took it. The woman was well built and had no trouble pulling Mariah to her feet.
Biting her lip against the pain, Mariah stepped over the side of her boat. She only made it a few feet onto the damp sand before she stumbled to her knees. Wiping at the salt around her lips, she managed to turn around and let her bottom hit the sand with a muted thud. Her rescuer was towing the boat back to its spot. She retied it and started back, treating the endless water as just another extension of the ground. She was obviously no stranger to the process.
Mariah spotted two other docks, one west and one east of her. The one to the west reached out from a peninsula that stretched farther south into the water. The boats moored there were much larger, enough for whole crews. In fact, she could see the small shapes of people moving quickly down gangplanks and up masts as if they had been born to it.
When the other woman reached the shoreline, she splashed over to Mariah, sat down beside her, and started to offer her hand again. She seemed to realize that Mariah could shake only with her bad arm and pulled it back.
“Hey, I’m Shira. Shira Caden,” she said, spreading the ends of her wet skirt out near her feet.
“Mariah,” she muttered. “Is this Grof?”
“Yep. Glad you know who and where you are. It’s a good start. What happened? Looks like you might have hit your head. How’d you end up in my father’s dinghy?”
Letting go of her shoulder for a moment to find the tender spot on the side of her head, Mariah scrambled mentally for a reasonable explanation and came up with something that was at least partially true. “We were looking for the village, but it got dark, and with the rain, it was so hard to see. I don’t know. I must have wandered onto the dock and fell. I really don’t remember.”
“We? You say something about a brother?”
Mariah nodded. “Xae. He’s fourteen. Shaved head. We got separated after the storm hit.” Her hand came away from her head with streaks of orange. She quickly wiped it on the side of her pant leg. How much of Bria’s dye was left after that downpour?
“Well, I ain’t seen nobody else new, but it’s still early. If he came in during the night, he might still be sleeping somewhere. Maybe one of the other folk took him in.”
“I hope so.” Mariah couldn’t keep the worry out of her voice.
“Where you folks from?” Shira asked.
“Farther up north,” Mariah said. “Up the coast. We’re heading to Glenley and were aiming to take the road from here through the Highlands and over the North Pass.”
“Huh. Well, we better get your shoulder seen to and then maybe get you some food. If you’ve been lyin’ in that boat since last night, you’re bound to be hungry.”
Shira didn’t know the half of it.
Without preamble, she hauled Mariah to her feet by her left arm. Mariah hadn’t eaten since the morning before, but she was less concerned about her stomach than she was about finding Xae
and making sure that he had finished the crossing intact.
“Don’t panic,” she muttered. “He could have easily have landed north or west. It might take him a while to find me.”
“What. Did you say landed?”
Oh, gods, I’m talking to myself again. “I meant after the storm, you know. That wind was blowing us everywhere. It was almost like flying.”
One edge of Shira’s mouth quirked up in a toothy grin. “I like that. Well, looks like your landing wasn’t that smooth, young lady.”
Young lady? I’ve got at least a few years on her. Before she could say anything, the other woman had turned her back and moved away.
The sun peeked out from behind wispy clouds as she followed Shira up a narrow sandy path between beach grasses and onto one made of weathered wooden planks. It rose upward in a series of terraced switchbacks with the natural slope of the beach. The walkway finally ended as the terrain leveled out, and they emerged onto the narrow stone and dirt road that led into Grof.
From Mariah’s vantage point, the fishing village looked smaller than Wellspring. The buildings were almost entirely made of wood. She wondered how they didn’t get blown away by every storm until she saw that the town was sheltered by hills on three sides.
Through gritted teeth, she asked, “Is there someone I can ask about my brother, maybe an inn?”
“Don’t you worry about it,” Shira replied. “I’m going to get you to our healer, and I’ll ask around while she’s seeing to you.”
Mariah’s mouth opened to protest. She didn’t want to have to be in close proximity to more people than absolutely necessary. She and Xae needed to get to Glenley as quickly as possible and then back to Cillian. It wasn’t safe here.
She hissed through her teeth as her shoulder burned and then clamped down on her objections. She did need a healer. Without one, she doubted she would get far on her own.
The walk down the main village street wasn’t long. Most of the structures appeared to be houses. There were a few small shops, and she and Shira soon came upon a two-story building with a wooden plank hanging above it, swaying gently in the breeze. The sign was carved with a picture of a fish and a tankard and the words The Herring Hideaway. The healer was at the inn?
Mariah followed Shira inside. It was small and clean but crowded with empty tables. There was a bar along the back wall, a large stone fireplace on another wall, and a staircase along the third.
“Da!” The young woman’s voice bellowed as soon as they were in the door. “Where’s Ma?”
Still gripping her shoulder and swaying a bit, Mariah grabbed the nearest chair. She let herself drop into it as Shira left her and disappeared through a door behind the bar. Her backpack kept her from getting comfortable, but she wasn’t able to take it off on her own, so she sat in the chair awkwardly, wishing the pain away and hoping Xae would walk through the door.
Several minutes had passed before Shira emerged from the back with another woman ahead of her. With their similar builds and soft brown eyes, they could have been twins, but the newer stranger had steel gray hair and wrinkles around her eyes.
“Ma,” Shira said as they came around to her table. “This is Mariah. I went out to Da’s boat, thinking I’d take it out and see what the storm had brought in, and I found her sleeping in it.”
The woman’s fingers came up and touched the back of Mariah’s head. It was a little too close to her shoulder for comfort, and she flinched, but the woman was undeterred, her fingers probing but gentle. “Maybe not sleeping. Maybe knocked out.”
The spot Shira’s mother examined ached even more than the one on the side of her head, and Mariah remembered the flash of pain that had blinded her after she had fallen the evening before.
“Hey, Mariah. This is my ma. She’s what stands as the village healer, and we all run the Hideaway together. She’ll take care of you and get you settled. I’ll check around a bit and see if anyone’s seen your brother, okay?”
Grateful despite her uneasiness, Mariah nodded and murmured a thank you before Shira turned and left, back out the front door.
“You have rooms here?”
The other woman nodded and looked down at her.
“It’s just that I told my brother that if we got separated, he should look for an inn. That I would find him there.”
“No worries. If he’s in Grof, Shira will find him. Let’s just say she’s got a nose for finding things. Now, let’s see to that shoulder. You’re holding onto it for dear life. We can find some quiet upstairs. Not too many guests this time of year.”
Mariah looked to the staircase, feeling more vulnerable than she had since Gwyn had cared for her in a little room in Tennedore so long ago. Here she was again in the hands of strangers. Knowing Gwyn would encourage her to accept their generosity, she swallowed down the ball of fear rising in her gut. “I think I might have broken something.”
“Can you walk?”
“I’m a little shaky, but I think I’ll be okay.”
“Let’s go then.”
With much more care than her daughter had shown, the innkeeper helped Mariah up off the chair and then up the stairs. The second floor was laid out simply: one hallway with three doors on each side and one at the end. They went into the first room on the right. It wasn’t all that large, but it was big enough for two small, neatly made beds, each with a trunk at the end and situated on either side of the window. There were also a couple of chairs and a table under the window with a bowl and ewer.
“Go ahead and sit down on the bed,” the woman said. She opened one of the trunks and pulled out some strips of white rags that reminded Mariah of the bandages she had seen Kalen use on Gwyn just a few days before. “I’m Rose, by the way. Shira always thinks of me as just her mother, as if that’s also my given name.”
Mariah tried to smile, but with the effort of sitting down without moving her shoulder, her mouth wouldn’t cooperate.
Rose pulled one of the chairs over to where she could reach both Mariah and the table and laid out the rags next to her. Working efficiently and silently, she undid the straps on Mariah’s pack and removed it, setting it on the other bed behind her.
“You’re going to have to move your hand, love.”
Mariah realized that she was still protecting her injured shoulder with her other hand. Reluctantly, she pulled her good arm down and gripped the edge of the mattress as Rose probed at her injury with gentle fingers. Unconsciousness threatened to pull her under when the woman lifted her arm by the elbow. She could hear her own bones grinding against one another. Rose grabbed Mariah by her other shoulder as she swayed and kept her from falling.
“There, there, it’s going to be okay. You were right. You’ve broken your collarbone. Let me get it set, and then I’ll get you something for the pain before I see to the gashes on your head.”
Mariah’s head swam, and she existed in a fuzzy realm of bare consciousness as the woman worked. Despite an apparently full night of sleep, she was still exhausted.
She didn’t know if she could trust Rose or her daughter, but in her state of mind—and body—Mariah didn’t have a whole lot of choice. She worried that if she fell asleep, someone would go through her things. Was there anything in her pack that might give away who and what she really was? After all, she was now in a place where it was illegal to be a free Ceo San.
Rose went through the bandages until she found a large triangle. She knotted one corner to cradle Mariah’s elbow before bringing up the other two ends of the fabric and tying them around the back of her neck. Finally, she slipped another small, folded bandage between her neck and the sling.
“You can relax now.”
Mariah reluctantly released the tension from her right arm and let the sling support its weight. Her shoulder still hurt, but it was better. The innkeeper helped her move until her back was against the head of the bed. Once she was settled, she probed Mariah’s shoulder from the edge of her neck
outward with deft fingers. Mariah winced and bit her lip again when Rose touched the spot where the bone had broken.
“The ends are back together now. If they are going to heal, you need to keep that arm in the sling for a month or two. It will take that long to knit together.” Rose dipped one of the other rags in water and used it to gently clean Mariah’s scalp. “There, that’s not too bad. A couple of gashes, but I guess being out in the wet kept them clean. I’ll be right back, darlin’.”
A month or two? Mariah fretted as she closed the door behind her. She had been in Varidian less than a day, and already, with one unfortunate landing, she had reduced her chances of helping Xae down to almost nothing. If Xae was even alive. Her body seemed less concerned with important things, though, and betrayed her with a yawn. With the strain on her injured shoulder lessened, it was even more of a struggle to remain awake, and she began to drift off.
When she caught the aroma of food, Mariah’s stomach growled, and it brought her back from the edge of utter unconsciousness. She opened her eyes to find Rose standing above her. The healer had returned with a tray that held two cups, a steaming bowl of stew, and a generous slice of bread.
Setting the tray down beside her patient, Rose lifted the first cup. In it was a thick, greenish mixture. “This first. Then I’ll help you eat.”
Mariah brought the cup up to her lips. The pungent aroma, smelling a little of ginger and a little of mustard along with something else, made her pause, but the pain in her shoulder convinced her to drink it down. Gwyn had given her such things when she was ill. Her face twisted at the strong taste, but she continued gulping until it was gone. Then she quickly washed the herbal brew down with the water in the other cup.
Rose chuckled. “I know it don’t taste great, but you’ll see, it gets the job done.”
With that, they began the slow process of getting Mariah fed.
The stew bowl was empty, and she was half-heartedly nibbling on the slice of bread and feeling more human when Shira stepped into the room. She met Mariah’s gaze with a smile.
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