Page 13

Chapter 13

Erik

L illian is sleeping peacefully in my arms by the time we arrive at the small shelter I built years ago on the north edge of this island. The isolated bit of land is large and crescent-shaped. My cabin is located on the widest wedge of the crescent, across the wide lagoon sheltered within its curve. Here, the winter winds blow in from the northlands, which keeps most of the animals sequestered to the southern half nearer to the shore during the cold months.

The shelter is not much: a cone-like structure made of thatched pine branches. But the overlapping needles take the bite out of the wind, and the hole in the center of the roof allows the heat of the fire to siphon through the top, which keeps the inside warm and free of smoke.

A bed of needles and furs makes up one side of the shelter, and the other is stacked with logs from the last time I stayed here. I am sure to prepare and store supplies throughout the spring and summer when I’m able, so I always return to a stocked camp at the beginning of winter.

Sadly, there are no stores of dried meat in this particular lean-to, so I’ll need to scavenge for some while Lillian rests.

I lay her on the nest of furs, being careful of her ankle as I arrange her legs. Scanning the space for anything I might be able to wrap it with, I come up empty.

I will gather supplies while I catch dinner.

The sun is low in the sky when I return to the shelter, several squirrels slung through a belt about my waist. I skinned them by the lake, where I also filled a skin with water for the evening. I set to building a fire and roasting dinner while I cut strips of hide with which to wrap Lillian’s ankle. She sleeps through all of it, clearly exhausted from her earlier efforts.

Or, perhaps, still recovering from the shock of it all.

I vaguely remember the early days after the shipwreck, when I was alone and hopeless here in the western wilds. But I, at least, was a warrior, with decades of hunting, fighting, and training at my back.

From what little I have observed of modern humans, they seem to live a life separated from its daily chores. Families visit the lake for a short while, with large colorful boxes filled with ready-made food. Fresh vegetables and fruits I have yet to locate in the local flora; fluffy-looking bread with nary a wheat or grain field to be seen.

Despite the lack of farms or animals, there are spiced sausages and ground meats cooked over iron grills (one of which I stole for myself to use at my main shelter by the lagoon, along with several shiny tools which make turning and cooking meat much easier). They play with vibrant, reflective toys, painted in colors I had never seen before.

But most amazing of all is their music boxes. Silver, black, blue, red–they come in a myriad of colors. And all of them can recreate the sound of an entire ensemble of musicians, with a seemingly endless collection of songs.

I hum one of the tunes I heard many times this summer from the campers’ music boxes as I turn the squirrels on the spit. I am not loud, but Lillian stirs at the sound.

“Are you…is that Cruel Summer?”

“You know this song?”

“Uh, yeah, everyone knows that song. It was all over TikTok this year.”

“What is TikTok?”

“Nevermind,” she says quickly, sitting up and taking in the surroundings. “Did you build all this?”

“Yes.”

She starts and winces as it shifts her ankle. “How long was I asleep?”

“Not long.” She looks at me blankly. I tilt my head, until I realize the cause for her confusion. “Oh! I built this shelter years ago. I remembered it, and brought you here to recover. Are you hungry?”

Lillian’s eyes dart from me to the meat cooking above the fire, and licks her lips. It is a lascivious movement. I look away quickly and gesture to the meal. “I was not sure how long it had been since you had eaten, so I prepared extra.”

“I am starving . Is it ready to eat?”

I smile at her, plucking the spit from the stand and handing it to her, before replacing it with another. “It is ready. And hot.”

“Fuck yeah.” She pinches the ends of the long stick between her fingers, and tears into the steaming flesh with a vicious bite before I can stop her. Instantly, she regrets it, fanning her mouth with her free hand and chewing open-mouthed while chanting, “Hosh-uh, hosh-uh, hoshhhhhhh!!”

“You should let it cool for a moment!” I say helplessly, as more tears spring to her eyes. Good gods, I cannot bear the sight of this woman crying. It tugs at the very core of me.

I find the water skin and hand it to her. “Here, drink!”

She grabs it, chugs from it gratefully, and then heaves a sigh. “Thank you.”

“You are welcome.”

A moment passes in silence as she blows air onto the meat to cool it before taking another, more tentative, bite. Watching her plump lips part, the slow and cautious movement, causes a heat to rise to my face. I look away, allowing her to sate her hunger in privacy.

Instead, I observe my own dinner, a second spit that I slowly turn over the crackling fire. She draws closer, warming her pale legs as she chews.

“How did you know I was in trouble?”

I do not answer immediately. My focus is concentrated on regulating my body’s reaction to the nearness of her, her scent, her soft vulnerability. Phorkys was honest in his warning; I can feel how much weaker his influence is the further I am from the shore.

Yet I know from experience that his pull is strong enough to keep me locked to the water’s pull. While he has less physical influence over my body, he can still command my consciousness. Still speak inside my head. Drive me to insanity.

“He told me.”

Lillian chews on this for a moment. Then, “How did He know?”

I turn the spit with my other hand as I stretch a shoulder. “Keto told him.”

A shiver rolls down her spine and I know it has nothing to do with the cool evening outside the shelter walls. Her voice is barely a whisper when she admits, “I wondered if she was in my head. I can’t hear her, but…” she sets her now empty spit on the packed dirt floor and hangs her head in her hands. “There’s a… a drive there that wasn’t there before, you know? Like a compass pointing me toward something. And I can’t seem to veer away.”

“Like instinct.”

“Yes!” she shouts, eyes wide. “Like instinct.”

My gaze blurs as my eyes swim out-of-focus, the spitting fire transforming into overlapping orbs of white and orange. “That is how it begins.”

I feel it before I see her stretch out her leg and test her ankle, bending and rotating it gingerly. A slight wince crosses her features, and I hold out my hands.

“Here, let me wrap it. I did not want to wake you before.”

She tenses briefly, then nods, her shoulders slowly relaxing away from her ears. I reach behind me to the pile of straight sticks and strips of hide I reserved to make a splint.

Taking a small piece of fur I cleaned earlier in the lake, I douse it with a pour from the water skin and carefully wipe her wounds clean of debris. Despite my gentle hand, she winces, and my chest clenches in response. I raise my eyes to hers in apology, some wordless whisper falling from my lips in place of an earnest remark.

There is so much I want to say to her, that the words form a pile in my mind, blocking passage to my throat. A shipwreck of intentions and platitudes, blocking any current of conversation. I close my mouth, feeling utterly impotent, and instead focus on keeping each swipe of her skin with the cleansing fur as light and effective as possible.

Her breathing steadies, thankfully. I examine the tender ankle, taking in the swollen skin and angry red scrapes.

No sign of infection. That is good. Still, I reach behind her in the pile of furs for the herbal poultice I store in all of my shelters. An ancient recipe, brought from home. While I have little fear of dying (quite the opposite), festering wounds are quite an annoyance I do my best to avoid when preparing for the long winters on land. Cuts and bruises are an inevitability, but prolonged discomfort need not be.

As I locate the small clay pot, a relic rescued from the shipwreck, my arm brushes her hip. A tiny gasp skitters over my back, raising the small hairs on my neck.

I pull it back quickly, reorienting my position so the stirring in my lap is less visible to her. I have since donned some hunting furs to protect myself, but they do little to hide the quickening of my flesh as it tugs against its wrappings.

Lillian, of course, is tantalizingly bare before me.

“This–” I clear my throat– “will prevent infection.”

“Right,” she answers, her voice almost as hoarse as mine. “Totally. Thanks.”

I nod, not trusting the air in my lungs. Slowly, I apply the crushed herb paste in dabs across the scratches that mar her legs. I shift her ankle this way and that, examining her injuries closely in the firelight, before deciding that I’m satisfied. Then I apply the splint.

A small hiss as I set her joint to rights. Then a sigh as she adopts a more comfortable position, exposing more of her front to the fire.

Gods, I bite my cheek to keep from moaning. Her ample chest sways as she takes it upon herself to rotate the spit for me, saving the downwards-facing side of my dinner from charring to a crisp. The tender flesh of her belly seems to bounce in the flickering firelight, and it takes all of my willpower to keep from imagining her jiggling beneath me, making more of those delicious sounds: gasps and sighs and hopefully cries of delight with that bell-like voice of hers…

“Erik? I think it’s done.” She removes the spit from the fire and hands it to me.

“Thank you,” I croak, my throat drier than a sandpit in a drought. Her cheeks flush.

Beautiful.

Beautiful, and damned.