Four Times Blessed (20 page)

             
“Hale and I did the fighting events. Animal, man, weapon. Most all of them.”

             
“Oh,” is all I manage. Because what can I say? He was right. I don’t like hearing that. I swear to myself not to ask any more questions.

I swear it a thousand times over, as meanwhile, he goes on.

              “Our father’d trained us young, so we were good. Most of the challengers, they paid to take us on, they weren’t traditionally trained. And I was fine when they’d do the  votes for create-your-own, man versus bull, or wild horse, weapons or not, a lot of the times they’d have Hale and me in the corral together.”

I feel horrible for making him talk like this. For making him all bunched up muscles and splotchy red like that, even with the salty whipping breeze that’s usually enough to distract me. I reach for one of his wrists, gathering it up in both my hands. He fidgets, but then he pulls his hand out of his pocket, and twists it palm to palm into mine. He gives me a squeeze and leaves it there. I feel better for it, pleased even.

              Especially because, for a moment there, I thought I’d broken him.

             
“I’m sure you’re both wonderful fighters.”

             
“We are.”

             
I rack my brain, but I can’t think of anything sweet to make him feel better.

With a touch of my zizi’s training, I say, “Maybe, if you want to stay fresh, you could always show Benito and Gino something. I know they’d love it, they’re Cassie’s new guards.”

              Though surprised, he seems to like the idea. He says, “Sure, let’s go find them.”

             
I suppose this is what I meant for. I warn him not to teach them anything too...much. He tells me not to worry. He grins. I’m not exactly reassured, though I can’t help but smile. His smiles are nothing if not genuine. Genuinely obnoxious, mostly, but still. And this one’s so purely delighted that I catch some of it and blush.

             
My guard drags me down from the bluff, all the while talking to me about apparently whatever pops into his head. The thorn bushes that I tug him from, the frigid water he just dunked himself in, did I go in it, the nap he took yesterday out on the green, how much he loves naps, do I think naps are great, whose birthday is it? I tell him about how today became a tradition. He asks why don’t we just schedule it? I ask why do we need to if it always works out so perfectly? He asks if I don’t find it annoying. I don’t. He does.

On the sand, we find Gino and Benito and they’re thrilled. Lium tells them to race each other across the beach ten times. They sprint off. Lium takes my arm then, and we both take off our shoes. We dart in and out on the edges of the waves, waiting until the last second to be chased off. They’re always faster than you think, I say, giggling and screaming like a girl when the next one catches my heals. Lium laughs at me, but I don’t really mind. I still feel a need to make up for what I did to him earlier. And plus he screams like a girl once, too.

Hale wanders over and spends some time watching us. Mostly though, he watches the sun set.

             
“He’s a good brother, miss Crusa.”

“Of course. I can tell he is,” I say. Lium wrestles with some impulse that makes his eyes shine. He gives up, wagging his head, “Since we set north, he hasn’t been himself, though. I was the one talking with the pirate lady, yes, and it was me that knocked over the rum, but he’s the one that got distracted by a m-, excuse me, palm tree on our way out.”

              “Oh, dear.”

             
“Exactly. So, I’ve been trying not to leave him to his own self ever since. It’s less him I’m concerned about than other people, if you catch me. He was just so goddamn good in the ring. To get so good at something, you have to think about it all the time, you know? And he just keeps on getting better and better.” He picks up my sandals for me, then insists on carrying them as we walk. I’m glad they’re not my stinky boots.

“Now me, I’m retired. I consider this my retirement home. I hear these places sometimes have golf. I wish you had golf.”

“I’ll ask about it,” I frown.

He nods. “Of course, now you’ve come along, princess, and ruined my system. You know, because I can’t leave you by yourself, and I don’t want to put the two of you together…it would be awful if my own brother screwed up my job. If you knew him before, honey, you’d have liked him. You’re a lot alike. Anyway, my point was, I’m a professional at keeping tabs on crazy people, so there’s no way anyone will be able to get you from me. That good enough for you?”

Oh. Whoops. I suppose I deserved that. I set myself up for it, I think. I’m far too pushy, just like my aunts.

“Yes, of course,” I tell the boy. Too bad he didn’t lead off with his point, though. I would’ve reassured him it wasn’t necessary. Way back at the beginning.

“So relax,” he says.  

I should be polite.

“You’re very bossy,” I tell him while I think. I shouldn’t ask any more questions. I swore a whole lot of times that I wouldn’t. But he keeps answering, right? So maybe he wants someone to. Or maybe he’s just a very open person.

“Lium?”

“Yes, miss Crusa?”

Pushy and nosy.

“How are you not like your brother?”

He considers. He’s handsome when he’s so serious. “I’m better at focusing on what’s in front of me…that’s what saves me.”

I nod and say that sounds very nice. Then I direct us off on a detour, all the way out and around the pier, until he tugs my hand and says again?! I confess, half-distracted by trying to memorize the color of his eyes well enough to recall them without external cues, which is a rather challenging, rather fun game, that I’m trying to implant a kinesthetic knowledge of the dimensions of the docks into his brain. So he doesn’t fall off anymore!

             
He relocates me rather impolitely to a bonfire, then. I’m surprised that it’s already dark.

We roast marshmallows with some of the others. They’re dry on the inside from being in the base storage unit so long, so they’re a little hard to shove onto the sticks. This turns out to be fixable though, if you have a highly-capable personal guard with you.

Once they’re roasted, they’re great.

“Honestly, how many marshmallows does a military base really need?” Eleni, long hair wet and combed, asks as she sits down on a blanket.

Hale, previously nodding off on that very same blanket, laughs in a tense kind of way that I find disturbing. Eleni screams.

I jump. Great grandmothers. My guard pats me on the knee. Eleni’s marshmallow is on fire, but Hale has gone to the rescue. Poor guy is smiling, which is creepy, but his eyeballs are huge when he glances at my cousin, which I can totally relate to.

Hale and Eleni fiddle with the fire. I’m getting chilly in my sundress, until Lium puts his arm over my shoulders. He rubs my goosebumps, and his hand is rough. In a nice way. Like warm pumice stones, or crawling on the sand.

             
Sweet forefathers, I need to go, I don’t know, home or something. Yup, that’s it. I need to ground myself. I’m slightly put out, but it’s for my own good. Preparing for my future husband has made me annoyingly girlish.

             
“What’s wrong with you?” the cause of my grounding inquires.

             
“Nothing.”

             
“You eat too many marshmallows?”

             
“No.” Probably. “You can’t eat too many marshmallows, that’s impossible.”

             
“I’ve never met anyone who can hold their sugar as well as you, sweetheart.”

             
“Behold,” I hold out my arms.

             
“You want another one, sugar princess?” he rummages around behind us.

             
I groan and bury my head in the blanket, “Sweet ancestors, no.”

             
He starts rubbing my back. He’s a very tactile kind of person. I bet that’d be his modality if he were an AIS recruit. Tactile-kinesthetic. Not a common one. I don’t really mind it. With everyone here being family, I’m used to it. And it makes me feel like we’ve known each other for a long time, which I hope we will someday. But now’s not then and I’m about to tell him to knock it off, when a marshmallow squishes against the back of my neck.

             
I respond as any girl would.

              After I’ve run out of ammo and desperately reminded Lium that he’s supposed to be guarding me, not attacking me, we sit side by side with just Eleni and Hale and some seagulls. The embers glow deep inside the black heap, and we’ve gone the same.              

“Where’s Cassie?” my cousin yawns. “We need to go get her.”

This, however, looks like the last thing she herself is about to do. Hale, who she’s draped artistically about, looks equally less drape-like. In an odd way, it’s pleasing to the eye.

             
“Why?” I mean to get up but Lium is too comfortable a chair-back and my plan fails.

             
“I’m babysitting her.”

             
I frown, “This whole time?”

             
“Yes.”

              “Well then, you should have been watching her. What if she got into trouble? Did you even make sure she cut up her meat at dinner? And it’s cold, did you bring her sweatshirt? When did you last see her?”

             
“Swimming.”

             
“Swimming.” Am I the only one who sees all the horrible ways that could end?

             
“Yes,” she says primly.

             
“Great ghosts of the grandmothers, Eleni. Come on.” I crawl close enough to yank her ankle, and scramble up.

             
I wipe the sand off my legs. Still seething, I trudge off with my cousin into the cool sand. It keeps our feet from sinking down too much, so we cover a good amount of the beach before we start arguing about whether Cassie will have hypothermia or not when we find her. 

             
She says it’s summer. I say that the water is below body temperature. She tells me not to be a smarty pants.

             
Most people have taken their children and grandparents and left a while ago, so when I scan the area and don’t see Cassie’s curly-headed shadow, I get a glimmering hit of adrenalin. We check around the second bonfire, but she’s not there. Larissa tells us she last saw her playing in the waves around sunset. Then we hear some people on the docks, so we yell at each other to double back.

             
“What was she wearing again?”

             
“Red and white dress, I think.”

Ok. I let my eyes go blank for a second.

Despite not being in the lab, my mind recognizes the game I want to play. It’s the same, really. I open my gaze, let it splay wide, wide, wide, and fill it with my attention. And I grasp that image of Cassie, that pattern, as tight as I can.

It’s not an easy position to hold. And I’m better with my ears.

But I’m sure she’s not there. Neither is she with our cousins on the docks. The boys get up to help us, and I notice that at some point both Hale and Lium started trailing along behind us.

We start calling out her name. Two of my boy cousins jog off into the woods behind the bluff. I turn back down to the waterline, those horrible imaginings from earlier making me seasick.

Yelling for Cassie, getting nothing back but taunting from the milky blue expanse…I hear my zizi railing. Because as they say, the island is a finite area. It’s the ocean that’s not.

I notice the spit of rocks that juts out into the water at this end of the cove. I figure I can get a good view of the whole beach from a little further out, so I run to the very edge of it and clabber on, hands and toes clinging. They’re slimy with green and black ick.

I stand and twist around. There’s the pinpricks of torches, the yellow haze of the streetlights, the mound of embers, the bonfire. All making the darkness that much thicker. There are forms coming over the rocks after me, which is frustrating because it’s sort of a one-lane kind of situation. Agitated, I push on the crick in my neck.

             
And that’s when I see the dusky red figure scrabbling in the inky surf.

She’s really, really far out. All the way at one of the buoys that marks an underwater rock for the boats. I hadn’t been looking that far out because there is no way she could’ve gotten there.

This is not good. I can make out her little arms reaching straight up in the air. Then they’re dunked under the water. I don’t know if she is playing or drowning, but it doesn’t matter.

             
I step onto my toes and launch through the air. My arms brace over my head and I feel my own heaviness against nothing for a moment, before I slash into the bitter cold. The impact tugs my skirt and sweeps back my hair. Underwater is bubbles and quiet. I breathe a trail out my nose and wiggle, fingers to feet with my dive’s rush.