Free Needle Rain by Cari Silverwood Page B

arms using a stolen knife, The cuts were healing if lumpy. He looked like someone prone to injury. On a dock like this, knife fights would be a part of life when the workers had a drunken night out.
    Hunger came and went, scraping and pulsing at him from the inside until his stomach hurt. It became unbearable. He waded into the water, waiting, waiting. The water stilled and, at the first flicker of scale and fin, he lashed out. The fish thrashed in his hands but once he sank his teeth into its back the struggles lessened to mere quivers. Small bones popped and crunched. He swallowed and sighed with pleasure. Warm blood and salty juices ran down his chin into his new thin beard.
    Another bite. He stopped in mid-chew.
    Goggled-eyed, the children on the bank stared at him. He smiled past the fish, past his teeth in the fish. The children scrambled backward along the bank toward the sunlit area. Only one remained, white-faced and seemingly glued to the mud. Samos frowned and lowered the fish. So be it. If the gods were with him, the children wouldn’t tell their parents.
    The white-faced child – a young boy with spiky brown hair, eight or nine years of age, maybe – gulped and whispered, “I’m sorry.” His face quivered.
    Sorry? What did...
    “Wait.” Samos knelt, smiling. “Don’t be frightened. Wait.” He glanced downward. All the bigger fish had gone. Swiftly he scooped up three tiddlers from the shallows at his feet then tossed them wriggling into the air, and round and round – juggling the squirming fish in a small circle and doing his best to smile.
    The boy giggled and grinned. “Look!” With that the others crept closer again then two squeezed past, laughing, trying to get to the front. Soon they were gathered round him pointing and amazed.
    Samos watched the boy past the whirling circle of fish, wondering – would his child be like this – all clumsiness and innocence and beauty? He let the fish tumble gently into one palm and knelt, cupping his hands and holding them out. The boy gingerly took the fish as they slid across to him. After a moment of rapt contemplation, he opened his fingers and let the tiddlers slip through to plop one by one back into the water, where they flipped their little tails and disappeared seaward.
    When the children finally waved and went homeward, the loneliness stayed away for a long time.
    Just past sunset, a boat anchored at the end of the pier. The thump and scrape, on the timbers above, signaled the unloading of fish. In the flaring light of lanterns, he saw the name, Windcatcher . It was the boat Pela had suggested. He emerged from his hiding place and half-climbed the ladder to check for anyone suspicious. Hands in pockets, he strolled to the boat, making sure each movement was as “un-immolator-like” as he could make it, then he boarded and ducked through the hatch, going down into the under-deck.
    Pela was there, sitting at a table, with a scarf around her neck, accompanying her was her father Tarlos, her mother, Vera, and three men of the clan.
    He opened his mouth to say his speech of carefully considered words.
    The sorrow in Pela’s eyes rocked him, erasing his words.
    So instead he knelt, his knees thumping onto the floorboards, and he bowed his head. “I am sorry.” Then he waited, looking no farther than the feet of those before him.
    The silence stretched.
    “Father, please!” Pela cried.
    “Oh, all right, girl! Samos.” Tarlos sighed. “What are you sorry for?”
    He kept his head down. “For putting Pela’s life in danger. You have every right to turn your back on me for that, and I know it. If you do this, I beg you to help her raise our child as well as can be done. I will give you a letter stating that she is to have all of my possessions, if you think that will help.”
    “Truly?” Tarlos sounded pleased then his voice hardened. “I wonder how much the enforcers will give to the family of a traitor?”
    “Father!”
    “Pela! This is