Salt Storm: The Salted Series: Episodes #31-35 by Galvin, Aaron (top 5 books to read TXT) 📗

Marisa frowned. “You speak to me as if I do not mourn the loss of them also.”

“Do you?” Chidi threatened her. “I don’t see you weeping for them, or the things you’ve done.”

“We all of us mourn in different ways, Chidi Etienne,” said Marisa. “For some, they put their grief on display for all to see and gawk over. Their tears rain as bountiful as the Salt, falling as frequently as waves upon the shore. Do you judge their tears worth more than yours? Aye, or others like you that shield themselves against such pain by running, hiding, or burying it altogether?” Marisa looked past Chidi then, her gaze flickering toward Bryant. “And what of those others who gladly swap their sorrow for anger instead? Those trapped by their pain, or the guilt of surviving when others did not? All to instead use such grief to seek out their own cause, even if the pursuit means chasing such ends to their own detriment. Whatever the reason, all such measures are meant to numb, or else delay, the true root of their pain,” Marisa offered Bryant some little nod before refocusing on Chidi. “Do not judge me harshly because you have not found me weeping over those taken from this world, Chidi. I too have suffered such losses as you have endured. I too have made my own sacrifices and will make still more to see this effort through. Or shall I show you some of them too? Some of my own ghosts?” Marisa raised her hand in offer for Chidi to take hold. “Would you like to hear as I do? More voices of the dead and others soon to be? Aye, the voice of all those that linger within me, so that you might add them to your memory also?”

Chidi recoiled, remembering the minor glimpses of visions Marisa had shown her in Orphan’s Knoll and upon the beach shortly thereafter. “No . . .” said Chidi. “I don’t want anything to do with you anymore. I don’t care what you’ve seen, or what you say will come. You brought Allambee out here knowing he would die for it.”

“And what would you have done if in my position, Chidi?” Marisa asked. “If you were given a vision of death for one, aye, but all whilst knowing there was the glimmered hope of salvation for many others as a result of the sacrifice made?”

Chidi’s face twisted. “I would have kept him safe,” she said. “Told Allambee to stay behind if I had known he would die.”

Marisa cocked an eyebrow. “And yet you knew your friend, Racer, would die if he ran with you. That your owner, Henry, would make good on his promise to hunt you always and kill anyone that he found running with you.”

Chidi stepped back as if Marisa had struck her. “I didn’t know that Racer would die . . .”

“No?” Marisa asked. “What of Henry’s murdering the little Silkie girl, Sasha, when first you came into his service? Was his murder of her not enough to convince you of his threat? Or what of those others you ran with after the loss of Sasha also? Shall I name all of them too?”

Chidi clutched at her chest as a flood of still more faces and names rose from the recesses of her mind, even as she fought to bury them anew. “How?” she asked Marisa Bourgeois. “How do you know these things?”

“Much and more is what I know, Chidi Etienne,” said Marisa. “Just as you had some little knowledge of what would occur all those nights you ran from Henry Boucher with those others at your side. All with the hope you and they might find your way to true freedom again.”

“I-I didn’t know he would find us,” said Chidi, her voice weakening at Marisa’s claims, her anger doused in lieu of the mystic Silkie’s accusations. “I just wanted to get away from Henry. We all just wanted to be free and get away from him.”

“Aye, you did,” said Marisa. “And you were willing enough to risk condemning others with the thought you might earn your freedom even after you had escaped Henry’s reach.”

Bryant became a shadow at Chidi’s side. “Hey!” He barked at Marisa. “Leave it alone now. That’s enough, Bourgeois.”

“Is it?” Marisa flung back, more in acknowledgement of Chidi than a reply to Bryant. “By your face, Chidi, you act as though you have no understanding of what I mean.”

“What do you mean?” Chidi asked.

“The naïve, Merrow prince . . . Jun Gao,” said Marisa, looking to Bryant too. “The pair of you stood in that innocent child’s home knowing that you had not been led there for good intent by the Nomad brothers, Quill and Watawa. Yet still you stayed and helped the ones who took you there to accomplish their further goals of reaching the zoo. Of taking the boy inside to test his origins and bloodline.” Marisa settled on Chidi once more. “How many died that night in the attack upon the zoo, Chidi? How many lives lost for your continued pursuit of freedom?”

Chidi fought against the stinging in her eyes. “It wasn’t supposed to happen that way,” she argued, fending off the memories of holding a dying Selkie in her arms after the battle for the zoo had ended. She remembered Bryant too as he called the Nomad brothers to relay their victory and to bring the boy, Jun, inside the zoo premises. “We didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt,” Chidi argued, more to herself than Marisa. And yet when she dared to look in the mystic Silkie’s eyes, she found them gleaming too. “Quill and Watawa made us go. W-We didn’t choose to be there.”

“Da’ar is altyd n’ kuese, Chidi,” said Marisa.

Chidi bit her lip to keep it from quivering. “What was I supposed to do?” she asked, her chin drooping to her chest, unable to meet Marisa’s gaze any longer. “What would you have done?”

Marisa reached