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

out to her, bidding Chidi to look up again. “As with all these former choices made, I would have begged the Ancients to make me as brave you were and are, Chidi Etienne,” she said, the sternness in her breaking for the moment. “I would pray that They would use me to continue bettering the lives of others along my journey. Aye, to ease their suffering, if only for my being there to walk and swim among those as desperate for aid and hope as we all of us have been and continue striving for now.”

Chidi sniffed. “You’re not making any sense . . . I don’t understand.”

Marisa smiled. “For all the trials you have endured, you still believe all that you have endured was meant to cause you pain, Chidi. That this world, its obstacles, and players; that all have been set against you. The odds stacked in the favor of others, and you the mindless pawn moved across the board without thought for your life and choices. What you fail to understand is that all of these things are meant to help you see.”

“See what?” Chidi asked.

“How you matter,” said Marisa. “Your choices, Chidi . . . your kindness . . . your words . . . aye, your heart.” The mystic Silkie beamed, even as she pressed the flat of her palm against Chidi’s breast. “Are you so blind still as to not see how your life affects so many others? How for all the guilt you keep within, Chidi . . . all the choices you would undo for their seeming failure . . . how is it that you still fail to see all the good and light you have produced also?”

“I haven’t though,” said Chidi, pulling away. “Allambee, Racer, Sasha . . . they’re all dead.”

“And still I say their lives were made better by your actions, Chidi,” said Marisa. “It was your willful acts and choices that led Lenny Dolan to rise against his owner, freeing you and others the night your Selkie crew took Garrett Weaver instead. Even thereafter, your later sacrifice that night reignited Zymon Gorski’s desire and his passion to carry on his noble work of helping to free others from likewise bondage also. Who can say many countless others will be influenced by those actions now?”

“Zymon was doing his work long before I came around,” said Chidi, motioning to the companion at her side. “Ask Bryant . . . he’ll tell you that Zymon was already doing the work.”

“Perhaps, he could,” Marisa said, then turned to smile at Bryant. “And what could you tell me that I have not long seen already in my dreams of you too, David? That you have preached to Zymon Gorski for all these many years now that he should show his face to the people and give them further hope?”

Bryant shook his head. “How do you know all these things, Bourgeois?”

Marisa would not answer him, her gaze refocused on Chidi instead. “And what of your standing against the Nomad brothers, Chidi? Hmm?” she asked. “For though you helped the Selkies to reach and take the zoo for your owners that night, you also defied one of the Salt’s most feared warriors too. When your master, Quill, thought to murder the Merrow king’s son, aye, an innocent boy, it was you that rose to defend the sweetling prince. You, a single seal to stand against the fearsome leader of the Unwanted tribe.”

“I didn’t,” said Chidi. “Wilda stopped Quill that night, not me.”

“And yet the old Merrow could not have arrived in time to save the boy had it not been for your choices to delay your master’s hand, Chidi,” said Marisa. “It were the same brave act that led Wilda to offer you that prized gift you now wear upon your finger.”

Chidi’s skin tingled, then. She looked down upon the simple ring and stone that Wilda had given her at the Indianapolis Zoo, wondering again what power, if any, it truly held.

“Aye,” Marisa went on. “Wilda offered it to you for the same goodness and light that even a proud and noble warrior as Atsidi Darksnout recognized in you this night also. Consumed by his grief and darker thoughts of vengeance, all his old wounds laid bare and opened anew,” Marisa pointed at the necklace and shark tooth Atsidi Darksnout had given Chidi to wear, “even the Hammer chieftain could not help but acknowledge the goodness he saw within you, my friend.”

Chidi instinctively clutched at the tooth when she found Marisa’s gaze holding upon it. “What do you mean?” she asked the mystic Silkie. “What is this tooth really?”

“Another of the Ancient gifts we were meant to seek out,” said Marisa.

“One of the five pieces of two?” Chidi asked.

Marisa nodded. “I once wore the necklace and tooth that you do now. The mother of Allambee Omondi gave it to me as a sign to her great love that all that I told the Silent Hammer about his son was true. Ah, but that tooth did not then hold the power that resides within it now.”

“What do you mean?” Bryant asked. “How can something have power one day and not the next?”

“Ask the Creator of such things, David Bryant, not me,” said Marisa. “From my limited understanding of the Ancient riddles, the five pieces of two cannot be bought. Not forcibly taken, nor stolen. They must be freely given else they are no true gift at all. No real sacrifice made from one owner to the next.”

“I don’t understand,” said Chidi. “You gave this tooth and necklace to Allambee’s father before, then?”

“It was never mine to give,” said Marisa. “I was merely the messenger. The tooth by rights belonged to Atsidi Darksnout all along. A token reminder of the love he shared with the mother of Allambee Omondi. She had kept it close to her all these many years with the hope of returning it to her lover one day when he returned to