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

smile once more. “And it might be that I may yet offer Garrett Weaver some small gift of hope to comfort against the pain and darkness raging in him now.”

Marisa turned to leave her alone, then.

Chidi called out to her as Marisa reached for the cabin door. “And what of Allambee?” she asked, hesitating when Marisa glanced back in study of her question. Chidi stammered on. “What of the things you saw for me? How can you expect me to continue on with you after all I have seen?”

Marisa nodded. “I know that you will, Chidi Etienne. If only to honor to the sacrifice offered by so many of those who have followed your lead and given up their lives that you might survive. As I have told you since our time together in Crayfish Cavern,” said Marisa. “I saw tears for you then, Chidi Etienne. Some you have already wept . . . and far more for you still to weep.”

Chidi swallowed that, her mind warning to no longer doubt the prophetic words of Marisa Bourgeois. As the faces of those she had already lost again rose to haunt her mind, Chidi buried them all by looking through the cabin glass to someone she cared for that yet remained.

Beyond, she saw Bryant and Garrett Weaver conversing as the man she once named Silkstealer piloted their boat eastward across the Salt and away from the reach of the Nomad armies she had seen below. For all her focus of the Selkie marshal at the captain’s wheel, Chidi could not help but focus on the face of Garrett Weaver too, remembering how she had seen him lain unconscious outside the police station in his hometown. His unwitting enslavement at the center of Lenny Dolan’s plan to free far more for a singular sacrifice. And those plans failed us too, she thought then, looking back to Marisa Bourgeois, dwelling on all that the mystic Silkie had told her of for those attempting to swim against the currents of fate. All to lead us here . . .

Marisa’s eyes narrowed when Chidi remained silent. “What is it, Chidi? What question on your tongue? The one you hesitate to speak . . . the answer you crave all the same?”

“I have two . . .” said Chidi.

Marisa nodded. “Let you ask them of me . . . unless you would rather not hear the answer?”

No, Chidi thought to herself, unable to hide her uneasy glance toward Bryant in the cabin, thinking back to all the lesson he had taught her as well. I’m not running from truth anymore. Not even the kind that I know will hurt me. Swallowing the lump in her throat, Chidi squared her shoulders and looked into the steady gaze of Marisa Bourgeois as the boat skipped across the water. “You say that you keep you hearing my voice in your dreams . . .”

“I do.”

“What do I say to you? What do I ask?”

Marisa smiled. “Nothing, my friend.”

Chidi’s brow furrowed. “Then, how do you hear my voice?”

“As with many things in this life – words, feelings?” Marisa shook her head. “The most important and dearest moments of all are not things heard, or voiced, Chidi. They are felt.” The elusive runner’s head cocked to the side, as if she saw her answer proved unsettling and unsatisfying to Chidi. “You dislike my answer?”

“I do,” said Chidi. “It’s just more riddles. The same as you’ve told me before when you knew that I didn’t understand then either.”

“Ask your second question, then,” said Marisa. “The one that plagues you most. The same one you have been avoiding asking of me. The same question you’ve wondered on since you first began to doubt my words and actions when they led to the passing of Allambee Omondi from this world and sent him on to Fiddler’s Green.”

Chidi took a deep breath before speaking, even as her mind warned again to cease her questions. “If you’ve seen all these things,” she began. “Of us and Garrett Weaver being here together, of the Nomads drowning Jun Gao to test him . . . of Allambee—” Chidi choked on his name, tears brimming anew in her eyes at the loss of him. Unlike before, Chidi refused to let the new ones fall. Clenching the sides of her Silkie suit that Henry Boucher had forced her into, Chidi reminded herself of all that Marisa Bourgeois had promised her still lay ahead as she asked her final question. “If you saw all of those things, all of that pain, all the sacrifices . . . how do I know you’re not leading me onward to more sacrifices too?”

Marisa blinked. “You don’t.”

Chidi recoiled at the flat answer, Marisa’s voice like a knife stabbing into her ribs for the cold manner of her speech and the delivery too.

Marisa Bourgeois was not done in her reply. “For such is the twin power and the curse of dreams, Chidi,” she said, reaching for the doorknob to allow herself to enter the cabin with Bryant and Garrett Weaver. “Again, I remind you that for all you think of me as all-seeing and all-knowing, in trifling times such as these, I am sometimes as truly lost as you feel now – both of us hurtling onward to make such plans and choices as we will. Aye, and with the doubtful thought that Fate mocks us all the while.”

Chidi blurted another question before Marisa could open the door. “If you cannot see all ends, then you don’t know what will happen to us. How it all ends?”

“No . . .” Marisa quietly admitted.

Chidi shuddered at the admission, even as Allambee’s face and his final moments flashed in the forefront of her mind. She banished the ghost of him away for the moment, forcing herself to ask a deeper question arising in her mind as she forced herself to look on Marisa Bourgeois. “And what will you do, Marisa . . .” Chidi hesitated to finish her