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

question, pressing on all the same. “Wherever you see us going, whatever it is we’re supposed to do . . . what if when we reach the end of this journey together . . . what if we find out you were wrong?” Chidi licked her lips. “What if you were supposed to sacrifice me all along, rather than let all of the others die?”

Marisa grimaced. “Chidi . . .”

“Answer me,” Chidi demanded, her voice quavering.

Marisa folded her arms across her chest. “If I am wrong . . . if I have been wrong,” she shook her head as if wrestling with the idea. When she looked on Chidi again, the knowing certainty again blazed in her eyes. “No,” said Marisa. “I am not wrong, Chidi. And if I were, then all the deaths you and I have seen, all the losses endured, they would still pale in compare to which comes for those of us who yet live and fight. I should rather die trying to thwart the Other still, rather then live on knowing I might have stopped them and did not for fear of the losses left in the wake of my indecision.”

“And if your choices meant sacrificing me?” Chidi asked, unable to meet Marisa’s eyes, focusing instead on the faces of David Bryant and Garrett Weaver through the cabin window. Blinking back her tears, she refocused on Marisa once more. “Would you, Marisa?” her voice cracked with the question. “Would you sacrifice my life to thwart the Sancul and all that you see in your dreams?”

Marisa’s brow wrinkled. “Is that a true question you ask of me, Chidi? Or a favor?”

“Both,” Chidi broke, even as she craved the answer. “I’m so tired, Marisa.” She wept, the faces and guilt of all those she had left behind rising in her mind to offer her some small bit of comfort also. “Please . . . I’m so tired of seeing everyone I care about taken from me.” Her lower lip trembled as she spoke the words, looking to Marisa Bourgeois again for some semblance of her answer. “So, if it comes to a decision . . .” Chidi continued. “If you have to make the choice between me, or someone else to die for the all of these dark things you claim to see, Marisa . . . let it be me to go next. Please?”

Marisa sighed, studying Chidi before answering. “You ask of me now the same question I have long pondered over since the first time I heard your sweet voice in my dreams.”

“And?” Chidi asked.

Marisa soured. “And on that fateful day, Chidi Etienne, I fear that decision will come to be the hardest choice I will ever make.”

Then, without another word between them, Marisa opened the cabin door and entered within, leaving Chidi alone to ponder over her cryptic words.

32

GARRETT

Huddled in a woolen blanket in the co-captain’s chair, Garrett Weaver hugged his knees close to his chest as the boat sped onward beneath him. The broken front window before him was a collection of glassy, shattered shards and some of them blood-stained. Beyond, however, a hint of dawn lay upon the horizon, the darkness breaking before the hints of light at the furthest reaches that Garrett could see.

Beside him, captaining the boat, his hands firmly upon the wheel, Bryant snorted as he too looked out at their approaching daylight. “Well, look at that,” he said quietly. “Now, that’s something, isn’t it?”

Garrett could only stare, willing the light to come faster and help him to forget the darkness and all he left behind.

Bryant clucked his tongue. “Yeah, that’s something all right. ‘Course, I’ve always been partial to sunrises more than sunsets.”

The sincerity in his voice drew Garrett from his own thoughts. “Why?” he asked.

“Reckon it’s on account of not everyone takes the time to appreciate sunrises,” Bryant smiled. “Most everybody likes to watch the sunset ‘cause they’ve already been up and at it all day. Get to see the close of another day and hope for a better tomorrow. Sunrises though, well, you got to get up earlier than most to see them. Get a chance to understand all that’s waiting on you while the rest of the world’s still sleeping. Yeah, to my mind, there’s nothing like a good sunrise, ‘specially if you had a rough night.” He nodded at Garrett. “I reckon you’ve seen some of them rougher things since we last saw each other, huh?”

Is it so obvious? Garrett wondered, fighting against the stinging in his eyes. He glanced away from Bryant, rather than allow the cowboy marshal to suggest anything further.

Bryant spoke on anyway. “Whatever it is that’s happened to you since, son? I’m gonna go out there on a limb and say it weren’t your fault,” he said quietly. “And, for whatever it’s worth, I’m sorry for it. If my calling you in for questioning at the jail that night had anything to do with what’s happened to you since, that is.”

“It wouldn’t have mattered if you hadn’t called me in,” Garrett said, more to himself than Bryant, thinking back on all that had occurred since the two of them had met in his hometown. “Lenny Dolan and his Selkies would’ve come for me either way.”

“Might be that’s true,” said Bryant. “Still don’t change what I said.”

Garrett looked at him again, the once hard-natured marshal he remembered questioning him ashore now nothing in compare to the one wearing a Selkie hood and speaking kindness to him. “What brought you out here, marshal? You come looking for me?”

Bryant barked a laugh. “Wish I could say I’m that dedicated,” he replied, not unkindly. “Truth is that same Selkie crew of Lenny Dolan’s took you and me both that night. Shot me with some kind of a tranquilizer, soon as I opened the door to them. Loaded me up and hauled me back with a few others from your town too.”

Kellen . . . Garrett thought then, not understanding how else his