Lilah's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

The name left Lilah's mouth at last. "Melody." It broke as she said it, but she said it. The baby went quiet against her chest. Kaimana smiled and pressed a warm cloth over them both. The fire cracked in its ring of stones. For a moment there was only the three of them and the dark sea beyond. Then Kaimana looked up at the sky. The light was already thin. "You cannot stay here tonight," she said. "The tide comes high. The wind turns cold after dark. A new baby will not last it." She nodded toward Lilah's shelter, the low hut of palm logs and twine. "That will keep out sun. Not the sea." Lilah looked at her hut. She had built it herself from what the shore gave her. She had been proud of it. Now the old woman was right, and that stung. "Where would we go?" "My people live where the shore bends," Kaimana said. "Warm walls. Dry ground. Women who have raised many children." She held out a hand. "Come with me before the light is gone." Lilah did not take it. She held Melody tighter. She did not know this woman. An hour ago she had been a voice from the shadows. Now she wanted Lilah to leave the one place Lilah had made safe and follow her into the trees. Everything Lilah had lost, she had lost by trusting the sea to carry her. "I don't know you," she said. "No," Kaimana said. She did not argue. She crouched and lifted the small bassinet Lilah had woven, slender logs and layered leaves, a nest for the baby. She turned it in her hands and touched the tight knots. "You made this. Steady work. You think ahead. So think now." She set it down gently. "Stay, and you gamble two lives on the weather. Go, and you gamble on me. One of those, I can promise you food and fire." Melody stirred and made a thin, cold cry. Lilah felt how small she was. The wind off the water had already turned. Lilah looked at the reaching dark, then at the old brown eyes that had not once looked away. The woman had come when no one else did. She had put her hands on Lilah and asked nothing back. "All right," Lilah said. "We'll come." Kaimana rose. She lifted the bassinet under one arm and banked the fire with sand. From the shelter roof the parrot dropped down and rode her shoulder, chattering. "He led me to you," Kaimana said. "He will lead us back." Lilah stood, slow and sore, and cradled her daughter against the wind. She left the hut she had built standing empty on the sand. She was walking into a stranger's world now, with nothing but the child in her arms and a choice she could not take back.