MY EYES STAY OPEN AT night partly to be sure the ocean doesn’t gobble us down while I sleep, but mostly because of Luokai. The only real sleep you get when SS is around is the dying kind, and this bench is a good spot to keep watch, no matter how many times Luokai tells me it’s warmer inside the boat’s canopy. I like to know where my enemies sleep. The water, just over the side of the boat. Luokai inside, where the screech of a door will give him away before he can get close.
Whenever Luokai isn’t messing with the engine, he sits up on the platform and breathes deep, letting the boat go this way and that. At first it makes me watch him close, until he says, “If I keep myself calm, they stay away.”
They. Compulsions.
Luokai sees mine coming before I do, the horrible voice screaming at me to jump over the side of the boat, to pull up the floorboards, to yank at my own hair, not even leaving me a voice to ask for help. He’s always there when my mind comes back to me, his arms restraining me still until I stop shaking. He’s strong like Howl. Soft like Sev.
Half gore like Dad.
Like me.
“Why do you worry so much about the water, June?” Luokai asks from the engine controls. He’s always saying something, like he needs to remind me he’s there, that I’m not alone.
“It’s worrying that sends you into a compulsion.” Luokai does something to the controls, then climbs down into the room under the canopy. “You have to relax. Think about good things and keep yourself calm, because then SS has less to work with. When we get to the river, it’ll take us right to where I first met Jiang Sev. A week or two of hiking from there and we’ll be at the Mountain, where Howl was headed. We’re practically already there.”
My ears perk at that. Didn’t Sev first meet Luokai at Cai Ayi’s trading post?
Luokai is watching me, though, so I pull my feet up onto the bench. Fold my arms. Close my eyes. Try to keep myself calm, like he told me to. It starts with remembering the bubbles in Cai Ayi’s voice. Then I line up the kids Sev and I pulled out of the City in my mind to wash their faces and check that their coats are zipped. Their heads were shaved, and their insides were meant to be cut out, but they’re mine now, and so they’re safe, because I know what it’s like not to have someone to take care of you.
As if you could take care of anyone now. The gore’s breath huffs in my ear. You can’t even take care of yourself anymore. Only thing you’re good for now is for Luokai to make sure he gets the cure.
Another thought slips in behind this one, keeping quiet so my gore can’t hear. If we find the Post, I could leave Luokai behind. One of the roughers would come with me to the Mountain to find Howl. I could be safe again, far from SS and the monsters it makes of good people.
Luokai appears in the door, sending me to the railing with my hand clenched tight around the metal strip stashed inside my coat, but I let it go when I see he has a bowl in each hand. He settles next to me on the bench and hands me one of them, the smell of old rice soaked to make porridge welcome in my nose.
“I was hoping to ask you something.” Luokai carefully places a bite in his mouth, chewing slowly and swallowing. “I understand you may not answer, and that’s all right. I respect your silence. But if there is anything you can say, please do.”
The bowl’s rim feels like bone in my mouth. One sip, one mouthful. That’s enough for now. I set the bowl beside me, wondering how long I can make the food last.
“It’s my brother, Howl. I had to leave before he was even your age. He grew up alone.” Luokai’s eyebrows pucker the skin across his forehead like he’s thinking very hard. “He’s still angry at me for never coming back. For not finding him.”
Luokai draws his fisted hand from his pocket, that communication thingy he likes to play with inside. Howl had one he used to hide from Sev, though I guess she found it in the end. “And there’s another person. Sole.” He opens his hand to show me the little metal disk. “I didn’t want to leave her behind, but I did. I was so frightened of hurting them.…”
My shoulders hunch, the wind pressing in close. He left people behind to keep them safe? Dad’s face seems to almost burn through the image of the gore who nests in my head. Dad couldn’t let go, couldn’t set me loose any more than I wanted to walk away from him. It was those things that almost killed me.
“I loved them,” Luokai continues, and I sit forward, my brain finally all the way focused on what he’s saying. “But now that I’ve been gone so long, I’m not sure they’ll ever love me again.” He smiles, that puckered-up sour fruit expression taking his calm face and making it into a real person’s. “You know Howl better than I do. Is it in him to forgive?”
I let my eyes fall down to look at my hands, my fingers white with cold, even bundled up inside my sleeves. Forgive Luokai for leaving Howl with people who weren’t his family, who treated him bad? The gore inside me starts to growl, but I hush him down.
“Not forgiving can be dangerous. When you hold on to anger, it feels like you’re in charge, that you’re keeping someone else from hurting you. But then that anger is trapped inside your mind with no release. It can turn into poison.” Luokai rubs a hand across his face. “Not forgiving made me… hard. Made me refuse to help people when I should have.” I can feel it when his eyes come back up, like little flies crawling across my skin. “There’s some of that poison in you, I think. Maybe there’s been too much to forgive in your life.”
The gore’s growls turn into bared teeth and claws. The wind holds her breath next to me.
“Forgiveness doesn’t mean forgetting. It means letting go so bad things don’t fester inside you. So other people’s bad decisions don’t spoil you. I’m still learning how to do it.” He shrugs. “I want my brother and me to be family again. But I can’t force someone else to give me another chance.”
Sometimes there are no more chances. Sometimes the things you do are permanent. I touch my arms, long white scars streaking my skin like bird poop.
“What happened?” His voice is so quiet, like Tian as she pet my head and told me I’d done well when I’d return to camp with my arms full of dead men’s things. Like the voice I gave Dad in my head after he couldn’t speak, though since it’s turned into…
The gore whimpers, gnawing on his own paws.
I kick my feet back and forth, take another bite of porridge and savor it in my mouth. Dad’s voice became a gore inside me, showing me all the ways to survive, and then growling that I don’t deserve it. I’ve been broken into too many pieces for anyone smart to want me anymore.
How do you forgive people who can’t have a second chance because they’re dead? Maybe that’s the only time you can, because then you can be sure they won’t hurt you anymore.
With a cure, maybe Luokai won’t have to wait until he’s dead to find forgiveness. Licking my lips, I look up and meet his eyes on purpose for the first time. They’re brown and stupid and full of hope.
Hope that’s inside me. The wind nestles in close to me, and I smile. A little.