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Down by the dock, a small crowd gathered, retreating into the gilded light of late afternoon, their faces sad and worried. The coin and chain dug into Nigel's palm, and he slipped the necklace into one of his more secure pockets, the better to confront whatever lay before him.
At the beach, a small fishing boat bobbed with its stern toward land, anchored fore and aft rather than head for the dock proper. Between, in the space opened by the parting crowd, lay a body.
Sickly pale, one arm flung to the side, it struck Nigel for a moment like the image of a martyr, surrounded by the mourning crowd, still bearing the wounds of some gruesome death he was intended to read as higher purpose. Someone had covered the corpse's face with a cloth, the head turned to one side. Tufted blond hair stuck out.
Nigel's throat went dry, his chest tightening as if in a vise he could not loosen. He ran the last few steps, stumbling, his injured ankle nearly giving out as he dropped to his knees.
Lucky the bay wasn't known for its sharks. Lucky the body hadn't been submerged for long. Lucky the death had to be less than twenty-four hours ago. Because Nigel remembered him offering to trade places with Devi, hoping to spend more time with them, waving good-bye.
Joe.
Somehow, Nigel dragged down a breath and reached for the cloth.
Devi's hand caught his arm, her grip both firm and gentle. "Are you sure?"
His shoulders heaved with each breath now, his throat burning. "You know who it is."
She gave a nod.
"We have to know what happened." His voice sounded hoarse, already broken. Her thumb traced lightly against his arm as she held him back. An attempt at comfort, or an indication of her own response?
"Nigel. You don't have to see him like this."
Dead? He could see that well enough. Nigel fought for control, for sanity, against the maelstrom of emotions that threated to capsize him. There was a reason for the cloth, of course. A reason beyond decorum that they had covered his face. "Then who will."
"I will." Her hand gently propelled his arm back from his intent. "Because you're right. We need to know, and we'll find out."
He resisted, his hand trembling, his obligation—gods, he had saved the lad's life, and been saved by him in turn. If that created no bonds between men, between souls, then nothing could. His lungs clenched as if he once more struggled to bring Joe to the surface, but this time, it could not be done. There was no saving him.
"They go for the eyes first," she said softly. "Birds, animals."
"I know!" He pulled back from her, and she let him, her hand still hovering there, her arm held between him and the dead as if to defend him still.
His hands clenched into his hair, his hat forgotten. "Gods, Devi, do you think I don't know? Have you no idea how many dead I've seen, how many I've buried?" He gulped a breath. "How many I've seen exhumed?"
She squatted beside him, her voice still low and even. "That wasn't your job, you told me. You worked with the living."
His entire body, every muscle and fiber coiled as if, at any moment, he must explode into a thousand fragments. This couldn't be. That young and vital life could not be snuffed so soon. His hands knotted together, pressed to his lips to contain his grief. No matter, it spilled over in his eyes.
He sank back onto his heels and somehow mastered his breathing, then steeled himself for the truth. "This is my job. It always is. To bear witness. To use my voice to amplify those who are silent, who go too long unheard."
She drew back her arm, and waited as he lifted the cloth, taking in the ruin of Joe's head for a long moment, then replacing the cloth.
"Looks like he fell. Maybe on the rocks," she murmured. "They'd been drinking."
"Why didn't they say? Why didn't they come to tell us?" His head shook slowly, denying it all.
"Maybe they did, Nigel, we haven't even been here."
"A fisherman found him in the bay. How could they have let him go?"
"Maybe they didn't know where he'd gone, that he was dead."
"Or maybe they left him for dead, and believed his body would vanish with the tide. Leaving him behind like their accursed beer bottles." The thought nearly choked him.
"That's your prejudice talking, Nigel. And your pain."
Prejudice? Her words pierced the fog of grief.
For a man who'd worked all his life to overcome prejudice, the barb struck home. Prejudice against the sort of men he was not, the sort of man she knew and liked, the males of her own kind. What answer could he possibly give? And in the secret dungeons of his heart he admitted she was right.
Nigel closed his eyes, pressing the heels of his hands into them not to unsee what he had seen but rather to impress upon himself the memory Joe's presence, his earthly existence.
He heard her moving, a rustle and soft scrape of sand. From a distance, other voices murmured in the subdued tones that befit the occasion. Someone's warm hand stroked over his shoulders, back and forth, back and forth, and he recognized the straw and sawdust scent of the shop. Hortensia. She stationed herself behind him, creating some connection between his unmoored self and the rest of humanity.
"He may have some broken ribs," Devi said at last, her voice coming close. "No other sign of injury. I'd guess he wandered away from the fire and fell. He seemed to enjoy that rocky area. All those buggy tracks out there? They likely searched for him when they realized he was missing. Maybe they still are and that's why we haven't heard anything."
Maybe she needed to stop making excuses for them. Nigel's jaw ached from clenching, and he made himself release at least some of this. He served no one if he fell apart, a lesson he needed to repeat from time to time. He forced his neck and shoulders to relax and lifted his head.
Stark blue sky overhead, hard sand below, and all of them hovering between as if they were painted into a medieval view of the cosmos. What was life, after all, but a few moments snatched from the grave?
"In that case, we need to find them. To tell them what's happened. To ask after his next-of-kin." He sought the people around them, but most had scattered.
Hortensia stepped back from him, Arryo standing beside her. "What do you need, Señor Nigel? How do we help?"
"He'll needs shroud and a coffin. Is there someone locally who prepares the dead?" Nigel flipped through his memories, the brief time since he'd met the young man to see what could be gleaned about his life and beliefs.
"I have this," Arryo said. "A coffin." He spoke with one of the other local citizens who hurried off.
Nigel tried to rise, staggered by his injured ankle. Devi caught his arm and kept him erect. "The fisherman," said Nigel. "El pescadore?"
An older man, bent by time, shuffled forward with a tip of his chin. "I see that the fish are jumping, they are busy, so I brought over my net, thinking I will have a good catch."
Fish, jumping because of the small fry discovering a new food source, and the predators finding more prey. Nigel mastered himself and stepped up to clasp the man's hand. "Gracias. Thank you for caring for my friend and bringing him to land." When the old man gave a nod, Nigel continued, "Can you tell us where he was found?"
The man turned and described the location, his hands working in the air, indicating a place between the town and the island. With a different turn of the wind, Joe might have been swept out to sea, or beached on the island itself. The offshore winds and the location where he'd entered the water collaborated to bring him here, or possibly nobody would even have known he was dead. Unless his "friends" had already known and done nothing.
A new idea surfaced like a shark swimming up from the depths and knotted his shoulders all over. What if they knew because they had killed him?
Only that was ridiculous. Why on earth would they do that?
Nigel bit down on his suspicion. His pain and his prejudice, Devi said. Very well. He might be utterly wrong. A fool taken in by his horror at a young man's passing, and his own warped spirit, recognizing in others the things he could never have nor be. He'd been disastrously wrong before, and made such a fool of himself in various arenas, how could this one be any worse? The only cameras here were his own, the only judgment that of a handful of people who barely knew him. What difference, in the end, could be made by one more such disgrace?
But if he were right—then why? What could Joe possibly have done to earn such a fate, whether in the wide and wild realm of fate itself, or in the intimate, awful sphere of murder?
Nigel feared the answer at the same time he knew he wouldn't rest until he'd found it.