Cal lay awake, watching for the first light of dawn. Her heart beat furiously inside her chest like a wild thing in cage.
All through the long night she'd tossed on restless tides of sleep and tumble in an undertow of troublent dreams. Now, at least, a dim light shimmered on the stone window-sill.
Night was over.
Cal rose quickly and set on her bed. She ran her fingers through the tangles of her copper hair and peered around the room. She could see little, but Cal had always lived in the half-dark. A world of shadow she now made ready to escape.
She reached for the earthenware jug standing on the floor by the bed, tipped it carefully and thrust her arm inside, pulling out a fistful of knotted twine. Cal worried about what her father would do when he found she'd gone. The handful of twine was her message, explaining why she had to leave. But would he understand? Cal remembered his recent words, ']"I love you more than breath itself, little spinner," and she knew it was true. But how could you really love someone and keep secrets; secrets that hurt so much?
"I will come back," Cal insisted silently to herself. "It's not for ever, but I have to go."
On an upturned crate beside the bed was a large shell bowl containing Cal's treasures. Her fingers found a bronze bracelet with three amber beads. Hurriedly she slipped it onto her wrist. There too was a tiny tarnished spoon and a bone comb. Her father had bargained for them with a trader. They were pretty enough but not what she was looking for. She took out a fragment of pottery. On the rim a painted bird was flying in a smudge of blue sky. Cal put her thumb on the bird's body, as she had done many times before, and felt the indentation of the potter's thumbprint, only a little bigger than her own. She put the wedge of broken clay into a small woven beg, surprised at how important these touchstones suddenly seemed, now that she was about to leave everything familiar behind.
Nothing will be the same again, she thought and felt a tremor of fear and excitement. Whatever she might discover in the day ahead, Cal was certain she would return changed somehow.
Last she picked out a triangular shard of mirror glass and took it to the window. Although it was badly scratched and the light still weak, Cal could make out a scrap of her reflection: a narrow green eye with red lashes, a cattier of freckles on her creamy cheek and the side of her long lose. She pushed her lips.
"No", "I want to see all of me," she said in a low voice, not just a part any more. I need to know who I am, where I came from. "If father won't tell me I'll find out for myself." Cal tightened the drawstring bag and fixed to a plaited belt around her waist, then reached instinctively to her throat for the crystal teardrop pendant she always wore. It had belonged to her mother. She paused, curling her fingers around the pendant in the very place her mother's finger must have held it, imagining a tiny pulse flowing from one hand to the other. Passing through the absence between them. Pulsing from heart to heart. What more did they share? Cal had to find out. Did her mother have the same russet hair with it's curious glints of silver? Did she have Cal's rare skin with injured creatures? Was her mind constently restless with questions? Cal was certain there must be somebody, somewhere, who would tell her. Someone who could remember what her father found too painful to recall. Cal took one last look around her room. Under the bed was a plain, wooden box. This had belong to her mother too, but it was locked and neither Cal nor Pelin, her father, had ever found a key. She sighed. If only it were smaller she would take it.
"No," she told herself firmly, "I won't be locked out any more. I'll find my own key."
Turning her back on the box she began to move silently along the passage toward her father's room. Pelin lay asleep, with his back to the doorway. Cal gazed at him. She remembered the time she'd slept there as a child, folded in his arms. On those nights, when she had cried for her mother, he'd held her close and the spell of his whispered words had comforted her. Now Cal was older, she had learnt to cry to herself. She didn't want his comfort or protection. It stifled her, imprisoned her. Pelin muttered restlessly. Cal's eyes prickled. She chewed her lip. For all her resolve she hated to hurt him. She didn't dare go into his room to even whisper goodbye for fear of waking him. Quickly she turned away and slipped down the staircase and across the hall.
Early light dappled the flagstones. She hesitated, clutching the little bag hanging from her belt, and steadied her nerve.Suddenly Cal sensed she was not alone. She spun around... Pelin appeared at the top of of the stairs. "Where are you going? It's so early." He looked confused. Cal wasn't prepared for this. Now she would have to lie. "I'm going to the over breath.I couldn't sleep."
"But you can't go alone," said Pelin, yawning and descending the stairs. "Let's eat first and then I'll go with you."
Cal moved nearer the threshold . "I can go alone, father, all the other my age do."
"I don't care what the others do, Calypsia." Pelin's voice sharpened. "You're not like them." Cal sighed. How many times had she heard those words before? They were always the beginning of an exasperating exchange that went nowhere. Still, she couldn't stop herself from asking, "why aren't I like the others?" Pelin didn't answer. He reached for the stone bench, draped in sealskin, and sank down upon it. Leaning forward, he rested his head in his hands.
'What dose that mean, "not like the others"?' Cal persisted. "It's not safe for you," said Pelin. "I'm afraid that - that there are--" "What are you afraid of?" Cal interrupted. "You must tell me." "I can't say. You have to trust me. It's not safe." "No!" Cal snapped. "I am old enough. You must trust me now."
Pelin knew she was right. Cal wasn't a child any more. She needed the fingers of his hand along with her own to count the times they'd watched the Great Migration. And how long before she stopped reaching out for his hand? He'd been a fool over-protecting her. Pelin was seized with panic at the taught of letting her go. He wasn't ready. He wouldn't let her slip away like this - hadn't prepared her for what might be waiting, out there, beyond his watchful eye...
"I promised your mother," he Sid softly. Cal felt her throat tighten. A shaft of light slipped through the window and sliced across the hall, trembling between father and daughter. Neither spoke. Why now? Cal taught. When I am just about to go? Then she dared hope. Maybe he is ready to speak, baby I won't have to go at all.
When Cal was little she had often asked when her mother, Syllable's, would come home. But Pelin had always avoided answering her questions, promising to tell her one day - a day that never arrived. Cal's young mind had been unable to grasp that there might be leaving without a return. She would arrange her playthings, hoping to please Sylla when she came back, quizzing her father about when it would be. She made gifts for her mother, threading beads and collecting stones. Then, one evening, she caught Pelin wiping tears from his eyes as he watched her and, without words, she understood what he could never tell her. Something of the darkness Cal felt inside that night had never left her. From then on she learnt not to upset her father with questions, although it hurts not to ask. But now, maybe this was a chance to coax some memory from him.
Cal move toward her father. Gently he pulled his hands away from his face. "What did you promised my mother?" she asked.
Pelin struggled. He had made a promise to Syllable's when she told him she was dying. If he broke it he would lose faith in with her. It was unthinkable. Yet if he didn't break it and tell their daughter now of the danger she might face how how could he protect her? Hadn't he promised to do that too? But that was not all that troubled him. There were other secrets - deeper secrets overheard, words he had tried to forget, knowledge so bothersome it was almost unbearable...
"Help me," Pelin gasped. His voice sounded strange to Cal. She knew at once his words were not spoken to her. Cal watched her father sink his head once more upon his heads.
"Tell me," she shouted desperately. "I have the right to know! Tell me something! Tell me!"
But Pelin did not look up. Cal cried out in frustration and turn away from him, towards whatever lay beyond. Her tail flashed dangerously as she passed through the rippling curtain of light. Without glancing back she swam off through the sunken village.