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Still, it had made it farther than last time. I just needed more power, more control.
Something to work on.
“Hey oh!” The voice called behind me in that familiar lilt, the sound of stomping feet following right behind. All of my magic was still rushing over my skin as I turned, fingers flicking as more sand rose into the air.
The man who was trudging his way through the beach grass to meet me barely noticed, he simply looked up, his sun-weathered features crinkling together.
“Ya lookin’ fer a fare, you jus’ mist it. They pullin’ em all in. We came from up nearin’ Fyrnd o’ the water. All pult in, they are.” He was still smiling, his hands gesturing wildly as he spoke.
“I came down from ma Qit, Waide o’ the water,” I responded, pulling my voice into the Wave Walker slang. “They be pullin’ in there too.”
He nodded, rubbing his beard as he stared. I was well aware I wasn’t dressed as I usually was, or how they would usually see a walker dress. He wore soft cotton breeches and a shirt that was coated with salt and bleached from the sun. I was clad in heavy leathers and boots to my thigh, my knives and pouches strapped over waist and chest and disclosed behind my heavy cloak. I was dressed for travel and battle, not for working the waters.
It was clear that though I may speak like him, I was not like him. At least I had cleaned most of the blood and dirt off last night after yet another ferry had pulled in before I could reach them.
“Do ya be knowin’ why?” he asked, still looking me up and down. I resisted the urge to look, I hadn’t exactly been prepared for this man to make an appearance and for all I knew my knives, or worse, were on full display.
I shook my head, taking the opportunity to glance at what he was staring at. Sure enough, a blade glinted there. I pulled my cloak around the sharp curve of the dagger as I spoke, well aware the sea water hadn’t cleaned the blade as well as I would have hoped.
“I don’,” I shook my head more fervently.
“Hmmm,” he stopped looking at where my blade had been, his lips pulled taught beneath the beard as he tried to decide if I was trustworthy.
“Well, we be havin’ a fire up near ta road. We has some chick’n and a bit of tates some’un snatched near’in a farm back a’ways. You wel’com to it.” It looked as though I passed the test, although he gave me yet another look, his eyes dragging over every inch of me before he turned, stomping his way back through the beach grass.
“I be thank’in ya,” I answered, following behind even as I hid and resecured blades and anything else I had on me. It was then that I saw what he really had been staring at. It wasn’t the blades, it was the blood stains near the hem of my cloak, the fabric was sopping wet from standing in the waves, which had also released some of the bright red and deep indigo tendrils that dripped down and stained the sand.
Well, if he decided I was trustworthy after seeing that, it could either mean that he had seen worse, or that he assumed he and whoever else he was traveling with could take me.
I could only hope it was the former. There was enough time to pull in the Qits, which meant there was enough time to put a price on my head. I kept my magic pulled tight against my skin as I stomped my way through the last of the beach grass before we reached the small camp he and a few others had made; two other Wave Walkers were approaching from the other side.
“Foun’ him near’in the higher pier!” My companion yelled to the other, gesturing to me as they all turned.
“This one was near’in da ferry from da road.” The other one said as he and his companion approached, everyone turning and nodding to the two of us.
There were five of them in total, six with the other newcomer. Seven with me. Luckily, they all seemed tired and worn from days of travel, their clothes were wet in places as if they too had stood in the surf and watched their connection to their homes fade into the distance.
Names were exchanged as the fire was stoked; potatoes thrown in the dirt near the flames as someone put a pot of sea water nearby to boil. A bloody bag set on the side of the pit was only big enough for a small chicken, not enough for this many men, but I was sure we had all lived off less.
The way it sat there, the blood oozing through the fabric, it brought back way too many memories of the heads I had plucked from the Fae. Of all the blood that has seeped from them.
Of the blood that had seeped from Theadore.
I had been working to find my way back to Jayse, to explain, but sitting there, watching that blood ooze over sand was bringing it all back.
Except he wasn’t a Fae. He didn’t bleed with that pungent purple blood of the Fae. If he was Fae, then that would mean I was part Fae, which was impossible. I was a Catalyst, I held the power of a Sypher, but certainly not a Fae.
Because my great grandfather was not a Fae. He had said as much.
I had felt that buzzing pull with him, but the pull of his magic that I had felt from him was wrong, as was the magic that now throbbed through my veins. He had no point in his ears, his hair was brown and shorn short… but yet…
“I am... but not.”
It still didn’t make sense. Yet, I sat there, his magic buzzing through me. Magic that he has used without a Catalyst, which could only mean that he was Fae.
Fae magic.
I sat up straighter as someone laughed from where they were sitting on the other side of the fire, their conversation nothing but noise as my own thoughts ran through realities that shouldn't be.
