Chapter sixteen
Elanor sat on the front low step; her right leg extended for Derek to shackle.
The morning had been greeted by the silent truce until that point. They’d had breakfast in a mutual silence before cleaning up, then he’d said they were going to the village today. She hadn’t even protested him putting the ball and chain on though anger shown as heat on her skin.
“You don’t have to wear it.” He said voicing his thoughts clearly on his face. “If you just gave your word.”
“I will not.” She said simply.
He nodded curtly, kneeling to strap the leather and clasp the lock. Standing again, he offered a hand to help her up, she refused it, standing on her own.
He muttered under his breath about stubborn women.
She waited for him to head towards the path, saying nothing in return. After a long moment, as though baffled, he shook his head. Elanor followed him up the short path. King shot off, running ahead of them in a happy dog gallop.
She realized right away the practice inside with the ball and chain did nothing to help her outside. The dirt ground a different texture then the hard wood. The ball dragged heavier in it. With slow progress they moved deeper into the small village.
It felt awkward and all the more embarrassing then it did when alone in the house. She had to take to a limp like walk, dragging the ball behind her.
Derek walked patiently beside her, strolling as though they were taking a pleasant walk through Hyde park. She could feel the anger starting to well up again.
By the time they’d reached the village, her temper had reached proportions that she’d never felt before. Seething, she limped behind him, watching the ground unable to look at the men and women greeting Derek as they past. It wasn’t until they were well into the small village that she did look up, instantly stunned by the number of people. Her eyes darted from man, woman and even children working near huts.
She saw some of the crew of Derek’s ship standing about as well. Elanor nearly slammed into Derek’s back, not paying attention when he’d stop.
“You’re in the slave trade!” She hissed low. “How could you do something like this?”
He looked stunned, Caspin came to stand by them looking equally shocked.
“I’m not in the slave trade.”
“Then what are all these slaves doing here?” She demanded.
“They live here.” He answered. “Freely. This is their home too.”
“It’s disgusting to get something for nothing. Stealing, enslaving people for your own gain!” She yelled at him. “I can’t believe you’ve become a pirate. You know what they do to pirates when arrested, Derek? Is that why you’re hiding on this island?”
He stared hard at her. She stare right back.
Derek turned to Caspin.
“Do you see what I’ve been telling you? Proper, well behaved Inglish women do not yell and carry on like this.” Her eyes drew wide at his sudden gentleman speech. “Country living gave too many freedoms, she‘s outspoken and rude. And now you see why I need to take her in hand. Show the error of her way. Pirate! She’s accusing me of being a pirate!” Her right hand itched to slap his face. He talked as though she were a child. Only he wasn’t speaking to her.
Of course she’d always been encouraged to speak her mind. When they were growing up, it had been one of the things that he often enjoyed about her personality. Or so he said. He made her feel like she was being obnoxious now. Speaking against piracy and slavery?
“Don’t pull me into this, Mate.” Caspin said. “You’re on your own. Angry women scare me.” His attempt on humor fell on deaf ears. Elanor and Derek were squared off now.
“You have morels of a barbarian and you dare to insult me for speaking sense when sense is needed?” She shot at him.
“I dare and I intend to correct the problem. You better start acting like a proper respectable lady who doesn’t shout and make false accusations in public!” Derek returned.
“Public! We’re standing in the middle of an island!” She fumed. “You won‘t stand there lecturing me about properness when you‘re a pirate and enslaving people!”
“I am not a pirate, nor am I in the slave trade!”
“You stole my father’s ship!”
“She’s got you there, mate.” Caspin chipped in, clearly enjoying himself.
“I didn’t steal the ship. And I didn’t take anything that wasn’t mine to begin with!” He raised his voice to speak over her when she started to talk again. “Real pirates took your father’s ship. I was just at the right place, at the right time. You don’t have to stay shackled, that is your choice.”
She’d glanced around expecting people to be watching. Oddly no one but Caspin seemed interested in their shouting match. The rest of the village carried on as though nothing were out of the ordinary. If this had been anywhere else, there would have been a small crowd gathered.
She’d have her name on lips of every social elite for her behavior, right or wrong. As her Grandmother often put it, the Seeker world was a man’s domain, where in some of the magical realms it still remained that men and women were equal to each other.
She’d been distracted and now lost the last bit of the rant he’d been making. His glare told her he expected a response but she didn’t know what he’d said.
Elanor couldn‘t stand there discussing anything with him any longer in any case. She could feel the energy bubbling inside, needing to be released. And she wanted to zap him a good one with some magic. She promptly turned then, dragging the ball and chain with her; walking away from him towards the path they’d just come from.
“Where are you going?” He demanded.
“To gnaw off my leg so I don’t have to spend another minute with you!” She snapped over her shoulder. King suddenly appeared beside her, happy to accompany her.
“That’s right King, attack!”
She threw a scathing look over her shoulder before carrying on her limp march away from him. She could hear Caspin laughing. Elanor didn’t see the humor in it at all. She couldn’t believe Derek had changed so much. When he first started sailing for his father, hadn’t he been sicken by the treatment of the slaves as she had been? Hadn’t he often said if he had the means, he’d free them? When they talked about how the Elder magic users were often enslaved for their knowledge; he’d been just as disgusted by it as her.
Did profit change him?
She only had to think about what he had done to her to know the answer. He’d stolen her off her father’s ship, put a shackle on her leg and now wouldn’t let her leave. Again, the wrong kind of emotions were turning inside her. Burning her energy and building up a bubble ready to burst. Just as she could drain herself from energy; Elanor could absorb and build too much of it as well. Being one of the five elemental witches had cost. If she didn’t use it, the pulse within her, swirling, making every inch of skin tingle with life. Demanding to be expelled. Her arms rose slightly from her sides as she murmured soft words under her breath. Invoking the spirit, she used an old trick she’d often used when they were living in the Seeker realm when they were younger.
A sudden gust of wind blew down the pathway, sweeping dead dried leaves clean off it. Her hair lifted and swirled in ribbons behind her head, then whipped across her face.
No one questioned sudden gusts of wind. She continued the wind channeling spell until she felt the ease of tension. When her insides felt less tense, she released the spell. King stood off to her right, head tilted with his ears perked.
“This has to be our secret my friend. I hope I can trust you not to tell anyone.” She murmured softly to him. Animals often could sense magic better then humans. It was why the Seekers who called themselves ’witch hunters’ used them to find casters. She hadn’t heard any tales of them in some time now though. Not since her Mother was killed.
But then, magic users rarely allowed themselves to be known any more either.
It occurred to her that Derek hadn’t followed. Now that she’d found some sense of calm again, she prepared to argue with him more about moral behaviors verse outspoken women. But looking back, he wasn’t moving down the path towards her. She couldn’t see the village any longer either. A little grin slowly moved over her mouth, making her cheeks rise. She’d broken one of his silly rules already.
She had to be twenty feet away. And certainly out of his view.
Not that she could go anywhere with a ball stuck to her leg, if she tried swimming with it, she’d surely drown. But it was the principal of the thing wasn‘t it?
“How do you tolerate him, King?” She asked the dog beside her.
He nudged her hand with his great muzzle before lumbering off the path to bring back a stick. She chuckled, throwing it for him. “You endure. Yes, I see.” She sighed. She’d have to endure too until she could figure out how to get away from there.
***
The mallet slammed down over and over. Derek didn’t notice how hard he was hammering until Caspin cleared his throat.
“Cracking it defeats the purpose, Mate.”
Derek spared a glance to the board he was hammering into place on the roof; the small circles from where the mallet had hit it instead of the nail.
“Pain in the arse!” He growled.
“Just trying to help.” Caspin chuckled.
“Not you! Her,” He jabbed the mallet in Elanor’s direction. “She hasn’t moved or said a word since I went and got her. Even though she broke one of my rules, I told her she could move around the village, but has she?” He started hammering the mallet again in frustration.
“She doesn’t seem as,” A moment’s pause, “hostile, as she was earlier.” Caspin observed. Derek glanced at her again, her hand smoothing King’s shiny black coat.
He snorted. “Turning my dog against me too! I go to collect her from the path and he barked!”
Caspin laid the new plank of wood down turning to him in surprise. “Really? Was he aggressive?”
Derek shook his head. “No, she didn’t realize I was coming up behind her. She was just standing there staring off and King the big lug, he lets out a few barks. If she were planning to run away, he‘d be her look out!”
Caspin kept grinning. “He’s protecting her. That’s why I got Apollo for Leelah and the children. He’s doing his job, you should be praising him.” Caspin regarded him with a quirking expression. “You’re not jealous of your dog are you?”
The mallet lifted again, banging at the new plank and nails. Derek stopped to glare at his friend.
“I thought once we got here, she’d see. I built the house we wanted, I even have the dog we wanted.” He admitted. “Everything changed so fast when she left me, but on the ship… I don’t believe that she doesn‘t want all this anymore. I can tell Caspin. She’s just fixed on going back to Inglid. Some grand magical idea that she can find her sister. Magic can’t bring back the dead.”
“I remember when we’d sail to Inglid before she left. She was there every time. Without fail, stars in her eyes for you. Though,” Caspin chuckled. “I remember her being a timid burde, barely saying anything. I never believed you when you said she was outspoken as quiet a girl as she had been.”
Derek felt memories punch him in the stomach, recalling sailing back to Inglid and knowing she’d be there waiting for him.
He would leave to come here to build on the house and the life he would provide for them as soon as they were married. It had been almost ready that last time he’d sailed into Port. Caspin had just married Leelah and had agreed to sail one more time to Inglid to help Derek collect his own bride. That night they’d met her Grandmother to hand-fast. Then they learned about the accident.
That one night had erased everything they’d built in one fell swoop.
“She was always there waiting.” Derek repeated.
He stopped hammering, watching her again from the roof they were repairing. He glanced at his friend and sighed. “She’s not the same, not since her Mother and Sister died. She’s scared of everything and yet, not... I’ve never seen her like that. And she‘s more stubborn then she used to be.” He banged the mallet against the wood in frustration. “It hasn’t gotten better like I thought it would.” His fingers squeezed the mallet, turning his knuckles white. “She’s holding back from even seeing anything around her and she won’t be reasonable.”
“Well I can’t say you’ve been reasonable yourself, Mate.” Caspin looked up from his work.
“What?” Derek pinned his friend with a glare. “I put up with her demands all the way to the island and even gave her a chance to give her word she wouldn’t try to run away.”
Caspin shrugged. “All I’m saying is, if you want to gain a woman’s favor, you don’t shackle her leg for it. Most give flowers and presents, Mate, not chains.” Caspin shrugged his shoulders. “Unless of course, she’s asking you to but that’s a whole different kind of restraint I think.”
Derek shifted his weight, slamming the mallet down on the wood to tap it into place. “I gave that a try, gave her a choice and she left me for years, Caspin. I didn’t have time to woo or ask since she’s been hidden for that entire time. Her father wasn‘t exactly pushing her back to me or the life I’d built. I had to take her off that ship to set things right. It was the only way.” His muscles tensed, bulging them in his arms thinking about the time wasted.
“You don’t have to tell convince me. I’ve been right here helping you with the plans to do that. She’s the one you need to reach.”
“I just don’t know how to do that anymore.” Derek forced his muscles to ease, calming the coil inside his stomach with the hope of another idea possibly making Elanor come around. “Whens Leelah coming back? I was thinking another woman might make Elanor see reason. Maybe help her settle a bit.”
Caspin barked out a laugh. “You’re planning on using my wife to soften her up? Poor choice Mate, poor choice.”
Derek scowled.
“Leelah adores me.”
“Aye, she does. But I don’t know how she’s going to take the thing attached to Elanor’s leg. You know how she feels about that.”
“I think she’ll understand when I explain what’s been going on.” Derek said looking down at Elanor whom still hadn’t budged from the spot he’d left her at. Caspin chuckled at Derek’s fresh scowl.
“You hope she‘ll understand. Too bad Leelah wasn’t here for Elanor’s stand against your slave trading.” Caspin gave him a toothy grin. “She’d have warmed up to any woman brave enough to shout like that in favor of the enslaved.”
“I can’t believe she thinks I’m a pirate and a slave trader! We‘ve done some risky deals over the years, yes, I’m- we are smugglers. Pirates, no.”
“She doesn’t trust you.” Caspin reasoned again. “It’s easy to think the worst of someone you don’t trust.”
“Trust isn’t possible for either of us right now I guess.” Derek agreed.
“If neither of you trusts. Maybe that’s where you need to start.”
They pounded at the remaining nails to finish the roof. Derek knew he was right. He just wasn’t sure how to approach it with her. Before he could consider it further his friend spoke up again.
“For the record, I like her brassy side.” Caspin said, watching Elanor, finding something funny. Derek stopped hammering to stand up right to look down at her. She had a stick in her hand, waving it mouthing words he couldn‘t hear, then smacking the links with the end.
“She’s trying to provoke me.” Derek said, grunting at Caspin who belly laughed.
Caspin nodded though his words weren‘t completely agreeing.
“Since you’re clearly the one who has the upper hand right now, maybe you could be the first to bend. Give her a reason to trust you?”
They stood on the roof watching her a moment.
Derek whistled sharply to get her attention. He watched her jump and turn her head with a bounce of long brown hair. Her brown eyes sparkled with defiance, shooting him a withering look. Tossing the stick away, she didn’t watch King run to fetch it instead definitely glared up at him.
“I think I’ve got a long rocky path ahead of me on this trust idea.” Derek muttered to Caspin crouching back to the work.
“It’s funny, I was just thinking that too.”
“When’s your wife going to be here?”