Chapter 3
Mebre kept her head down and the spoon in motion. Swallowing down each bite barely aware of the flavor. She had shelter for the night and a meal, she was thankful for that, but she dreaded the dawn.
“Slow down sweet thing, we’re not going to take the bowl from you.” Zayaf’s voice carried kindness undercut by heavy concern.
Mebre didn’t slow. She’d been lucky to find food at the Captain’s and this meal felt like too much to count on. She had no way of knowing how long her unluckiness would last once she was reduced to foraging on her own.
“If you’re hungry,” Zayaf’s words accompanied a gentle hand coming to rest on Mebre’s shoulder. “There’s plenty more, you can have another bowl.”
Mebre swallowed and looked up at Zayaf. The woman was smiling back at her, wrinkles gathering at her eyes. She looked to be about Ma’s age, a few gray hairs stood out among the straight black roots pulled back into a braid.
“Thank you.” Mebre said, managing to smile back. Then she turned to Beylem, who sat, leaning back in a big wooden chair packing tobacco into the bowl of a white clay pipe. “And you too.” She hoped her earnestness came through. “You’ve both been very kind. I don’t know how I can repay you.”
“Repay?” Beylem scoffed. “How could you repay? You’re from Hyr Golos, right? So you’ve got no money.”
“Beylem.”
He ignored Zayaf’s plea. “So with no money and no family… other than empty promises, how do you intend to repay?”
Mebre grimaced at his words but she had no retort. He was right that empty promises were the currency of Hyr Golos. Half the fishermen in Golos owed Pa for repairs, and few of them ever even showed up with more than a copper or two to pay down what they owed. Those that didn’t sometimes offered to move crates, or man the bellows. The workshop had stayed busy because he kept taking on new work. He’d say that was part of being in a hyr. If he refused to fix their gear they couldn’t work, if they couldn’t work their kids went hungry and the hyr suffered.
“I could work for you. Earn my keep. Pa taught me to work since I was young.” She showed her hands, not the lumpy mass of callouses Pa would wrap around a hammer, but they were stronger than some of the hyr boys.
Beylem let out a coughing laugh and a half formed cloud of smoke.
“That’s a great idea,” Zayaf cut in. “Tomorrow you take her down to the boat and find some work she can do.”
“Work on the boat?” Incredulity dripped from Beylem’s question.
“Give her a chance. Why not?” Zayaf’s grip on Mebre’s shoulder tightened but lost none of its gentleness.
“If Hyr Golos folk knew how to work, you think they’d be as coinless as a school of fish?”
Zayaf answered with an unbreaking stare and silence.
Beylem puffed on his pipe.
“Fine. But if she’s more trouble than she’s worth, that’s that.”
“I can carry my weight,” Mebre said. Then, not liking the lack of conviction in her voice, she added, “You’ll see!”
Beylem leaned forward in his chair and took the pipe bit from between his teeth. “Your words aren’t worth much to me.” He puffed once. “They might impress the others left in Hyr Yugehn, but they’re mostly drunks and debaucherers.”
Mebre straightened in her seat, attentive to possibilities. “There are others?”
“I know of a couple handful, fishermen and taverns staff mostly along with much of the Wave Driver’s crew.” A quick drag on the pipe. “They came ashore the night everybo…” He paused, his eyes flicked over to a closed door on the other side of the room. “The night it happened.” He finished with a long pull of smoke and a crackling of pipe embers.
“In Hyr Golos there’s pretty much nobody, or if there were, the earthquake brought their houses down on them.” Mebre knew the sad fact of that last point, but she didn’t want to dwell on it, she was just thankful that she’d been out looking for Ma and Pa when everything started shaking and swaying.
“Mebre, dear, what do you mean by ‘pretty much nobody’? There were some?” Zayaf asked in a soft voice.
“I met some clammers, but I ran.”
Beylem tapped out some ashes from the bowl of his pipe. “And so you came here hoping for decent folk.” He was pointedly not looking in Zayaf’s direction. “You might hate to hear this, but you should thank the stars you’re here.” He lit a splinter in the oil lamp and held it up over the pipe opening, drawing it in, reigniting his smoke. “It could be worse, much worse.”
Mebre didn’t think she wanted to show gratitude to the stars at that moment.
Zayaf patted Mebre on the back. “Do you want some more soup, dearie? Or if you’d prefer I picked some fresh figs this morning.”
Ma loved figs. Early autumn, despite the rains soon to follow, was when Ma’s smile was most common. She’d wake Mebre before dawn to find trees still unpicked by the other hyr families. They’d eat some on the way back but once home, she made sure Pa and Rahim got an equal share.
“Figs please.”
A big smile creased Zayaf’s face before she walked over to the kitchen. The house was quite a bit larger than the one Mebre grew up in. Back home they’d had to move the table aside every night to make space for sleeping. The interior of Zayaf and Beylem’s home, not even including whatever lay beyond the two doors she could see, would have contained the whole of Mebre’s home plus Pa’s workshop. Her eyes scanned around in admiration of the space and solidity of the building. She caught Beylem’s gaze behind a wispy curtain of smoke, he was watching her.
“This is a really nice house.”
“Thank you.” He said before drawing in more smoke. “Don’t get too comfortable with it.” He said through a fresh cloud.
Zayaf cleared her throat as she approached with a plate of quartered figs. “Tell us about your Pa, Mebre.” she said, putting the dish down in front of Mebre. “About your family, before the…” She left the last part unfinished.
Mebre felt a quick shiver rise through her at the unsaid mention. She didn’t want to think of that either. She’d been running from that reality and just then she was in a place where she could ignore it, for the moment.
“Pa ran a workshop, where he fixed the fisherman’s gear.” Mebre began.
Beylem came forward, elbows on the table, blowing out a stream of gray mist. “Your Pa didn’t even work the sea?”
“Beylem, give her a chance!”
He threw up his hands and leaned back with a dismissive shake of his head.
Her whole life she’d been told her family was low because Pa worked on land. She’d scrapped with plenty of fisherman’s sons who learned to keep such opinions to themselves.
“That’s right, and without his work, there’s plenty of other men who’d have been stuck on land when their gear broke.” Mebre knew she should rein in her snarl, but it was a hard leak to plug. “And even more, Ma came from the mountain. She ain’t ever seen a tide or seagull til she came home with my brother in her belly. But we’re Hyr Golos in our bones!” Mebre’s hand crashed down on the table making the plate jump. “You wanna call my family saltless? I’ve heard it plenty, but my family’s salt comes from our work, our sweat. We make it, we don’t just float on it.”
“We’ll see.” Beylem said, the contents of his pipe bowl glowing red. “We’ll see.”
What are your thoughts on this chapter? I feel like this is where the first real "arc" of the story comes into focus, but there is groundwork being laid for other big things. It was easiest and most fun to get into Mebre's shoes for this one. Beylem was a challenge. He's a character who is very different from myself, yet with time I found myself understanding and even admiring him in some ways. Writing him is work, but I feel like it makes me better