A Trip To Tuanaki

Chapter 5

As their carriage rolls away from Hidden Springs, Alice pulls her feet up onto the bench in front of her and hugs them to her chest. "You alright?" Mal asks.

She shrugs. "I hadn't ever really thought about what I would do if I ended up here. Well, I never knew I'd be here precisely, but you know what I mean. I'm not sure what to do. I spent four years..."

Mal glances at her sidelong, trying to read something in her face that he doesn't find there. "I thought humans' coming-of-age was eighteen."

Alice looks up. It takes her some effort to draw her attention back into the present, but she manages to direct it towards Mal. "Elves' isn't?"

"Normally you don't make your own way to quite this extent until you're twenty-five. But then, there's usually a decade of training that precedes it..."

"So you haven't been at this as long as I thought."

"Depends on how you define this," Mal says. "Captaining my own merchant airship? No, not very long. But only because it took years for me to pay off the debt from my leg. I never actually had a real elven coming-of-age."

"Because you're only half elf?"

Mal bristles a little. The comment is making things he'd much rather forget resurface — things he had thought he'd already forgotten. "No, not because of that," he says, although the truth is he'll never know if he would've gotten a proper elnyar. "My entire enclave was killed in a flood."

"Enclave?"

"It's like a — well, the closest human analogy would be a city, but that wouldn't give you any proper idea of what it really looks like. Perhaps tribe would be closer, but that has certain connotations..."

"Oh," Alice says. "I'm sorry they died."

Mal shrugs. "It was a flood, what, fifteen years ago now? I've moved on."

"Still, it can be hard, to lose people."

Mal looks at her differently. "Who have you lost?"

"Not lost anyone, per se, just... left them behind."

"That's different."

"Is it really? When going back isn't an option?"

"It's always an option," Mal says. "Might not be a very good option, but it's always there. And when you've run out of others..."

"You don't understand," she says, curling herself into an even tighter fetal position. "I can't go back. And I know that sounds stupid — I was just a kid when I ran away, it's been a few years, surely they'll let me come home. And believe you me, I wish it were that simple. But it's not. And it's never going to be, either. I'll put it this way. The only way I'm getting anywhere near that house ever again is if it's in a box, and even then I'm as likely to be fed to the pigs as buried respectably."

"You don't have to defend yourself to me," Mal says. "I was just seeing if you'd thought out all your options. In case there was anywhere I could drop you."

"Other than the docks, you mean?"

"Look, I'm just trying to help you out. If you don't wanna get dropped somewhere, don't. I'll be getting out there, so you have until we get there to redirect us."

"No, no," Alice says. "I'll go to the docks. I'd really love to hire on with a ship... but this doesn't seem quite the town for that, so I'll have to see who's going where. What about you? Where will you go next?"

"Depends what cargo there is to be had," Mal says idly. "We were making our way west before you dragged us up here... Maybe we'll go back, see if we can get a real cargo out of Benny, and not just another favor."