Marked By Tide

Chapter 11 - The First Friend

Nerida's POV

I am sitting up.

I do not know what day it is, exactly. Paloma has told me it is the fourth day since I came in, which would make it Saturday by my count, and Saturday makes sense from the light because the light is the kind of light Saturday has — the kind that does not rush, the kind that knows nobody is going anywhere.

I am sitting up against the pillows Paloma propped behind me an hour ago, and the wound at my side hurts only when I move the wrong way, and the wound on my arm has closed under the gauze in a way that Paloma says is *very satisfying for the timeline*, which is the closest thing to a compliment Paloma gives. I am wearing a clean shirt that is too big for me — somebody's, possibly Paloma's husband from years ago, possibly Soren's or Cassian's from when they were younger. It is soft. It is the softest thing that has been against my skin in five years and I keep noticing the softness in a way that I am going to have to stop noticing eventually because the noticing is making my face do things I cannot afford to have my face do in front of Paloma.

I have a book in my lap. Paloma gave it to me yesterday. It is a small worn book of poems and the poems are short and I have been reading them one at a time, slowly, the way you read when you have not been allowed to read for pleasure in a long time and the muscle for it has gone slack.

I am two poems into the morning when the door to the front room opens without knocking.

I look up.

I expect Paloma. The door does not give me Paloma. The door gives me —

A girl.

She is sixteen, I know immediately, because Juno told me she would be sixteen. She is shorter than Juno and shorter than Paloma and shorter than I think I am, but not by very much. She has dark hair that has been braided in a hurry — the braid loose and a little crooked, the small fly-aways at her temples suggesting she walked here fast. She is wearing a green sweater and faded jeans and a leather cord around her neck with something small at the end of it I cannot see clearly from here. She has Juno's mouth. She has Juno's nose.

She has none of Juno's quiet.

She walks into the room the way a person walks into a room they have decided is theirs, and she stops three feet from the foot of my bed, and she puts her hands on her hips, and she looks at me.

She says: "Hi. I'm Tamsin. I'm sixteen. I'm the sister of the idiots who carried you in."

I open my mouth.

Nothing comes out.

She continues, without waiting: "My mother told me I was not allowed to come in here until you were strong enough to have a conversation, and you look strong enough now, so I'm here." She tips her head sideways. "Tell me to leave and I will. I won't even be mad. I'll come back tomorrow."

I do not tell her to leave.

I cannot tell her to leave. I have not been spoken to by another person my own age in five years — possibly longer, the friends I had in school all stopped being my friends within eighteen months of Jareth becoming my guardian, because Jareth did not approve of the friends and the friends did not approve of Jareth and the math of those two things eventually worked out the way the math always works out — and the experience of being addressed by a girl who is two years younger than me but is, I can tell already, going to be the most direct conversational presence I have encountered in my adult life, is doing something to my brain I cannot manage in real time.

I say, in a voice that comes out smaller than I want it to: "Please don't leave."

Tamsin's face does a thing.

It is not a big thing. It is the smallest of upward-corner shifts at her mouth, the kind that means *good, I have been hoping for that answer, I am not going to make you do anything else to earn it*. She moves to the chair beside the bed — the chair, *that* chair, the chair Cassian was in, the chair Paloma has been in, the chair Juno was in two mornings ago — and she sits.

She does not ask permission.

I notice that I do not mind.

She says: "Good. I brought snacks. The healing room food is medical and I figured you'd want something Paloma didn't make."

She starts producing things from her pockets.

I watch her do it.

It is the funniest thing I have seen in five years and I am not yet able to laugh at it but I am *registering* it as funny in a part of my brain that has not registered things as funny in a long time. She pulls out a piece of bread wrapped in a checkered cloth. She pulls out a small jar of honey. She pulls out two apples — different colors, one red, one yellow-green. She pulls out a piece of dried fish that is wrapped in waxed paper and is, I am pretty sure, larger than her hand. She produces it like a magician producing a rabbit and looks at me to see what I think of the dried fish.

I look at the dried fish.

I look at her.

She says: "You don't have to eat it. I brought it because we keep it in the family kitchen and I grabbed everything I could find. You can pass. I won't be offended. The dried fish is an acquired taste and you have not had time to acquire it."

I say: "I'll — pass on the fish."

She laughs.

Her laugh is — short, surprised, the kind of laugh that comes out before its owner has had time to compose it. She says: "Fine. More for me." She picks up the fish and bites a piece off and chews and says, around it: "It is genuinely terrible. We eat it because we have to. Most things in this pack are eaten because we have to."

She passes me the bread instead. She gives me the small jar of honey with it, and a butter knife she also produces from somewhere — I do not even watch her get it out, the magic act is too fast — and she says: "Spread it however you want. Eat as much as you can. Paloma is going to be cross with both of us if you do not eat at least half of it before I leave, because she has been complaining about your appetite, and if she is cross with both of us we can split the cross between us which is easier than getting all of it yourself."

I take the bread.

I take the honey.

I look at her for a long moment before I do anything with either, because the experience of being given food by another teenager who is teasing me about a healer's medical concerns is so far outside what I have lived inside the last five years that my hands have temporarily stopped knowing what they are supposed to do.

She waits.

She does not push. She just sits in the chair with her own piece of fish and she lets me get my hands moving again at whatever pace they need to move at, and the patience is — I had not expected the patience. I had expected the chaos. The girl is the chaos. The girl is also, I notice, deeply patient when she is *being* the chaos at a person who needs patience underneath, and I file that with all of the other small things I have been filing about the people in this room since I woke up.

I spread the honey on the bread.

I eat.

The bread is warm. The honey is dark and tastes like trees and wildflowers and something I do not have a name for. It is the best food I have had in five years. I do not say so. I do not have to. Tamsin watches my face and her own face does the small upward-corner shift again, the *good, I knew that would land* shift, and she leans back in the chair and bites her fish and starts talking.

---

She talks.

She talks the way I imagine people my age talk when they have known each other for years and there is no pressure on the conversation to produce anything in particular. She does not ask me questions about myself. She does not ask me about the wounds. She does not ask me about my brother or my hometown or how I got to the border in the first place. She just — *talks*, sideways, irreverent, full of asides about people I do not know yet, and she lets the talking be the gift it is.

I learn, in the first ten minutes:

That her brothers are *idiots*, which is a word she uses about them with affection, the way a sister uses *idiots* when she has decided her brothers are competent in the ways that matter and incompetent in the ways that do not. That her brothers are *fraternal twins*, not identical, which I had been working out for myself since Wednesday but had not had confirmed. That Cassian is *the older one by eight minutes and he never lets Soren forget it*. That Soren is *the smarter one by exactly the same amount and Cassian is fine with it because Cassian's whole thing is being okay with everything he is not the best at*. That her mother is *the actual person who runs this place*, which I file with a question mark beside it because Juno had introduced herself as the wife of the man who runs this place, and the implication of *actual* in Tamsin's sentence is a thing I am going to have to ask Juno about eventually but not today. That her father is *not a person you would expect him to be*, which Tamsin says with the slight roll of the eyes a teenage daughter does at a beloved father, and which makes me think I might be able to manage meeting him eventually.

She tells me about Paloma.

She says: "Paloma has been my mother's best friend since they were both younger than I am. Paloma delivered Cassian and Soren and me. Paloma has been the healer here for forty-six years. Paloma is the second-most-feared person in this community after my mother. *Everyone* respects Paloma. *Nobody* messes with Paloma. If Paloma tells you to eat your bread, you eat your bread."

I eat the bread.

Tamsin laughs again.

---

She tells me about her brothers.

She does it carefully. I see her doing it. She is choosing her sentences the way a person chooses sentences when there is information in the room she has been told not to bring up directly, and she is going to talk around the information instead. She says: "My brothers are good men. Very good men. The pack is going to be a better place under them when they take over from my dad in a year or two. I love them. I would, however, die for either of you if you decided to be cross with one of them, because they are also *deeply* dumb about anything to do with feelings, and especially deeply dumb about anything to do with their *own* feelings, and the next year of their lives is going to be them making the same five mistakes in rotation. I am telling you this now because you should know going in."

I look at her.

She does not say *going in* to *what*. She lets the *what* sit between us, blank and significant, and she watches my face to see how much I have figured out.

I have figured out — *not much*.

I have figured out that the men who carried me in have not been allowed to come in here, and that they have *wanted* to come in here, and that the not-allowing is something the family has agreed on, and the agreeing has been done in rooms I have not been in. I have figured out that Tamsin has been told not to push me too hard about her brothers, and that her *going in* sentence has, on the other side of it, a thing she is not saying. I do not know what the thing she is not saying *is*. I am eighteen and I have been alone for five years and the categories my life has given me for *family decides about a stranger* do not include the categories that would let me guess what she is not saying.

I have suspicions.

The suspicions are smaller than the thing she is not saying, I think. The suspicions are: that the family likes me. That the family has decided to be kind to me. That the men who carried me in want to be in this room, and the family wants them in this room too, and the only person they have all agreed has to be ready before that can happen is me.

I do not push past my own suspicions. I am out of bandwidth.

I find that I am — touched. I am *touched* that they sent Tamsin, and not one of the men. I am touched that they sent the chaos and the soft together in one person, because both of them at the same time turn out to be exactly the amount of warmth my body knows how to take this morning.

I say: "Thank you for telling me."

Tamsin says: "You are welcome."

She does not push. She does not say *do you want to know more*. She does not say *I can tell you the whole thing*. She lets the *thank you* land where it is going to land and she goes back to her fish.

---

She talks for an hour.

She tells me about the pack heart — the layout, the kitchen, the path that runs from the family quarters out to the eastern boundary. She tells me about the patrols — *they go out every six hours and you can almost set a clock by them*. She tells me about *the Roe family*, who are *good people, the daughter is my age, the father is a pain in the ass to my dad about half the time but in the way that means he is doing his job*. She tells me about a woman named *Lorelei* who she does not like, the dislike held in her face the way a thing held with both hands is held, and she does not explain the dislike and I do not ask.

She mentions her wolf in passing.

She says, mid-bite of fish: "My wolf hates this stuff too. Won't even sniff it. Mire is *picky*, which is hilarious because she will eat literally anything I drop on the floor by accident, but if I *offer* her something? Forget it. She turns into a food critic. Mom thinks she's getting it from me, which is unfair because *I* will eat the fish, I just complain about it."

She says it the way she has been saying everything — fast, irreverent, no pause to let it land.

I sit with the phrase a beat later, after she has moved on.

*My wolf.*

I file it the way I have been filing the small things. The reserve was originally created to repopulate the wolves — that is the one thing about this place I knew before I crossed the line, the thing Jareth used to talk about when the reserve came up on the news because Jareth had opinions about *government-funded sentimental land-use*. The people who live here, I had assumed in the half a second I had to assume anything about them while I was running through the trees, must be the people who do the repopulation work. Rangers. Conservationists. People who live among the wolves because the wolves are the *point*.

It makes sense, then, that each of them might have a wolf. Their wolf. The one they have raised or rehabilitated or paired with for the work. Mire is — *a wolf*. The wolf Tamsin works with, or has been raising, or is otherwise responsible for. Mire is *picky* about food, the way a strong-willed animal is picky about food, the way Tamsin is talking about her now with the easy proprietary affection of a person who has spent a great deal of time with a specific creature whose personality she knows.

It is the first piece of information about this place that has fit cleanly into something I already knew.

I say: "What kind of wolf is she."

Tamsin's face does something small. The smallest possible pause. The smallest possible recalibration. It is so quick I almost miss it. Then she is back, easy: "She's — big. Bigger than me. Grey at the shoulders, brown down the back, white at the tail. She is older than I am, technically. We grew up together. That's how it works here. Everyone has — a wolf. From very young. You're paired up early. It's the whole thing."

I say: "That sounds nice."

She says, the small pause again before the word comes out: "It is. It really is. It is the best thing about being from here."

She bites the fish.

I do not push past my own understanding. I am out of bandwidth. I have figured out a thing that fits, and the fitting is its own small relief, because most of what is in this room does not yet fit anywhere I have a category for, and a fitting thing is the closest I have come to firm ground since I woke up.

We go back to talking about the kitchen.

---

When the bread is mostly gone — I have eaten about half of it, which is more than I have eaten in any one sitting in three months — Tamsin stands up.

She says: "I have to go. My mother is going to come check on you in an hour and if I am still here when she comes she will give me a *look* that is worse than getting yelled at. She will not yell at me. The look is enough. So I'm going."

I do not want her to go.

I notice the not-wanting. It is the first time in five years I have noticed not-wanting something to do with another person near me. The not-wanting is its own small private fact, and I do not say it out loud, but my face must do something because Tamsin's face does the small upward-corner shift again and she says: "I'll be back tomorrow."

I say: "Okay."

She says: "Tell my brothers nothing. They are going to ask. Cassian especially. Cassian is going to *interrogate* me. I am going to lie about every part of this conversation. I am telling you so we have the same story. Are we good."

I say: "We are good."

She says: "Good."

She gathers her wrappers. She takes the second apple back — *for me, I will eat it on the way home* — and leaves the first apple on the table by the bed, *for later, do not let Paloma confiscate it*. She crosses to the door. She stops with her hand on the frame the way Juno did two mornings ago, and she looks back.

She says: "Nerida."

It is the first time she has used my name in the whole hour. She has been talking to me like a person she knew already and is just catching up with, the way you talk to a friend at the coffee shop. The name comes out now with a different weight.

I say: "Yes."

She says: "I'm glad you're here."

She goes.

The door closes.

---

I lie in the bed for a long time after she leaves.

The apple is on the table. The crumbs from the bread are on the blanket. The honey jar is back in my lap. The book of poems has fallen sideways onto the pillow beside me. The room smells like fresh bread for the first time since I have been in it, and the smell is making something in my chest do a slow loosening thing I have not felt for so long that I am going to have to think about it later because I cannot think about it now.

I close my eyes.

I think: *I have a friend.*

The thought is too big to be true. The thought is also the truest thing I have thought in five years. I sit with the thought. I do not push it away. I do not call it premature. I do not run the safety-check on it that I would have run on any thought like this twelve months ago, because twelve months ago a thought like this would have been the kind of thought I could not afford to have. I am — apparently — allowed to have it this morning.

I have a friend.

She is sixteen. She is the sister of the men I have not met yet. She has decided I am someone she is going to like, and she is going to come back tomorrow, and she has a wolf named Mire who refuses to eat fish but will eat anything off the floor by accident, and the having of the wolf is the first thing about this place that has made sense to me since I crossed the line.

I am — *home* is too big a word. I am not home. I am in a room in a strange place with people I do not know and a brother somewhere on the other side of the line in the trees who is going to come for me. I am not home.

I am — *somewhere*. I am somewhere I have not been before. The somewhere is not home but it is also not the house, and the not-being-the-house is the thing my chest is doing the loosening thing about, and the loosening thing is — I cannot describe it. The loosening thing is a small specific feeling I am going to need a vocabulary I do not yet have to talk about.

I open my eyes.

The cushion of the chair beside my bed has Tamsin's indent in it now.

The cushion has had a lot of indents this week.

I look at the indent. I think about who else has sat in the chair this week — Cassian first, then Paloma, then Juno, then Tamsin — and I think about the fact that *the chair* is becoming the chair *that is sat in by people I am letting be near me*, and that the chair has been sat in by four different people in four days, and that none of them have hurt me, and that the chair is the chair where, if I am being honest with myself, I have been wanting Cassian to come back.

I think about that for a long moment.

I have been wanting him to come back.

I have known him for four days. I have spoken to him exactly never. I have seen him asleep in a chair and seen the indent of his body in the cushion and learned his name from his mother and watched his sister tell me he is *very good* and *deeply dumb about anything to do with feelings*, and I have not seen his face awake and looking at me. I have not heard his voice. I do not know what his hand feels like against my own hand instead of against the blanket six inches from my hip. I do not know what his eyes look like in the daylight.

I have been wanting him to come back.

I close my eyes again.

The thought is bigger than the *friend* thought. I am not going to think about it more this morning. I am going to set it down beside the *friend* thought and the *the people here keep wolves* thought and the not-wanting-Tamsin-to-leave fact, and I am going to come back to all of them later, and I am going to sleep for an hour because the bread has used up all the energy I had stored for the morning and my body is asking me to lie down.

I lie down.

Something in my chest that has been very tight for five years loosens — not all the way, not even most of the way, but a fraction. A small fraction. The fraction is the loosest my chest has been since I was thirteen years old, and the fraction is, this morning, more than I have any right to have.

I sleep.