Shepherd’s End
1001–1010 AC
Xalati & Ixtalan
Papa was proud of his boat. The Wind Jewel had been in the family for at least two generations, and while the styling was archaic—it lacked some of the fancier clockwork gears and tools the newer models supported—he would smile if that came up and say, “But I can fix most things on my boat with just a hammer and wrench.”
Her first memories of the boat mostly involved her father and aunt stepping off it at the end of the day, tired and bearing baskets piled high with fish shining silver. In later years, when the setting sun and the increasing size of the triangular green sail heralded its approach, she would race Tala and Sal to the end of the dock; the winner got bragging rights and the first catch to reach land, tossed to them by Papa, while the second person just got the line to tie up the boat. They always ate that catch later, though half the time when Tala got it she would crunch it down whole and raw, guts, bones and all. She only stopped when one of the fish happened to have a fishhook inside it, which necessitated a gory trip to Physicker Teredian and turned a streak of Papa’s hair white. (After they’d both stopped crying, it also earned her the moniker of Fish forever after.)
Papa took them out on their first full day fishing trip when they were seven, after Auntie Tezha married a city girl and moved away from Shepherd’s End. He coached them in his low, even voice on how to pull up the sail, which knots worked best for which purpose, where the fish liked to school in the harbor and what areas to avoid for the hidden rocks, how to cast a net so the weighted edges spread and sank evenly. They already knew how to gut fish, but he showed them how tossing the offal overboard could bring in more fish for the nets, and how to scare away predators that might be drawn to the blood. It was a full day, that one, and they were nearly asleep with exhaustion by the time they returned.
He didn’t take them out regularly for full days, but half days - before Teaching hours - became frequent, and he often praised them for their hard work and willingness to help out. Sometimes, on slow days when the fish weren’t schooling, they entertained themselves by learning how to spear-fish, losing two harpoons before an exasperated Ximal told them they could only keep doing it if they bought the harpoons themselves. That stopped it - who would buy harpoons when they could spend their allowance on candy and picture books, the flimsy kind with the exciting stories about Captain Wolfheart and the Wolfpack?
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