The Breath -Sixth Whale Book 1

*13*

As the morning gloom filtered in through the windows, Vern found himself getting up early like normal and wandered downstairs into the cabin's main room. Nobody else had woken yet and he found it oddly peaceful. Mae hadn't turned up yet and he secretly hoped that she wouldn't. Something about the girl scared the living daylights out of him. Not to mention how she and Shae argued, it made Vern feel incredibly lucky not to have any siblings.

He opened the pantry and weighed out some flour and yeast from the sacks and found some oil in the very back. He placed these on the table and went to fetch some water which he measured into a metal pan. Gently heating in it his palm until the icy liquid became lukewarm. With the dough ready to rise, Vern covered it and decided to head outside for a brief walk while he waited. 

Since the healing, as it had become known what's all, he seemed to be doing, waiting. He'd practice the barriers and was able to hold one over the cabin for at least two hours. It did amaze him that despite the Witchfathers barely conscious state the barrier over the halves never wavered for a second.  Other things had changed, The Halves had become stained with the pungent stench of the funeral pyres, It was hard to imagine that the smell would ever fade from the ramshackle wooden building. Not only that but Thandre had become some kind of Idol to Ofrin's followers, people were worshipping him now. Offerings of food and clothing were being left outside the cabin on a near-daily basis. Vern would bring those in when he returned.

The Halves was always thronging with people, but in the earliest hours of the morning there was a wonderful stillness and Vern always felt like it was a brief moment of peace just for him. This morning though that peace was disturbed as he wandered aimlessly through the streets he nearly walked into a beautiful young woman with midnight hair pinned up and lips painted a vibrant red. Her eyes were decorated with gold and when he met her eyes as she looked up through her thick black lashes he realised who he was looking at and the sign she was collecting from the street. Vern was thankful that the blood rushing to his face was barely visible on his umber skin. The dark brown offering the perfect disguise for his embarrassment. 

Mae glared at him and suddenly his blood ran cold and his life flashed before his eyes. It wasn't, with the exception of, the last four days or so all that eventful.

" If you tell Shae, you're dead." Mae offered no other information and she picked up the sign to Madame Vines house of women and hurried back inside. Vern wondered if perhaps she was going to kill him in his sleep, or perhaps poison his food. He couldn't put any of it past her. There was something about the encounter that felt deeply wrong. He just didn't know what. It might have just been that for a second he'd thought of Mae as the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen.

He ran a hand through his midnight hair and decided that nobody would ever know about any of this. He kept walking on, and when he was coming back he saw Mae, make-up and gown gone walking with Gilly. This time he kept well out of the way, but he couldn't help but notice how her normally cold eyes twinkled she she looked up at the giant of a man next to her. He had dipped into a small cut-through and waited until they were long gone before rushing back to the cabin. He suddenly felt like he knew far more about Mae than he'd ever wanted to know and very possibly more than Shae knew. It was not a comfortable feeling.

He wasn't surprised that upon returning to the cabin the number of offerings had grown. He was pleasantly surprised as he bought them in to discover butter and honey. Neither were easily available within the halves due to the lack of bees, grass and cows. With tensions between them and the city so high it was remarkable that someone had sourced it. He thought of his bread and grinned. Fresh bread and butter, now thank was something to be happy about. Vern had been worrying a lot about the possibilities of a food shortage within the Halves. Sure everyone grew what they could in little window boxes and the few lucky ones with yards and flat roofs kept pigeons and chickens, but it wasn't an area that could easily produce its own food. If someone really wanted to kill the witches They'd just have to wait till they starved to death.