Daughter of Azeroth

42 | DA LIGHT BE WORKIN' IN MYSTERIOUS WAYS

Idira woke parched and perspiring. She peeled off her blanket and emerged from the house's suffocating heat to find the sun already high in the sky. Heat waves shimmered on the horizon, making the distant hills waver, their low ridges distorting in the broiling air. Unambi nodded at her as she passed him on her way to the well. Clad only in his kilt, he crouched in the shade of one of the acacia trees, sharpening one of the knives he had brought from the ship's galley.

She hoisted up a bucket of water and filled the wooden cup that hung from the hook on the beam supporting the well's roof. It had hung there ever since they'd left all those years ago. It might have needed a good cleaning, but otherwise, it was as if she had never been gone, the intervening years irrelevant. She drank, marvelling at the icy coldness of the water when the air was so hot. In a rare moment of fatherliness, Papa had once said he believed the well tapped into an aquifer fed by the mountains' glaciers. She refilled the cup and brought it to Unambi. He took it with a nod, drinking as she eyed the stove, wondering anew if they would be able to salvage it. It looked clean, very clean, better than she ever remembered it. She opened the latch to the fuel chamber and looked inside. It was spotless. She glanced at him, astonished. He got up, hefted it under one arm and carried it across the yard, the door to its fuel chamber hanging open, swinging back and forth as he lurched up the porch's steps.

It took longer than she expected to get the stove back into place and the pipes properly connected. When Unambi finally lit it, the house filled with smoke. With a muffled curse, he doused the kindled flames and went up onto the roof, holding a long stick. Straddling the roof's peak, he probed the chimney pipe, working to free an old bird's nest lodged halfway down. Bits of branches and feathers rained down onto Idira, sticking to her hair. He slipped a little and her heart juddered, dread gnawing at her. He righted himself in time but from then on, Idira couldn't stop herself from fretting. She hopped from one foot to the other, eyeing the treacherous slates, calling to him, warning him, terrified she might lose him too. He must have known, because when he was done he came down and without saying a word, gathered her up into his arms and rocked her back and forth, singing a little troll song to her. She clung to him, letting him stroke her hair as she mourned Myra, Benny, Kip, and Vanessa. She even cried for the books she had had to abandon in Moonbrook, to moulder in the darkness, unloved.

Over the next few days Idira didn't accomplish much, now her ordeal was finally over, she succumbed to an overwhelming fatigue. She would fall asleep laying on a blanket under the trees, sleepy from the heat and the warmth of the sunlight dappling her pale skin. Unambi didn't say much, he kept himself busy working in silence, lost in his thoughts, distant. Idira left him alone. She understood. He needed time to himself as well. Too much had happened over the years without either of them ever having the time or space to come to terms with their many traumas. Now her oppressor had fallen, she had time to grieve, to reflect, and to heal. The months spent in the darkness, locked in tight confinement had done something to her, robbed her of something, she could feel the lack within herself, a hollowness. She hoped it would come back, with time.

Whenever she wasn't sleeping, she spent her time sitting at the top of the cliff path, looking out over the sea, her legs dangling over the edge, savouring the wind in her hair and the sun on her body. Sometimes her murloc friend came to sit with her, burbling to himself as he looked at the sea, happy just to be. His joyful presence warmed Idira's shattered heart, bringing life back into her soul. Each morning she rose to find a fresh-caught gift waiting on the doorstep; fish, squid, crab, once, a woven seagrass basket full of clams.

After a week spent idling, Idira felt herself growing restless; feelings of anger and resentment began to plague her. Unambi said keeping busy was the best way to move on from the 'bad tings'. He offered to give her little tasks, things to occupy her mind, which would also help him in his work. The first task he gave her was to collect seashells. For three days she scoured the beach, helped by the murloc, carrying back whatever she could find gathered into a linen towel.