Her gazelle was nuzzling in her ear, trying to calm her, but panic was rising, as sure as strangers, and everything whispered.
She saw an opportunity as he turned the lock in his hands, to safely snatch it away. For an awful moment, he instinctively held it, and she had to tug at it and she could almost feel his fingers, they were so close.
Then he opened his hand and the lock was hers again and she could retreat to her side of the shower.
“No one will ever hurt you again,” Conall repeated.
It was better, with the heavy weight of the lock in her hand. Gizelle could catch her breath again, like she had roots and could drink the earth once more. “This is the heart of my hoard.” She tucked it back away underneath the shower shelf.
“You’re... a dragon?” Conall looked understandably confused.
Gizelle shook her head. “No. But if I were, this would be it.”
She got to her feet. “Come on, I’ve shown you my hoard. Now, the rest of the island.”
Chapter 20
Conall at several points wondered if Gizelle honestly meant the entire island.
The tour she led him on was a completely different experience than prowling the resort the first evening. They didn’t spend any time at all at the sites labeled on the brochure, and very little time on the marked paths. One of their routes went right out into the jungle, over tangled roots and following no sort of trail that Conall could identify whatsoever.
They even hiked along the tree-tangled ridge of the island to the abandoned compound on the other end, staying to the edge of the overgrown lawn.
“That is where the cages are,” Gizelle said calmly. “I come visit sometimes.” But she didn’t offer to show them to Conall and he didn’t know if he should ask to see them. “I don’t eat the grass here,” she said, and then they turned and hiked back through the jungle to the resort along a completely different route.
“I don’t like the beach,” she said, leading him to one of the lawns that overlooked it. She had to repeat herself when she remembered to look at him while she spoke. “The sand is too hard to run in. But the grass here is delicious. Graham says it has to do with the salt water spray and the sun that it gets and the kind of soil. He says even less than you do.” She added that last with a thoughtful look. “Did losing your hearing make you talk less?”
She was still better at keeping her face in view when she spoke than many of Conall’s friends had been after months of reminders.
They had felt so awkward about interacting with him that after a few failed attempts at staying in contact, Conall hadn’t bothered. “I’ll call you,” they always ended a conversation, forgetting that a phone call was useless.
Conall had to laugh and he wondered if it sounded as humorless as it felt. “I guess it did,” he said honestly. “I wasn’t what you’d call chatty before the accident, but since it happened, talking can be a challenge. People don’t remember to look at me, and I can’t tell what I sound like. It’s easier being quiet.”
“I think you sound nice,” Gizelle said swiftly. “You have... sort of a fuzzy voice. Like a cat.”
Conall decided to take that as a compliment. “Thank you?”
“We don’t have any cats here, unless you count Travis and Graham and” (undoubtedly-not-) “Wrench and” (probably-not-) “Brick. No domestic cats. Except sometimes guests, but you aren’t supposed to pet the guests.” She sounded wistful.
That surprised a real laugh out of him, and Gizelle smiled slowly in reply. “I like it when you laugh,” she said.
“Then I shall endeavor to laugh as often as possible,” Conall told her gravely.
She almost laughed herself then, and leaned so close that Conall thought she was finally going to touch him, but she didn’t quite.
Then she was turning away, possibly saying something that Conall couldn’t hear.
He followed her, sorely tempted to catch her swinging braid and use it to pull her into an embrace.
From that lawn, they went to another at the exact opposite end of the resort by the most circuitous route. This one was outside the resort gates; soft groomed mounds of grass rose from the jungle to meet the stone wall.
They contemplated the Shifting Sands Resort sign.
Gizelle traced one of the esses, then turned to him and said, “I like letters. I can’t wait to learn to read.”
Reading would certainly simplify her life. Or possibly complicate it, given the strange rabbit-hole that was the Internet.
“Have you thought about what you want to do next?” Conall had to ask, thinking about the warning Bastian and the mermaid had given him. He couldn’t imagine Gizelle in Boston, any more than they could.