Chapter 10: Sandcastle, Value Zero

Caspian courted me for three days at the estate before he decided it was not enough.

He brought me coffee in bed, and I wrote it down.

He left a comb on my pillow, carved out of cherry wood with a tiny serpent on the handle, and I wrote that down too.

"It's handmade," he said, hovering in the doorway. "I checked. There is no market for it."

"What's it worth to you?"

"A week of my evenings."

"Then it's worth a week of your evenings," I said, and entered it.

On the fourth day he asked me to come to the sea.

"A cabin," he said. "Two nights. One bedroom, because it is a small cabin, but I will sleep on the floor."

"Why?"

"Because you named conditions, and I am trying to keep them."

I looked at him standing there, with the tail pooled on the floor behind him and his hands clasped in front.

"Fine," I said. "Two nights."

The cabin sat on a bluff over a gray beach, with a stone chimney and one window that looked straight at the waves.

By noon I had a list.

Gifts received since Monday: one comb, and one scarf he had knitted himself, badly, in the shape of a tube.

Also one fish, caught with his hands and cooked on a stick.

I added it up on the back of the ledger while he watched over my shoulder.

"The fish is not a gift," he said. "The fish is dinner."

"Dinner is a gift if I didn't pay for the fish."

"You didn't ask me to catch it."

"That makes it worse."

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