Ehren found Akira sitting on the couch holding her brother’s shirt. She seemed to be examining it. He sighed and went to her.

“Akira, let’s leave my Uncle Arri to work in peace,” he said. “By now I’m sure my mother has had rooms prepared for you.”

Akira shook her head.

“I can’t leave him,” she whispered. “I…. I promised……promised her I’d take care of him.”

Anwen Wolfe

By the time the snow and ice cleared the bay, Anwen was too heavily pregnant to return to sea. Despite this, she insisted on making the journey into Canada to trade with the Natives and French. She insisted on this fact because she was the only one of them who was born into what many would consider “polite” society. Her crew would most certainly call them rich, stuck-up, loggerheaded, yeasty, clay-brained and many other colourful adjectives. Anwen herself had a few token insults she threw around on the rare occasion she needed to. For the most part though, she refered to them as hell-hated scuts.

When they left the bay, she could barely stand without leaning on the railing of the ship. The journey to French held Canada was long, Anwen knew but she couldn’t risk her crew not being able to acquire what was required because of the language barrier. Her French, while rusty, was passable enough for bartering and trading. But her skills with the languages of the Native peoples was decidedly lacking. For that, everyone, including her, looked to Aytigin. His command of the Native languages far exceeded anyone else’s. Without him, it was unlikely their settlement would have survived for very long.