Blackfoot Forest do you feel ashamed?

They won't.

Marina was certain of this, and though she could not have said how, it was her mother's voice echoing in her memories; a name long-abandoned. They would have called you Sea-Snake. Her father would have had a different name for her, Thalia had said, but Marina was neither of these. She was no Corten. She was no Sea-Snake.

Something else; something not quite either, or perhaps both, but who could ever know? Maybe she was only losing her wits. She bent to chew the bark and the roots with a bit of snow, mixing them into a paste. Whether the man allowed it or not, she moved to smear it across his wounds, silent and insistent. Only a single root, long and thin and pale compared to the rest, was spared from the messy ointment.

You'll eat that one - or you'll continue to rot. I guess there's a bit of choice after all.

She knew enough to keep him alive, at least for a little while. Long enough to decide what to do with him. A dead man walking; a rapist and a traitor both, if the hunters were to be believed. A perfect father, perhaps, for a yellow-eyed devilchild. Maybe she truly was losing her wits. Suppose she killed him herself? Buried him somewhere only she knew? Then at least one day she might bring her child to his grave to say: look, there is your wicked father, lying in the bed he made of his sins; look, so you know the path you should never take; look, so you know what an evil thing you were made to be.

Perhaps she would give him to the sea instead.