Stranger

by Sherwood Smith

  A huge platter of tacos appeared, and Paco ended the song with a crescendo that threatened to crack his plate. Everyone clapped. Jennie was glad to see him take his share, and he joined in the talk as they demolished the entire platter.

  When they got up to go, Paco said softly, “Sorry, Mom. I didn’t mean to be a jerk.”

  Sera snorted. “If Doc Lee ever benches me for a month, you’ll have to roust out the entire town to cheer me up.” She smiled at Jennie and Indra. “That reminds me. The Kawakamis are moving to Sunset Circle, so there’ll be an empty apartment at Jackalope Row. If you move fast, you could nab it.”

  “What?” Jennie exclaimed.

  Indra threw his arm around her. “We talked about this, Jennie.”

  She stopped herself from saying, But I didn’t say yes. She would not have this conversation in public.

  After they left Luc’s, she and Indra walked silently through the crowded streets until they reached the relative privacy of narrow Primrose Path.

  Jennie said quietly, “When did you talk to Sera about us moving in together?”

  “At lunch, I guess. What difference does it make? We’ve been over this.” Her ears, sensitive to every shade of his voice, heard a quickness to his speech. Like he was defending himself.

  “Not really. You brought it up.” Jennie watched her boots hitting the hard-packed earth. “And I said I wasn’t ready.”

  “Jennie, you are ready.” Indra caught her hand again. She let her fingers stay in his as he said, “We’re not kids anymore. You’re an adult twice over, with two jobs. Too bad you can’t vote twice, like Preston used to.”

  She smiled at his attempt at humor. “Too bad I can’t keep both jobs.” She took a deep breath. “We’ve only been dating for six months. I’m still not ready to move in with you, and I wish you hadn’t talked about it with Sera.”

  “Why not?” Indra asked, turning to face her.

  “For one thing, it would hurt my parents to hear about this from other people, instead of me.”

  He dropped her hand and made an impatient gesture. “Your parents are the mellowest people in the entire town.”

  “That doesn’t matter. Every big decision is talked out in my family. It’s the way we do things.”

  “Then let’s go now.” He reached for her hands. “I know they believe in the sanctity of marriage. If it’s living together that bothers you, let’s get married first. We could have the biggest wedding in Las Anclas.”

  His face was so open and filled with longing, and his hands were so warm in hers. She could see herself marrying him. She’d have a beautiful wedding gown sewn by Mrs. Callahan and embroidered by Grandma Riley, whose needlework was the best in town. Mia and Meredith could be her bridesmaids. Everyone would toast the happy couple, and there’d be feasting and dancing. Indra would be so handsome at her side. And then, on the wedding night, everyone would walk them to their room, carrying candles and singing . . .

  But marriage wasn’t about the wedding. Jennie had grown up hearing that, and now she understood the truth of it.

  “Listen to me, Indra. If I’m not ready to move in with you, I’m not ready to get married, either. We’re too young.”

  It hurt her to say those words, but there was more she wanted to do, and more things she needed to see, before she could settle down. She owed Indra—and herself—the truth.

  “Lots of people get married at our age,” he protested.

  “I know. Pa married Olivia Lee as soon as they turned eighteen. And they were divorced before they were twenty.”

  Indra pulled his hands out of her grip. “Is there someone else?”

  How did he know? Then Jennie caught herself: there was nothing to know. She had no reason to feel guilty. “Are you serious? Of course there isn’t!”

  “What about Ross Juarez?”

  An incredulous laugh escaped from Jennie’s lips. “Ross? He practically leaps through a window if you so much as try to shake his hand!”

  “That’s not what I saw this morning.”

  Jennie had never heard that tone before.

  This is jealousy, she thought. She stared at her boots, on the verge of dizziness—like she was waking up from a dream. But this was no dream. Nor a romantic song. There was nothing romantic here.

  “Think, Jennie,” said Indra. “Could he be using his Change power to make you like him?”

  Jennie took a deep breath. “Ross has no Change power. Or at least not that one. He’d be having a very different time at school if he did. But Ross is not the issue here. The issue is that I’m not ready for this.”

  “What’s ‘this’?” Indra asked, flinging his arms wide. “Marriage? Moving in?”

  “Both.”

  “So, what, it’s time for ‘We said we could see other people,’ is that it?” He clenched and unclenched his fists, then shook out his hands as if he was trying to shake off his anger. “I don’t want to ‘see’ anyone else.”

  Embarrassment prickled Jennie’s skin. Two feet away, the entire Cohen family was busy weeding their kitchen garden. She was certain they were listening.

  “Let’s go inside, okay?” She pointed toward her house.

  Indra caught her arm. “I don’t care who hears.” His voice rose angrily. “What do you want, Jennie?”

  “I want this to be a private conversation,” she said, her own temper rising. “Like it should have been in the first place.”

  “Too late now.” He turned on his heel. “Have fun with your claim jumper.”

  He walked away, leaving her standing alone in the middle of the road.

  23

  YUKI

  YUKI’S BED JERKED, JOLTING HIM AWAKE. HE CLUTCHED the mattress, thinking he was at sea. No; it was an earthquake. The windows rattled gently, but nothing fell from his shelves, and Kogatana stayed curled at his feet. It was only a small quake, then. From the dimness of the light, he had some time left to sleep.

  Then his mind leaped from memories of tossing on the ocean to the sea caves. This quake might have been the one to jar something loose—something he could prospect.

  Moving silently, so as not to awaken his mother or Meredith, he dressed and headed out, Kogatana padding at his heels.

  The streets were nearly deserted, silent except for the chirping of crickets and morning birds. Yuki felt as if he had the entire world to himself. But by the time he reached the gate, it had already opened for the farmers and hunters and fishers who started work before dawn. He knew two of the sentries from school, and hurried past before they could ask where he was going. No doubt they’d mention it to their friends, and those friends would tell their friends, and he’d get interrogated by a dozen different people before the end of the day.

  The earthquake woke me up, he rehearsed to himself. I felt like taking a swim. Neither of those were lies.

  The fishers had long since launched their boats, so he had the beach to himself. He walked along until he reached the sheer cliff pocked with caves, some above water, some submerged. He didn’t see any new ones, but you never knew what might lie beneath the waves.

  Years before he’d come to Las Anclas, an earthquake had shifted some of the cliff face, revealing an ancient building. But that had been mostly above the waterline, and had long since been picked clean. Other ancient houses must still be buried beneath the tons of stone. He checked the cliffs after every one of the occasional earthquakes but had never found anything but seaweed and mussels.

  He stripped down to his swimming trunks, braided and tied up his hair, secured a collecting bag around his waist, and put on the goggles that Mr. Ahmed had made for him.

  He patted Kogatana. “Stay.”

  Yuki took a deep breath, then dove into the chilly, blue-green water. He swam rapidly along the cliff, scanning the familiar stone walls and avoiding grasping strands of kelp. Phosphorescent
fish glimmered in the darker depths, and he dove to avoid an eel wreathed in crackling blue lightning.

  The world beneath the waves was both familiar and strange, like an old shirt altered to fit someone else. He’d learned to swim before he could walk, but the environment of the deep ocean was completely different from that of the shoreline. Once, his mouth and nose stuffed full of the oxygen-rich breather moss that the Taka had grown in hydroponic tanks, he’d been able to explore for over a quarter hour at a time, but no one around Las Anclas had heard of it, not even the traders who sailed the local coasts. He was limited to the few minutes he could hold his breath.

  He was about to surface when he noticed a new crack in the brown rock. He kicked hard. The opening was narrow, but he could squeeze through. He peered at the slice of water illuminated by the pale filtered light. The crack led to a larger space, but all he could see was water with strands of kelp floating in it. No. Not kelp, cords. He’d found a ruin!

  Yuki swam up and floated, filling his lungs and thinking. He’d been told to report any new cave and not to explore it alone. But he’d grown up diving deeper than any citizen of Las Anclas; whoever accompanied him would be more likely to get in trouble than he would. Or, worse, they’d forbid him to go in at all—and then he’d lose what could be his first real claim.

  This was his cave—in his territory. Anything could be inside.

  He took a deep breath, then dove and eeled his way into the crack. Rough stone scraped his chest and belly as he pulled himself through. Then the stone dropped away beneath his hands, and he was in.

  It was nothing like the tunnels of stone and coral that he’d explored as a child. This was a labyrinth of fallen walls and tilted staircases, jammed with tattered skeletons of furniture and chunks of rubble, illuminated only by the dim light that filtered in. The dark water was choked with floating cords, bits of cloth, and coiled springs and wires. A few fish were the only living things in sight: until an hour or so ago, this had been a sealed environment.

  Excitement tempted him to start exploring. But his old training and discipline held him in place.

  Without gravity to orient you, it was easy to swim down when you meant to swim up, or left when you meant to swim right. The few times Yuki had ever seen anyone explore a cave in Las Anclas, they’d used ropes to find their way out. But on the Taka they’d warned him that ropes got tangled in wreckage and rocks, trapping divers until their air ran out. Divers could be lured into relying on their ropes rather than on their mental map of their surroundings. But ropes could get broken or bitten through. Ropes killed.

  The crack is that way, he told himself, quickly building a map in his mind. That way is up. That way is down. That way is away from the crack.

  He spotted dishes and machinery amid the rubble, but the ground was covered in a layer of silt; if Yuki disturbed it, visibility could drop to zero in an instant.

  Avoiding the hanging wires, he swam around a tilted wall, into darker waters. The pressure in his chest was starting to hurt, but he ignored it. He knew exactly how long he could hold his breath. Then he spotted a glimmer of metal, brighter than the corroded stuff he’d seen before, within the still-upright remains of a broken cabinet. A silver statuette lay partially buried in a mess of rotting wood, slivers of glass, and chunks of brick.

  Yuki didn’t have much air left. He gently eased out the statuette and tucked it into his bag.

  As he began to swim out, he felt a ripple in the water. He turned in time to see the cabinet hit the ground. A huge puff of silt rose up like smoke. Now he could see nothing but swirling darkness.

  Fear jolted through him. He shut down the instinct to gasp for breath, and made himself recall his map. He knew where he was. He didn’t need to see. He retraced his path, swimming for the crack.

  A hard, thin object scraped his leg, then snapped around his ankle and pulled tight, trapping him. He must have put his foot in one of those coils of wire.

  Don’t panic.

  He reached down and untangled himself, his fingers clumsy. He was running low on oxygen, and it was affecting his coordination. He got the wire off, then swam on. Something soft wrapped around his face. Yuki slapped it off. Where was the crack?

  He stretched out his hand, and touched a solid wall.

  Was he too high, or too low? Or had he gotten turned around entirely? Wild thoughts of trying the other direction raced through his mind.

  No. That was how divers died. He would not panic and second-guess himself. He had swum down to retrieve the statuette.

  So he swam upward, trailing his fingers along the wall. His head throbbed, and his lungs ached. The impulse to breathe clawed at his throat.

  Was he even going up? Or had he gotten so disoriented that he was going down, or sideways? His ears rang, and he knew he wasn’t thinking straight.

  Then he touched the rough edges of the crack. He pulled himself through, fumbling and clumsy, the pain in his lungs excruciating, until he saw blue light ahead and tumbled out into the open waters. He was kicking his way toward the surface when everything went black.

  He woke to the shock of cold air. He sucked in a breath and grabbed for something solid to hold on to. Then he remembered where he was. He floated below the cliffs, sucking air, too dizzy and weak even to be relieved.

  Sick fear wrung his entire body. He’d nearly drowned. If he’d blacked out even seconds earlier, he’d have breathed in water before reaching the surface.

  Exploring a ruin wasn’t like exploring a reef. He’d thought he’d been careful, but he’d missed the signs that should have either told him not to touch the statuette, or how to do it safely.

  It was true: prospecting was dangerous.

  He made it to shore and stretched full-length on the sand, eyes closed, chest aching. Kogatana scampered up and started licking his face. Gradually strength trickled back into his limbs. Still on his back, he pulled out the treasure that had almost killed him.

  It was a dancer poised on one foot, her arms outstretched and her hair coiled around her head, forged of some silvery metal. Yuki examined the absorbed, inward-turned expression on her face, and the finely detailed straps on her shoes. It had to be hundreds and hundreds of years old, and now it was his. He could feel the weight of all those years in his hands, connecting him to its long-dead owner. He or she must have cherished it.

  The cave was probably full of treasure, but as with the ancient city with its barrier of crystal trees, there might be no way to reach it. Yuki didn’t know enough to dive in the cave safely, but neither did anyone else. He’d rather keep it a secret than have the entire town learn he’d had yet another prospecting disaster. Maybe he’d just tell Paco.

  The sun hadn’t even risen yet; he’d only been underwater for a few minutes. As he walked home, he wondered if Ross knew how to swim.

  24

  Jennie

  SERA FACED JENNIE ACROSS THE KITCHEN TABLE. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am.”

  Of all the sympathetic comments Jennie had endured since the breakup, this one hurt the worst. Her throat constricted.

  “But I have to ask,” Sera said. “Can you maintain discipline around Indra without letting your emotions get in the way?”

  “Of course I can,” Jennie said firmly, though her stomach churned. Was she about to be thrown out of the Rangers?

  But Sera gave a brisk nod. “I knew it. And Indra says the same. You aren’t the first and won’t be the last Ranger couple to get in this situation. Training and working the way we do, it’s natural for people to pair up. Sometimes it doesn’t work.”

  “Thanks.” Jennie couldn’t help wondering if Sera had ever paired with another Ranger. Rumors had always flown about her and Mr. Preston, including that he was Paco’s father. But Sera had never mentioned it, and Mr. Preston didn’t treat Paco like a son.

  Sera pushed back her graying hair. “It’ll
be hard for a while, but I think you’ll get to be friends again. You were close long before you started dating.”

  Jennie smiled. “That’s the first thing anyone’s said that’s actually made me feel better.”

  “Good to hear.” Sera slung her rifle over her shoulder and went out.

  Before the door could close behind her, Felicité appeared, carrying a basket. The basket handle, Wu Zetian, and Felicité all wore matching spring-green ribbons.

  “I’m so, so sorry about you and Indra,” Felicité said earnestly. “You seemed so perfect together. I was taking some scones to Grandma Narayan, and Mother and I decided to pack some for you, too. Pastries won’t mend a broken heart, but they’re better than nothing, right?”

  Jennie forced a smile and a thank-you, feeling more than ever like she was trapped in a supporting role in some awful play.

  Felicité didn’t leave. Waiting for her cue?

  Jennie wondered if she was supposed to invite Felicité to stay. And what? Talk about Indra? She gritted her teeth.

  “I’ll go deliver the rest.” Felicité patted the basket. “Oh. Daddy wanted me to convey his sympathies, and his disappointment.”

  Jennie winced inwardly. She hadn’t even thought about how Mr. Preston would react. She felt like she’d let down the entire Ranger team.

  Felicité concluded, “But of course your own feelings must come first.” She gave a sad little wave as she left.

  It’s the hands, her ma had once said. People talk more truly with their hands.

  Jennie remembered Indra’s hands that horrible night, how he’d flexed them, his fingers stiff. Today, Sera’s callused hands had gripped and twisted.

  Felicité had said all the right things, and her expression had been sympathetic, but her hands had been relaxed, and that pat she’d given the basket had been downright satisfied. She wasn’t a bit sorry.

  Jennie was tempted to throw the scones on the mulch pile, but that would be a waste of good pastry. They would be delicious; the Wolfes’ cook had been hired away from Jack’s.