by Sharon Shinn
Ah! In a moment I understood the problem, and I was instantly exuberant, though I hid it. I set the tray on the table by the window and crossed to stand right before him. “I am no ghost,” I said. “I know you cannot see, but can you not at least tell that a shadow has crossed your face? That is because I am standing between you and the sunlight. Could a ghost achieve such a feat? Would a ghost stand here and argue with you about its very existence? Would a ghost”—and here I leaned down to very gently take his hand in mine—“feature true flesh and blood?”
His hand closed with such energy on mine that I had to bite back a cry of pain. “Her fingers—her delicate little bones—her own skin, which I studied so long I knew it better than my own . . .” he murmured, turning my hand this way and that, now lacing his fingers between mine, now running his thumb along the join of my wrist and thumb. Suddenly he pressed my hand against his mouth, then turned his cheek into my palm; I felt the dampness of a solitary tear melt between his skin and mine. “Jenna,” he whispered. “If it were only, really, truly you.”
He still doubted! He still thought himself visited by specters of the past! I jerked my hand away, causing him to sit up in astonishment, looking aggrieved at the behavior of this particular wraith. “I see I have much to do to convince you that I am real,” I said in a voice of decided exasperation. “Is there another chair to be had? I want to sit and make myself comfortable while I explain myself. Also, if you are not going to eat the excellent snack Mrs. Soshone has made up for you, I think I will help myself, for I have traveled far today, and not stopped for so much as a drink of water, and I am famished.”
He stared up at me with blind, marveling eyes. “I—but if you—how could you have—”
“A chair?” I reminded him. “Where might one be found?”
He gestured vaguely toward the hallway. “The room across the way—I think—but—Jenna? Jenna? Is it—”
“Just a moment,” I said, and disappeared through the door.
I could hear him calling out questions attached to my name for the next few minutes as I checked the room across the hall and found a nice, sturdy high-backed chair. I carted it back into the sunroom and set it close to Everett’s, though at an angle that would allow both of us to sit in sunlight. Then I dragged over the small table which now held the tray of food, and situated this so it was convenient to both our hands. All this time he continued to pelt me with questions; all this time I refused to answer.
“Now!” I said, when I was finally comfortable. “How about a little of this bread? I will butter it for you, if you like.”
“Jenna? How is it possible? Where have you been? Are you really returned? How have you survived these many months?”
“I will answer every question, but first you must swear I am not a ghost, and then you must eat at least a piece of bread, and probably a slice of cheese too, before I will give you any hard information.”
“Oh, it is really you, all-too-human Jenna, I believe that now!” he exclaimed, and though he attempted to imbue his voice with the mock scorn he had always used with me, I could hear the trembling in his speech. “No ghost would saunter in and force me to consume a meal before proceeding to break my heart again!”
“No, I assume that eating and drinking are activities that the dead might wish to engage in but cannot,” I said around a mouthful of food. I knew I was being uncouth, but I did not care. For so many days I had been unable to summon up an interest in any meal—but now, suddenly, face-to-face with the man I had crossed the universe to find, I was starving. “I, on the contrary, intend to make a most hearty meal. Here, try one of these—grapes, I suppose they are. Some kind of fruit, though it’s a little pinker than any grape I ever saw. Quite good, though.”
He took the item from my hand, put it in his mouth, then returned his hand quick as a flash to take hold of my wrist. “If I must eat, then you must allow me to touch you,” he said when I pulled back as if to free myself. “I must have constant reassurance that you are real, or I shall falter again—I shall slip into my old ways and accuse you of possessing merely a spiritual nature.”
“You may hold my hand, then, if you choose, but you must continue to eat.”
A moment’s silence. “I cannot,” he said at last.
“Oh? And why is that? You have two hands, I suppose.”
“Two,” he said, “but only one that functions.”
I knew this, of course; it was not the dread revelation he expected it to be. “Oh? Well, let me see it. That shall be the hand I hold while your other one scoops up food.”
“You will not want to hold it once you see it,” he said, and withdrew it from its hiding place between the arm of the chair and his seat cushion. It was truly a wretched sight, a mangled mess of ripped, scarred flesh, and bent, ill-healed bones. It resembled a monster’s claw invented to scare children, and it was clear, from the way he held it, that his range of motion was either severely limited or nonexistent.
“Do you have feeling in it still?” I asked in a very nonchalant voice.
“Yes—not extensive, but I can tell if it is touching silk or leather, and if I have plunged it into water hot or cold.”
“Good,” I said, and reached out to take it between both of my own. He started; I felt the maltreated fingers twitch in their highest degree of pain or ecstasy. “Can you feel my hand?” I inquired.
“Yes,” he whispered.
I sat forward on the edge of my chair, and brought his hand to my lips. I kissed each broken knuckle, each separate scar. “Can you feel that?” I asked.
This time he merely nodded dumbly.
I sat back in my chair, retaining my hold on his hand and letting it lie in my lap. “Good,” I said briskly. “Now let us finish our meal.”
“Jenna,” he said, and nothing else.
“Were you going to ask me something?” I said politely.
“No—so many things, but—no—”
“Then let me ask you something,” I said. “Why have you not had the hand repaired?”
This, like so many of my observations this afternoon, seemed to catch him completely off-guard. “What?”
“The hand. And the scars on your face—and your eyesight, which I understand is nearly ruined. Why have you not had them repaired? You know as well as I do that there are doctors throughout the galaxy who could make each of these perfectly whole again. Why have you not had the treatments done?”
For a moment he looked completely stunned—then, slightly embarrassed. “I—the wounds are relatively new—I have not had a chance yet to investigate—”
“I think you like sitting here feeling sorry for yourself,” I said, taking a bite of a rich chocolate pastry. “Mmm, this is very good. I think you like sitting here, wounded in the dark, and remembering all the dreadful things that have happened to you. I think you are a man who has gotten addicted to grief.”
He snatched his hand away from me and looked angry enough to take a shove at me too, if he could have been sure of my exact location. For a moment I thought he might knock the tray over, so furious did he appear. “That is not so!” he declared. “I have suffered worse wounds than this in silence—wounds to my soul, wounds that I did not ever expect to heal—and I did not mope around looking for sympathy. I have not addressed these broken parts because—because there seemed no reason to do so. There was nothing I particularly wanted to look at, nothing I particularly wanted to touch, and so I did not care if I could see or feel.”
“Good. Then you will have no objection to me doing a little investigation on the best surgeons to be had for your condition,” I said brightly. “Unless—oh, but perhaps I misunderstood—there may have been another reason you hesitated—”
“Now what will you say?” he demanded, sounding so exasperated that I almost laughed aloud.
“You may have some distaste for the results of any operations you undergo—that is, the synthetics that will have to be incorporated into your body to make you whole again. T
hat is a sensitive subject to you, I know.”
“Not that you would care if it was so sensitive it made me weep merely to have it addressed,” he muttered, and I could not help but grin at the irritation in his voice. “Banish that thought, you provoking girl! I would let myself be remade, every bone, every blood cell, if it would please you. My only condition would be that they not exchange my heart for something artificial, for it is my own that I would want to love you with, and not something cobbled together from rubber and metal and electric wires.”
I smiled again, and reached for the hand he had jerked away from me. The broken fingers stirred and tried to return my grasp, then lay quiet inside my own. “That was very pretty, sir. Thank you.”
His good hand came up to cover mine with an urgent pressure. “May I speak now, Jenna? Have I swallowed enough morsels to earn your permission to ask a question or two?”
“Yes, you have done quite well. Ask me what you will.”
“How did you come to be here? Why did you leave? What have you heard of the disasters that have befallen Thorrastone?”
“I saw news of the tragedy on the StellarNet, but I could not find the details. I had to know what had happened—to you, to everyone. And so I journeyed back.”
“You could have sent a stel-letter,” he suggested. “Contacted someone at the spaceport who could have supplied the information. Hired an investigator—though that would have taken money, I suppose.”
“I have money now, sir,” I said, smiling.
“The devil you do! How did that happen?”
“It comes at the end of a very long story,” I objected. “And this has been a long, tiring day—”
“Oh, no, you don’t! Some of the details you may skip, but I expect the outline now. Tell me what has transpired in your life during the eighteen long months since I saw you last. Begin with the night you left here, in stealth and sorrow, leaving me so terrified for your well-being that I became, for a time, almost a madman—”
“Do not dwell on that, I beg you,” I interposed swiftly. “It hurt me to leave you for your own sake almost as much as it hurt me for mine, but I could not stay. My reasons you know. I need not outline them again.”
“You took nothing,” he said, disregarding my prohibition. “A few items of clothing—a pair of shoes—nearly everything you owned was on my cruiser, and you had scarcely a note of credit to your name—”
“Yes, but I managed quite well,” I said, instantly deciding to edit the greater number of horrors from the tale of my escape. “I went to the spaceport and found an outbound ship that was willing to take on a last-minute passenger to fill up an available berth, and I traveled practically to the end of the universe.”
“Where did you go, Jenna? I looked for you everywhere. I sent messages out to every planet and outpost for which I could find a general address.”
“To Appalachia, sir. Have you heard of it? It’s a frontier world, and still growing, so there is a great deal of opportunity there for someone who is willing to work hard.”
“Yes, that’s one of the places I sent my messages. Did you like it there? Did you apply for a farming license and learn to grow beets?”
“Not exactly. Upon my very first day there, I was introduced to people who had need of my technical skills, so I found a home right away among people who valued me. And then, the most astonishing thing! We soon discovered that we were cousins—of a sort.”
“This does not surprise me at all,” he assured me. “You are constantly producing relatives that you had never mentioned before.”
“One time only,” I corrected him. “My aunt Rentley. And these people were not related to me by birth, but by conception.”
“I don’t understand, Jenna.”
“They too were created in the gen tanks on Baldus, though they were raised on Newyer, and they had an upbringing not unlike mine. We were so amazed at the connection that we called ourselves cousins thereafter, and felt as close as I believe true kin could ever feel.”
He was frowning now, remembering something. He had a very quick mind, so I was sure he would soon put the pieces together. “Wait a minute, I remember a news story from—oh, four or five months ago. Before the accident here. The founder of some clinic on Baldus was looking for his harvested offspring, wanting to leave a fortune to one of them—”
“Yes, sir,” I said simply. “That was me.”
“Why, Jenna!” he exclaimed. “Then you are a wealthy woman! Congratulations ! For his estate was considerable.”
“Well, I split it among my cousins and myself, but still I am left with a handsome sum,” I said. “And that money enabled me to hurry to your side as soon as I heard of the events that had transpired here.”
He seemed to speak with some difficulty. “Did you know then—before you set out on that long journey—what had happened—and who had died—”
“No, sir,” I said quietly. “I came not knowing if your wife still lived.”
“But then—as I asked before—why come at all? Why not find out by other sources how I fared and how matters stood?”
For a moment I did not answer. Sinclair Rainey had asked me the same thing, more than once, in the day I had spent packing for my trip. I had had no ready answer for him either. “Because, like you, I had to see and touch for myself,” I said at last, squeezing his bent fingers with a gentle pressure. “I could trust only the evidence of my own eyes and senses to know that you were alive and well. No other report would do.”
He had another question prepared to ask, I could see by the expression on his face, but just then a knock sounded on the door and a hesitant voice spoke. “Mr. Ravenbeck, I am sorry for interrupting,” said Mr. Soshone. “But there’s been a small problem—”
“Can it wait?” Everett snapped, but I had already come to my feet and picked up the food tray.
“You confer with Mr. Soshone. I know he would not seek you out for some trivial reason,” I said. “Now that I have assuaged my hunger, I am so exhausted I do not think I can see straight! I will beg Mrs. Soshone for a room, and I will meet with you again at dinner.”
And I escaped through the door while Everett rather testily argued behind me. Mr. Soshone mouthed an apology at me, but I smiled it away. I really thought this was the better plan, to allow Everett time to get used to my existence before we delved into the fresh issue confronting us: Now that his wife was dead, now that I was returned and he was free, could we reconstruct the future that had once seemed so bright before us? I did not want to take him by storm and surprise a declaration from him. My own heart was unchanged, as faithful as ever, but time and tragedy might have twisted his to the point where love was no longer possible. I hoped not; I believed otherwise; but I thought a few hours of separation and cogitation might help both of us understand more fully what we truly wished.
Accordingly, I did not see him alone again until the following morning. In the interim, Mrs. Soshone showed me to a small but charming room on the first floor, and I immediately fell into the soft bed and slept for several hours. I woke in time for the dinner meal, which was pleasant, though slightly strained, as Everett spent nearly the entire hour addressing random comments to me merely to force me to verify my continued existence. After the meal, I hurriedly retired to my chamber again, though I heard the others move around the house for another few hours before they all finally sought their beds.
In the morning, I did not emerge till I smelled breakfast cooking down the hall, and then I came out fully dressed and braced for whatever joy or disappointment the day might have to offer. Like dinner the night before, breakfast was made both uncomfortable and amusing as Everett focused all his attention on me. The Soshones exchanged frequent glances of hope and hilarity, and I could see that they, like I, thought one specific outcome would be most guaranteed to bring everyone happiness.
“Miss Starborn, why don’t you and Mr. Ravenbeck take a nice long walk?” Mrs. Soshone suggested as her husband left for his day in the min
es and I offered her help cleaning up the kitchen. “I’m so used to working in the house by myself that it will be easier on me if you two take yourselves off somewhere for a few hours. Mr. Ravenbeck does quite well walking as long as someone’s there to guide him.”
“Do you like to walk?” I asked him.
“On my less belligerent days,” he replied. I smothered a laugh, though Mrs. Soshone looked quite surprised at his humor. I realized he had probably not indulged in it much during the past eighteen months, and I rejoiced that he was able to show that side of his personality to me.
“Then let us go for a stroll. You can set the pace, but I know the course to follow.”
“And what is that, Jenna?” he asked me. “It is not like there are a variety of nature walks here in the park confines.”
“No, but there is a monument I would like to see. I know the oxenheart tree was felled more than a year ago, and I am sure it is nothing but a rotting stump by now, but I would like to visit it again. It was an important place to me in the past—I cannot, because it suffered misfortune, consider it inconsequential now.”
“Let me pack a light luncheon for you,” Mrs. Soshone suggested. “That way, you can stay out as long as you like.”
Soon enough, we were on our way. I had, as a matter of courtesy to the blind man, taken Everett’s arm so I could lead him across the lawn. That he clutched my hand with a rather extreme pressure I took for no more than the agitation of a man who could not see the path and feared he might fall. As for myself, the first few minutes of our stroll were occupied with remembering: the stale, still quality of the enclosed air; the filtered sunlight, which seemed so insufficient and artificial; the coarse grass that sprung up so instantly once my foot was lifted that I could not help thinking it resented my very presence on its planet. After Appalachia’s fresh air and soft breezes, this environment seemed stilted and strange—and yet, for how many months had I longed to be back on this very world, in these few connected acres!
