Comstock drew in a deep breath and blew it out. He gave Otto a pat on the shoulder. “Heavy load to carry.”
Otto nodded.
Comstock headed back down the trail.
“Hey,” Otto said. “Why were you going to ask me how Bobby died?”
Comstock turned and looked up at him, a sheepish smile twisting his mouth to the side. “Well, you’re the shaman ...”
It took a second for Otto to see where Comstock was going. “You think I hexed him to death or something?”
Comstock shrugged. “No. Not really. Just thought, you know, I’d ask.”
“That’s not how it works, Ed.”
“I didn’t think so,” he said. “Just coincidences.”
Otto nodded and looked back out to sea, listening to the world.
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
Cape Grace: February 21, 2352
THE FEBRUARY WIND STUNG Otto’s cheeks and cut through his coat. It flapped his pants against his legs and picked up the spray from the waves breaking over the headland. The brushed metal canister weighed almost nothing in the crook of his arm. A gull creaked out a long call over his head.
He stared out at the sea, gray-green in the afternoon sun. The rollers broke on the rock with quiet crashes. The sea, even more than the cottage they shared so briefly, had been her home. He tried to remember an image of her. Something besides the picture from the funeral. He closed his eyes, letting the wind buffet his face while he rolled back the calendar in his mind. Her standing on the dock after a day at sea. Her peeling potatoes at the counter in the kitchen, a pot of chowder in the making as onions sweated in the pan. The smell of her hair after her shower. He tried to remember how it felt to hold her. Her lips.
He opened his eyes, unable to recall much more than the surface of her, vaguely disappointed in himself that he felt so hollow. He pulled off his gloves, stuffing them deep into the pockets of his coat, keeping them safe from the plucking fingers of wind that threatened to carry them out to sea.
The canister felt icy cold to his bare hands, the screw top scrolling off after only the barest of objection to having been closed all that time. He stepped closer to the water’s edge, uncorking the bottle to release a genie of ash into the sky.
The wind carried the plume out over the rocks and water, into the sky and away from him. He stood there for several long moments, watching the wind shred her final remains. In one last unexpected fit of anger he drew back and threw the empty metal jar as hard as he could, watching it flip end-over-end with a wuffling sound until it fell with a splash so quiet he couldn’t hear it over the wind roaring in his ears. White water marked the spot that seemed much too close to the rocks to have been caused by his efforts. He snorted and flipped the top after it, watching it dance and skitter over the rocks before plopping into the sea. It would wash up on some beach perhaps. Or not.
He looked up into the sky, watching a trio of sea birds soaring on the updraft from the headland. It was over. She was gone. All those years of holding on, now, finally, come to an end. A sadness welled inside him. Not for the loss as much as the consideration of what trying to hold on had left him with. What it had cost him. His tongue traced the windburned chapping of his lips and his hands sought the protection of this gloves.
He turned and started picking his way across the rocks, back toward the empty cottage.
A figure approached from that direction, an arm waved in greeting.
Otto didn’t recognize him at first, the wind blowing tears into his eyes and turning the world to water. He blinked them clear and saw Flanagan’s craggy grin.
“Where’s Sarah?” Flanagan asked, a frown wrinkling his brow.
Otto looked at Flanagan, then up at the sky. “She’s walking her own beach.”
Flanagan rocked back on his heels. “So it’s true.”
Otto nodded. “Couple weeks ago, now.”
“Where’d she go?”
“Out there somewhere.” He waved an arm toward the sky. “They said she got a job on a freighter.”
Flanagan ran a hand across his lips, his dark eyes peering out from under bushy brows. “So she’s really gone.”
Otto nodded.
Flanagan shook his head and groaned. “Ah, dammit. I’m sorry, Otto.”
“Not your doing, Jack. A long time ago you told me I couldn’t keep her. You were right.”
Flanagan snorted and scuffed a boot on the rock.
“Come on, then,” Otto said, striking off for the cottage once more. “It’s too cold out here for standing around talking. Got time for a cup of tea?”
Flanagan fell into step and walked along with Otto. “Wouldn’t turn it down.” After a few steps in silence, Flanagan glanced at Otto out of the corners of his eyes. “What’ll you do now?”
Otto pulled his coat around himself and took a deep breath. “Well, now I guess I’ll be the shaman. Carve. Listen to the world.”
Flanagan clapped him on the shoulder. “About all we can do, I suppose.”
Otto stopped by the door and glanced up at the daylight star hanging over Starvey Bay to the west. An outbound shuttle, silent at this distance, carved a white condensation trail arcing across the blue-green sky.
Flanagan turned his head to follow Otto’s gaze. “Suppose she’ll be able to listen to the world out there?” he asked.
Otto shrugged, an eldritch joy bubbling up inside him. “I think she’ll do more than listen.”
Flanagan raised an eyebrow.
“She’ll hear it,” Otto said, holding the door open for Flanagan. “It just won’t be this one.” He cast one more glance at the sky, listening to a world without Sarah, without Carla. A stray breeze said the storm had passed.
He sighed and followed Flanagan inside.
About the Author
Nathan Lowell has been a writer for more than forty years, and first entered the literary world by podcasting his novels. His science-fiction series, Trader’s Tales From The Golden Age of the Solar Clipper, grew from his long time fascination with space opera and his own experiences shipboard in the United States Coast Guard. Unlike most works which focus on a larger-than-life hero (prophesied savior, charismatic captain, or exiled prince), Nathan centers on the people behind the scenes—ordinary men and women trying to make a living in the depths of space. In his novels, there are no bug-eyed monsters, or galactic space battles, instead he paints a richly vivid and realistic world where the “hero” uses hard work and his own innate talents to improve his station and the lives of those of his community.
Dr. Nathan Lowell holds a Ph.D. in Educational Technology with specializations in Distance Education and Instructional Design. He also holds an M.A. in Educational Technology and a BS in Business Administration with a minor in marketing. He grew up on the south coast of Maine and is strongly rooted in the maritime heritage of the sea-farer. He served in the USCG from 1970 to 1975, seeing duty aboard a cutter on hurricane patrol in the North Atlantic and at a communications station in Kodiak, Alaska.
He currently lives in the plains east of the Rocky Mountains with his wife and two daughters.
Read more at Nathan Lowell’s site.
Cape Grace Page 36
