by Megan Hart
“No. I’m a stranger to them. I’m a stranger to myself.” His expression was bleak, but in that moment she saw what a handsome man he’d once been.
She squeezed his fingers. “You are not a stranger to me.”
“You remind me of my daughter. She had hair like yours. Long and dark. And she laughed a lot, like you do.” Venga’s smile was tentative. “You’ve been kind to me, Teila. Thank you.”
His gratitude moved her and made her uncomfortable, too. She hadn’t opened her home to these people out of the kindness of her heart. She was paid to take care of them.
“I know it’s your job,” he said before she could answer. “But you don’t have to do it with as much concern and caring. I’ll guess there are many who, in your place, would be less than kind.”
“Is there something I can get for you, Venga? Do you need anything?”
He shook his head again. “I think I might lie down in my room for a bit. All of these memories . . . they were gone for a long time, weren’t they?”
“Yes,” she told him gently. “A long time.”
“Some I wish I still forgot.”
She didn’t ask him which they were; she could guess there were many painful reminders. She gave his hand one more squeeze and got up from the table, but caught a glance of what he’d been looking at on his handheld. It was a government news page. Many of the interactive features wouldn’t work with Venga’s old unit, but Teila had seen the page before.
“Venga . . .” She had to ask him. Had to know. In all the time he’d been here, he’d never shown any interest in the gov pages, only viddy entertainments. “Why were you looking at this? Is it what helped you remember, or did you look at it after you started?”
“The handheld was on my bedside table when I woke up today. Set to that page. Looking at it, I started to remember.”
“But why did you look at it today?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know, Teila. Maybe it was just . . . time.”
She nodded, still curious but willing to let it go. He said something else as she was leaving that stopped her. “What?”
“I said,” Venga told her, “that I do know one thing that isn’t a memory. Not something I remember, just something I know now.”
“What’s that?” She thought he would tell her about his grandchildren again, or perhaps more about his daughter.
But Venga gave her a narrow-eyed look cold enough to send a frisson down her spine. “They’ve been lying to us for a long, long time.”
Chilled, Teila didn’t know what to say. Outside, she found Vikus and Billis to help her with the cleanup outside. The storm had done some minor damage to the lighthouse outbuildings, but it had almost ruined the boathouse and left behind a lot of debris on the shore.
“There might be something we can use,” she told the grumbling Vikus. “Remember the time we found all that scrap metal and sold it? That bought you a trip to Salvea, Vikus. I don’t remember you complaining about that.”
“Only when he came home,” Billis told her.
Vikus frowned. “I should’ve stayed in Salvea. More people there.”
“We’d miss you here,” Teila said mildly. “But you know if you want to go, Vikus . . .”
Billis grinned and punched his brother on the shoulder. “I’ll go with you. We can get jobs in the viddy shows, Vikus. You can dance and I’ll sing.”
Considering neither of them had any talent in either area, Teila laughed behind her hand. “Remember me when you’re rich.”
At this, Vikus put an arm around her shoulders. Seriously, he said, “We could never leave you here alone, Teila. You and Stephin need a man here.”
Her brows rose at this—both at the idea that she couldn’t manage on her own without a cock and balls, but also at how sweetly serious he was. Vikus and Billis had known her all their lives, though the fact they were likely her brothers had never been discussed even when both their mothers passed on.
“Why would you say that?” There hadn’t been a man in charge of the lighthouse for years before Kason’s cruiser wrecked, and there hadn’t been one in charge since he’d gone, either.
Billis looked embarrassed. “Vikus is right. We can’t go away from here.”
“You certainly can,” Teila told them both sternly. “I’ve always told you that you could make your own way in the world, if that’s what you wanted. Go to school, get training. Go off to Salvea or anywhere else. I never meant for either of you to be stuck here forever, like . . . well, like me.”
“I thought you loved the lighthouse!” Vikus looked shocked.
His brother, too. “So did I!”
Teila tipped her head back to look up at the stone lighthouse, rising so high against the backdrop of the pale sky and three bright suns. She did love the lighthouse. She’d lived in it for her entire life. That had never meant that she didn’t wonder what it might’ve been like to live in a city. To pursue an education beyond what she could learn herself through correspondence courses. When she was younger, it had meant imagining finding love . . . but the lighthouse had brought her that.
“Of course I do. But that doesn’t mean you both have to. The lighthouse won’t be the same without you. But it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go, if you want.” She knuckled Vikus’ head, though he’d grown so much taller than her it was difficult to reach.
He slowly pulled away from her. Billis had walked ahead just enough to reach the bleached bones of a whale jutting from the ground. They’d been there for several cycles, home to the nests of seabirds. Just beyond it the shore took a meandering curve farther out. Much of the debris tended to collect there after the storms.
“You go on,” Teila told him. “See what you find. I’m going to start making a list of repairs we’ll need to handle.”
Walking in the opposite direction, she put her face into the wind and let it whip her hair around her face. It felt good. Cooling under the suns’ relentless glare. In a few hours at sunsdown the wind would bite, but now it caressed her. So intent on looking over the damaged buildings, Teila didn’t pay attention to anything else until she rounded the base of the lighthouse and found Kason.
Wearing only a pair of loose trousers low on his hips, he stood at the edge of the sea, facing out. He worked through a familiar set of motions, sweeping gestures with his arms and legs. How many times had she seen him do this, usually in the early mornings before the heat of the day? Every day that she’d known him.
He was bigger than he’d been before, but too thin. The knobs of his spine jutted like the whale bones out of the ground. His hipbones looked sharp enough to cut. She watched the play of his muscles beneath his tawny skin and thought about what his father had said.
Not rescued. Returned. The Wirthera gave up the ones who came back, but riddled them with nanotriggers before they did. It didn’t seem like the most effective method of infiltration to her, but what did she know? She wasn’t military.
If he knew she watched him, he didn’t acknowledge her. She tapped notes into her handheld, taking stock of the worn paint and splintered bits of wood in places the wind had gouged on the lighthouse. The stone base would weather storms far worse than any she’d ever seen, but she checked them too for cracks or missing mortar. When she’d finished, she looked up to see him standing with his feet together, palms pressed against each other at chest level.
This was the man she’d loved. Borne a child with, who he’d never had the fortune to know. She’d have done anything for him before and would do anything for him now to keep him safe. Sane.
She thought of Venga, a man she’d have sworn would never return to his right mind, yet this morning he’d been clear as glass. And from what? An unexpected prompt. Had he opened the page on his handheld and forgotten it, only to see it in the morning and set his own recovery in motion?
Or had someone left it there for him?
The idea disturbed and intrigued her. Who would’ve done that, and had it been on purpose?
The Rav Aluf and the SDF and the Melek himself had lied to them all for years. What if they were wrong about the soldiers who’d been returned and the nanotriggers they all carried inside them? What if they didn’t need to remember all on their own, without any help?
What if she could prompt Kason to come back to her?
Chapter 19
“You must be feeling better,” Teila said to him.
“I couldn’t stay inside any more. The others just sit around doing nothing.”
She laughed ruefully. “They do, indeed. I guess they feel entitled to a little rest.”
He didn’t feel entitled. He felt restless and bored. He felt weak. The exercises he’d been doing had come from the data stream, the first good use of it he’d been able to make. He hadn’t had any more luck in muting it or controlling the flow, but he’d been able to pull something out of it that made sense, and that was quite an accomplishment.
“They’d probably feel better if they worked on something other than their bad moods. You should make them help you out here.” He eyed her handheld upon which she’d been typing. “I’m sure you have a list of chores that need taken care of. Even old Venga could help around here.”
She shrugged and tucked the handheld into the pocket of her robe. “It’s not Venga’s job, or any of theirs, to help here. They’re here to rest and recover however they choose.”
He squinted to try and read her expression. Her tone held no hint of condescension or contempt. “Has there been a lot of damage from the storm?”
“No. The lighthouse was built to withstand even the worst storms. The boathouse will need a new set of doors and nearly all of the windows will have to be replaced. The rest can be repaired, but I can’t fix or replace the scudder.”
“What happened to it?” Without thinking about it, he’d started following her around the curve of the lighthouse and along the shore toward the boathouse.
Teila tugged at the double doors, both of which had splintered and sagged. When she couldn’t get one open enough to get inside, he reached around her to grab it. He might feel weak and out of shape, but he still had the strength to pull the entire door off its broken hinges. In fact, he pulled it so hard with so little resistance that the door flew backwards and broke into several pieces on the hard earth behind them.
Teila stared at him, mouth parted, brows raised.
“Sorry,” he said gruffly. “It wasn’t as stuck as I’d expected.”
Inside the shadows of the boathouse, away from the glare of the suns, it was so much cooler that he drew in a grateful breath. Teila showed him the small scudder, victim to a fallen roof beam. The whole boathouse, as a matter of fact, looked ramshackle and ready to fall over at any minute.
He ran a hand over the punctured hull. “This wouldn’t take much to fix, not with the right tools and materials.”
At first she didn’t answer, but when she did, she put herself directly in front of him. “You could fix this boat.”
He knew he could, but the fact that she seemed to know he could caught his attention. He’d been angry with her before. Furious to the point of violence. But something about the dream he’d had had calmed him. He tilted his head, studying her now.
“I think I could.”
She smiled slightly. “You could. There are tools in the shed. We could order the other supplies for delivery on the next boat. If you want to make yourself useful . . . keep yourself occupied . . .”
“It would be better than sitting around playing cards,” he told her.
“Come on then,” she said. “I’ll show you where they are.”
Chapter 20
The shed had survived the storm a little better than the boathouse with only minor cosmetic damage. Some of the tools had fallen from their pegs from the wind that had broken one of the windows, and a fine layer of seadust had settled over everything, but that was the worst of it. Teila turned to look at Kason, who’d followed her inside. This had been his place. His tools. Would he remember?
“Nice setup,” was all he said. “This should have everything I need. I can get you a list of materials for the boat repairs once I’ve checked it out.” He turned and caught her staring. “I’ll pay for them, of course. I’m sure my pension will cover it. At least . . . I think it will.”
“You have plenty of money,” she assured him. “But you don’t have to pay for the boat. It’s mine. I’ll order the supplies. I’ll pay you for your labor, too.”
“You won’t.”
She tucked the inside of her cheek against her teeth to keep herself from smiling. “Of course I will. I’d have to pay someone else, and there’d be no guarantee the work would be any good. Plus, I’d have to wait forever for anyone to get here, and I’m sure they’d expect room and board while they stayed. You’re already here. And I know you can do the work to my standards.”
He eyed her. “Do you?”
“Yes,” Teila told him, her gaze locked on him. “I do.”
Tension spun between them, thin as a glass filament and as fragile. She waited for his anger and wouldn’t have blamed him for it. His eyes narrowed for a moment, but the corner of his mouth twitched upward.
“You know more than I do, then. I’m not sure I know what half of these do.” He gestured at the tools.
She looked them over, remembering the times she’d come in search of him for the evening meal and found him in this very place, using those same tools. He’d made her many lovely things, though he’d never worked on another pleasure cruiser.
“You’ll figure it out,” she told him. “I have faith.”
He caught her sleeve when she turned to go. “I had a dream last night.”
She waited for him to go on, and when he didn’t right away, she said, “I’m sure you had more than one.”
“It seemed like more than a dream.”
“Ah.” She moved a little closer, though not so close as to make this awkward even though she couldn’t stop herself from remembering what it was like for him to pull her into his arms.
“Not like the other sort,” he said in a low voice. “The ones from the Wirthera. It wasn’t like those, either.”
“I’m glad.”
Kason looked at her. “I think you were in it.”
This surprised and pleased her so much she couldn’t hide it in her expression. “What was I doing?”
“I think you were trying to help me.”
“I would like to help you,” she said, swallowing around the lump of emotion she didn’t dare let overtake her.
He studied her. “You help everyone here, Teila. Don’t you?”
She thought of Venga, who’d been in her care for so long but had never improved from anything she’d ever done. “I try.”
Kason went to the bench and lifted several of the tools, blowing off the dust. He turned in a slow circle to look all around the shed before focusing on her again. “Is there a reason why you can’t tell me what you know about me?”
“Yes,” she said hesitantly.
He nodded. “It’s because of the Wirthera? Something they did to me?”
Rules. Guidelines. The training she’d undergone before they would allow her to take on even one soldier. All of it shuttered her mouth. It was hard to throw it all away, even knowing about the lies. Even believing there was a way to help him.
She took a deep breath. “Yes.”
He looked thoughtful. “You think it would be dangerous to tell me.”
“Yes,” Teila said.
“But you did it.”
She nodded. “Yes. I did.”
“Because you want to help me.”
She smiled. “Yes. Because I want to help you.”
“Why do you want to help me, Teila?”
That question was far more dangerous to answer, but as he stared into her eyes, she thought that maybe he’d begun to know.
Chapter 21
It was disheartening to realize he still had physical limitations. He’d spent much of the day clea
ning the shed, wiping each tool and inspecting it for damage and also to familiarize himself with them. They felt right in his hands, more right than anything else he could remember.
He discovered something else as he returned each tool to its place and tested a few on some pieces of scrap wood from the pile in the corner. When he focused on the tools and their functions, the data stream faded. It didn’t disappear. He thought it probably never would. But when he worked with the tools, he found he could ignore it, at least for a little while.
He found Billis in the yard with Vikus nearby. “Hey. I need your help with the scudder.”
Billis nodded, but Vikus gave him a narrow-eyed look. “What are you going to do with it?”
“It got damaged in the storm. I told Teila I’d try to fix it.”
“That makes sense—” Billis began, but Vikus elbowed him hard enough to make him double over.
“Shut up,” Vikus told him. To Jodah, he said, “You better make sure it’s safe for her.”
Jodah frowned. “Of course I would. Why would you think I’d do anything else?”
Billis looked shame-faced. Vikus didn’t. Squaring his shoulders, he moved closer to Jodah. “She goes out it in alone, you know. So you’d better make sure it’s fixed right, that’s all.”
“I will.” The younger man’s belligerence might’ve made him angry, except that he so clearly acted out of concern for Teila. Jodah clapped him on the shoulder. “Trust me.”
“I don’t.” Vikus shook his head and backed away. “But she does.”
The three of them were easily able to pull the damaged scudder from the boathouse and carry it to the shed, where they put it up on the wooden frame Jodah had built. The younger men left him there to pursue their own tasks, and Jodah got to work.
When he began, he wasn’t sure if he remembered what to do from previous experiences or if somehow the progression of tasks just seemed natural. He decided that it didn’t matter. As he moved from step to step in the project, all his tensions began to fade. He worked as the suns moved across the sky, so absorbed in his work he didn’t even stop to eat.
