The Silver Ship and the Sea Read Online Free Page A

work. It seemed to take forever.
    The burdened hebra turned its bearded head, watching Tom carefully, its wide-set dark eyes curious. Cold settled inside my stomach. The body lowered and the shroud opened to reveal Gi Lin, one side of his face flattened, the other perfect. Kayleen and Paloma and I nearly crushed each other’s hands from sorrow and disbelief.
    The other hebra was similarly burdened. Just as Tom loosened the ropes, a hand flopped out. Steven’s hand. His left little finger was missing, an accident from the last days of the war. It is one thing to be certain of something, and another to have knowledge of it driven into you with the harsh stake of reality. I landed on my knees on the stony grass of the park, and Kayleen and Paloma knelt on each side of me. Someone keened. When I found my breath again, I pushed myself back to standing. Behind me, Paloma asked, “Any word of the others?”
    Ken, one of the men who’d gone to retrieve the bodies, answered her. His words were choppy, uneven, as if he still had trouble admitting their truth. “Rocks fell almost all the way across the road. Hard to pass at all, but if someone was on the upward side, they could get to us. We saw a dead hebra off the cliff, but there are rocks there, too, rocks crossed the road.” He swallowed. “We did see Therese’s body, but there’s a rock too big to move covering most of her. We’ll have to go back later.”
    I stumbled into Paloma’s arms as the second expected blow became real.
    Tom came up, putting his arm over my shoulder. “Go on, Chelo, take care of Joseph. You can’t stay in the park all night. Your house came up safe in the survey. Go there. We’ll check on you tomorrow.”He glanced at Paloma and Kayleen, his eyes demanding rather than asking. “Can you take her back? Settle her and Joseph in? Then meet me at the amphitheater—I’ll be there in an hour.”
    We walked back, clutching each other’s hands, stumbling through nearly complete darkness. Only one weak moon, Plowman, added to the starlight. The town’s evening lights hadn’t come on. We stumbled through the dark to find Joseph and Bryan where I had left them. Bryan carried Joseph, and the five of us shuffled carefully home, crunching shards of glass and ceramic roof tile under our feet.
    Kayleen and Paloma helped me tuck Joseph in. Bryan made me a cup of mint and redberry tea. After they left, I tried to drink the tea, but it tasted bitter. I wandered about, restless, picking up cups and pictures that had fallen, sweeping the shards of a broken potted plant into the trash.
    Steven and Therese should walk in any minute. I knew better, yet I looked up for them over and over.
    I pulled my bedding into Joseph’s room and lay down on the floor. False crickets chirped outside the window and the occasional call of a night bird sounded from up above the house in the beginning of the Lower Lace Forest.
    The night passed slowly. What if Joseph didn’t get better? What would happen to us now? Who would take us in?

2
Mourning
    Light falling in the window woke me. I blinked. Where was Therese? She usually woke us up. I remembered, and wanted to fall back asleep until Therese woke me. But she wouldn’t, ever again. My back was stiff from sleeping huddled on the hard floor of Joseph’s room and he lay, hurt, above me. Joseph stirred, as if waking in sync with me. “Are you awake?” I whispered.
    “Yes.”
    I sat up and gazed at him. He was on his back, looking up at the ceiling, his face white. “How do you feel?”
    Joseph’s eyes met mine, but looked right through me. It made me shiver. “Like fire burned me inside out,” he murmured, his voice cracking. “I heard them, their voices, their cries. Steven calling out for Therese, Mary yelling for Jonas, but of course, he wasn’t with them. I was afraid with them, as if the rocks were falling on me. I heard their pain, heard them wink away, one by one. Therese was one of the first, and I heard