Legacies by Edward McKeown

Author:Edward McKeown [McKeown, Edward & McKeown, Edward]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: X28
Publisher: Copper Dog Publishing LLC
Published: 2021-06-02T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty

I drive off to see Nipkin for a day together. She is waiting on the steps of the school, as I pull up and skips up to the Mule. She tosses a small bag in the back, where I have packed a picnic lunch for us. We head to a hillside just north of the town and from which we can see Seachange. As an incidental, I can also use the ship’s laser should anything threaten us on this side of the hills. We will not pass out of its protecting arc.

We enjoy the sandwiches, sodas and fruit drinks. Nipkin has brought a local fruit, like grapes, that we both pop in our mouths, throwing them in the air, sometimes at each other’s mouths too.

But for all her little-girl giggles, I can tell something is on her mind. I put my grapes down. “Is there something you want to talk about, little one?”

“I hear people saying that there’s going to be an expedition to Tillet,” Nipkin whispers. The wind stirs her fine hair as she looks up at me.

“I think so. Malporin told me that much of the opaloids owed me for my cargo are up there, or in the mines beyond. With the lifting of the siege here, it may be safe. I expect he will ask me to go, perhaps very soon.”

“My mom…my mom is up there.”

“Yes, I know.”

“I feel like I should go…to see her, but Aurelia, the Indies they don’t like our cemeteries, sometimes they do things. I should go and see to her grave, make sure it is…”

She cannot continue, tears course down the little face. I reach forward and embrace her gently. A couple passing by on the trail below, notice us then look away, able to guess the source of a little girl’s pain and giving us privacy in a public place.

I kiss the girl’s soft cheek and manufacture some tissues in my internal plants sliding them into the false pockets of my jacket. Nipkin wipes a face too etched with grief for its few years.

I zip up the front of her jacket; the feeble sun is not putting out enough warmth. “You will not go,” I say in my most adult voice. “I am going. I will find your mother and make sure all is well.”

“I’m her daughter, I should—”

“No. This is work for grownups. Since your father is too far away and I am your friend, it will fall to me.”

Nipkin gives an oddly adult and bitter laugh that troubles me more than the tears. “It seems a lot to ask of so new a friend. You’ve already done so much for me. Why?”

For all the speed of my brain, I am stumped on how to respond for some seconds. “Let us say that friendship is very important to me. Most of my old friends are gone, and I have not had time to make new ones. You are the first.”

She looks at me in surprise. “Not Dassa?”

Now it is my turn for a bitter laugh.

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