Acorna's Children #03 - Third Watch by Anne McCaffrey

Author:Anne McCaffrey [McCaffrey, Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Fiction, General, Mothers and Daughters, Fantasy Fiction, Sagas, Life on Other Planets, Sisters, Fantasy Fiction; American, Plague, cats, Acorna (Fictitious character)
ISBN: 006052541X
Publisher: Eos
Published: 2007-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

I don’t imagine it’s worthwhile to try to find this Odus now,” Neeva said. “He probably died of the plague, don’t you think?”

“Perhaps not, if he was the one who deliberately engineered it,” Ariin replied.

“Ariin, I agree he was totally odious,” Khorii said, “but I don’t think he was actually evil. Why would he do such a thing?”

“I don’t know. He probably didn’t know he had until it was too late to undo. But I very much doubt he suffered by it. His sort never do.”

Since Odus’s sort was the only sort Ariin had known until recently, Khorii decided that although her sister’s viewpoint might be a bit warped in some instances, she was probably generally correct.

“In that case, we should find him and see if he can help undo this latest scourge,” Neeva suggested.

“Okay, but where do we look?” Jaya asked.

“His race left Vhiliinyar long ago,” Neeva said. “Well, most of them anyway. I am unsure how to explain the continuing presence of Khiindi’s alter ego.”

“Khiindi is part of our family,” Khorii said. Khiindi looked up from his bath and blinked twice before returning his attention to his tail. “Grimalkin is the name of his alter ego, and he befriended my father. It got—well, complicated, and as Ariin will tell you, sometimes what he did didn’t work out very well, but—”

“But he was your family, just like he’s your kitty now,” Sesseli said, having apparently no problem with the change in her feline friend’s status.

“About like how the tribes were my family,” Captain Bates said, with a wry twist to her mouth. “Although my mother was the only blood relative I had, sometimes I thought my adopted ones screwed up my life so much I’d have been better off as an orphan.”

“But no matter how good they are, sometimes you feel that way anyhow,” Jaya said. “Sometimes I wanted to believe my parents—and my aunts and uncles and cousins, who were other crew members on the Mana—”

“I didn’t realize that, Jaya!” Khorii said. She felt bad that she had failed to understand, or even sense, that part of Jaya’s predicament as the sole survivor of the Mana’s crew.

Jaya nodded. “Yes, there were a lot of them. They all had opinions about everything I did, everything I said or wore. Sometimes I used to just feel smothered and as if there was nobody left for me to be because they were so overpowering. And they did things that upset my plans and hurt my feelings and embarrassed me. I never had any privacy.”

“But you really miss them all now and wish like anything they were all back again,” Sesseli said, with a sigh.

“Not all of them, no,” Jaya said. “But my mom and dad I miss all the time. And—well…”

Hap silently patted her shoulder. Sesseli buried her face in the fur of the kitten she was carrying.

Moonmay said, “It’s true kinfolk can be a trial and a tribulation at times, but I miss mine just the same, and I’d miss them more if I knew I’d never again have an opportunity to be peeved with their antics.

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