Crest by Jae Waller

Author:Jae Waller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ECW Press
Published: 2021-05-21T00:00:00+00:00

22.

A Year without Stars

Once Jonalin and I both went back to work, it became tough to see him. There wasn’t much time between our shifts and sunset, which was his curfew. Our days off didn’t overlap. So one weekend I brought him lunch at the brick-making kilns in Ashtown, then one weekday he brought me lunch at the apothecary, and we settled into a routine.

He said he missed seeing the stars. Back when he was a dockhand, he’d worked such odd hours he couldn’t sleep at night, so he’d wandered the shore or gone canoeing. Neither his cell in prison nor the parole house had windows. He said sometimes he woke in total darkness and felt like the sky had been wiped blank. After a year without stars, I wasn’t sure he’d survive another.

I started looking at the sky before bed. Next time I saw Jonalin, I described each night to him. I told him about storm clouds, falling snow, and shimmers of green and blue light on the horizon. His eyes drifted out of focus like he was picturing it, saving it for later. Over the weeks we followed the moon cycle and the slow movement of constellations.

Jonalin told me the prison guards had shaved off his hair. He had no idea what happened to the shorn bits. Iyo tradition dictated they should be burned to return to the earth, but for all he knew they were still lying on a cold stone floor, those bits of his spirit trapped in prison forever. I wanted to reach out and stroke his head, to touch the remains of his spirit and say he’d be okay, but it felt like a hollow promise.

He asked how my reading lessons were going, and I admitted they weren’t. My dashed hopes of learning from Matéo hurt too much. I scraped by at work by memorizing recipes and drawing symbols on labels. Even Samulein, who struggled to pay attention when snow or sleet cancelled lunchtime athletics, was making more progress than me. Hesitantly, Jonalin suggested he could teach me.

It felt like the Sverbian trickster spirit was playing a cruel joke. At one point, I would’ve been flattered that a brawny older boy wanted to help me. Now, everything was wrong. Jonalin didn’t look or act or smile like he used to, we were both hung up on Ferish people we could never have, and every time I saw him, I remembered touching his neck to find a pulse.

Lessons were a good excuse to keep watch over him, though. On days he visited me, he brushed coal ash off his clothes in the alley, greeted Agata and Nicoletta politely, and gave Luna a scratch under the chin. He was a shadow stepping into my daydream of Matéo — the two of us curled up by the sitting room fireplace, reading Ferish children’s stories in Nicoletta’s old school primers, sharing pérossetto rolls and smoked salmon.

Gradually, his hair grew into its usual rumpled state. Hauling bricks put muscle back on his bones.

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