The Memory Keeper by Sarina Dorie

Author:Sarina Dorie [Dorie, Sarina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781707059645
Publisher: amazon.com
Published: 2019-11-25T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

Art is not about what you see, but what you make others see.

—Edgar Degas

Something rough and wet licked Sean’s face. He sat up with a start, afraid he was being devoured. Shadows danced over the tusks and the sharp teeth of a monster inches from his face. Sean pushed himself backward like a crab. A chiramantep slobbered over him, not so different from an overgrown puppy dog. She nuzzled his ribs and nudged her head under his hand to be petted. He scratched behind her ears and she sighed. He wiped the slobber from his face with his other arm. It flared with heat.

“Let her clean you off,” Tomomi said. “The residue will give her a stomach ache, but she’ll live. You won’t if it stays on yours skin.”

The animal’s hot breath smelled like rancid meat. Sean felt disgusting. He would have preferred a bath in the river, but he supposed this would have to do for now.

The flames from the fire painted Tomomi’s face in flickering shadows. She smiled, the dark tattoo of her lip curling upward. “Looks like you had quite the adventure.”

Patrick sputtered and cried out as one of the blue beasts raked its tongue over the red swellings on his face. Others groaned and slowly woke around them. Horiuchi and Tam ground up a new batch of medicinal herbs to apply to rashes.

“An adventure,” Sean repeated.

That was an understatement.

* * *

No one objected when Tomomi insisted they return to the Tanukijin village. The journey lacked the optimism it had when they’d set out. Each jostle on their beasts of burden irritated Sean’s rash. Each step felt endless. None of the men stopped to take photographs, collect specimens or draw. Even those who hadn’t been injured were solemn.

Patrick continued to be unusually silent. When Sean questioned him about what had happened back in the ruins, he shrugged. “I must have had a strange dream and hallucinated.” His eyes were dark hollows and he turned away.

That creature—or had it been a machine?—that had been down in the belly of the ruins was no hallucination. When Sean peeked at the burns on his arms, made worse by the rash, he was reminded of the reality that his brother had almost been killed. It was no wonder Patrick wasn’t himself.

Sean hated to see his brother suffer. He made jokes to make Patrick smile, but the experience had taken its toll on him. Patrick no longer talked about his dreams of living on the planet and becoming a chemist. He hardly said anything at all.

His brother wasn’t the only one who had changed.

Michi sat alone and apart from her tribe as well as the off-worlders. Mr. Weston puffed away at his pipe until he ran out of tobacco. Audubon was sullen and didn’t get out his drawing materials once. He grew irritated anytime anyone asked him how he had gotten a black eye.

Three days after they departed from the secret palace, Sean found Michi awake early in the morning. He also couldn’t sleep.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.