Order of Swans (The Blue Swan Duology #1)

Chapter 22

22

Kaley was lying on soft, sweet grass with dappled sunlight coming through the trees. The days seemed longer on Bellis than on Earth. She knew she should probably ask about that, but right now she was too comfortable to care.

Tibby was in the crook of her arm and Arnot, the little elephant, was by her legs. On her right side, sitting in the grass, was Otto, the dodo. The poor guy was torn between her and Tanek, as though he couldn’t figure out if he was a mammal or a bird. Stretched out on the grass on the other side was Tanek, his head resting on a five-hundred-pound tortoise as it crunched the grass. Three swans, looking like they were about to start nesting, were close by on his far side.

She thought of the picture they made, two humans nearly smothered by animals. But after the day they’d had, her only desire was to be quiet and still.

When she and Tanek returned to the compound with as many feathers as they could carry, they’d been greeted with loud, energetic enthusiasm. “If they had cannons, they’d set them off,” she said, but no one understood her joke.

Tanek was soon leading young men carrying big bags under water to the cave. It took hours and multiple trips to clear out the cave—and Tanek went with every team. He wasn’t going to risk injuries to unsupervised kids. Mekos wanted to help with the diving, but Sojee said he was needed at the processing area.

“Papá has made some new discoveries,” Tanek explained to Kaley. “He showed them to Mekos.”

“Not to you?” she asked.

Tanek scoffed. “Not my job.” He started to say more, but someone called him and he had to go.

Kaley, followed by her animal entourage, went with Mekos and helped with the feathers. They were cleaned, then the barbules were carefully sliced off. She was told that every bit was valuable, including the quills and the fluff.

The pieces were collected, then boiled in a carefully measured amount of sterile water. Hours later, they were removed and laid out on trays that were put into the big ovens. Daln explained that they would be ground into powder and pressed into different sizes of pills. The water used for boiling would be made into a salve and put into tubes. “It’s good for skin ailments,” she was told.

While the men worked quickly and efficiently, she managed to get some information from them. Internal health problems were solved by the chips in their arms. “Sound waves,” Sojee said as he emptied another bag of feathers onto the slick stone table. From the look of them, they’d been used as nesting material. Cleaning them without injuring the barbules wasn’t easy or pleasant.

“You mean cancer?” she asked. “Meningitis? Lupus? Parkinson’s?”

Only the oldest men had heard any of those words, but they didn’t remember what they meant.

Kaley asked more questions and found out that the absence of disease meant that there were no doctors or medical clinics. That sounded good until she was told that a broken bone often meant permanent injury or even death.

“There needs to be a happy medium between our worlds,” she said, but no one asked what she meant.

In the afternoon, she had an interesting talk with Sojee and Mekos. The three of them—the most inexperienced, or, as Sojee called them, the most useless —were together and gently washing swan debris off the feathers.

Sojee said, “I had a report this morning that the Pithan Reaver was busy last night.”

Kaley didn’t ask who had sent him the report. Someone from the royal family? But then, Sojee was staring at Mekos so hard that he probably wouldn’t have heard her question. If Mekos heard, he didn’t react. “What’s a Reaver?” she asked.

Sojee, his hands on the feathers, was still staring at Mekos. “A Reaver plunders, loots and steals. And he uses a bow and arrow rather well.”

Kaley looked from one man to the other, then lowered her voice. “You think Mekos might be...?” She didn’t finish but joined Sojee in staring at the young man.

Mekos smiled at them. “You thought it was me ? Based solely on the fact that I can handle a bow?”

Sojee didn’t answer, just kept staring.

Kaley had a thought. “What does this Reaver do with the goods he steals?”

Mekos said, “The word is that he helps the less fortunate. I’ve heard that some of the women on Pithan need help.”

Kaley gasped. “Robin Hood.”

“I hope this isn’t one of your stories,” Sojee said. “People in your stories end up dead.”

Mekos nodded in agreement. “Or chained to walls, or cutting off their toes, or—”

“No, no,” she said. “This one is about love. For Marian. Well, there is the Sheriff of Nottingham. He’s a pain but Robin deftly eludes him.” She looked at Mekos. “Robin was young, talented, smart and great with a bow and arrow. The legend is that he took from the rich and gave to the poor.”

“I like him already,” Mekos said. “If you meet him, please introduce us. Maybe I can learn from him. As for me , I’ve been here for days. Even my mother can’t travel fast enough to go between islands that quickly.”

“Mother?” Kaley’s eyes widened. “A female. Everything here is backward so maybe Robin Hood is a girl.”

The two men looked at each other in shock. Then, in the next second, they disappeared. Poof. Gone.

Kaley looked at Tibby when he stuck his head up from the grass. He seemed as puzzled as she felt. “Was it something I said? Or do the two of them know who the female Robin Hood might be?”

Minutes later, the men returned and the Reaver was not mentioned again.

That was hours ago. The workers had been fed pounds of beef; all the feathers were cleared out of the cave and were being processed. At last, everyone slipped away, wanting to rest and enjoy the feeling of having done a good day’s work.

Kaley stretched out on the grass, away from the others, and Tanek joined her. “How do your lungs feel?”

“Stretched,” he said.

“Did you have any problems?”

“I had to help a couple of boys but they didn’t give up. Heard anything from your latest prince about where Nessa is hiding?”

She looked at the tree leaves and sighed. “Nothing. He probably found his true love and forgot all about me.” When Tanek made a sound as though that was impossible, she smiled.

“My concern is that the king might execute us for returning his son to him,” he said.

Kaley laughed, then mimicked a male voice. “‘I forgot how bad my son is. Off with their heads!’” She paused. “ Do you execute people? No! Don’t tell me that. Did you see the photos of the men on my camera? Daln got the camera batteries recharged and set up a little photo area.”

“Yeah, I saw them. They were studies in grief.”

“My thoughts, too,” she said sadly.

“You did well today,” he said.

“Thank you. It seemed almost natural to me.”

“Are you sure your mother didn’t have feathers? Maybe you and I are distant relatives.”

He was joking, but she didn’t laugh. She knew so very little about her mother.

He was quiet for a moment. “Do you mind if I ask how your parents met?”

“Through...” She hesitated. “Through Jobi. He and my mother attended the same university in the east. Jobi had a job in the west and was going to drive there, but he needed codrivers to share expenses. My mother was the only one who answered his ad. His car broke down near my father’s garage.” She shrugged. “Dad said he took one look at my mother and was in love. It was mutual.”

“Then Jobi left her there?”

Knowing what she did now made Kaley hesitate. Was it as coincidental as they’d thought? “No. Jobi called the place where he had the job to tell them he’d be two weeks late, but they said they couldn’t wait, that they had to give the job to someone else. Jobi was broke and he had no car, so my family let him stay in the room over the garage. It was supposed to be just until his car was repaired, but my grandfather had broken his arm and was having a hard time working. They hired Jobi to help on the farm.”

Tanek turned onto his side, his head propped on his hand. “How long did he stay?”

“Until I was born. Actually, he delivered me.” When he looked at her, she waved her hand. “It used to be a beautiful thought, but now I know he had ulterior motives.”

He considered what she’d told him. “Jobi was there for months but your family didn’t see any oddities in him? Your mother didn’t see them?”

“If they did, they were quiet.” Her voice was rising. “People in Kansas are very polite. We wouldn’t say, ‘Hey! You’re weird. Did you come from another planet?’ We’d just offer him more beef and beer, then everything would be fine. Besides, my parents were in love, and newlyweds, and I was on the way. I doubt if they saw much else.”

Tanek lay back down. “Jobi didn’t have anything to do with...?”

“My mother’s death?” she asked. “No. It was a brain aneurysm. But maybe the stress of having me...” She didn’t want to continue.

“I’m sorry that happened to you and your family.”

“Me, too.” His sincere words calmed her. “Jobi had been on Earth for a long time. He’d learned how to pretend to be one of us.” But there had been clues, she thought. Her grandfather said that it was odd that Jobi drove so far off the interstate and that when his car broke down he was less than a mile from her dad’s garage. Did Jobi foresee that the young woman he’d met at university would meet the man she was to marry? Foresee that the couple would produce Kaley—who was to do something on his planet?

Kaley didn’t like to think what the truth might be. The idea of her life being predetermined and manipulated was not something she wanted to consider. Most of all, she didn’t want to question what she knew about her mother. If a human could be a saint, that was how Kaley thought of her mother—and she wanted to keep it that way.

She didn’t want to think about any of that. She turned to Tanek. “I bet Tibby would let you pet him if you were really, really careful.”

“I’m not going to get near that creature. It’s bad enough that this giant bird you found is sitting on my arm.”

“Let me explain what the word dodo has come to mean.”

“I bet I already know,” he said, but Kaley told him anyway.

Mekos was deeply annoyed. Every boy his age had spent the day with Tanek diving deep under water to an unknown cave. Afterward, the boys had strutted around bragging about what they’d done, how dangerous it was and how heroic Tanek had been. “A swansman saved my life!” one of them said. “My dad says I am honored.” They’d all looked at Mekos.

“You cleaned feathers?” one asked, smirking.

Mekos was about to hit the boy when Sojee grabbed him by the collar and picked him up off the ground. He didn’t let him down until they were out of the sight of the boys.

“I could have won,” Mekos said sulkily.

“Won what?” Sojee asked.

Mekos didn’t answer. “Why didn’t my father take me with him? He could have—”

“Spare me,” Sojee said as they started walking. “You have other things to do than go swimming.”

“It was more than that. It was...” When he saw what Sojee meant for him to see, he quit talking. In the distance, lying on the grass, buried under a pile of animals and birds, were Kaley and his father. They looked half-asleep—and old. Mekos’s anger rose. “I know my father doesn’t want Kaley to leave, but that’s no way to win her. He should take her soaring, create songs to her beauty. Show his feelings. I’m going to wake them up.”

Sojee clamped his big hand on Mekos’s shoulder. “When you take on responsibility instead of whining that you didn’t get to go swimming, and...” He glared at Mekos. “When you understand what’s going on there , it’ll show me that you’re an adult.” With that, Sojee turned and left Mekos alone.