Chapter 12
Mara
“Mara, get that box of transistors out of the back, will you?” my father calls for me. He’s busy and he sounds harried. We’ve never had so much demand. There’s going to be a market on Saturday and he wants to be prepared. We’re going to have to clear out all the old stock, he says.
I have been cataloging old parts all morning.
My neck and back hurt from bending over them and copying down serial numbers so we can assure people that they’re all genuine, and provide warranties if necessary.
My father insists on us having more information than anybody else, and also not accepting returns on goods we didn’t sell.
My life is a list of serial numbers, all copied down meticulously in his book. It’s good work, steady work, and as the rains are back, it’s frequent work. There’s a lot to be done to restore the environment to its previous state, and we are all hands on deck.
The elders talk about the drought, and how lucky we are it broke, and I agree about that. It should feel satisfying. It does feel satisfying, I tell myself. But, from time to time, I feel a strange pang. A memory of something I can’t quite reach for.
I have a certain sense of nervousness any time my father talks about going on trade missions without me. So far, with the rains being here, and the growing season extending, he’s mostly staying on the planet to supply the local farmers with what they need, so that’s not so bad.
* * *
The market is bustling. Seeds are being sold, animals are being traded, and home crafts are being exchanged. I want to get to the jam tent, but there’s a steady stream of tractor parts being sold and my father is insistent I copy down every last detail for the receipts.
By the time I get out of here, there’s not going to be so much as a solitary jam crumb left over.
“Dad? Can I have a break? Just ten minutes?”
My father turns around. “We’ve got a line the size of an anaconda, and you want a break?”
“I’m hungry,” I say. “I can’t eat the tractor parts. Or the ledger. I’ve already chewed the pencil.”
“Very well,” he sighs. “You know, if you’d take Jimothy as a husband, you’d be spared all this admin.”
“I’d rather spend the rest of my life copying down 66-digit serials in triplicate than marry Jimothy,” I say.
He laughs, as does his customer. It’s become a running joke that Jimothy Farvel wants to marry me and that I am refusing to do so. It doesn’t help that Jimothy is a catch by colony standards. It’s making me very unpopular in certain circles to keep rejecting him.
It’s a warm day, and getting warmer. Jimothy is in the wood-cutting competition. He’s shirtless and glistening, and surrounded by a crowd. I glance over at him on my way to the food tents. He catches my eye and swings the axe even harder, prompting shouts and hollers from the crowd.
I manage to get two jam sweet rolls topped with icing, along with two lemonades. I carry them both back to our stall, where my father is immersed in a conversation about rotary tilling.
I set his beverage and lunch down near him, and eat mine with great enjoyment. There is sun beating down, but we have conditioning in the shade, throngs of people are milling happily through the stalls, and I have a sense of contentment that feels hard won.
I am just finishing my lemonade when a handsome stranger approaches our stall. He’s taller than most, and he has a blue-ish tint to his otherwise dark hair. I feel a crackle of electricity as I look up at him. It’s the kind of feeling I should have when looking at Jimothy.
I glance over at my father, but he hasn’t noticed the new guy. He’s too busy talking to Mr. Thompson and his son Garret about corrosion on breaks.
“Anything you need today, sir?” I ask the question in a weird and stilted way because I am being suffused with a certain type of feeling that I rarely get when it comes to men.
This man is gorgeous. His lashes are dark, his eyes are blue. He is wearing thick blue jeans and work boots and a collared shirt that has just enough dirt on it to show that he’s been working and not enough to make him look neglectful of his hygiene.
“I don’t think I’ve seen you before,” I say. “Are you from down the valley? We’ve been getting more visitors from that way lately now that there’s so much trade happening. The port’s always busy.”
“I’m from down South,” he says, his voice taking on a smooth drawl.
He’s familiar, somehow. I feel as though I’ve met him before, but he’s definitely a stranger.
If a man like this were around the colony, there would be a lot of chatter around the place.
The girls would know about him, and they’d know if he was single or married.
There’s no ring on his finger, I notice.
“Could you show me the display machine?” He asks the question while I’m busy trying to silently inventory him.
“Sure,” I say. “It’s parked a little ways away from the main stall because of traffic restrictions, but if you’ll follow me…”
I lead him to the edge of the market, where the display tractor is standing. When we first unveiled it, it was absolutely thronged, but the draft horses are now working on the other far side and most have lost interest in this for the moment.
“What are you looking for, exactly?” I ask the handsome stranger.
The market is still going on, but it feels as though it is at a greater distance than I remember. The world seems to wrap around him, make him the center of my attention.
“I’m looking for you, actually,” he replies with a sexy wink.
I blush and giggle. “Thank you,” I say. “But I’m not authorized to give discounts.”
“I don’t want a discount,” he says, looping a strong arm lightly around my waist and drawing me behind the tractor so we are further hidden from view. “I want you.”
“Oh, my,” I gasp.
I am wearing a dress today. He slides his hand up my thigh and under my dress with a casual ownership that is as hot as it is infuriating. That bold move brings me back to my senses.
I slap his face as hard as I can, pulling down my hem at the same time. “I am not that kind of woman!” I declare, taking several steps backward.
He chuckles and seems unbothered by my strong rebuff.
“I know you’re not,” he says. “You’re mine. You’ve saved yourself for me all these weeks, even though you’ve been propositioned half a dozen times by at least three of these local lads.”
Saved myself for him? He sounds insane. There’s a lot of that going on at the moment.
A lot of people lost their minds in the big dry.
Things are starting to improve now, but I reckon with enough hardship you don’t ever come truly right the same way you once were.
This guy is young and handsome, but that means he was probably caught in the worst of it.
Like I was, I guess. I wonder again how I don’t know him. Maybe he’s from off planet.
“How do you know I’ve not been with any of the others?”
“I know everything,” he winks. “I’ve been keeping an eye on you, Mara. In everything I’ve done. I found your father, I brought the rain, and now I’m here for you.”
“Oh,” I say. “You brought the rain. You’re a rainmaker, are you? A sorcerer?” I don’t even hide the mocking in my tone. I try to be nice to pretty much everyone, but sometimes a guy pushes it too far and you’ve just got to take the piss out of him.
He smiles even more broadly and gives a half-shoulder shrug. He doesn’t seem to mind if I believe him or not. It’s good, because I don’t.
“I don’t know you,” I say. “And I never lost my father.”
“Not in this timeline, you didn’t,” he says.
Alright. He’s weird. There are a lot of strange men in the colony who like to talk about stuff with timelines and call things quantum when they’re not even close to quantum.
It makes my dad so mad, because he sells quantum engines from time to time, and these guys sometimes try to stand in the exhaust to see if… I don’t even really know what.
This guy looks too clean and too smart to try to huff quantum fuel, but you never really know.
I’m starting to think more and more that he’s from off world.
There’s something about him that makes me think he’s not from here.
He’s going to have to be careful if he’s already on the verge of being unhinged.
Something about living this close to the edge of the world makes people go very much their own way.
Not every man is a Jimothy with a lot of colony ladies after him.
“Well, the only timeline I know about is the timeline in which I have to get back to work. My father’s going to be big mad if I leave the booth for too long.”
“Mara!” My father calls for me almost on cue.
“See?”
He doesn’t even glance in the direction of my father. He just smiles at me with those pretty, stellar-striking eyes.
“I’ll see you soon, Mara,” he smiles. “Next time, I’ll be more of a gentleman.”
The sound of the market is growing again.
I hadn’t noticed that it faded, but now that it’s returning, I notice the difference.
I move away from the stranger with a mixture of confusion and regret.
He dared touch me intimately, and I don’t like that, but it does feel as though some part of me recognizes him.
“Where the hells have you been?” my father asks me. “It’s been the better part of an hour.”
“I thought it was more like five minutes,” I say. “Sorry. A guy wanted me to show him the tractor.”
“What guy?”
I turn around to point at him. The crowd is thick for a moment, and then it clears. He’s not there.
“Uh, I don’t know where he’s gone. But he said he was interested. Maybe he’ll be back. He might have gone to get something to eat? The bakery is selling their seconds, and the bread is so good.”
My father frowns for a moment. “If anybody wants to look at a tractor, you refer them to me. I’m the one who knows how the transmission works, and I have the keys if they want to test the hydraulics and such.”