Kingdom of Cages(47)
Chena chewed on her lip as she walked back toward the railbike depot. There had to be a way. She’d find it. But even if she didn’t, she would at least make one more trip to bring Farin his answer and his raspberries.
She would see him again.
By the time Chena got back to Offshoot, twilight and flowers filled the forest, and she was as tired as if she’d spent the entire day shoveling compost. But she didn’t mind. She held the chit and the note in her pocket like precious secrets. She knew how she could make her errand-running business work. She could help Mom make enough money to get them back to Athena Station and then pay an Authority shipper to take them to some other world where no one would snatch them up for body parts. All she had to do was convince Teal and Mom about a couple of things. When she’d done that, she’d go back to Stem, and she’d see Farin again. They’d talk, and she would tell him about her ideas for running a whole business of carrying packages and letters, and he’d tell her how smart she was, and then… and then…
Chena stubbed her toe against an uneven board on the catwalk and stumbled forward a few steps. She swore and hurried up the stairs, keeping her eyes firmly on where she was going.
It was shift change. Chena tried to get above the worst of the crowd by climbing the stairs to the catwalks, but even the catwalks were crowded. She found herself being jostled on all sides by people anxious to get to their meals and their baths, or just to get indoors before the mosquitoes rose for the evening.
Below her, she saw Sadia shouldering her way through the crowds as they spread out. She waved, wondering what Sadia had been doing, since it was her day off too. Sadia must not have seen her, though, because she did not wave or even break stride.
Chena shrugged. Oh, well. I can tell her everything tomorrow. Well, okay, maybe not everything. Maybe she wouldn’t tell Sadia how her heart thumped when Farin smiled. She didn’t want Sadia to think she was a stupid little girl with a crush.
The house Mom had rented was on the second level of Offshoot. It was a small place, lashed in the shadows near a cluster of other buildings around a central cistern that caught the water falling from the upper levels and spilled it down to the canals that ran toward the hydro-processing buildings.
The house had been built so that strip windows alternated with thick wooden panels, letting in what little sunlight crept under the thick branches and between their neighbors’ houses. Even for an Offshoot house, it was perpetually dim, which was one of the reasons Mom had gotten it so cheap. But now Chena could see light in the windows and her heart rose. She couldn’t wait to tell Mom.…
She stopped in her tracks. Careful, Chena. Tell Mom too much and you’ll get so grounded…
She shook her head. It was okay. She’d be able to tell her enough. Who would she say she got the letter from, though? Talking to strangers was not a sport Mom considered appropriate for her and Teal. If he was a friend of someone, okay, but she sure couldn’t say he was a friend of Nan Elle’s.
Maybe she didn’t have to tell about the letter at all. Maybe she could just tell about the idea of the letter.
Yeah, that’ll do it. Secure with that extra thought, Chena pushed open the door.
“Well, there she is,” announced Mom. “You were wrong Teal, we won’t have to call out the cops after all.”
The front room had been completely transformed while she’d been gone. Patchworks of cloth made a colorful rug for the center of the warped floor. A low table, canted either from the tilt in the floor or because its legs were uneven, stood on the rug. Four fat red pillows lay scattered around it. The blank, worn wood of the walls had been polished. Curtains as patchworked as the rug hung in the windows. Vines and flowers stood in baskets and pots in the corners.
“How?” began Chena.
“Ah, you forget, Supernova.” Mom smiled. She sat in the middle of the floor with a weird, blocky contraption in front of her and a length of purple material hanging out one edge of it. “I used to be a colony woman, and not a rich one either. I know a thing or three about making do, when I can get the stuff.” She gazed in satisfaction at the room. “It’s not high design, but it will do, and we can fix it up as we go.”
“Look at this, Chena!” exclaimed Teal, jumping to her feet and pulling her sister toward the low table. “We get to eat on the floor!”
“Well, not quite, but close.” Mom also stood and enfolded Chena in an embrace that went on long enough that Chena knew she had really been a little worried. “How was the great adventure?”
“Great,” answered Chena. “Where’d you get all the…” She gestured at the rug and curtains.