The Silver Ship and the Sea (Silver Ship Series)

Chapter One: Our Second Loss Let me start with a nearly perfect dawn on Fremont. Morning light dappled my legs with patterns made by the broad leaves of the tent tree I sat beneath. The Lace River ran smoothly fifteen meters below me. Two of our seven moons shone above me: Faith, large and round, followed by her smaller companion, Hope; both pale in the bright daylight. As round as the moons, but near at hand and small, the redberry bush fruit had swollen into sticky orbs the size of my thumbnail. My fingers were stained red. I sat, twirling a stick idly in my hands, thinking about the summer, which had been easier than most, about the good harvest being tucked into the granaries and the storage bins. My hands moved of their own accord, restless because the peace made me restless. Footsteps on the path behind me announced my little brother Joseph, just old enough for light fuzzy down to ghost along his chin and a slight widening of the shoulders to emphasize his thin frame. He grinned widely as he sat down next to me, and then took the stick from my hands. "Here, Chelo, let me show you." He reached up and plucked a wide green diamond-shaped leaf from a low branch of the tent tree. He folded the leaf, then made a crack in the top of the dry stick and wedged the leaf into the crack. "See?" He twisted the stick, fast, so the black mottling of the whitish bark blurred to gray, his palms flat. He smiled, impish, his dark eyes dancing. His hands flew open and the stick rose, impossibly, higher than our heads, whirring like night-crickets. Leaf and stick separated. The leaf fluttered down onto my head and I laughed with him. "Come on, sis, let's go." He stood, shifting on his feet, full of restless energy. He was nearly my height, black-haired and black-eyed like me, and fast and strong, like all six of us altered. In Joseph, speed and strength showed in long wiry limbs and well-defined muscles. Neither he nor I displayed obvious physical differences; we didn't have Bryan's size or Kayleen's long feet and extra strong toes. Green Valley spread below us as I followed Joseph down the packed-dirt path to the science guild hall. Artistos nestled against the Lace Forest. The Lace River, behind us now as we walked, bordered Artistos to the north, cliffs marched up and away to the east, cleared land gave way to thick forest to the south. Another cliff face bounded the valley, falling westward to the Grass Plains that themselves ended in the sea. The town itself spread neatly out from the largest open space, Commons Park, and thin strips of green parkway ran beside the river, buffering Artistos and making space for fishing and gathering and walking. The two cliffs, up and down, the High Road and the sea road, forced the town's small industrial base north, across the river, and barns and fields bellied up to wide tent trees and tall thick-trunked near-elm of the forest in the south. Dense thorny underbrush made the forest a true barrier. All the land we needed so far had been long cleared, although each spring we fought the forest to maintain the boundary. Nearly everyone lived as close to Commons Park and the guild halls as they could, so the edges of Artistos were empty. Still, Joseph and I passed small groups of people hurrying to cross the river and start work. We began to walk faster. If we were last, Nava would be mad. We already angered her just by being ourselves, by being born at all. We couldn't help that, but we could be on time. Our jobs were simple. For us. Joseph would slip open to the data nets, feeling the subtle messages carried on the air from the networks; his blood, bone, and then brain vibrating wCooper, Brenda is the author of 'The Silver Ship and the Sea (Silver Ship Series)', published 2008 under ISBN 9780765355096 and ISBN 0765355094.