Bright of the Sky Read Online Free PDF Page A

happened.
    A wisp of fog descended over him. On its fuzzy screen he imagined a strange river flowing. It moved slowly, more like lava than water, more silver than blue. . . . And the things that rode the river . . . The image receded, leaving him no wiser. Somewhere in the murk lay his memories of the other place. Ten or so years of memories. But the tests had all shown he was the same age as when he left Earth, still thirty-four years old. Of course, these contradictions only existed if one held to strict rules of logic. And Quinn’s hold on strict rules had always been loose.
    Up the beach he could see someone on his property. Paddling fast, he got close enough to see that it was his brother Rob. Caitlin and the kids were with him. They hadn’t spotted him yet. He could still evade them, as he had been doing for two years now, for reasons not entirely clear to him. Rob with his normal family. Those kids. He was becoming a lousy uncle—eccentric, unpredictable, unavailable. He wearily paddled to shore. For Caitlin’s sake, because she always thought the best of him, and he hated to prove her wrong.
    As he pulled the kayak up the beach, his brother and Caitlin came down to help. Quinn nodded at them. “I thought you weren’t coming until the twenty-third.”
    Rob smirked. “Merry Christmas to you, too.”
    Caitlin gave Quinn a big hug, which he returned with feeling. Her face always lit up when she saw him, the last human being who seemed to look forward to seeing him. She wore her light brown hair pulled casually back from her face—round, where Johanna’s was oval, green eyes where Johanna’s were deep brown. He couldn’t understand what a fine woman like that saw in his brother, though he liked Rob, too, after a fashion.
    “Uncle Titus,” Mateo shouted, “I found a dead bird!” Down the beach, Mateo was holding a mass of greasy feathers.
    “Good!” Quinn shouted. “Give it to your little sister!”
    Mateo began chasing Emily with the bird as Caitlin hustled down the sand to forestall a sibling fight.
    Quinn gazed at his brother, seeing a mirror image of himself: big-boned, deep blue eyes—but gone a little soft with that desk job he liked so much. “I thought you said you were coming on Friday.”
    “This is Friday.” Rob gestured at the porch with his armload of presents. “Let’s get these inside.” He stared at his brother. “We are invited in? We drove three hours from Portland, Titus.”
    “I haven’t got any food or anything. For the kids.” Well, there were some hard candies left over from last Christmas.
    “Caitlin brought the food, naturally. You don’t think we’d let you cook a turkey, do you?”
    Quinn helped to carry the presents, feeling like an ass that, again this year, he had more or less forgotten about Christmas. He cut a glance at Rob—Rob doing the brotherly thing, reaching out, doing Christmas. Rob the stalwart, the steady.
    Rob hanging by a thread at the company.
    Quinn began the unlocking procedures on his front door, fiddling with mechanisms he’d designed himself. Also he’d designed his door knocker. In the shape of an impossibly long face, with finely formed lips and brows, it was cast in bronze from his own carving. Rob took in the view. “It’s nice here.”
    “Yes. No one around for miles.”
    “That’s not what I meant.”
    To avoid a rerun of the lecture on becoming a hermit, Quinn made a show of bundling the packages inside and looking for a place to stow them. He dumped the parcels on the couch, on top of the kayak equipment he’d been cleaning that morning, while Rob carried bags of food into the kitchen. Thunderous jolts from the porch announced the arrival of Mateo and Emily, hollering and streaming sand.
    Caitlin managed to grab Mateo by the collar. “Shoes off,” she ordered.
    Quinn waved at them. “Don’t bother.” He looked around at the mess. “Little sand can’t hurt the place.”
    Emily was drawn to the dining room table, where the