Earth Legend Read Online Free PDF Page B

from
sheer weariness as because anyone had to be at work in the morning.
"Good thing tomorrow is Saturday," someone commented. Someone else
answered, "I'll be way too wasted in the morning to go to work."
And a third put in, "Shouldn't this become a holiday? Destiny Day
or something like that? The day we started the journey of a
lifetime." There were cheers and whistles and someone said they'd
bring it up at the next village meeting.
    No work tomorrow? That meant colonists had
jobs. Just like home. I decided to wander into town Monday morning
to see where they went. I should figure out a way to look as if I,
too, had a job like everyone else. Then I pretended to fall asleep
as the party wound down.
    After the last colonist had tiptoed softly
past in order not to wake me and disappeared down the path towards
New Rochelle, I rose quietly and followed at a good distance. By
the time I reached the town square, it was deserted with the
exception of one figure in the darkness. I eased behind a store and
waited for him to go home. He didn't.
    I squinted. Darn. It was Cullen Vail, pacing
steadily back and forth. Making his rounds. Keeping New Rochelle
safe from felons like me. I dropped to my knees behind a voluminous
raspberry bush by the store wall and waited for him to leave, which
he did after a few moments.
    When I was sure he was gone, I slipped into a
store and pulled a lightweight mattress, a pillow and a blanket
from the shelves and then dragged them into the apple orchard. I
was glad for the artificial dirt because I left no trace behind.
But when I was getting ready to turn the mattress into a bed,
something stopped me. A sound.
    I froze. Dropped to the ground and lay as
still as possible as I waited to be uncovered. I was afraid to look
towards the sound, afraid to make any movement at all, so I just
lay and waited to be caught. To be imprisoned. The be thrown out
the airlock.
    Those are the things I expected to happen.
Instead, I heard music. The clear, lovely sound of pan pipes
drifted towards me through the night air. I'd heard them before.
One of my aunts had whittled a set from reeds growing near her home
and bound them together with twine. When she was finished, she'd
winked at me and played a melody. I danced and after that I danced
every time she played them because she played happy music.
    The songs I heard now were hauntingly
beautiful but I couldn't decide whether they were happy or sad
because, in a way I couldn't fathom, they were both. I wondered who
was making such music and what led to the choice of songs. Was the
musician pouring out what he was feeling, what everyone was most
likely feeling beneath the public gaity, as the Destiny headed out
of the solar system?
    I crawled on my belly without a sound through
the cherry bushes until I could make out a form in the dimness that
passed for night on the space ship. No moon because there was no
need for one. But the darkness was a good imitation of night. It
was almost like nights on earth when the moon was new but stars
were bright though instead of stars the night sky on the Destiny
was a bluish, filtered glow. In that faint light I could vaguely
make out the musician's form but not well enough to recognize it. I
scrabbled back to my cherry bushes. Then I settled down to
listen.
    The concert went on for what I judged to be
the better part of an hour. Then, abruptly, the musician rose and
left. He passed within two feet of my hiding spot but the bushes
were thick and he saw nothing. I said a prayer of thanks for my
invisibility even as I wished I could tell him how much I liked his
music. How it reminded me of my aunt's songs. But speaking would be
suicide and in moments he was gone.
    I crawled to my mattress, slid onto it,
pulled the blanket over me, shoved my face into the pillow and
eventually fell asleep, the first night of my new, unplanned life.
But the lovely melodies of pan pipes floated through my sleep and
were a comforting counterpart to dreams of