Encante Read Online Free PDF Page B

one as delicate as Cecelie. Upon that point Cane and I had always been in complete agreement; the rebellion was not an endeavour fit for his daughter. I wondered if she had thought of me since I left, then berated myself for such foolishness; it had been mere hours, she would barely have noticed I was absent, and then only to become angry that she didn’t know where I was.
    “Do you have a sweetheart, Mister Escher?” Axel enquired, as if sensing my thoughts. We stepped over the threshold of the hydroponics lab and, once again, I found myself surrounded by that ethereal blush of emerald water and plants reflected from walls of metal.
    “As it happens I do, lad,” I told him. “My lady’s name is Cecelie, Cecelie Whitten, or CC as I call her.”
    “Do you love her?” he asked.
    I was slightly taken aback by the impertinence of the question, then recalled his youth, and sensed that perhaps he had love on his mind.
    “We are to be married soon after my return,” I told him.
    “And how long will you stay here?”
    “I do not yet know,” I said truthfully. “There is much to learn.” I gestured at the water beneath us. “For example, I wouldn’t have the first idea how to go about growing plants such as these in a false environment, nor how to cultivate and harvest them.”
    “That’s Garrett’s area. Although, truth be told, he knows little of it himself. He may keep the farmers organised, but he doesn’t teach them to farm.”
    “Farmers?”
    “Like Dane over there.” Axel nodded, brown hair flopping into his eyes in the process. He pointed across the walkways to where the finned man I’d seen earlier was hauling his filled nets from the water. Now he was out of the water, his tail had been removed and he walked like a man.
    “He farms the rushes and main crops,” Axel continued. “Then there’s Orville, he’ll be sleeping this time of day, as the crops he tends run in different cycles. I’m told you met Piccolo earlier?”
    “Piccolo?”
    “Smells like salt water, and has . . .” He gestured about his head.
    “Ah.” I chuckled. “The gentleman with the seaweed hair? Yes, hard to miss.”
    Axel laughed. “He’d like to be called a gentleman. I’ll be sure to tell him.”
    “And the young lady who helped me?” I enquired, for she was the true reason I’d engineered this return visit. “Vee, I believe your sister called her?” Axel tensed at the name and there was no mistaking it. He turned away from me slightly, and the boy who had only seconds ago been so open and honest suddenly looked far more like his uncle.
    “Vee, yes.” He shook his head. “She isn’t working now.”
    “Might you take me to her?” I ventured. “Only I never had a chance to thank her for saving my life.” He frowned, sizing me up as if wondering something. Something of his friendly demeanour was lost to me, and I wondered if Vee had found some way of explaining the carapace to them. Did they know I had technology that kept me safe beneath the surface, at least for a little while?
    “She’ll be sleeping now.”
    “Perhaps later then.” I glanced once more at Dane. “You know, I’ve never seen anything like them before, they seem so human and yet so . . .”
    “The encante are no different to us, really.” Axel smiled once more. “They may look different in some ways, they may breathe differently, but beyond all that they’re much like we are.”
    “I wonder how people would react on my world if they encountered a similar species. But then, I suppose it’s different when you’ve always coexisted with such creatures.” It was a hunch, and he bit.
    “We haven’t—”
    “Axel!” Franklin Garrett’s boots sounded on the walkways and I turned to find him glaring at me. “What business ‘ave you ‘ere?”
    “The captain requested I give our guest a tour.”
    “Well, our guest ‘as already seen in ‘ere. Off with y’.” The boy’s cheeks flared and he looked for an instant as if