Shadows Cast by Stars Read Online Free PDF Page A

it would be beautiful,” he says, as a heron, startled by the engines, takes to wing. “Told you.”
    A wharf looms out of the morning mist. Boats flank it, rocking at our approach. The jangling of their rigging breaks the eerie silence.
    Madda pilots the skiff into a berth as my father jumps onto the wharf, catching the mooring line as Paul throws it to him, and tows the skiff into place. “Start unloading,”he says to me once the skiff is moored. “I’ll be right back.” He jogs up the ramp and vanishes into the mist.
    I climb over the gunwales to take a box from Madda. “I knew you a long time ago, when you were a little girl,” she says as she hands it to me.
    Paul catches my eye as I bite my tongue. Meeting me as a child hardly constitutes knowing me, but I swallow those words. It’s been a long night, and we’re all a little owly.
    Once everything’s unloaded, my father reappears and helps move it all up the ramp. There’s a truck waiting there. A white man is at the steering wheel, and beside him, a girl about my age, with long blond hair woven into braids. Neither of them gets out. They just watch us load our belongings into the back, making it clear that they think they’re better than us, and when I notice the scar on the girl’s arm, it’s all I can do not to give in to my anger. That scar tells me she lived in the Corridor once, so she knows what it’s like to lose your belongings, your home, your everything, and she doesn’t even have the decency to say hello?
    When we finally have the truck loaded, we climb into the back with our boxes. Madda tells us she’ll see us in town, and heads back down to her boat. The man turns the key. The engine chugs a few times, and then coughs.He turns the key again, with the same results. Chug, chug, cough, nothing.
    “Want me to take a look?” my father says.
    “Nope. It does this sometimes,” the man replies, but it’s not long before they’ve got the hood up and they’re both bent over the engine.
    I wander back toward the wharf, picking up an old piece of salt-crusted rope that someone’s tossed away as I go. The rope’s stiff, but with a little work, I unravel it into strands and start to knot it into a chain.
    On the beach a short ways down, something catches my eye as I work—a blur of black against the thick, dark firs. I squint. It’s a raven. He’s tugging something from under a rock. He cackles and hops, dancing his awkward, funny jig, until he finally pulls his prize out. Then he rises in the air, a black arrow, and drops something small, something white, to its death. An oyster, I think.
    “Paul,” I say. He’s talking to the girl, and looks annoyed that I’ve interrupted him, but strolls over anyhow, the girl sliding out of the truck to trail after him. “What?” he says.
    “Look at that raven,” I say.
    “Raven?” Paul tips his head to the side. “What raven?”
    I look again. It’s not there. “It must have flown away,” I say quickly, though Paul narrows his eyes. He knows I’m lying, but to admit I’m seeing shades in front of thisgirl that neither of us knows is a bad idea. Strangers don’t always take kindly to someone who sees things that aren’t there, and there’s something about this girl, now that she’s close to me, that strikes me wrong.
    But the girl didn’t hear my slip. Her attention is focused on the chain of knots in my hand. “What’s that?” she says.
    “Oh.” I hold it up. “A necklace, maybe? I think it might be long enough.” I smile and hold it out to her. “If you like it you can have it when I’m done.”
    She pulls a green stone on a leather thread out from under her shirt and dangles it for me to see. It’s beautiful, and she knows it. “I’ve already got one. I don’t need another,” she says. She tucks the stone back in place and strolls off to the truck.
    My brother follows her, casting me a glance that says, Oh well .
    My hand forms a fist around the knotwork, and when