The Silver Ship and the Sea Read Online Free PDF Page B

still in the fields. Some of what we’d already harvested had probably been damaged, and rain might damage more. We never got our disasters in ones. Always twos or threes or fours.
    The crowd gathering at the amphitheater talked quietly, looking somber. Family groups walked together, parents holding children’s hands. I often helped at the elementary school, and some of the children waved at us, but most adults ignored us. We sat near the top, like yesterday, Bryan and Kayleen on either side of me.
    I felt a hand on my shoulder. Startled, I looked up into Jenna’s single steel-gray eye. Her mangled face was weathered, her skin dark from living outside. Her breath smelled like twintree fruit. She said, “Take care of your little brother. His pain is huge.” She didn’t wait for a reply but let go of my shoulder, backing up, sitting by herself in a shadowed corner. She never came into town, never responded to the gather-bell. I hoped she would be all right in the crowd.
    “What’s she doing here?” Kayleen whispered.
    I shook my head. “I don’t know. How does she know about Joseph?”
    Jenna lived outside of town but inside the boundaries. People chased her when I was a little girl, as if she were some kind of animal, trying to kill her. She outfoxed them; she killed a few paw-cats and caught two of the long yellow snakes, which she brought, one by one as she made her kills, into the middle of the park and left for people to find. We modeled our own acceptance on hers. Being useful.
    Jenna was the only adult example we had of what we might become, even if she was broken and barely tolerated and hard to talk to. Jenna was wary of everyone, even us. Still, we’d puzzled out some of our abilities by watching her. She had Bryan’s strength, although she was tall and wiry, less boxy, and she ran like Kayleen, fast and agile.
    Kayleen chewed on her lower lip. “Do you think anyone besides us ever talks to her, or she to them? Does she have any friends at all?”
    Down on the stage, Nava cleared her throat into the microphone. The crowd quieted. “Good morning. I believe everyone knows most of the news, but I will repeat it officially for the record.
    “The earthquake yesterday registered nine point five, the second worst in our history.” She swept her gaze across the whole of the amphitheater. “First, to acknowledge our losses. Ten people, including Therese and Steven, died in a rock fall on the High Road above us.” Nava hesitated, and it seemed that her grief and the crowd’s grief and the knot in my stomach all bound together into something palpable, something with weight. I blinked, trying not to cry. Bryan squeezed my hand and Kayleen put an arm across my shoulders, steadying me. Nava continued. “We will mourn them together. Tomorrow night. They were our leaders, and would have wanted us to ensure our safety first. We will do that.
    “We’ve started assessing damage. Nearly everything can be fixed; what cannot be fixed can be replaced. We made lists of tasks.” Nava pointed to a table with lists set out on it. “Some of youhave been preassigned based on skills. Others may choose spots to fill in. We need to work hard, even in our grief and pain. We need to beat the storm. Let us work together today, and eat together tonight, and work again tomorrow, and then we will mourn our dead.”
    The crowd moved down, subdued, and began checking and completing lists, then drifted across the park or across streets or toward warehouses to begin the work. We were almost the last in line. I looked behind me for Jenna, but she had disappeared.
    On the lists, Kayleen’s name was coupled with Paloma’s, to keep helping with data readings, assessing the overall damage to the network. Bryan’s assignment was to help repair hebra barns. My name had been scratched out of the list of people moving things from the damaged storehouse and written into the child-care list. So Nava had made sure I’d be near enough to check