There was a man sitting right at the head of the table that was also in blue. He was about as old as Ursala to look at – old enough that his hair was gone to grey around his ears and up by his temples, though the rest of it, and his short, squared-off beard, was black as pitch. He was tall and broad at the shoulder. Old as he was, I thought he was likely to be very strong.
What was strangest about him, though, was that he had a drone at his shoulder – not a raven, which would not of fitted inside the room, but a drone like the ones that used to vex us so much in Calder. It was just sitting there in the air, bobbing from time to time like a cork afloat in a bucket. Its red eye was lit up bright as anything, which meant it was awake and ready to fire.
The drone give me to mistrust this man right then and there. I guess I was not altogether scared of it, seeing that Cup and Ursala was sitting right by it and it wasn’t offering them no harm – and seeing that the raven had rescued us all out of the ocean. But I was determined I wouldn’t get no closer to it than I had to.
The last one at the table was a boy my own age that had his arms folded in front of him and looked as sour as could be. His head was shaved clean, just like the heads of the Many Fishes people. There was sores there, all across his scalp, that was only halfway to being healed. He had a pale face – even paler than Lorraine’s – that made his blue eyes stand out strong and hard. The boy was the only one not dressed all in blue. His trousers was blue, but they was of a rougher cut than ours with the stitches all showing, and he had a white jerkin with a yellow smiling face painted on it, like the faces Monono showed me from time to time in the DreamSleeve’s window.
“I meant that the design of the ship is striking,” Ursala was saying. “Not to mention its size. It’s very old, isn’t it?”
“I believe it is,” the man said.
“As in pre-war.”
“Of course, pre-war.”
“So how did the three of you come to be—?”
Then the boy looked round and seen me and Lorraine standing there. His mouth twisted in a sneer. “Oh my god,” he said. “How many more of them are there?”
Cup and Ursala looked up at them words. Cup give a yell, and both of them got to their feet and run to me. Well, Cup run and Ursala followed after at a quick stride. The next thing I knowed, Cup was hugging me and holding onto me, and even Ursala – that hated being touched worse than almost anything – laid a hand on my shoulder. I was close to crying, though not from being sad. It was a great thing to be with them again. We had come so far now, and done so much together. There wasn’t no difference in my thoughts between I and we when it come to these two. They was a part of my I, just like Monono was.
“We thought you was dead when you hit the water, Koli Brainless,” Cup said, with her arms tight around me. “Don’t you know how to climb a ladder?”
“I thought I did,” I said. “But I guess not.”
“The three of you should get a room,” the boy said. “With a little coin-op window maybe, like in a porno theatre. I’d watch.”
“If you don’t mind your manners, Stanley,” the man said, “it will be you that goes to your room – and your meal won’t be following you there.” His face was stern, and there was a quickness in how he come in, like he had knowed all along the boy would say something he shouldn’t and now was proved right.
The boy rolled his eyes and looked away out of the window.
“Stanley, this is Koli Faceless,” Lorraine said, pushing me forwards. “You heard Cup and Ursala talking about him earlier. Koli, this is my son, Stanley. Stanley Banner. And that bearded loon at the head of the table is my husband, Paul. Sit down, dear, right here.” She pulled a chair out for me that was facing the scowling boy. Ursala went and sit back down again next to him, and Cup went next to me. Lorraine took her own place at the end of the table facing the man, Paul.
When I went to sit down, I seen something else that was there. It was big enough that I should of seen it first, except my eyes was drawed to Cup and Ursala. Right at the end of the room, as far from where we come in as you could get, there was a statue. At least I guess that’s what you’d have to call it. It was in the shape of a great rock, but you could see it wasn’t no real rock for it was cast in dull gold metal that had a kind of a green shine to it. I guess it was the mix of copper and tin that gets called bronce and is harder even than iron hammered out on a forge. Stuck into the top of the rock there was a sword. This was made of bronce too, but there was a big shiny stone set in the end of the hilt that was pure white and shined like there was fire inside it.
Once I seen the statue I stared at it, for it was a beautiful thing and big besides – the rock coming up to my waist and the sword standing higher than my head. But Lorraine was bidding me sit, with a hand on my shoulder, and I had got to look away at last.
“I’m sorry to have held you up, dearest,” Lorraine said to Paul.
“Not at all, my love,” Paul said, giving her a big, wide smile. “Why don’t you go ahead and say grace?”
Lorraine grabbed hold of my hand, and Stanley’s. Paul took Ursala’s and Cup’s. I think we was meant to close the circle with our other hands, but we was too slow and Stanley didn’t make no move to reach out. Anyway, Lorraine had already started talking to someone named Jesus. She asked Jesus to shine his light on us all, and she thanked him for the good things we was about to eat. I knowed enough to see this was a prayer to a god I hadn’t never heard of before. I was curious about that, but I didn’t ask. People either don’t like to talk about their gods at all or else they talk too much and you wish they would stop.
After Lorraine was done, Paul didn’t let go of Cup and Ursala’s hands and he didn’t stop smiling. “I want to clear the air,” he said, “before we eat.”
We all waited. I had already noticed the good things Lorraine thanked Jesus for, and my eyes kept going back to them. The table was so full of food I was surprised it hadn’t broke in two. It was good wood though. A single piece of oak polished to a high shine. The chairs we was sitting on was of the same wood, and so alike in the colour and the grain I thought they all might of come from the one tree.
“We got off on the wrong foot,” Paul said. “It’s been so long since anyone visited us out here, we went into a… you might call it a threat response, as soon as we saw you. Obviously some level of wariness, of readiness, is a good thing. A necessary thing. And that’s why we’re trained to err on the side of caution. But there’s a point where caution…” He stopped, and seemed to forget his words for a moment. A lot of expressions went across his face almost too quick to see – like he was surprised, then troubled, then maybe angry. He ended up with another big, slow smile that was not happy. “We needed to make sure you posed no threat to us,” he said. “It was only reasonable. I hope you see that.”
“You can’t be too careful, I suppose,” Ursala said. “We’re lucky you reached a conclusion before we drowned.” She said it lightly, like as if it was a joke, but I seen in her face she didn’t find nothing funny about all this.
Paul nodded, and Lorraine laughed, long and hearty. “We did cut it a little fine,” she said. “I’m hoping you’ll enjoy my fresh bread so much that you’ll forget about your narrow escape.”