The Travels of Scout Shannon: Books 4-6

Chapter 17

17

When the door chime announced Bo’s arrival the next morning, Scout slipped outside rather than let him in. The dogs ran out after her, anxious to go back to the park.

“Is everything all right?” Bo asked, trying to look into the room before Scout quite had the door closed.

“Geeta is sleeping,” Scout explained once the door was shut.

“That’s good,” Bo said. “And Emilie?”

“Lost in your library,” Scout said, “although I gather the Months sent her something similar.”

“I thought they would,” Bo said. “Shall we?”

Scout nodded, reaching for the cords in her belt pouch.

“Allow me?” Bo said, pulling a bundle out of his sleeve. “I had my manufacturing people craft some leads for you. They clip onto the collars; they’ll be easier to undo when we get to the park.”

“Thanks,” Scout said, taking the bundle from him and unwrapping it. The leashes inside were like silk through her hands. “Is this going to be strong enough?”

“Assuredly,” Bo said. “I can show you the equipment we use to fabricate it if you like, but it’s back on my ship. Tell me, do you have spiders down on the surface?”

“A few,” Scout said, clipping the leashes to each of the dogs. Gert twisted her head about, trying to get a good look at the pretty new thing attached to her.

“The design of these leads is based on the thinness but strength of a spider’s webbing. It’s far stronger than it looks. We generally use it in construction settings, but it works for small jobs too.”

Scout just nodded, and the two of them headed back out of the hospital to the marketplace.

The Months hadn’t been by to see any of them. Scout didn’t know what to make of that. Were the sisters willing to bet anything that they would all choose to stay because Seeta had to?

Could Scout even say that was a foolish bet?

Bo kept up a stream of chitchat Scout didn’t pay much attention to as they made their way up the long staircase. It was indeed easier to unclip the leashes than to untie the cords, and they took up hardly any space in her pouch.

It had been a thoughtful gift, certainly less terrifying than the offer of an education had been.

“I have something else for you,” Bo said.

“I really don’t need anything,” Scout said.

“Gifts aren’t about needs,” Bo said. “Or maybe I should say: the best gifts are about needs you don’t even know you have.”

“That’s exactly what I don’t like about them,” Scout said bluntly.

“Feel free to turn it down,” Bo said, “but let me show it to you first. Why don’t we go this way, down the other fork in the path? There’s a little secluded alcove where we won’t be disturbed. What I have to show you requires a little concentration.”

Scout let him lead the way, only looking back from time to time to be sure the gamboling of the dogs was trending in the same direction.

The path went through a thicker patch of forest, the tree branches overhead denser and lower, some even low enough to catch at her hair.

Bo didn’t seem to have the same problem, Scout noticed with annoyance the third time she had to stop to get a clump of hair free from a thorny branch. And he was taller, and his hair was longer. How did he manage it?

Then the trees parted, and the path turned, and Scout found herself suddenly on the banks of a little pool fed by a trickle of a waterfall. The tree branches, interlaced far overhead, gave the light a diffuse, green quality, and not the smallest sound from the marketplace below carried through all the forest behind them.

“Here,” Bo said, finding a wide, flat rock where the two of them could sit. Then he took another bundle out of his sleeve and delicately unwrapped the silk binding.

“What is it?” Scout asked. It looked like a curved rib cage of soft, pliable plastic.

“It reads memories,” Bo said, picking it up delicately and draping it over the top of his own head, the spine aligning with the straight part of his hair, the rib parts wrapping around his skull to touch his temples and behind his ears and against the base of his skull.

“That sounds creepy,” Scout said.

“I know,” Bo said. “That’s why I wanted to demonstrate first. I need a moment of silence to focus.”

Scout nodded and sat quietly, hands folded on her lap. Bo closed his eyes. A soft light within the plastic of the device started to pulsate, slowly at first but then brighter and faster.

Then Bo opened his eyes and took the thing off his head.

“What did it do?” Scout asked, but he didn’t answer. He just took another object from his sleeve, an egg-shaped piece of crystal, and touched the end of the thing’s spine to the egg. The crystal egg pulsated and glowed for a moment, and then the lights faded out.

“Here,” Bo said, placing the crystal egg in her hands. “Now, look into it.”

Scout hesitated, but it seemed harmless enough. She raised it to her eye and peered into it.

She could see a series of low, rolling hills covered with grasses bending and swirling in a gusty wind. The sky over the hills was a deep, dark blue like nothing she had ever seen.

Then, from behind a distant hill, a blur of brown motion appeared, quickly disappearing between that hill and the next. It appeared again, closer this time, then dropped away again. The third time, she could finally tell that it was a horse running towards her. A horse, just like they had on Old Earth.

Then it reached her, standing before her and tossing its head, making the rich brown of its mane dance and spin in the breeze. It looked at her with intelligent eyes and bent its head to nose at her. Scout was so startled she dropped the crystal egg.

But, of course, it couldn’t really touch her. And yet it had seemed so real.

“You see?” Bo asked.

“That was your horse?” Scout asked.

“One of them,” Bo said. “My favorite. I miss him terribly. But we’ll be returning soon, and I can introduce him to you. Now it’s your turn.”

“My turn?” Scout repeated. “What am I supposed to remember?”

Bo, who had started to lift the thing to place it on her head, set it back down on his lap and gave her a look of profound sadness. “Scout. You lost your whole family. Not just your family, but your home. Every keepsake, every recording, every image. I thought you’d like to have something of them you could carry with you always.”

Scout looked down at his crystal egg in her hands. “I don’t really remember them,” she said. “I try, but . . .” She couldn’t go on. She wiped a drop of moisture that had fallen to mar the surface of the egg, but then there was another and another.

“Scout,” Bo said, his voice infinitely gentle. “This will help. It can pull out things you don’t even know you remember. I certainly didn’t specifically recall every blade of grass on my steppe, and yet you saw it. Give it a try.”

Scout wiped at her face but then nodded. Bo put the device gently over her head. Scout waited for it to tingle or something, but it didn’t feel like anything.

“All right,” Bo said. “Close your eyes and pick your memory. The last time you saw them, or your happiest memory—whatever feels strongest to you. Ready?”

“Ready,” Scout said, closing her eyes. She tried to summon the image from the last time she had seen her family: her brother pulling at her father’s beard, her mother waving at her as she pedaled her bike away.

But the image wouldn’t come. Instead, she saw herself the moment the asteroid had hit the city, the moment she and Shadow had been thrown from the bike and cut with a thousand tiny shards—all that remained of the dome that couldn’t protect the city from such an attack.

She kept her head down and her eyes closed, trying to summon the other memory. She didn’t even realize Bo had taken the device from her head until she heard him sigh softly and looked up to see him looking in another crystal egg.

“I messed it up,” Scout said.

“No, no,” Bo said, slipping the egg away in a pocket. “I said to find your strongest memory, and I’m afraid you did. But we can try again, if you’re ready?”

“Yes,” Scout said. “I can do it now.”

“Very well.” Bo draped the device over her head again, and Scout closed her eyes, willing that other memory away and focusing on the scent of bread. Her parents had been bakers. The smell of fresh bread always made her homesick. Always.

This time when she opened her eyes, Bo was smiling. He handed the egg to her, and she held it in her hands, almost afraid to look.

But she was more afraid not to look. She lifted it up to her face and peered inside.

There was her family, standing in the sunlight under an indigo sky so deeply blue not even the dome overhead could dilute it. Her father’s beard was as thick and curly as she remembered it, and her mother’s hair was the deep honey-gold shade that was also Scout’s natural hair color. Her baby brother in her father’s arms was plumper than she remembered, with a thick patch of dark curls centered on the very back of his skull as if it were a hat he had pushed back so he could scratch the top of his head.

Scout gazed into the egg for what felt like an eternity, but she just couldn’t get enough of the details. Her mother’s eyes had been green? Had she ever noticed that? And her father had a scar across his forearm. Was that real?

Scout felt a dog’s wet nose pressed to her knee and lowered the egg to see them both there, looking up at her.

“Thank you,” Scout said, holding the egg tight in her hands.

“I want to do one more, if I may,” Bo said.

“I don’t know, this is already so much,” Scout protested.

“Just one more,” Bo promised, putting the device back on her head.

“But which memory?” Scout asked. Most of her other memories were not so good, things better left to be forgotten.

“This is a bit of an experiment, but it’s something I’ve been honing for a while,” Bo said. “I want you to think of everyone you knew as a kid. Your family, but also your neighbors and classmates and friends. Don’t worry about holding on to any one memory, just let them all wash over you. Ready?”

Scout nodded, closing her eyes again.

At first, she didn’t think she could do it. All of that stuff was so far back in the past she didn’t even remember what any of those people had looked like. She had barely remembered her own family.

But then images started coming to her. The woman who lived next to her parents’ bakery who had kept bees in her yard and sold the honey as well as jam and would let Scout have little tastes. Just to be sure it was still good, the woman had said.

And her teacher at school. Scout didn’t remember her name, but she remembered the way she had worn her hair in a bun on the back of her head. Scout had never understood why, since she always had to dig underneath to scratch at her head. Who piled their hair against the itchiest spot on their scalp? It made no sense.

Then there were the kids in her neighborhood who would gather after school. There was one boy in particular who was good at making up the most fun games they could all play.

Scout pressed her hands to her face, but there was no stopping the tears. “I can’t do more,” she said from behind her hands.

“I think we have enough,” Bo said, taking the device off her head.

“What was the point of that?” Scout demanded, angrily swiping the tears from her face. “They’re all dead and gone. What’s the point in remembering them all now?”

“Because they knew you,” Bo said, putting another egg in her hands.

“I don’t think I want to see this,” Scout said.

“Please,” Bo said, folding her hands over the egg. “I would scarcely want to show you something that would make you turn against me, now would I?”

“I guess not,” Scout said. She still didn’t want to look.

Bo bent to pick up Shadow and hold him on his lap as he scratched at his ears. Clearly, he was willing to wait all day for Scout to work up the nerve to look into the final egg.

Scout bit her lip, then lifted the egg to her face.

She had expected to see some sort of collage of faces, all the forgotten friends and people who had cared for her once upon a time, but that wasn’t what the egg contained.

It was mostly white space, as if the device hadn’t known what background to fill in and so had left it blank. But in the center was a girl, a little girl of about ten. She was wearing a shirt far too big for her and a snap-brim bush hat that nearly dwarfed her head.

Then the girl swept the hat away, spinning on the toe of one foot, trying for as many turns as she could before having to put the other foot down. Her honey-blonde curls were caught up in little pigtails, tied low behind her ears so they wouldn’t interfere with the hat that she always, always wore.

“Me,” Scout said, her voice barely more than a whisper. “That’s me.”

“That’s you,” Bo said, “through the eyes of everyone who loved you. That’s you still, if you can remember her.”

Then he put Shadow in her lap, Shadow who was the only thing she still had from those happier days. Scout buried her face in the soft fur of his neck and let the tears fall.

She had often thought of all she had lost that day when the asteroid fell, but until this very moment, she had never thought that one of those things had been herself. Herself as a happy little girl surrounded by love. Someone she could never be again.

Bo reached out to squeeze her hand but didn’t try to talk to her. He must have sensed there was nothing he could say. But holding her hand, his grip both strong and comforting, said enough.