“Can I ask you something about your patter, Sarah?” I asked gently.
“Sure.”
“Rhon told Pip that you were saying the stones were blessed by a St. Cloud shaman.”
“Yes.” She looked down at her hands. “I did. I fibbed a little bit about how rare they were, but Rhon seemed think that was okay.”
“I see. You didn’t think telling the people that the stones were blessed was a fib?”
She shrugged a little shrug and focused on her crochet work. “Maybe a little.”
“Only a little?”
She worked the yarn for almost a whole tick before speaking, “Did you know that shaman is often a hereditary position?”
“I’ve heard that it is in some cultures, yes. But how do they do it on the south coast?”
“The post is almost always passed from father to son. The son inherits the gift from the father, you see. Sometimes you find a shaman when somebody’s been sick…really sick. When they recover, they discover they’ve received the shaman’s gift. But most often it’s inherited.” Her fingers never stopped moving and her eyes never looked up.
“I see, and did the shaman in your village have a son?”
She shook her head. “No, my mother died having me,” she said it so softly that I could barely hear her.
“And you blessed the stones.”
“Yes. I blessed the stones.”
I pulled the two from my pocket and held them up by the thongs. “Would you bless mine?”
“Why do you want me to bless them?” she asked, looking up for the first time. “You’re not a follower.” There was something akin to anger in her eyes.
I shrugged. “A lot of people thought it was worth it today. Who am I to argue?”
“But I’m not really a shaman,” she spat. “I’m not a boy.”
“Maybe so,” I agreed. “But you’re not on the south coast any more, either. You’re on a ship that carries the spirit of a great woman. The captain of this ship is a great woman. Maybe the ship needs a great woman to be her shaman.” I shook the thongs, making the stones rattle together.
“You don’t believe that,” she said flatly. “You’re making fun of me.”
“I’m not making fun of you. I’m in no place to be ridicule anybody. And to be a shaman, maybe, you only need somebody to believe in you.” I held the stones higher and offered them to her again. “It doesn’t matter to me what you believe in. The important thing is that I believe in you.”
She swallowed hard and looked at the stones like they might burn her if she took them.
Neither of us moved for a long time. Finally, she reached out and took the stones from me. She looked at me once more, then she closed her eyes and I could see her lips moving ever so slightly as if reciting to herself. She kissed each stone and handed them back to me.
“Thank you, Sarah.”
“Thank you, Ishmael,” she replied and with a little smile and a deep breath she went back to her crochet work.
I stepped out of the quad and almost bumped into Pip who had been standing just out of sight. “Clean up done already?”
“Yeah, you know what port-side mess is like.” He had the look on his face that told me he had been there for a while.
“Well, I need to get back to environmental,” I told him. “Wanna walk as far as the gym?”
He followed me out of the berthing area and then grabbed my arm. “What in the name of Venus’s hairy palms was that all about?”
“What?”
“That mumbo jumbo with the stones.”
“She’s come a long way, but she’s still healing.”
“No kidding!” he said. “So why are you encouraging her.”
“What? Why am I encouraging her to heal?”
“No! Why are you encouraging her in her delusion?”
“What delusion?”
“All this shaman stuff. First the whelkies, now the stones.”
“Well, the whelkies are real. I have one in my pocket. And she did bless the stones.”
“But none of that is any more magical than I am.”
“What makes you think you’re not magical?”
That stopped him for a few heartbeats.
“Are you going soft in the head on me, Ish?” he asked with genuine concern.
“Well, maybe. But I remember the story you told me about when you came aboard.”
“Yeah. So what? They traded me for Murdock.”
“And once you came aboard, things began to turn around for you.”
“That’s true, but I don’t see what that has to do with Sarah being a shaman and all this magic crap.”
“Why do you think things started changing when you got here?”
“I don’t know. I got a better attitude maybe. People were nicer here.”
“Or maybe they just believed in you,” I told him quietly. I noticed I still had the stones in my hand and I thrust the white one into his. “Here, lucky stone, blessed by a St. Cloud shaman. Wear it in good health.”
I left him standing there gaping at me as turned and headed back to environmental. As I walked, I tied the green one around my neck and let it slide down inside my shipsuit. You never know.
Chapter 25
DUNSANY ROADS ORBITAL
2352-APRIL-19
My tablet bipped me awake just after 12:00. Overnight watch had been low-key. Francis ribbed me good-naturedly about Al but he seemed a bit groggy when he relieved me and I wondered if he had been out too late himself. I rolled out and hit the san for a quick shower before I zipped into a shipsuit.
Sarah was on duty in the galley. I thought she looked a little less pinched, but that might have been just a projection on my part. She and Cookie smiled and waved but they were still arguing about pastry dough and I didn’t interrupt. Lunch was a very nice fish and pasta dish. I was not sure if it was the last of the cobia fillets or some of the munta from St. Cloud. Whatever else it might have been, delicious came first on the list.
Pip came in dressed in civvies already as I settled down to eat. “You’ve already been out this morning?”
He grabbed a coffee and sat across from me. “Yeah, I went up and scoped out yarns. I saw Sean and Tabitha up there, so I suspect they’ll come back with more crochet materials. At this point they need more hooks, too, I think. They’re doing so well I’m sure there are others who will start up with them. Sean should charge for lessons.”
I laughed. “Or get royalties on the pieces.”
We sat there for a couple of ticks while I dug into the fish and pasta. I was hungrier than I thought.
Pip was not very talkative. I usually relied on him to carry the conversation. “You okay?” I asked him.
“Yeah, sure.” He gave a half-hearted shrug that made me doubt him.
I realized he wore the white stone under his shirt. “Nice stone.”
“Thanks,” he said, looking down. “It was a gift from a friend. It’s a lucky stone—blessed by a St. Cloud shaman.”
I grinned at him and he smiled back.
“You gonna finish eating one of these days so we can go shopping?” he asked.
Leaving the ship with Pip felt odd. The last time we had been off the ship together was when he had brought me aboard seven months before. My brain kept sliding sideways whenever I saw him walking beside me. I was so used to walking with one or more of the women. We cruised up to the flea market and headed right for the batik booth.
“Ah, Ishmael!” Chuck said as I came up to the booth.