Diamond didn’t want to talk about the fights.
“I thought I could see you,” Seldom said, waving the binoculars. “You had a sword. Then the glass broke, and out you jumped out.”
“Seldom,” said the Master. “Leave our friend alone, please.”
Diamond wiped at his dirty face.
“Sit,” the Master suggested.
“I’m hungry,” Diamond confessed.
Seldom dropped the binoculars and both children ran off on a food hunt.
Mother was sitting in the middle of the cabin. She looked pale but happy, waving to him. “Here. Please, keep me company.”
He sat, and she held his hands.
The Master sat elsewhere, Father joining him. The two men spoke quietly, every word serious and every gesture careful. They were talking about laws and the codes of the slayer and political matters that shouldn’t matter to normal boys.
Diamond leaned into the old woman, and she leaned into him.
“I’m tired,” she said.
He nodded.
“Are you tired?”
He said, “Maybe.”
“Weak?”
He thought for a moment, one hand grabbing the other wrist. Both were healed, and he said, “I’m back to the same.”
She felt the arm. “You are.”
They sat together for a few recitations, saying nothing.
Elata returned with two ancient meals wrapped in clear rubber, plus a flask of warm water. “This is all, so far. Seldom’s chasing rumors about a lost lunch. But nobody remembered to load food at the reef, what with the engine and the excitement.”
“Thank you,” Mother said, using a smile to coax the girl to leave.
Then to her son, she said, “Eat it all.”
The meals were dry and nearly tasteless, and he wasn’t sure what the food had been when it was fresh. But he was famished, and she watched him for a little while before saying, “Diamond.”
“What?”
“Your name. I want you to know where it came from.”
His mouth stopped chewing, and he looked at her.
She motioned at Father. “He told me you understand, you know where he found you and how he brought you home.”
“Yes,” said the boy.
“Afterwards, I pretended to be pregnant,” she said. “At my age, that seemed unlikely. But we announced that you were coming and I didn’t let myself get seen without wearing a pillow under my shirt. Then we announced that you were born at home and sickly. Maybe we shouldn’t have. It might have been smarter to run off to the wilderness and live like bandits. But your father had his work, and wild country has its dangers, and so we kept up this lie until too many people were asking to see you, wanting to help.
“Friends found the doctor for us, and the doctor convinced himself of your afflictions, at least for a little while. You were one bug away from death, and in one fashion or another, we believed our own lie.”
Diamond listened intently.
“I used to watch you lying inside your crib,” Mother said. “Your father was working, and I didn’t have anything half as important as studying you. Such a little baby, you were. So sweet you seemed, but odd. Sometimes you’d gaze at me and smile and make me weep, I was so happy. But there were spells when I would do everything I could to win a grin, and you did nothing but stare at the darkest piece of your room, watching nothing. As if you were hypnotized by the darkness. And then sometimes, without warning, you laughed for no reason, and you smiled like you smiled at me, only better. A radiant smile, and that’s when I realized you were remembering your real mother. Whoever she was, whatever she was. Ages spent in the belly of a corona, yet you still hadn’t forgotten this other life that I can’t begin to imagine.”
“I don’t remember anybody else,” said Diamond. But the words felt forced, and when he fell silent, he could almost see another face.
Sipping stale water, he waited.
“Your father and I fought,” Mother said. “We argued about what to teach you about the world and yourself. In the end, I won. I said you were happy as you were. I reminded him that I was responsible for you, day after night after day, and if you knew too much about the world—if you ever decided to leave—I wouldn’t be strong enough to keep a creature like you in one place.
“That’s not a worthy reason for everything. I feel terrible. I deserve to hurt. But that’s one reason you were locked away, so a weak old woman didn’t have to make impossible choices.”
Diamond wasn’t sure how to react.
Seldom returned from his search, empty hands held high.
“My name,” Diamond said.
“What?”
“You were going to explain my name.”
“I’m sorry. I distracted myself.” Mother made herself laugh, just to prove she could. “When I was a girl, about the age of your friends, I was a student at the Marduk school. There was one very long day, and my class traveled to a special place where ancient artifacts are kept safe. We were shown one rare, exceptional marvel. It was a rock. The rock was tiny, like the tip of the tip of your finger, but it was bright and glittery in the special light they shone on it. The story that I was told was that there are only so many of these tiny rocks in the world, and the gems were stronger than everything but the shell of the world. They’re called diamonds. According to legend, when the first humans in the world were married to one another, the man and the woman each wore a ring encrusted with these exceptional gemstones. That’s the way the Creators made us. People died, but diamonds are the everlasting symbol of love. But there are very few diamonds left in the world, and thousands of days later, I was gazing at a baby who had come across an unimaginable route, enduring untold miseries to find me, and it seemed to me that the world would be better—a stronger, more enduring place—with one more diamond among us.”
SEVENTEEN
Every course has its benefits. Flying beneath the wilderness canopy, the Happenstance pushed ahead as fast as the repaired engine allowed, following the straightest possible line back to the Corona District. And every course had its risks. Any moment, some wild branch might drop or an entire tree could tumble free on top of them. And if the other engine exploded and punctured a bladder, they would start a long horrible fall without any snags to stop them. Flight meant calculations, and their course was the best imperfect choice. But at least the sun was so weak that nobody wore goggles, and Diamond could sit at the window with his new friends, everybody watching a vista that few had seen before.
Mother and Father were sitting with Master Nissim, talking in whispers.
Seldom started to laugh.
“What’s funny?” Elata asked.
“School,” he said. “When we go back tomorrow, what are we going to tell people?”
“The truth,” she said.
“They’ll say we’re lying,” Seldom said, laughing harder.
Elata was laughing. She patted Diamond on the knee and smiled at him, and when he looked at her face, she said, “When I talked to you that first time, when you were standing on your landing . . . do you know what I thought . . . ?”
“No.”
“You were boring.”
Diamond nodded slowly.
“Oh, I knew he was fascinating,” Seldom said. “Right away, the first time I looked at you.”
“You did not,” said Elata.
“I did.”
“You’re lying,” she said.
“Maybe,” Seldom agreed. Then something was so funny that he couldn’t speak, shaking his head as he giggled and snorted.
The reef country had vanished into the late-day haze. Between the Happenstance and where they had been, an entire tree suddenly ripped free, plunging from the canopy without sound or apparent haste, twisting until the heavy base of the trunk was leading the way. Diamond watched it grow small, and then came the demon floor, heat and pressure claiming their prize, and he thought about the monkeys trapped on that doomed wood.