Crystal Rain Read Free

another.

CHAPTER TWO
     
     
    John deBrun sat in a canvas chair and doodled on a piece of paper with his good hand. His left hand, a simple steel hook, rested with the tip dug into the chair’s wooden arm. He drew a semicircle on one side of the paper with a swoop of his quill. He did the same on the other side to form an egg. Then he shaded shapes onto it. Wicked spikes. Shadows in the crevices. John added water dripping from the spikes, a slight déjà vu moment flitting through him, and then held the piece of paper back at arm’s length.
    Just a spiked sphere. That’s all. He set the paper on the floor.
    Several other sketches lay on a varnished table in the basement’s corner. A giant metal bird with a beak that writhed into a human face. A half-finished sketch of a woman melting into a fiery sun.
    The largest painting hung from the ceiling. John often lay beneath its chaotic blue ocean-wave landscape. When salt spray drifted in through his shutters, John recalled sailors’ screams and water streaming across the deck. Cold, frigid water.
    Half-sunk into the earth, his house remained nice and cool, despite the heat outside. Wonderful protection as dry season came to the lowest slopes of the Wicked Highs. After all day fishing the Brungstun reefs, John often retreated down here. But even at the basement’s coldest, it never compared to the chills he got when looking at the painting.
    “Hey,” said a familiar voice. The twenty-year-old memories of his sail north fled. John turned. His thirteen-year-old son, Jerome, sat on the stairs. “Mamma done cooking. You go come up to eat or what?”
    “What’d she cook?” John didn’t sound Nanagadan. He’d spent enough years listening, but he kept to his own strange language patterns. Despite his son’s teasing. Or the inlaws’. It was the only thing he had from his past.
    “Saltfish stew. Rice-n-pea,” Jerome said.
    John loved Shanta’s cooking, but could never find enthusiasm for her weekly dose of saltfish. Just rice and peas for him today, then.
    He leaned forward and stood with a grunt. The scars down his legs ached. Jerome grinned and ran up the stairs.
    “He coming, he coming,” Jerome yelled, headed for the kitchen.
    Shanta leaned around the corner, then turned her attentions back to the iron skillet of rice. Coal burned in the square stove’s bin, heating the kitchen’s confines. Her white dress shifted against her curved hips.
    “What take you so long?” Shanta berated him. “I call you already.”
    John sat down at the scarred table. A plate of fresh johnnycakes still glistened with oil in the middle of the table. John reached over and speared one with his hook.
    Jerome turned in his chair. “He using he hook to eat he food.” Jerome grinned as he told on his dad. Shanta turned around and gave John a look. John avoided her eyes and pulled the fried dough off his hook.
    Shanta set the skillet on the table. “Quit playing,” she warned.
    Father and son exchanged meaningful mock glares, blaming each other for drawing Shanta’s irritation.
    “You want to go into town with me, tomorrow?” John asked Jerome. Jerome scrunched up his face and thought about it.
    “Yeah. Where?”
    “I need to go out to Salt Island.” The salt bin had reached the halfway mark last week, and John needed to make some extra fun money as well; carnival started in two days. He didn’t want to be broke during the food fair. It was his favorite time of year. “If you help me, I’ll give you some money for carnival.”
    Shanta filled Jerome’s bowl with saltfish stew and then nudged the pot toward John. He shook his head. She sighed and handed him the skillet of rice and peas. “Be back before dark. You know how I get when you out late.”
    John nodded. It would be Jerome’s first sail out of the harbor. “We’ll be back in time.” Jerome kicked him in the
shin and John winced. “Don’t do that,” he warned in his best “danger” voice. It was halfhearted.