Crystal Rain Read Free Page A

Jerome had been a surprise after six years of marriage. Shanta had been thirty-six and they both had worried throughout the pregnancy. John doted on his son as a result. The strong emotions still sometimes startled him.
     
    Later, once Jerome slept in his room, John helped Shanta with the dishes. She cleaned. He rinsed and set them on the rack.
    “He excited,” Shanta said.
    “Yeah, he’ll enjoy the trip out.” John’s hook hit a pot and clinked as he balanced the last wooden bowl on the other dishes. Shanta flicked the water off her hands. John moved up close to her when she turned. “Hello, Miss Braithwaite.”
    “Mr. deBrun. How you doing?”
    “Fine. Fine.” John kissed her and held her close; his tanned and weathered skin against her deep brown. “I thought about you when I was fishing today.”
    “What you think?”
    “How much you would have liked to salt those groupers we netted.”
    “Hey! Man, why you tease me so?”
    “’Cause I love you.”
    “Ah.” She leaned into him. Then: “John?”
    “Yeah?”
    “When you painted … you remember anything?”
    “No.” He kissed her hair and noticed several gray streaks. More and more had been appearing. Yet she never commented on the fact that when she’d met John, he’d looked older than her, and now he looked younger. “Don’t worry about it.” He loved her for caring. Shanta didn’t talk much about the gap in John’s memory. Yet sometimes it seemed to him she secretly worried about it more than he did. Did she want him to stop thinking about it because it always tore him up so? Or did she worry about some past secret that might be exposed that would tear them apart?
    Shanta grabbed a towel and dried her hands. “I don’t want Jerome going sailing much after this.”
    “Why not?” John took the dish towel from her hands and hung it up on a peg. “What harm is there in it?”
    “I remember when they pull you up out the water. Twenty-seven years, John, but I remember. You all wrinkled. Strapped to some floaty thing …”
    “You were young.” John remembered her standing on the beach. Then he remembered the gray streaks in her hair and regretted saying it.
    “Huh,” Shanta snorted. “Twenty-two. Old enough to give you plenty grief.”
    John had struggled with the fact he couldn’t remember anything before he had washed up on the beach. He had taken his name off the silver necklace around his neck with the name John deBrun written on it. Even though he didn’t speak like everyone else, he understood Nanagadans. Which meant he must have been exposed to the land before.
    John stayed to sail boats in Brungstun, hoping to regain his memories. He could picture maps in his head as if they were before him. He could navigate by stars, sun, map, and with his eyes closed. But he started out a horrible sailor. He had known nothing about winds or the tides or the waves and weather around Brungstun.
    “He won’t be like me,” John said. “None of that adventuring spirit. He’ll grow up, be respectable. A town banker, right?” Shanta mock-punched his arm. “He won’t break any young girls’ hearts,” John teased, continuing. “Won’t leave for Capitol City …” Shanta’s grin disappeared.
    After six years learning the sea with local fishermen, John had trekked to Capitol City with a small group of mongoose-men led by Edward, a bushman who became a close friend for the trip there.
    Shanta stepped away from him. “Don’t talk about Capitol City, John. Not tonight. I never slept when you was sailing the ocean. I don’t want ever think you was dead again. You know how horrible—”
    “I’m sorry.” John pulled her back to him in a hug. “I’ll shut up.” During the trip John had looked for clues to his past in other towns on the way north, and in Capitol City itself. He’d been offered a chance to join a trio of ships as navigator. The expedition was to see if there was land to the north, but in the
dangerous, icy waters of