"And with all that exploring," I said, "you’ll never come back to Demoth?"
"Faye." And this time, that one word meant yes, not no.
I pulled a package out of my coat pocket. "A going-away present," I said.
Festina looked embarrassed. "You knew I’d say no?"
"If you said yes, it would have been an engagement present." I pushed it into her hands. "Here."
"Where’d you get this?"
"From Lynn, last night. Open it."
Thank God, Lynn had been the one to wrap it. She always does a beautiful job. Me, I never have the patience. All energy, no finesse, our Faye.
Festina opened the wrapper, then the box. There, tucked up in tissue paper, was a clear glass bottle holding a water-owl egg. "From Lake Vascho," I told her. "The family went there for a picnic yesterday, so they could all say they helped get you the gift. In case you said yes. The other eggs were hatched and gone, but that one never opened. It happens sometimes." I took a deep breath. "So there you go. I’m giving you a dud egg."
She wrapped her arms softly around my neck and just held me. A tear trickled down her cheek.
Sometime, when she got back to the navy base or maybe up to her flagship, she’d take the bottle out of the box and find the other present I’d asked Lynn to hide in the tissue paper: my scalpel, retrieved by the cops from the dipshits’ skimmer, quietly passed by Cheticamp back to my family.
The egg was a gift from my other spouses; the knife was a gift from me. A sign/promise/oath that I was past needing it.
I’d wrapped the blade in tape so Festina wouldn’t cut herself when she found it. That knife had drawn enough blood in its time.
Its time was over. And the past, after all, was past.
Copyright © 1999 by James Alan Gardner
ISBN: 0-380-80208-2