Page 49 of The Last Hope
Mykal wears a lopsided grin. “Hear that, Court? You might enjoy something.”
Court licks his thumb and turns another page, but I catch his lip ticking upward.
I’m about to ask Mykal if Court just smiled at his joke, but I sense Mykal: the sudden swell of his chest. He stares at Court for a long, long while, almost like he’s replaying the moment.
Stork hops up on the countertop behind the bar and sits there. Right across from Mykal and me. “Saltarians want a fight,” he explains like we’re a little slow to catch on.
“That part has been obvious,” I snap.
“Well, let this sink in, dove. Humans can die.Youcan die.”
I shiver, trying not to fear that uncertainty. Not again.Please,not again.
“Saltarians fight without any shields,” Stork continues, “while you have humans walking into combat in full-metal armor.” Before I ask whyhe’dwear protective gear if he’s Saltarian, he tells me, “Armor is customary in the Earthen Fleet.”
“But you don’t need it,” I state.
“Accurate.” He nods and licks his lips. “Saltarians know that the Earthen Fleet has no real chance if we go to war. We can’t kill them, and so for the past decade, the majority of the fleet has been avoiding their ships and trying to devise alternative strategies.”
He really loves Earth, but I don’t understand why the planet is so special besides being the motherland for humans. “Is Earth beautiful?” I wonder.
Stork cocks his head, sloshes his liquor in its bottle. “What do you define as beauty?”
I think about the Catherina Hotel. All the gold and grandeur. A kind of beauty I dreamed to die inside, but nothing compared to seeing the stars. “I find all sorts of things beautiful, I suppose.”
“Trees,” Mykal pipes in. “There’s no better beauty than a sturdy tree.”
Stork frosts, rubbing his knuckles, and he appraises Mykal without a word. Again, Stork has skipped over my answer. Not providinganydetail about Earth.
Mykal brushes wood shavings off his legs. Finished whittling, he displays a beautifully carved snow leopard between two fingers to Stork. “For you—”
“No—”
“Our pa—”
“He’s dead,” Stork says with an uncaring shrug. “He died.”
Mykal runs his tongue along his sharp molars. “Yeah, he died, but he’s still watching.”
“I don’t believe in your gods,” Stork proclaims.
Mykal grunts something and pulls at his hair, finding words. “Then believe that he’d want you to know about him, andthis”—he chucks the snow leopard and Stork catches it quickly—“is somethin’ a pa crafts for his newborn. Supposed to represent the wild inside of his child.”
I’ve heard this story before. How Mykal lost his wooden sculpture when he was nine and wandering the Free Lands. He accidentally dropped the white bear figurine in an ice fissure while fishing. Sunk to the bottom. When he realized he couldn’t retrieve the carving, he said he cried until he passed out.
Stork brushes his thumb over the edges of the snow leopard. He inhales, then ejects a forceful sigh. “I don’t care about him.”
He looks like he cares. “You’re lying?” I ask.
“Am I?” An icy smile crosses his mouth, and I remember how he said he doesn’t lie.
Maybe he’s lying to himself.
Stork swigs another big gulp, and then holds the bottle limply. “You want to know something? If you and I”—he gestures to Mykal, then to himself—“if wehadn’tbeen swapped, if instead I grew up on Saltare-3… then I still would’veneverknown my father.” He tosses the snow leopard in his palm and then throws the statuette at Mykal’s chest. “So, really, this is yours. Not mine.”
I’m confused, but Mykal isn’t.
He scratches his neck. “You’re an Influential then.”
