Page 9 of Killian
Moira froze in petrified horror, and then he burst out laughing. “Your face!”
“Not funny!” She whacked angrily at his arm. “God, I thought I was going to have to explain racism, and I can’t even adequately explain it to my grandfather!”
They both froze.
“You have a grandfather?” he asked.
Moira opened her mouth. “Uh…” She probed at her memory. Now that she had said the words, there was a grandfather-shaped hole in her memory. Someone big, who smelled of pine and felt like hugs and cocoa, but there weren’t any images attached. He remained stubbornly in the shadows. “Yes? But it’s like…”
“Like a word on the tip of your tongue that won’t come out.”
“Yes!”
“But when you weren’t thinking about it, your brain filled it in anyway.”
“So, then the memories are still there,” said Moira thoughtfully. “But something is blocking them.”
“That’s encouraging,” said Killian. “That means we might be able to get them back. I would like to remember how we met.”
Moira looked back at Killian’s wallet. “I bet I was on vacation in Greece. This business card says you’re a Tour Researcher for Hand Held Holidays.”
“Well, you’re from Oregon,” he gave the state a hardgonesound, and Moira winced, “in the rainy Pacific Northwest, so obviously you would want to come to the glorious beaches of Greece.”
Moira tried to think about the Pacific Northwest in the abstract instead of searching for direct memories. She came upwith the sharp rasp of calling crows and the feeling of cold drizzle down her collar. “Yup, sounds plausible to me. But it’s pronounced gun.”
“Like I’m going to shoot you?”
“Yes. Ore-gun.”
“That doesn’t seem right, but OK.”
“Maybe I’m on vacation,” said Moira. “That explains my passport. But why do you have a passport?”
“This must not be Greece?”
They looked around the ornate architecture and massive stone pillars. The columns looked Egyptian with painted lotus blossoms at the top, but the furniture looked Asian, although Moira had no idea what country, and the carpet pattern looked Middle Eastern.
“Well, maybe we went someplace together for vacation?”
She picked up his passport, searching the pages for stamps. “You’re not Greek. You’re South African—here is a visa. You must live in Greece now. Someplace called,” she went back to the driver’s license, “Kavala.”
“It’s a port town. That’s why most of us work at the shipping company.”
“Who is us, and what company?” asked Moira.
Killian looked just as perplexed as she must have about her missing grandfather. Finally, he shook his head and shrugged.
“Well,” Moira said, flipping through the passport pages. “You’ve been to a lot of places. What about me? Do I have a lot of stamps?”
“No, hardly any. The passport looks pretty new, though. Maybe you replaced an old one.”
“Or maybe I’ve never been anywhere,” said Moira, feeling depressed. Killian’s passport was impressive.
“What do you think this is?” Killian asked, lifting something from the debris of Moira’s bag. It was like an oversized letter,wrapped in leather and bound in red ribbon. The ribbon was affixed to the definitely-not-vegan envelope by a hefty blob of wax that had a design stamped into it—a swirlingDandS. A white paper tag had been tied to the ribbon as though it were a gift. Moira picked it up and flipped it over, and they both leaned close to read it.
To: The Librarians.
“I guess we’re in the right place then,” said Killian.
