Wolves and War
Page 92
CHAPTER 29 (The Northern Continent)
Tara and Kolyei had one last visit to make before they left for home. She wanted to visit the cabin from where she had started out on her adventures. As the two of them made their way through the battlefield Tara kept her eyes closed as Kolyei picked his way through although this sector had been one of the first to be cleared.
There was not much of the cabin left standing she noticed as they stopped before it.
“They have used the wood for the pyres,” Kolyei said.
Tara dismounted and walked into the ruins. The doorframe was still there but the door that she had slammed shut that momentous morning was long gone.
“My bed was over there,” she pointed, “and the cook fire there where the soot is. Mrs Mackie wasn’t a very good cook.”
She wandered over to the bed-space and looked down. “I wasn’t very happy here either when I think about it; I cried myself to sleep some nights.”
“I know,” said Kolyei. “I was there, remember.” He sounded complacent.
Tara’s eyebrow rose. She decided to correct him. It was good for her self-confident life-partner to be corrected on occasion.
“I suppose in part,” she conceded, “though I didn’t know that at the time. All I did know was that something was there inside my mind telling me to be patient; that my unhappiness would stop soon.”
“Has it?”
She smiled.
“Yes, I am happy, despite all the horrible things that have happened. You should know that.”
Tara turned away then and as she did saw something glinting in the sunlight. Watched by an interested Kolyei she bent down and dug it out of the soil.
“What is it?”
“It’s a coin,” she answered with excitement, “I wonder.”
She rubbed it with her sleeve.
“Zowie! It’s Papa’s silver coin!”
Joy lit up her face.
“I thought it lost forever. It must have dropped out of my pocket that morning. I never said anything but I was disappointed it wasn’t in the box they kept for me. Papa and I talked about it the day before he died you see. It’s an old coin, been in our family for generations, even older than the last ones made before credits took over from the old money. Look, on one side is Earth, the planet we came from. You can see the continents. On the other side… see.”
Kolyei gazed at the coin in Tara’s hand.
“Is an animal,” he announced.
“Don’t you see Kolyei? It’s a wolf, an old Earth wolf. Why, it could even be a Lind!”
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