Bones in the Sand by Julie Steimle (books to read to get smarter txt) 📕

see they aren't to be trusted at all now, huh?"

Agent Sicamore glared at him. "They were never to be trusted in the first place, kid."

Kyle flustered, watching the two agents Palmer and Powell walk away.

But Sicamore stayed. He looked at Kyle, silently staring at the redhead as his mind went back to the question that has been haunting his mind ever since he found out Kyle was a Martian. "Why did you come to this planet?"

Kyle stared at him for a moment, surprised the agent as talking to him at all. He shrugged. "I got sick of breathing processed air." Turning his eyes to the open desert, he murmured, "That's why most people leave Arras - to get out of the crowded city and have a life with real air...and fruit...and vegetables. And meat. I mean...beef and pork. And water. So much water.... Arras is so empty of all that."

"Mars?" Sicamore asked, peering at him.

Kyle laughed mirthlessly, nodding. "You can call it that if you want. But it sort of loses its believability when you use your terms."

Agent Sicamore chuckled, nodding to himself. "Indeed it does."

The two teenagers carried the velvet-lined bone box to the shuttle that evening before dinner. Zormna washed her face then, per Jafarr's instructions, painted red stripes down from her eyes and lower lip with a mixture of the sand and a powder she had brought with her. Jafarr painted the same stripes on his face and added a circular mark on his forehead that was exactly like the mark on the helmet. Both of them carried the small casket to the open ship, parting the crows of curious students who had lingered at the site. They entered the open cabin and placed the box on the pilot's seat. Both stood before the box with mournful faces. Then Jafarr started to sing.

His voice was something else. Professional quality, some said. He sang a melancholy melody that floated over the desert. It sounded a bit like an English folk song rather than an alien ballad. Of course the words were incomprehensible, and there were many verses. Zormna attempted to sing along, but after a few lines, it was obvious she was tone deaf. She struggled to follow the tune, bust mostly whispered, allowing Jafarr's warm tenor to overpower her off-key Irish-like soprano.

Everyone listened.

Kyle stepped out from his tent, gazing toward the source of the song. He sighed as if defeated, and bent down to the earth, picking up a handful of sand. He fingered it in his palm then threw it to the wind, running his fingers down his face from his eyes, like the marks on Jafarr and Zormna's faces. He listened to the words, mouthing a few in an unfamiliar grief that his fellow classmates never saw in him.

 

Em ranen'om neem meez'o d neem trii emes ll'abor Dors,

Na'tan nee mazh odihan ee ta'er'ej za'en O'res.

Em rannen'om nees kar'mel laz'ak oomas ee ll'abor shan'al.

Einrras conch'narr sois'ova'ova ee Om za rras reinnendel.[2]

 

Jafarr's singing came to an end. The desert felt even emptier than it had been when they had first come to set up camp.

"What was that?" one of Kyle's classmates murmured, approaching him.

Startled, Kyle jerked quickly around to see who was talking to him. He smiled weakly. "It was a funeral song. Seers sing funeral songs when the dead pass to wish the people a good journey to the home of the Great Creator." Kyle smiled wistfully. "I haven't heard one since my grandfather died. Then my parents decided that it was best to leave Home and come to this place." He shook his head. "Funny it had to come from him."

"What did he say?" the guy asked.

Kyle shrugged. "I forget. It was something like we wish you peace on your journey, and we wish that your family won't forget you and won't quit loving you, and something about happiness and death now being impossible. You never know with Seer Class songs."

The other guy nodded, inching back.

Not long after, Jafarr and Zormna left the ship and walked back to the camp, leaving the casket of bones in the pilot's seat. Kyle watched them, narrowing his eyes in a steely glare. 

 

[1] "Lights!"

[2] We wish you peace with you to our great Father, where you may rest and be his. We wish your family long memory and great love. Never ending happiness, and death is now impossible.

Chapter Thirteen: Old Friends

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

" 'This isn't war, said the artillaryman.

'It never was a war, any more than there's a war between men and ants.'" p.122

 

 

The two 'Arrassians' were invited over for dinner by the other college students, and Jafarr insisted they accept. At the time Zormna resisted. She said she felt like sitting in her tent and meditating, which caused Jafarr to raise an eyebrow. However, Jafarr won out, dragging her to the campfire where they both were special guests.

Steve passed around the last of the chicken, and the last of the hot dogs were handed to both now well-redeemed aliens. Their estimation had risen in the eyes of all the archaeology students when Jafarr had sung that funeral song. It had blown them away actually.... While Kyle sulked and muttered that professional singing was in Jafarr's blood, as if it had been nothing. Many in the group spent that evening begging Jafarr to sing other songs for them as they sat the fire. And when they did, even Zormna smirked, waiting for him to perform.

"Too bad you didn't bring your ukulele," Zormna said.

That got her a number of surprised looks.

But Jafarr hung his shoulders and said, "It didn't fit in the bag. Besides, we both hadn't intended to be here this long."

"Really?" someone said.

"Look," Jafarr said to his watching audience, "I know a good number of songs, but uh...our songs are kind of depressing, and I really don't think that I ought to - "

"You know a large number of English songs," Zormna cut in, that sly sparkle not leaving her eyes.

He shot her an irritated look. "You're not helping."

"I wanted to meditate in my tent, and you dragged me here," she said.

Shaking his head with a skyward glance, he groaned.

 "Come on, one song," a girl named Celia begged. "You have such a nice voice."

Zormna smirked and took a larger bite of her hotdog to smother her amused grin. He didn't miss it however.

"Don't laugh at me. Zormna, why don't you sing them a song?" he asked, nudging her with his feet.

Zormna managed to swallow the bite she had been chewing. "Because, unlike you, I'm tone deaf - like I have been telling you and everyone for the past year."

"I think you're just lazy," he said.

Those listening laughed.

Shaking his head, Jafarr chuckled as he finally gave in. "Well, do you have any suggestions for a song? Since you think I know so many."

Ignoring his tone, she angled her head in thought - then smiled. "How about singing that one we heard at the cultural fair."

Jafarr grimaced, pulling back "Which song? There were a billion of them and I didn't stand around memorizing them."

She shrugged. "I heard you practice this on the violin about a week ago. The one about the hair. What was it? Black is the color...?"

"He plays the violin?" someone whispered.

"You liked that one?" Jafarr blinked at her, his cheeks getting hot for some reason. He cleared his throat.

Zormna nodded, not noticing his reaction due to the darkness.

"And the ukulele apparent," someone else replied.

He smirked at her. Nodding to himself, Jafarr announced, "Ok, this one is a Celtic folk song, Irish I think. And it is the closest you're gonna get to an English version of an Arrassian song."

Everyone around the campfire listened intently, the light illuminating their eager faces. When Jafarr opened his mouth out came the most soothing tenor they had ever heard. Every girl listening suddenly wished that her hair was black and that he was singing about them. When he finished, his eyes fixed on Zormna who grinned at him with pleasure. The rest of them burst into applause.

The night grew dark and cold. Soon the only ones awake were Jafarr, Zormna, and the desert animals. Kyle had gone to bed early, lying in his tent while the songs were being sung. Jafarr had gotten them to start a round of camp songs, which led to a do-you-remember-when session among the college students who reminisced about scout camps and YMCA camps and random family outings. A few of the college boys had also tried to get Jafarr and Zormna to go with them on a snipe hunt. But when Zormna loudly remarked that that strange nocturnal bird had a tendency for abandoning people in the woods, they had to give up the trip for lost. Jafarr then explained that they had already been on a snipe hunt that last summer, and they weren't too keen on another prank.

Most people left the firelight by nine o'clock. The lingerers stayed until ten, and the rest - Jafarr, Zormna, and Steve (who was now utterly entranced by Zormna's princess status) - stayed and talked until eleven-thirty. By then even Steve had to call it quits.

Jafarr and Zormna played cards by the light of the moon until midnight. Afterwards they just lay outside their tent, staring up at the stars.

"And you see that one?" Zormna pointed to the three bright stars that ran close together in a line, "That one is called Orion's belt."

"What else does Darren tell you?" Jafarr asked, peering at the speckled sky.

Zormna sighed. "He says that nearly every star has a name, or will when their astronomers get through with them. It's funny how a culture can change so quickly when the past is forgotten. He says that tiny cluster of seven stars is called Pleiades. I always though they were the seven brothers and sons of the Sun. Isn't that the myth?"

Jafarr nodded. "I doubt the people here remember half our myths, Zormna. Who knows, maybe the legends Darren knows actually comes from some ancient Ur-yek folk tale."

Zormna laughed. "He looks like an Ur-yek."

Jafarr also laughed, agreeing.

It was one in the morning.

Zormna blinked. Had she fallen asleep? When Jafarr leapt up, it startled her awake. He smashed against something that was just hovering over her, propelling whatever it was away from the tent. Zormna sat up.

Jafarr and Kyle rolled down the hill, crashing into the nearest tent at the base of the hill and knocking the sleeper inside awake. Jafarr clenched Kyle's right hand, holding the point of a sharp paring knife away, fighting Kyle's arm as it pushed inward toward Jafarr's neck and shoulder. Kyle clenched Jafarr's other hand, fending off Jafarr's from his neck.

"Jafarr!" Zormna sprang to her feet, staring.

Jafarr and Kyle continued to roll, struggling and knocking over the portable grill, then the gas lanterns and the red food cooler.

Zormna scrambled down the hill after them, skidding on the rocks and leaping over the tents to where the two wrestled. Jafarr twisted. He managed to get some leg between them and forcefully thrust Kyle away, crashing into another tent. Scrambling onto his feet, Jafarr wiped his bleeding chin where Kyle had nicked him.

"Blast! Another scar,"