Defying Mars (The Saving Mars Series) - By Cidney Swanson Page 0,67

ever so slightly as he played, the musician embraced the cello, holding it to him like a lover, fingering the frets with an intimacy born of many years’ familiarity. They knew one another, thought Pavel, the player and his instrument. It made Pavel ache for someone who would know him that well, draw from him those notes so clear and beautiful.

When the piece ended, Pavel looked around to see if clapping was appropriate, but the desert folk applauded in a different way. Beside and behind him, people rubbed their palms together. It made a sound like a soughing wind, gathering and then dying off. The cellist bowed deeply before beginning another piece, a merrier one that brought children wriggling from parent’s laps to dance about the great fire.

And then, just as Pavel recognized that one of the dancers was taller than his fellows, a cry went up around the circle.

“Renard!”

“It’s Renard!”

Pavel found himself smiling, even though Renard was a stranger. The enthusiasm was contagious, and when all about him began to clap (apparently they did clap for some things), Pavel joined in.

After a minute, Renard held his hands up and all fell silent.

“I am Renard, son of Ambrose and Keiko, foster-son to Marie and Roy,” he said. “I have returned to Yucca after a three-days’ sojourn in the deserted places. I ask this community to receive me as a full member. I vow to carry my own water-weight and to relieve those whose burden has grown too great when the chance falls to me. Will you have me as your full brother?”

Having said this, Renard turned so that his back was to the seated community, his face to the fire. He held his hands slightly out from his sides. Almost immediately his hands were taken up by two who slipped forward. Then, one by one, the adult members of the community stepped to the fire to link hands, creating an ever-enlarging circle about the bonfire. The children skipped around the circle, sometimes darting under the linked hands. At last an old woman smoking a clay pipe was the only citizen still seated beside the five strangers. Then, slowly, she stood and walked to close the gap by taking the last two hands.

“Renard, I declare you a citizen of Yucca by unanimous consent,” said the wizened woman, pipe clenched between her teeth as she spoke.

A round of whoops and hollers echoed around the fire as people rushed forward to congratulate, hug, and otherwise smother Renard.

After several minutes had passed in this manner, Pavel saw Samuel tugging hard at one of Renard’s hands. The young boy succeeded in pulling Renard toward the strangers.

“This is my foster-brother,” said Samuel, beaming from ear to ear. “He came back to us. I knew he would.”

“Of course I chose Yucca,” said Renard, scooping Samuel up and tickling him. “Who are your new friends?” he asked, staring from the little boy to the five he didn’t know.

“Strangers,” said Samuel, his eyes wide. “But they’re okay,” he added in a loud whisper.

Ethan spoke the question Pavel was thinking. “Was the choice yours to make? To return or depart?”

Renard’s eyes narrowed. “It’s the same choice everyone here has to make, once they’re grown: Join the community or leave it for conventional life. We take three days on our own to decide.”

“Or die in the desert,” said Samuel with relish. “You could have died, too, you know.”

Renard laughed and tossed Samuel into the air. “And miss the party?”

A laughing group of young men and women Renard’s age came by and swept him off to where dancing had now begun, a fiddler and drummer having joined the cellist.

“Well, about time for bed, is it then?” asked Brian Wallace.

Pavel itched to stay, but this wasn’t his party; these weren’t his friends. And so when Dr. Zaifa and Harpreet nodded and Ethan turned his hoverchair from the fire, Pavel fell in behind.

But as he drifted to sleep in his borrowed bed, Pavel thought of the laughter and dancing by firelight, of the wild and sweet sounds the cello had made, of the firmness of purpose in Renard’s declaration, and he wished he’d been born an impoverished son of the desert instead of a privileged nephew of Lucca Brezhnaya.

~ ~ ~

The five strangers became Renard’s first official responsibility as full citizen during the course of the next days. With Renard’s help, Zaifa, Ethan, and Wallace were kept busy planning and beginning construction of the deep-space satellite dishes for transmissions to Mars. Renard understood manufacturing