He lifts his eyebrow. “And you are—”
“A woman,” I tell him, offended.
“Of course.” He nods. “My apologies.”
I shake my head, staring at my hands. “Jamison doesn’t want me.”
John tosses me an unsure glance. “Are you sure about that?”
“Quite.” I nod.
“Really?” His face falters. “Quite?”
I stand up quickly, decidedly. I brush rogue bits of cloud off my dress. “I should just put it away,” I say, moving back towards the shack.
“That doesn’t work how you think it might,” he calls to me, and I pause. “Who we love, how we love them—it shapes us.”
I fold my arms over my chest. “Well, I don’t know what shape I am anymore.”
He gives me a look like he thinks I’m silly. “You’re a fine shape.”
“Do you have any ancient wisdom?”
He gives me a look. “How old do you think I am?”
“Just tell me what to do,” I plead.
He sighs, scratching his chin. “Both of them make you happy. Both—” He gives me a knowing look. “Both make you sad. Both of them make you feel free but in different ways. Both hurt you but”—his face strains—“differently also.” He breathes out his nose and stares at the darkening sky.
I think I’ve been up here for hours.
Peter and I went diving for pearls this morning, but then a hurricane blew in, and Peter wanted to play in it. I said I needed to come up here anyway, and he didn’t say anything about it. I’ve come up so many times lately, he got me a cloud that floats me up and down on his command. You can access the shack through the mountain and a lot of stairs, but it’s about a day’s hike from the tree.
“One of them makes you peaceful,” he goes on. “Sometimes,” he adds as a caveat, then his eyes pinch. “The other makes you feel a peace, but it’s not real. It’s just a numbness.”
And I know which one he’s talking about, but I don’t even know if that matters because— “Only one of them wants me though.”
“So you say.” The old man sighs.
“So he says!” I tell him, indignant.
And then he does something that throws me off a little. He shrugs. “If you believe him, then you have your answer.”
I stare at him, frowning, admittedly unhappy with the conclusion but too proud to tell him why.
“I suppose I do.” I arch an eyebrow. “Fine.” I shrug as I turn on my heel. “Cumbersome, antiquated thing that is it, I’ll just take it off—”
“No!” he calls, hobbling after me, and I stop.
It’s rather rude to make an old person hobble after you, don’t you think? I think my grandmothers would be cross at me for it.
“No?” I turn back, my eyebrows arched.
The old man shakes his head. “Can’t.”
“I can’t?” I repeat, indignant.
He shrugs. “I’m closed.”
I cross my arms over my chest and give him a dubious look.
“Since when?”
Shrugs again. “Since now.”
My eyes go to slits. “Until?”
His face pulls as he thinks about it. “Morning.”
“And for what reason are you suddenly closed?” I ask him, tapping my foot impatiently, but it loses its effectiveness in the clouds. Cumulus. Very fluffy. Too fluffy for irritable feet.
He stares over at me. “Family emergency.”
And I’m seconds away from unleashing on this old man a tirade about unprofessionalism, about lying, about how he doesn’t have a family because he’s a man on a cloud, and then a thought sails into my mind, and I stare over at him.
Terribly blue eyes. Quite like…
“My grandmother had a brother,” I tell him.
He stares over at me for a few seconds before he nods once. “Yes, she did.”
“His name was John.”
He nods again. “Yes, it was.”
I take a step closer towards him. “No one’s seen him since the Second World War.”
His face goes rather solemn. “No, they haven’t.”
I’m standing. “They say he went missing somewhere over the Indian Ocean.”
His face flickers. “Somewhere over it, yes.”
“What happened?” I ask him, my voice quiet.
He knocks my chin playfully with his hand. “Another day.”
I sniff, nose in the air, indignant once again. “I shall be back in the morning.”