| To Saralinda: Part 9 |
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I don’t believe in ghosts. Never have. I was skeptical even when I was a kid, and I pretty much gave up on any belief in them at all after the time I visited mother’s grave for three months straight, waiting for her to come and visit. She never did. I don’t know what I saw in the hall this morning. Probably a figment of my imagination while freaking out over Keith’s behavior. He was singing, for crying out loud. Singing and laughing so hard he was about to fall over.
He’ll be laughing even harder after this afternoon. All of them will be. I still can’t believe I lost by less than a minute and a half. What a bum deal.
Saralinda comes to the forefront of my thoughts again, and I feel a vague sort of tug in my chest. I have to do something, and I have to do it right now. I hail Black Lion. Keith’s image comes up on my secondary screen.
“Keith, I need to be excused from the rest of practice today. I have to do something important.”
He smiles at me. “Yes you certainly do, but that’s not until lunchtime.”
“I’m serious, Cap’n. I want to go pay a visit somewhere.”
He studies me for a moment, his expression turning serious. “Where to?”
“I’m not sure exactly where it is. I guess Coran could call it up from a database or something. There’s a good chance the spot where the refugee camp the little girl lived in was marked somehow, isn’t there?”
Keith pauses in thought for a moment. “I want to go with you.”
Like I can tell him no. “Sure, no problem.”
He tells Sven to take charge of practice while we take off on a short trip, and then hails Coran for the map data. The site isn’t very far away, just two hours and a half southwest as the Lion flies. We have to make a couple of passes and re-check our coordinates because the area isn’t marked at all. We land the Lions on what would have been the perimeter of the camp and disembark.
The main gate is little more than a single broken post with a weathered chunk of wood still clinging to a rusted hinge. Pieces of framework from makeshift shelters stick up among the weeds that have carpeted the area. There’s no sign or plaque or monument to declare that the people who struggled to survive here even existed.
Keith and I begin to wander around the area. At one point we come to a row of sandbags that seem to flank a footpath. We follow them to an overgrown area that has mounds of dirt laid out in neat rows. Some of them are very small. One of those little graves has some scraps of cloth that look like they could be remains of a rag doll resting atop it. A badly tarnished Arusian Gilded Star, the medal of honor for the military, is right beside them.
The image before me blurs from the tears that fill my eyes. I feel very petty all of a sudden; it clings to me like a layer of filth. Saralinda’s world came to an end at the age of four. All I did was lose a bet. And what am I going to suffer, a little bit of bruising to my ego? Big deal. Big, fat deal.
Keith picks a handful of daisies from a patch nearby to put on the grave. I wish I had something to leave here for her...wait, the lollipop that Doc Leslie gave me; it’s in Red Lion. I run back to get it and place it beside the daises.
We stand in silence for I don’t know how long. Then we finally go back to the lions and take off for the castle.
I adjust my bow tie and take a final look in the mirror. Lance old boy, you are a ladykiller indeed. This doesn’t feel as irritating as it should. Maybe I will survive after all.
I wait off-stage while Allura makes her presentation speech. Nanny is given a large plaque and a hug from Allura. Then she announces the ‘little extra something’ that Nanny is to receive. The band strikes up the tune, and I emerge on cue.
Nanny looks completely dumbfounded until I get a few bars into the song. Then she gives Allura a look of surprise. By the end of the first verse she’s wiping at her eyes. By the second she’s dipping into her apron pocket for a handkerchief.
Allura hands me a huge bouquet of roses during the musical interlude and with the third verse I sing my way off the stage up to Nanny’s seat. I take her hand and gently urge her to stand up. She gets to her feet as if in a trance. I place the roses in her arms and plant a kiss on her cheek.
The result is amazing. She goes from zero to full-blown sobbing in less than sixty seconds. Coran comes over to guide her to the dining hall where she gets to be waited on for the midday meal for once.
The guys all give me a once-over before they get up to leave. Keith is smiling, but it’s a thoughtful sort of grin on his face. Sven looks completely dumbfounded. Pidge is caught halfway between a laughing fit and a heart attack. Hunk is in the same boat, though he’s leaning more toward the laughter end of it.
Allura walks off the stage as the band begins to pack up their instruments. She’s smiling her old I-got-you smile, but that really doesn’t bother me so much either. Guess I can blame that on Saralinda too. Maybe that was my lesson out of all of this. I just needed a change of perspective.
“That was a wonderful performance, Lance,” she says. “Nanny was so very happy.”
I stick my hands in my pockets. “Yeah, seems that way.”
She gets a distant look on her face for a moment. “Keith and I had a very long talk last night after you stopped spying on us.”
“Spying? Me?”
“Stop trying to play innocent, Lance. It doesn’t suit you.”
“Good point. Do go on.”
“Well, we got a lot of things off of our minds, and then he told me all about the trip the two of you made beneath the castle. He said he found an old sketchbook of mine, and he wanted to keep it, so I let him.”
I grin at her. “And the crayons too?”
“Yes, the crayons, too. And speaking of sketchbooks, I know it was you that scanned my drawings into Keith’s laptop.” She gives me a stern look and points a finger. “You blamed it on Pidge, but he was out on patrol at the time and you were the only other person in the sitting room when I left those drawings on the table.”
“Fine, okay, you got me. I guess Pidge got your lecture on invading privacy for nothing.”
“Yes, he did get my lecture for nothing.” Her expression turns smug. “I guess that’s why he was so eager to help when I asked him to access the castle network and set the clock a minute and a half ahead yesterday afternoon.”
Fritz goes the brain again. “You...you...a minute and a half...?”
“And I knew you’d want to get the time from an outside source, so I had him re-route all calls to the observatory back to the digital timekeep here to make it look like the castle time had synchronous confirmation.”
I gawk at her in amazement. “Oh, that was clever. Fiendishly clever.”
She smirks at me. “I like to think so. I can chew gum and walk at the same time, you know.”
That makes me laugh. “Okay, okay...I admit defeat.”
Allura smiles briefly, then she produces a set of keys and tosses them to me. “You’re a good person, Lance. Don’t let anyone tell you differently.” She draws close and gives me a kiss on the cheek. I look down at the keys in my hand, then back at her.
“You might not say that later on, my dear Allura. I will have my revenge someday.” I study her for a moment. “You know, Nanny really was blown over by that song. I imagine that if Keith were to do the same thing for you, you’d be reduced to this big, blubbering puddle of pink goo. That would be very amusing to see.”
Allura wrinkles her nose at me. “Keith doesn’t sing, Lance. It’ll never happen.”
Says you, princess. But you didn’t witness his performance in the hallway this morning.
I grin and waggle my eyebrows at her. “You wanna bet on that?”
=== END
| To Saralinda: Part 9 |
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