CHAPTER 25
The Danielses’ flower garden was bordered on one side by a sandbagged machine gun emplacement but it was still showing off its June beauty. Flowers of every kind had survived the trampling combat boots. Chase watched Kit gather an armload of scarlet columbine, pink daisies and yellow snapdragons. He leaned an elbow on a sandbag wall and admired how her long sand-colored hair fell down as she bent to pick a flower and how she brushed it back when she stood.
She flashed him a good-natured smile. “What are you gawking at?”
“Pretty flowers,” he said.
She went along with his line. “They are pretty, aren’t they?”
“Beautiful.” He meant more than the flowers. He went to her and put his arms around her. She didn’t resist as he drew her near and kissed her. The kiss, and the honey smell of the flowers, and the warmth of the day, and the joy they each felt at having survived, combined to sweep them both into a rapturous and long-lasting kiss and embrace. Kit clung to Chase tightly, dropping the flowers and abandoning herself to the delicious moment of tender sharing.
After the kiss, Chase nuzzled her cheek. He whispered, “I think I’m falling in love.”
“So am I,” she sighed. After a moment, she bent to gather the flowers and said, “I’ve got to put these in a vase right away.”
They strolled out of the garden arm-in-arm and headed for the back door of the house. As they passed Ogilvey and Gar at the fighting machine, Ogilvey chortled, “We’ll need more than flowers to prepare for a peace negotiation.” He followed Kit and Chase into the house gabbing as he went, “We’ll need to arrange the place. Tables, chairs, pencils, paper, and plenty of raw meat.”
Gar remained seated in the quahka where he had been communicating with his fellow Kra. In a quiet moment he reflected on private thoughts. Sitting with his long neck arched and his head bowed, he prayed quietly.
“Go to Eng-kan, my brothers and sisters who died on these lands. Go to him in peace. Tell Eng-kan the Kra are done with war. Ask him to guide us on another path. Ask him to change even the heart of Neggok, who would restart the fighting.
“My dead comrades, you are to be envied, for you return first to the hallowed ground where our ancestors lie. I wonder, do you share the afterlife with hoonahs? Do they also sit at the side of almighty Eng-kan in the Hall of Eternal Feasting? You dead know the answers long before the living can ever hope to.
“Eng-kan, I pledge upon the souls of our fallen soldiers that there will be no more killing—not of hoonah, not of Kra. I shall keep this pledge until the day when I too am at your side.
“Before that day, Eng-kan, grant that I see again my beloved Gana.”
Gar visualized the graceful curve of Gana’s neck and her crest’s stripes of dark brown and delicate pale orange. In his imagination, her beautiful amber eyes looked deeply into his, a radiant light shining in them. She was the most beautiful female among all the Kra. He imagined her sitting in the center of their nesting couch of golden yellow, the long feathers of her forearms fanning out in a familiar greeting flourish of black and iridescent blue-green stripes. He imagined how she rose to show him an egg cradled in the nesting couch, perfectly oval and luminously white. How fragile it looked, and how dear.
Another image crowded into Gar’s mind. The brooding chamber was shattered in the cold vacuum of the moon. In a swirl of gray moon dust, he saw not an egg, but broken fragments of eggshell, scattered like dead flower petals.
He looked up at the waxing form of Noqui, the moon, rising in the eastern sky. “My friend Ogilvey tells me hoonahs have destroyed Illik base and all who remained there,” he murmured. “But I cannot believe this. Those on Noqui will yet join us here. Gana and I will dance the mating dance and watch our children hatch. She is not dead.”