Another Hillside, to the South of the Rose
The question he was surprised by. He glanced down at his arms, and then back at Gideon; it was the fact that it was a question at all that surprised him the most. Aremu swallowed; his throat moved, slightly, behind the collar of his jacket.
“Yeah, the hand,” Aremu said, after a moment. It ached again; he didn’t bother with trying to massage the tension out of his arm again. There didn’t seem to be much of a point.
“I lost it shipside,” Aremu said, after a moment. They were walking through the grass, still; it prickled at the edges of his pant legs, and though he couldn’t quite feel it through the thick fabric, he was aware of it all the same. “It was complicated, it…” He swallowed, silent. “I made a choice,” Aremu said, quietly, into the drifting wind.
“On the ground there’s,” Aremu swallowed, “maybe it’d’ve been possible, but not up in the air.” He didn’t know why he was saying this – not any of it, really. It was all true, and that was absolutely the worst of it. He could still do a good deal of mechanic’s work – so long as he didn’t need to worry about balance, about being pitched around in a storm or fighting off anyone on a deck.
Sometimes he wondered; if he could have found another way, what would have happened? Would Uzoji – would he? There wasn’t any point in looking back, but the past called to him all the same; it crept up from behind him, trailed him like his shadow in the thick grass, slanted off all strange, hints of his shape but different too.
He still wasn’t sure why he’d said it, any of. I made a choice, he’d said, aloud. There were those who knew that; there were some, at least. He’d said the words to himself, and many times; there wasn’t much of a difference between that and saying them aloud to a stranger, or so it felt. There were others he couldn’t have imagined saying it to; he thought of a thin, drawn face, and sad gray eyes, and wondered if he’d ever find the courage for it.
“I still feel it sometimes,” Aremu said, abruptly. “Like it’s haunting me,” he glanced over at Gideon. He didn’t know – he’d wanted it to be a joke, but he didn’t know how to say it like one. My ghost-hand, he wanted to say, but the words crawled into his throat and died, and he couldn’t quite force them out. He thought he shouldn’t have gone there at all; he pressed his wrist deeper into his pocket. It hadn’t sounded funny, said aloud, he didn’t think; he’d meant it to be funny, all the same.