The Doktor's Spyglass

Chapter 13.3

She let him keep it for three days, after which she politely asked for it back. Key's research, while fascinating, had reached a dead end, and he knew that he'd truly be pressing his luck to try and hold onto it any longer. So he returned it, thanked her, and deeply regretted that he lacked the equipment and the training to investigate further.

He had managed to ascertain that the capillaries in the elekstone he'd observed through his microscope did indeed show signs of activity, which Key had tentatively identified as life. Without the ability to view them at a higher magnification, he could not prove that theory, but in his experience very few things moved so organically and were not alive. Certainly not things found within gemstones. The branching veins pulsed with some internal pressure, very much like the circulatory system of mammals, which he was very familiar with.

It could be a trick of the light, of course; even at his microscope's highest power the capillaries appeared tiny. There was no way to be certain that what he was seeing wasn't a strange reflective effect that made them appear alternately larger or smaller, depending upon the angle of the observer or of the light source. Perhaps there were even tiny chips of the stone caught within internal vacuoles, which shifted around and caught the light at different angles. Either was a more logical hypothesis than his: that a lump of stone lived, in the same way that an animal or plant lived.

Nonetheless Key wanted to believe it very badly, a feeling he chose not to investigate any further at that particular juncture.

When he gave it back, Seffa put it on immediately, replacing it at her breast with a look of relief that was obvious even to Key.

"Thank you," he said.

"You're welcome," she replied. "I'm sorry too. If I was too...protective of it. It's just...it was a gift."

"Who gave it to you?" The question was inappropriate on two levels. For one, it violated the unspoken agreement they had not to inquire into each other's life beyond what each cared to share. For two, Key was at least as interested in her answer for its potential value in identifying the provenance of the necklace. A longshot though it may be, he couldn't help but be curious how a young girl—an apparent street urchin, or near to—came by a piece of jewelry worth more than its weight in gold.

This fact might have concerned others more from the very beginning, but Key's mind simply worked in a different way.

"My father," she said, somewhat shortly. For she, too, had noticed that Key had asked an uncharacteristically direct question. She was silent before speaking again. "He died."

"I'm sorry," repeated Key. And he was surprised to find that he truly was sorry. The pained look that crossed her pretty, smudged face when she told him pierced his heart like a spike of rusty steel. Like those actually wounded by such a barb, Key was seized with a growing sickness that threatened to make his muscles spasm and light his brain on fire. He knew better than anyone that the seat of love, if one believed in such things, was in the head and not the heart. The slow burn in his chest, however, demanded otherwise.

"How did he die?" asked Key, for the first time truly interested, and not because it might benefit his studies.

Seffa sat down in her chair, sweeping her dirty skirt under her primly. She had a neat, polite way about her that Key had respected from the first. It was one of the many reasons he continued to share space with her. She was easy to live with, respectful of others' boundaries. Of his boundaries, anyway. He wouldn't know if she respected anyone else's, and he didn't particularly care. He and Seffa were like two gears that meshed perfectly, with little to no slippage. An engineer might say that they had high efficiency.

"He wasted away," she said, and it occurred to Key that this seemed a very adult turn of phrase for a girl her age. For a boy his age, even, despite their otherwise abnormal independence. "One day he was healthy, the next he began to feel sick. Then a few months passed and he died, a withered thing, like a stick person, dry and yellow." She shrugged. "I don't know what happened."

"What did the physicians say?" Key asked, then cursed himself. Physicians were a luxury only the rich could afford. Seffa was clearly not rich. He felt like an ass. Of course there had been no physicians.

But Seffa surprised him.

"They said it was cancer, but when they opened him up they found nothing."

"Were they from the University?" he asked. Seffa nodded. "The medical college?" Another nod. Key pulled up another chair, a rickety wooden thing, and sat down next to her, confused. If University doctors had failed to even identify the disease correctly, then Seffa's father had died from something rare indeed.

"When?"

"Just last year."

Key, acting with a precipitousness he could only attribute to the growing thing in his chest, put his larger hand over her smaller one. Seffa sniffed, and when the tears welled at the corners of her eyes she leaned over and put her head on his arm. Key stroked her hair awkwardly, certain that at any moment she would rear back, alarmed at his familiar touch. But she only snuggled closer, and after a moment Key got onto her old tufted armchair with her, wrapping his arms around her in the musty leather.

He held her then, cradling her smallform against his narrow chest, resting his chin gently on her head as shesobbed, and wondered whether the fire within him was one he wantedextinguished.  

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