WORRY PRICKLES THE BACK OF YOUR ELBOW
After dinner, Jaq listened as his mother recounted her confrontation with Ripley Vilcot.
"There's something not right with that man," she said. "You talk to him, but he stands there twitching and fidgeting like a schoolboy about to have a tantrum."
"Was he wearing his 'Don't mess with me' gloves?" Grandpa asked.
"I don't think so. They were just normal gloves."
"How insulting! He doesn't even think we are worthy of his best gloves. Thought we'd be a pushover for his wheeling and dealing."
"Did he try to buy the farm again?" Jaq asked.
His mother and grandfather didn't answer. They looked at each other, like they were hoping for the other one to talk. Jaq's gaze went back and forth between them.
"He doesn't want the farm," his mother said at last.
"What does he want?" Jaq asked. Klingdux was curled up next to him on the floor, and Jaq stroked his soft fur. Then he noticed Grandpa looking at Klingdux.
"No," Jaq said softly. "No, he can't."
"He offered twenty-five damars for him," Mrs. Rollop said. "Think of what we could do with that money, Jaq. Better irrigation for the fields, fix the roof, repair the drafty floorboards."
"You don't hear me complaining," Grandpa said. Then he pointed to his blanket, because he felt a draft and didn't want to get up.
Jaq fetched the blanket and then rushed back to Klingdux. "He's the only friend I've ever had, Mom."
"I know," his mother said. "We won't sell him to that man."
Jaq was relieved, but later, as he lay in his corner of the room, he heard that sentence a different way, and in this new way, We won't sell him to that man didn't mean that they wouldn't sell him to someone else.
On Yipsmix, emotions are heard and seen in addition to being felt. That night, Tormy Vilcot sat at home, his ears ringing with envy. His grandfather paced in his office, anger swirling red and black in his vision. And Jaq lay in bed, his elbows prickling with worry.
Jaq wasn't sure he could trust his mother. He knew she didn't like Klingdux. She never had. He began to imagine her snatching up Klingdux while he slept and then selling him to Vilcot. Anger popped to the surface of his vision, like underwater bubbles, and burst open. The thought that she could be so treacherous was very real to Jaq, and very frightening.
She never let him have anything he wanted, and now she was going to take away the one thing he loved. It wasn't fair.
Many planets set aside a special day to celebrate mothers. It's a day when young children can show their love through handcrafted art projects. On Earth, young children sometimes make a necklace out of colored macaroni, or decorate a picture frame, or draw a picture using their handprints as flowers. The gifts are adorable, and mothers love them.
On Epsidor Erandi, macaroni would be considered a choking hazard. Picture frames, with those sharp edges, are too dangerous for kids to handle. And they would never allow their children's hands to be painted—how unsanitary! Instead, most children sing a song for their mothers, usually about the importance of safety, or how much they love wearing a helmet as they walk to school.
To honor their mothers on Zanflid, young children take their machetes and venture into the jungle to collect the venom of the poisonous tree snoogli. It's a great gift because the venom is very useful in making medicines and perfumes, and it's relatively easy to extract. Tree snooglies hardly ever hear you sneak up on them. Mostly never.
On Yipsmix, children collect the clear rocks they have nicknamed "foot scrapers" because of their hard, sharp edges. Teachers help their students polish the foot scrapers, and then they are given to mothers on Gratitude Day. The worthless rocks are very pretty once polished. When the sun hits them, the clear stones light up with rainbows of color.
Jaq had just passed a nice-looking foot scraper on the path as he walked to the river, but he didn't pick it up. Usually, he collected as many as he could find, saving them up for Gratitude Day, but he wasn't feeling very grateful for his mother at the moment. The last few mornings he'd woken up wondering if this would be the day she would make him sell Klingdux.
He continued down the path, kicking away a few more foot scrapers and swinging the bucket he was going to fill with worms for the garden. But when he got to the river, the river was gone. There was nothing left but a dry depression in the land. He checked his gravity irrigation lines, and they were dry, too.
That was strange. The river had never run dry before. Ever.
He walked up the riverbed and immediately saw why: The river had been moved. Jaq had seen the massive earthmoving equipment working behind the Vilcots' spread; he had assumed they were digging a swimming pool or clearing land for another field. But no, the Vilcots had dug a massive trench, and the water now flowed down to them before taking a wide swing away from the Rollops' farm.
Without water, Jaq's crops would wither and die.
And they did.
Over the next few months, the Rollop family struggled. Almost all of Mrs. Rollop's factory wages went to pay off the loans they'd taken out to buy the land and seeds. They really needed the crop money to buy food, but the crops failed.
They grew very hungry.
At breakfast, which was a half bowl of ripweed oatmeal topped with one brickleberry, Jaq's mother broke the bad news.
"Jaq, I don't think we have a choice anymore. We have to sell your freasel."
"Mom, no," Jaq said. "He's mine. I can't …" His voice trembled, and he felt body-shaking sobs rise up inside him.
"Then we'll all die of starvation together," Mom said, angry now. "Is that what you want?"
Jaq hugged Klingdux a little tighter.
"You've trained him well; he's grown so big and strong," she said. "I'm sure he'll fetch a good price. With twenty-five, thirty damars, we can dig a well for your irrigation system and be ready for the next planting. I'm sorry, I really am, but he's just a pet."
Just a pet? Jaq's world burst with explosions of sadness. Gray streaks swished through his vision and wound around his throat, making it feel tight.
Grandpa put a hand on his shoulder. He didn't say anything, and that was when Jaq knew there was no escaping this terrible fate. He was going to lose his best friend.
"I'm not selling him to Tormy Vilcot," he said.
"No, of course not," his mother said. "His grandfather was back yesterday, saying he would take him off our hands for twenty damars. He said the offer went down because he could see that we're desperate. He's an awful, evil man. Diverting our water so he can steal a pet for his spoiled brat of a grandkid."
Jaq hugged Klingdux and cried.
