The Core of the Sun by Johanna Sinisalo Read Free Book Online

would have been difficult to explain a sudden interest in natural science or history without arousing suspicion. She was a full citizen, so it wasn’t officially forbidden, but she thought you could never be too careful.
    I knew, of course, that you were the one who’d cut up my book. But I couldn’t understand why. I went to your room. You weren’t there, but there were scraps of paper and scissors and pages of the book on your desk. Next to them was a sheet of paper with a clumsy drawing of a bride and groom. The bouquet in the bride’s hands was a clump of plants cut from the book and glued to the paper. You’d chosen wild roses, twinflowers, lilies of the valley, and several other lovely spring flowers. Under the bride you’d written “Manna” and underneath the groom it said “Jare.”
    I left your room. Maybe you remember that I never mentioned that book, or your picture. I didn’t blame you. I understand why you did it.
    Sometimes I wish I could find you just so Jare could tell you what really happened. Maybe you would believe him.
    I hope you aren’t really mad at me.
    Missing you, your sister,
    Vanna ( Vera )

JARE REMEMBERS
    July 2011
    I cut my hand making stakes for the peas. The cut wasn’t that deep and I hoped it wasn’t serious, but it bled like hell, dripping on my clothes and onto the ground. I couldn’t keep working until I’d put a bandage on it. I didn’t have a first aid kit, just some bath things in the sauna. I took off my shirt, found a clean spot on it and wrapped it around my hand to stop the bleeding, then ran over to the main house. I knocked on the living room door, hoping the old woman would be there—and be awake, since she was often napping. There was no answer, so I opened the door a crack and peeked into the room. I grimaced; the blood was already soaking through the shirt. I had to find a bathroom and see if there was something I could use there, maybe a towel I could borrow to use as a bandage—it was an emergency, after all. I pushed open the first door I came to.
    The older eloi, Vanna, was sitting in the room alone. It seemed to be her room. There was a bed and a young eloi’s clothes—but also a pile of books on the table and on a small shelf on the wall. Vanna looked up and saw me and leaped to her feet, a book falling from her hand. Seeing any kind of book in an eloi’s hands was unusual, but this book was titled Astronomy and the World Today. She quickly tried to kick it under the chair where I couldn’t see it.
    An eloi might flip through a book for fun, of course, especially if it has pretty pictures in it. But that didn’t seem to be the case here, and the strange part was that she was so afraid that I would see what she was reading. If she had just been innocently looking at the book out of curiosity she wouldn’t have panicked.
    And then her whole demeanor changed. Her sharp gaze dropped and turned soft and hazy, and she thrust out her breasts, cocked her hips, raised her hand to her chin as if she were embarrassed, her lower lip trying for a sweet little droop. She batted her thick eyelashes. “Oh! You can’t come in here. I’ll get my grandmother,” she cooed.
    Then she noticed the bloody shirt wrapped around my hand and suddenly her eloi mannerisms disappeared again. Her eyes brightened, her posture straightened, the submissive simper went out of her voice. “Yikes. We’ve gotta do something about that.” She came to the door, took hold of my arm and led me through the living room to the other side of the house. We went through a small passage to the bathroom. She turned on the light, told me to sit on the toilet, and held my hand in the air as she rummaged in the medicine cabinet. She found a bottle of disinfectant and a bag of cotton balls, told me to unwrap the shirt from the cut, and quickly washed the wound. She got out gauze and a roll of