The Forever Knight: A Novel of the Bronze Knight (Books of the Bronze Knight) by John Marco Read Free Book Online

nodded, because she knew the stories too. War stories, mostly. Atrocities and all the things that come with war. Cricket gazed blankly at the moon.
    “Cricket . . .” I said it softly. “How do you know your name’s Cricket? How can you remember that, if you can’t remember anything else?”
    She shrugged. “How do you know your name’s Lukien? I just do is all. I haven’t forgotten how to talk or walk either. It’s just some things I can’t remember. Sometimes it’s on the tip of my tongue and I can’t get it out . . .” She closed her eyes and grumbled, “It makes me crazy! I try to remember. I have dreams sometimes and can’t remember them.”
    “Don’t force it. You have to come at this thing from the side, not head on. It’ll all fall in place eventually. Maybe when we get to Akyre.”
    Cricket put down the fruit and drew her rass skin cape around her shoulders. She looked tired but restless too, like she wanted to keep talking.
    “There’s one thing I remember,” she said. Her eyes narrowed as she focused on the memory. “A waterfall. Maybe a river, but I think it’s a waterfall. I can see myself there.”
    “In Akyre?” I asked.
    She closed her eyes completely. “Yes. Definitely Akyre. I can see it, kind of.”
    “What else do you see? Are you alone?”
    “I’m . . .”
    She struggled, holding her breath. And then she opened her eyes and looked at me.
    “Can we go there, Lukien?”
    “Where? You don’t even know if it’s a river or a waterfall.”
    “We can find it. Akyre’s not a big country. We could ask around. We could do that, right?”
    She was fixated suddenly, and I didn’t understand it. “Sure,” I told her. “We could do that.”
    Like a charm, the promise calmed her. She leaned back against the ridge. “Now it’s your turn,” she said. “Tell me something you remember.”
    “You’re an imp. It’s late. I don’t feel like talking.”
    “Ah, you’re always making excuses. You have as many secrets as I do, Lukien.” Cricket smiled at me. “I just want to know about you, that’s all. Not just the stories everybody says about you. Not just how you lost your eye. Before that.”
    “Oh. When I was your age, you mean.”
    Her brown eyes blinked at me. I couldn’t escape. So I settled back and told her what life was like for me before becoming “the Bronze Knight.” I told her about growing up in the streets of Liiria, about how I lived by breaking into stores to keep warm at night and by stealing food. My mother had died before I was old enough to have memories of her. But when it came time to tell Cricket about my father, I had to stop. What could I say about a man who left me to fend for myself? Who one day decided that life was too tough for him?
    “There’s only one way a man should leave his family,” I said finally. “By dying.”
    Cricket looked baffled. “He just left you? Out there on the street?”
    I couldn’t look at her. I stared at the moon. “Right.”
    “Didn’t you wonder what happened to him? Didn’t you try to find him?”
    “You mean beg? You can’t beg someone to love you, Cricket. I decided it was easier to hate him. Now . . .” I stood up and brushed the sand from my trousers. “It’s late and I’m tired. More next time, all right?”
    As I walked toward my bedroll, Cricket said, “Lukien? You think I’ll ever be able to remember stuff like that?”
    All of a sudden she sounded like a little girl. And I was the closest thing she had to a father.
    “Yes, I do,” I told her. “When you’re in a stronger, safer place, you’ll be able to remember. That’s why I’m here. So we can find that place together.”

6
    M alator had been strangely quiet since we left Jador. For the first two days I felt him hovering just out of reach, like a child peeking around a corner. Within the sword I could feel his presence, stoic but solid, but by our fifth day I could barely sense him at all. He had stopped speaking to me