Sky Pirates

Chapter 56

Cole entered the house through the kitchen. He picked up two apples from the basket next to the door and made his way up the servant's staircase to the second floor. He stopped at the top of the steps, listened. The house was quiet, except for the sound of the cook and a servant gossiping in the kitchen below him.

He walked slowly along the hall, keeping to the carpet so his feet wouldn't make any sound. It wasn't that he was avoiding being noticed, not really. He simply enjoyed the quiet of the big house. He liked feeling alone and invisible to any others who might be present.

Mildred's door was, of course, closed. It had only been a few days, but he had missed entering her room at night and sitting with her while she filled him in on her day. The absence of their private time together had begun to weigh on him. Cole stood for a moment at that door and then, with a purposeful movement opened it, entered the room, and closed the door behind him.

Her room was cool and well kept. Her bed was made. Her desk was neat. All the doors and drawers of the cupboards and cabinets were closed tight. Cole went to her desk. There weren't any stray notes or any beginnings of any letters, simply a neat, clean surface and that damn mechanical rabbit. He absently picked it up, wound the key, and set the thing down. It marched in front of the pen that was in its holder, the inkwell with its cap on. He wondered how she kept her inkwell and desk so clean. Even with a blotter, his own desk was heavily stained with ink and grease.

Cole looked out of her window, out at the great expanse of the grounds with their trees of green and grass of green and the gentle river of green reflecting a blue sky with fluffy clouds moving through. He sat in her chair and from that perspective could see over the garden walls. He admired her progress. It had only been a few weeks, but the center path of Mother's garden, as well as the areas near the wall nearest the house, were well defined. He could now see the dots of red, yellow, and pink: the roses she had unearthed from the thick masses of weeds, tall grasses, and debris.

He marveled at this view. He'd never sat in her desk chair before and he now realized that for her entire life, for the desk and chair had always held this place under the window, for her entire life she had been looking and watching as the garden become overgrown and reclaimed by the elements of time. How sad it must be for her to not remember Mother and then to watch as the thing most beloved by her went to seed.

Cole opened a drawer. He shuffled the paper there, clean stationary with her embossed initials: MG. He closed that drawer and opened another. There rested her notebooks. One was the garden notebook their uncle had given her before he left on this latest journey. Uncle Parker had asked him when he left this last time if he, Cole, wanted to come along. It was a good profession, plant hunting, his father had told him when he was small. And, it would be nice to spend time with his uncle, to be treated as a man by him and those around him. Cole was the first son. It was second and third sons who took to the sea, just as his father had when he was a boy and his uncle after him. Cole turned down the offer.

He liked his father, but didn't really know him well. He was gone most of the time, six or seven months at a time. He'd return with a flourish of excitement, gifts, and activity, stay home for a few weeks, maybe two months, and then would be off again to some other exotic destination. With him gone, his Uncle Parker picked up the role, maintained the pattern. Cole couldn't imagine being away from his home and his sister for that long. He asked his uncle if Mildred could come along, too, but his uncle's mood quickly changed. Life on the sea and in the air is no place for a little girl, he had chastised Cole.

Cole thumbed through the letters under the notebook. They were all from their uncle. He unfolded one. The rich paper had been thickened and crimpled from exposure to sea water. He sniffed the letter, smelling the ink, imagining he could smell the sea and the world that his uncle, and father, inhabited so easily. He imagined Lord Parker Greene, standing well over six feet tall, against a light blue sky that expanded as far as he could imagine. His father stood with him at the rail of the ship with his broad shoulders and long blond curls blowing in the wind created by the ships movement and great propellers. In the fantasy, they both looked happy, their view of the ocean waves below filled with expectation of possibilities that the next destination finally arrived at would provide and produce.