Joss came to the cabin door an hour after the Tern lifted.
He had unbuckled himself from the first bench without asking. Nemi had seen him do it and had not stopped him. He walked down the hold between the benches, past the other children, who were asleep or nearly asleep in their straps, and stopped at the cabin door where Mara sat in the right-hand seat, the one that never rattled, with notebook I open on her knee.
He held out a piece of paper, folded in quarters.
Mara took it. She unfolded it on her knee.
It was a drawing. Black crayon on a page from an exercise book, ruled in faint blue lines. A sun: a circle with rays coming out of it in every direction. No bandage this time. Across the middle of the circle, from one side to the other, ran a line, a seam, and across the seam, at intervals, short strokes. Stitches. The kind of stitches you saw on a mended coat or a cut that a doctor had closed: a row of small crosses holding the two sides of the seam together.
And at one end of the seam, very small, a figure. A stick figure, with a round head and two lines for arms. Holding the end of the thread.
