Free The Pirate Queen by Patricia Hickman

figured that had been the intent of whoever had erected it twenty years ago. It had come with the house and was one of the features Bender liked, the privacy of a fenced backyard barricaded by deep water. No one to bother him.
    Even the night noises were comforting. But then a not-so-distinguishable faint sifting sound began from behind the next-door neighbor’s backyard trees.
Sift. Swish. Sift. Swish
. She figured it wasn’t any sort of insect rubbing its legs in the night air. Maybe a raccoon. Then she decided not. She sat up to see if there was a light on in the house. A rouge of candle glow seeped through the top of the windowsin back of the house. The swishing noise persisted. It might have been something mechanical, but the rhythm was too crisp and uneven, not any kind of noise a machine would make.
    Saphora sat for an hour on the balcony, her curiosity causing her to sit guessing until she decided that it sounded like a shovel cutting into the soft, sandy loam. But the house was not near enough to the beach or the riverbank to pick up the activity of clam diggers or even teenagers building a pit for an illegal bonfire.
    Finally the digging stopped. A door closed. Despite her curiosity about the digging, Saphora was even more curious about the occupant. Whoever had rented out the summer house had taken up a spade to dig by moonlight. Why on earth a neighbor would take to digging after midnight got her so curious she subconsciously got out of her chair to lean over the balcony railing. No hint of a human presence came through the trees. The next morning she would finagle a way to introduce herself.
    The house next door had gone completely dark. There was nothing to watch except the half moon. She sat under it until the cool wind chased her indoors. The door faintly whined at the hinges.
    Bender’s eyes opened, cat’s-eye slits widening under the hairline of moon falling across his face.
    She froze in the doorway. “I’m sorry if I woke you up,” she said.
    “Don’t apologize.” He did not take his eyes off her or look away as had been his custom for many years. “You look pretty standing there like that, the moon on your hair.” His voice was so thin that Saphora realized he had startled awake. Before he dozed off again he said, “But you have always been the prettiest of all the wives.” Then his eyes closed, and he fell directly asleep.
    Bender had once asked Saphora to join him in a pact: only oneof them could take a sleep aid in case the house caught fire. He had seen too many burn victims in his operating room. Besides, the kind of sleeping pills Bender brought home from the hospital made him nearly comatose. She watched him sleeping and then took her place beside him as she had done for twenty-seven years.
    She fell asleep as the puzzling sifting sound started up again.

5
    With a new awareness, both painful and humorous, I begin to understand why the saints were rarely married women.
    A NNE M ORROW L INDBERGH ,
Gift from the Sea
    Bender lay in the hospital bed with the blinds pulled closed. He looked too big for the bed, awkwardly pulling at the pale green hospital gown. Getting him to wear it took the genius coaxing of a nurse forewarned that he was a bona fide god complex–affected surgeon.
    Jim came in to check on him and talk to him about the side effects of the chemo if indeed the therapy was needed. “It’s good to talk about chemo and prepare for the possibility of it,” he told Bender and Saphora. “Then if you don’t need it, no big deal.” But Jim felt chemo was the viable avenue and made good on his promise to keep Saphora honestly abreast of Bender’s diagnosis. He showed them the gels from the CT scan. The tumor had shown up in his cranium, a small shadow that looked like a tiny moon gliding over earth. Jim left to meet up with the surgeon who would perform Bender’s procedure. He had promised Bender to observe and assist during the surgery.
    After Jim left, two nurses prepped