Cryoburn - Lois McMaster Bujold [51]
Jin stared around the shed in some frustration. It was taking a lot longer to walk from his aunt and uncle's outlying northwest suburb to the near south side of the city than he had imagined. It was partly from Mina lagging and complaining as soon as she'd grown tired, just as Jin had expected, but mostly he was afraid he'd got turned around and lost during their long trudge last night. Streets curved unexpectedly, mixing him up, and the towers of the city center, glimpsed now and then from a hill or clear space, looked much the same from any direction.
This shelter had been a splendid find, early this morning. They'd stopped to buy half-liters of milk in a corner store of a neighborhoody area, then spent the next few blocks looking for a place to hide out during school hours. One house had a For Sale sign out front, and a peek through the windows revealed it cleared of furniture and empty of people, safe. It had been locked up tight, but the door to the shed around back proved unlatched. The garden was high-walled and full of sheltering bushes and trees, good to hide them from prying busybodies. Better yet, they'd found an outdoor spigot with the water still turned on. Mina's lunch bars were holding out, if getting boring, but finding water had been more of a problem, though during the long march yesterday they'd twice lucked out with city parks that offered not only drinking fountains, but bathrooms. Mina had proved very cranky about going behind a bush, even in the concealing dark.
The shelves of this shed had been cleared of likely containers, unfortunately, as well as of garden tools except for one bent and rusty trowel. Jin's eye fell on his sleeping sister, curled up with her jacket folded under her head, her zippered yellow backpack beside her, decorated with smiling but anatomically mis-drawn bees. He squatted down and began rooting through it. Ah, there!
"Hey!" mumbled Mina, sitting up and yawning. Her sleep-pale face was marked with creases from her makeshift pillow, and her hair hung every which way. What was it about sleeping in the daytime that made people so hot and rumpled? "Are you stealing my money?"
Jim popped open the clear plastic box she kept her coins in and dumped the contents back into the pack. "No! I just need the box."
"What for?" asked Mina, enduring this rummage, but at least not theft, of her possessions with no more than a frown.
"Spider house."
"Eew! I don't like spiders. Their webs stick in your mouth."
"She's a wolf spider. They don't spin webs."
"Oh." Mina blinked, considering this. She didn't look altogether convinced, but at least she didn't set up any stupid shrieking. She did keep her distance till Jin had snuck up on and captured his prey. But once the lady spider was safe behind the transparent barrier, Mina was at least willing to take a closer look, as Jin pointed out the manifold, if miniature, splendors of fur and eyes and mandibles, and the promising egg case.
"She really does have eight eyes!" said Mina, crossing her own as if trying to imagine the spider's view of her. Emboldened by her brother's example, she tapped on the plastic lid.
"Hey, don't. You'll scare her."
"Will she be able to breathe in there?" asked Mina.
Jin regarded the box in new doubt. It was certainly secure, but it did seem rather airtight. The wolf spider scratched futilely at the walls of her prison with fine claws. "For a while, anyway."
"What's her name?"
"I haven't named her yet."
"She needs a name."
Jin nodded full agreement. All right, sometimes Mina could be sensible. It was said there were thousands of wolf spider species back on old Earth, but the Kibou terraformers,