Cryoburn - Lois McMaster Bujold [52]
"You could call her Spinner. Except you said she doesn't spin. Wolfie?"
"Sounds like a boy's name," Jin objected. "It ought to be a lady's name, to fit her. Something from old Earth."
Mina scowled in thought a moment, then brightened. "Lady Murasaki! That's the oldest lady's name I know of."
Jin, about to pooh-pooh her idea in brotherly reflex, paused. He eyed his spider. The name did fit. "All right."
Mina grinned in triumph. "What does she eat?"
"Littler bugs. I should catch her some in the garden before we leave. I'm not sure how much longer it will take us to get, um. Home."
Growing more interested after all this, Mina said, "Can I help feed her?"
"Sure."
Mina stretched, and, perhaps reminded of food, dug in her pillaged backpack for another lunch bar. "Maybe we better split this. To make them last."
"Good idea," Jin admitted. He set the spider box aside and went out to rinse and fill their milk bottles with water from the garden spigot.
When he slipped back inside the shed, closing the door with a creak, Mina asked, "What time is it out there?"
"I'm not sure. Afternoon, anyway."
"Do you think school's out yet? Can we go on the streets again?"
"Pretty soon."
They divided the lunch bar and the water.
"Maybe you should put Lady Murasaki in one of our water bottles, instead," said Mina, draining hers and holding it up to the light falling through the shed's one grimy window. "We could poke breath-holes through it."
"I was going to rinse those out and fill them up with water to take with us. You know how you were yammering you were so hot and thirsty yesterday afternoon."
"My feet were so sweaty inside my shoes," Mina said. "They felt nasty." She looked up at him, still a bit puffy-eyed from their uncomfortable day's sleep. "How much longer is it going to take to get to your place?"
"Hard to say." Jin shrugged uneasily. "I've been gone way longer than I'd planned. I sure hope Miles-san is taking care of all my creatures."
"That's your galactic friend, right?"
During their winding journey, the past day and a half, Jin had slowly unburdened himself of what he suspected were far too many of his secrets to Mina, partly to shut up her incessant questions, mostly because, well, he hadn't had any other kids to talk to for so long.
"Yah."
Jin's own abysmal failure as a courier troubled his mind. Would Miles-san believe Jin hadn't stolen his money? How was he getting along with Gyre? You had to be gentle but firm with the bird. The chickens were easier, except for the part about climbing down and carrying them back up the ladder or the stairs when they fluttered over the parapet. With that cane, could Miles-san manage both an indignant chicken and the stairs?
"Does Miles-san have any children?" Mina asked.
Jin frowned. "He didn't say. He's pretty old-thirty-something, he said. But he's kind of funny-looking. I don't know if he could get a girl." Once the drug effects had worn off Miles-san had been a nice enough fellow, with that face where smiles seemed at home. Plus, he had seemed to understand Jin's creatures, which made him quite smart, for a grownup. Jin wasn't sure whether to wish him a short, understanding bride, or not.
After a long, thoughtful pause, Mina said, "Do you think he'd like some?"
"What?"
"Children. Like, if he's lonely."
At Jin's baffled stare, Mina forged on: "We read this book for school this year, about two orphans adopted by a man from Earth. He took them there and they saw everything about where our ancestors came from." She added enticingly, "They got new pets . . ."
Jin vaguely remembered that one from his own second school year, otherwise made burdensome by the infliction of beginning kanji. There had been a lot of sickly stuff about the girl getting a fancy kimono, but there had also been a chapter about going to the seaside which had featured