“Hafiz and Yasmin Forever Entwined,” was inscribed on the inside of the band.
“A weeing ring?” Karina asked.
Hafiz groaned again. “Yes, beloved. I can explain, my heart.”
Karina turned back to the place where the old woman and her grandson had been. The chair was empty, the table vacant. She looked at Hafiz, then, truly baffled.
“But-how did you-where did she go?” Karina asked Hafz and the captain.
“Where did who go, madam? ” the captain asked. “The golden-aged woman who was just here? She and her grandson?”
“I saw no one like that, Madame Harakamian,” the captain said.
His sister replied, “Machinist Johansson was your last reading, Madame. There’s been no one here until Mr. Harakamian arrived.”
Karina looked from one of them to the other. “You’re wrong. There was a young boy and a very old woman just here. She said she was one hundred and three years old.”
The sister exchanged looks with a couple of the other people who had already had readings. “It couldn’t be.”
“Couldn’t be who?” Karina demanded. “Who was she? How did she know about the ring? Where did she go?”
It didn’t occur to her that, as the psychic reader in the room, perhaps she should not have had to ask.
The captain’s sister looked abashed. “1I can’t say for sure, Madame, but the only person ever did live here by that description was old Alison Ward as used to run the herb farm.”
“Well, yes, Naima, but her grandson died in that avalanche years and years before old Alison passed on.”
“Passed on?” Karina asked. “I’m sorry, but she was right here, sitting in this chair.”
“Oh, old Alison will do that from time to time if she reckons there’s something you need to know. Don’t let it upset you none, ma’am,” a rawboned farmer said gently. “It’s just her way.”
While the locals were all saying things like “you can’t keep a good woman down,” and “Alison always did have to get her two cents’ worth in,” they all nevertheless continued steadfastly to deny having seen the crone or her grandson. Karina, who found she was far more disturbed than she expected to be at having once more encountered what was apparently a quite genuine apparition, turned to Hafiz.
“But you saw her, didn’t you, darling?”
Hafiz shook his head slowly, and pointed to the ring. “I do, however, behold that band, the very one I gave to my first wife, who up until recently I fondly believed to be dead. Tell me, Karina, where did you get it, and when, and why did you not mention it to me?”
There ensued a heated discussion-their first argument! as to why neither of them had told the other about Yasmin. Fortunately, Hafiz was not so distraught by his current wife’s omission to mention encountering his first wife that he neglected to order the ship searched from stem to stern.
Yasmin, hardly the sort to trouble herself to escape through any possible handy ventilation systems, emerged, roughly escorted by three crew members and four or five enthusiastic locals. She smoothed her skirts against her thighs and glared at them defiantly.
“Get your hands off my husband, you fat bitch,” she said to Karina.
Hafiz thundered, “All bear witness! Yasmin, I divorce you,
I divorce you, I divorce you! There! Now, what were you doing aboard the Shahrazal and where did you get that powder you blew into my face?”
“Yeah, honey, what’s the matter?” Karina asked in a voice she hadn’t used since middle school. “Didn’t you have the price of a flitter ticket? Is that why you stowed away?”
“I regret only that we did not discover your presence aboard before we landed,” Hafiz said. “The customary punishment for stowaways is spacing. I would have greatly enjoyed pushing you through the lock with my own two hands.”
“Bully!” Yasmin said. “You’ll get yours when my friends catch up with you.”
“Where did you get the powdered horn you blew in my face, daughter of evil but idiotic ifrits?”
“That’s for me to know and you to find out,” Yasmin said.
Hafiz turned politely to the planet’s administrator and asked, “Have you a very dull axe, like the one you use to butcher wood for your fires, perhaps?”