She shook her head. “It’s the wrong tree.”
Marik looked at her, one eyebrow tilting up. “It looks like the tree that I found in the database book.”
She nodded. “They do look alike, but it’s not the same tree. See the bark? See how the lines in it go in a sort of waving pattern? That pattern is the wrong pattern. It should look more like this.” She used her fingers, and traced along the bark to show them what she meant. She added, “Not only that, there should be a white powder here below the outer layer of the bark, but there isn’t any. If there’s none of that there, then you can’t use the bark for what you want.”
Marik asked, “How can you be sure?”
Jenny’s head lowered. Fear started up, and she had reminded herself that she was no longer on the planet of her birth. That here the knowledge that she held, the knowledge that she had grown up learning at her mother’s knee was not just valuable but needed.
Jenny said, “I don’t know if there’s a difference because we're no longer on a planet that I know, but I do know that without that inner layer, that white powdery stuff, this bark is maybe not useless, but not the bark that you’re looking for.”
Marik leaned back against the wall. His eyes glowed with interest, and she had to look away again. He always did funny things to her heart and emotions. That was wrong. No matter what, Ben was still the man that she loved and was engaged to.
Fear shot through her like a bolt of lightning. Had he died in the rebellion that Talon and Jessica had created? Was he down on Old Earth right now suffering and hurt, injured by weapon fire or even dead? Would she ever know?
Marik said, “Tell me, Jenny, have you seen any plants and the like that you thought might have medicinal purposes?”
She didn’t dare meet his eyes. “I haven’t looked. I don’t know why I didn’t think to.” She had not thought to because she had not considered that she would be sent to this particular building for the task ahead of her.
She had no idea why she had not considered it anyway though.
Part of her knew that it was an ingrained thing, that she had been taught to hide her knowledge for so long, that the idea of admitting it or showing it had never entered her mind.
Marik said, “Well, we have no patients today, so I think we should go look. The rest of you stay here in case a patient comes. If it is a serious emergency, then shout as loud as you can before you ring the bell in the center of town. I don’t think we will go too far but if you can’t shout us back, then ring the bell.”
The others nodded their agreement. Jenny’s heart sank. The last thing on earth she wanted to do was go wandering around with Marik!
Marik began walking, and she followed him. The sun struck her again, warm and pleasant. She paused for a moment, letting it soak into her skin down into the bones below. Marik paused, and she glanced over at him a trifle guilty.
She began walking, and he fell into step beside her. He said, “You seem to enjoy the sun.”
Her fingers twisted together. She had always been shy and quiet. She was very timid as well. Speaking up like she had inside the med-bay building was not something that she was used to doing, and she wasn’t used to talking a lot either.
“I’ve never really seen it before. I’d never really seen the sky until we were on the ship and space is a lot different.”
She glanced over at him expecting to see disbelief there. Instead, there was a kindness written across his face that startled her. Below that kindness was something else. Understanding. He said, “I remember when I first came out of the mines. I hadn’t seen sunlight in so very long. Not that you could look at the sun there; the entire surface was so scorching that it would burn you alive if you try to cross it. We were on the ship for quite some time after that and the first time that we set down on the planet that had a sun, I stayed out underneath its rays for so long that I burned my skin.”
She had known that he had been in the mines of course, but she had not realized that he had been trapped there and had not been out to see the sun. She said, “I’m sorry.”
She was. She knew exactly what that felt like, to be kept away from the things that all beings craved. Light and fresh air and the smell and scent of things growing in a natural fashion were those things.
Her heart hurt for him a little bit as she spoke the words, and her heart hurt even more when he said to her, “I’m sorry that you didn’t get to see it before now.”
Confused and not sure what to say to him, especially given how often she had had those little daydreams about him, she pointed to the hills up ahead. “Maybe we should try up there.”
Marik said, “That sounds like a good idea.”
Jenny struggled for words. She had never felt the things that she felt whenever she was around Marik, and those things often left her tongue- tied and confused. He made her heart race and her pulse as well. He made funny little flushes of heat start in her belly and go writhing up along her chest as well. It was nothing that she had ever known, and she wasn’t sure if perhaps she had some sort of allergy to him or if it was those daydreams that she had about him kissing her that caused it.
Either way, being that close to him was uncomfortable.
They walked in silence, but it wasn’t an awkward silence. Marik stopped occasionally to survey a plant or tree but he always walked on, and she did as well. At the top of the hills, they came to a long flat meadow ringed by a thick growth of various trees. There were plenty of creatures about, little insects that danced through the grass, winged creatures that landed on the branches of the trees and then flew away again, and animals that gathered away from them when they caught sight of the two beings entering the meadow.
Marik said, “That is the tree that we took the bark from.”
She followed the direction of his pointing finger. Her mind went back to the book, and she squinted at the tree. “I think… I think you can boil that bark and use it for coughs but not for pain relief.”
She spotted a slender tree not far away from that one and said, “Can we go look at that one, please? I believe that has the stuff that I am looking for.”
