Diamonds in the Sky by Ed. Mike Brotherton Page B

goddesses from ancient religions, referenced with a single name. Except my poor teddy didn’t have eight arms like Kali the destroyer, she only had seven.

    “What’s the matter?” Mom stroked my head.

    I pulled the towel back to show her the place on Kali’s side where her eighth leg should have been. It was one of her hind limbs, designed for weaving. Mom didn’t say anything. She kissed me on the forehead and went inside.

    I leaned against the wall of the nesting house and rocked my baby teddy. They really do look like teddy bears, you know. Especially when they are young and about the right size. The illusion vanishes when they open their mouths, of course, and the three lobes of flesh part, right along the lines of the threads of a stuffed bear’s mouth. But even that was a source of utter fascination to me. Her long coiled tongue looked like a pink seashell or party favor and it quested out of her mouth for the fruit paste as if it were an extra arm. If only she had come with a spare.

    * * *

    Mom and Dad came out later and crowded into the nesting house with us. I had spent the intervening time memorizing the features of my teddy. Kali was asleep in my arms, and her whole body pulsed with her breath. I was imagining it, of course, but it seemed as if she were already bigger than when she had come out of the egg. Teddies grow at a monstrous rate, nearly reaching their full size in their first year. I wouldn’t try to ride her until she was two, of course, but she’d be nearly large enough for me to by next Top Day.

    Dad cleared his throat. “Jaiden, we need to talk to you about the teddy.”

    Without even looking at him, I knew something bad was coming, the way his voice was careful and neutral.

    “I earned her.” At the time, the only thing I could figure was they were going to complain again about having the teddy at all. “I earned money to buy her egg and I’ll earn money to pay for her keep.”

    Dad tried again. “Your mother said the teddy is deformed.”

    I didn’t say anything to that. Sure she was missing a leg, but one look at her perfect face would tell you that deformed was the wrong word to use.

    Into my silence, Mom said, “We spoke to the man who sold the egg to you. He said he’d replace the egg.”

    Now two thoughts went through my head at the same time. One was that they couldn’t have spoken to him, because he was a neo-Luddite and didn’t give out his number. The second and more pressing thing was that Mom had said, “replace.”

    “She’s mine.” I clutched her tighter. I’d fallen in love, you see? It didn’t matter one whit that she was missing a leg. She had seven more and wasn’t she the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen? If you look at a picture of her face, I’d defy you to find a teddy bear spider with a more perfect set of features.

    Mom and Dad looked at each other like they were trying to double their strength. “She needs to be put down.”

    I don’t remember which of them said that. It might as well have been both of them.

    “No!”

    Dad held out his hands. “I’ll take care of it honey. She won’t feel a thing. The man will send you another.”

    “No. Kali is mine and I love her.” Now you might argue about what a thirteen-year-old could know about love or whether it was possible to learn to love something in the span of time I’d held Kali, but what you can’t argue about is how deeply I felt it. I’d loved Kali since before I saw her, since the first moment I held that egg in my hands. She represented all of my hopes and efforts for the last year, and she might be flawed, but no other egg would be as thoroughly mine.

    Mom opened her mouth to try again but I cut her off. “I earned her and I can choose what to do with her, can’t I?”

    “But she’ll never weave and won’t be able to carry you up the cliffs. What good is she?” Dad gestured at the leftover fruit paste. “She’s going to be a burden. An expensive