The Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell Page B

some new piece of ordnance that I was encountering for the first time.
    But I defy you-or would have defied anyone-to read that hand. As soon as I saw her palm, I almost jumped as if she'd surprised me with another “boo.” Her hand was a welter of lines, as though it had been shattered and then reassembled, piece by piece. I looked at my own hands in vain for some reference point. I looked at her other hand, compared them-but they weren't alike, at least in no way that I could tell.
    Stranger still, and what I remember even more clearly, is how soft her hands were.
    “Here's a little advice,” Lily said. “If you decide to go into this profession after the war-and I don't think you should, because you're not doing so hot, so far-but if you do, it helps if you talk to the customer.”
    “Sorry,” I said.
    “And when you talk, don't use that word,” Lily said. “It scares them. Also:
sick, death, troubling, mother,
and
price”
    I exhaled quickly and squinted, as if focusing would help me read her palms better. “Well, there goes my whole speech.”
    She smiled, took her hands away. “That's not a surprise,” she said. “But you making a funny-that's a surprise. A nice one.”
    But I wasn't listening to her. I was just watching those hands disappear out of mine; the loss of that touch was almost painful. “Please” was all I could say, and something about my pathetic appearance- combined with the fact that I was harmless, just a boy to her, made her put her hands back in mine.
    “Okay,” she said. “But be quick. Remember, I'm here to read
your
palm. Which reminds me: How are you going to pay?”
    I smiled again. “Let's take a look,” I said, and studied her palm.
    I decided all you really had to do was tell a story. And all I wanted was an excuse to hold her hands, so I just took any line I saw and started in: She was born in… Tokyo. An only child. Her parents were-but she stopped me, and pointed out that Tokyo was far away. How did she end up in Alaska, and speaking English? I rubbed her palm with a thumb, pretended to think on this for a moment while I savored the touch, and then settled on a ship, a great, ridiculous ship that was full of language instructors, chalkboards.
    “God, that sounds boring,” she said. I think now she was referring to the imaginary classroom as it bobbed across the Pacific, but I thought then that she was criticizing my imagination. Some palm reader I'd make. So I revised things; I found another line and started again. Born in Japan, on top of a mountain, a mother made of snow and a father made of fire. I didn't know where all this was coming from, but she'd fallen quiet and was listening. She spoke every language, I said, the words came to her in raindrops. Raindrops; a cloud; she'd traveled across the ocean in a giant cloud, floating this way and that, until a storm had gathered, and she'd dropped to earth in a flaming downpour-
    Her hands flew away from me with a start, and just for an instant, I saw her wear another face, one she hadn't shown me before. But it passed, and then she was holding my hands. Holding them, but looking at my eyes.
    “You're a very, very bad palm reader,” she said. “And a creepy storyteller. I, on the other hand-I'm very good at both. You want to hear your story?”
     
    I THINK MINE is the sort of life that almost anyone could read from a hand, or better yet, my eyes. They say those eyes never leave you, eyes that blinked awake each morning wondering if this was the day your parents would come-not some foster parents they'd found for you, but your real parents, a mom and dad, like everyone had, even Jesus. So although I find it patronizing, I long ago decided it was also true: an orphan never loses that look, those eyes.
    I wasn't too surprised, then, when Lily got that part right: orphan. And I admire her for not taking the easy route and pretending she knew who my parents were, and describing these imaginary beings to me in exquisite,