Fremd (Book Three of the Xenolith Series)

Okay, this is just a placeholder. I'm not ready to start uploading chapters regularly but putting Chapter 1 here psychologically commits me to get this done.

Prior readers won't recognize any characters in this chapter. Celia is new, and key to the action in one of the two intertwining stories. But no worries, Chapter 2 features Frank and Liz. Chapter 3 features Canu.

Expect this story to get rolling once Root is completed (By March, I hope?)

 Émigré

 Chapter 1: The Reception

 Spilled Merlot dribbled down Celia’s hand as she stared into the shadows beneath the footbridge. The image of a living sin wave shimmering across the ripples of the koi pond, lingered in her retinas like a ghost.

The water snake had been just a little thing, no threat to the huge koi flickering like cold flames beneath the duckweed. But the little newts buoyant amongst the lily pads or that little spotted frog perched on a stone could be in for some trouble.

She wondered if Massachusetts had any venomous reptiles. In Hillsborough, the little town just outside of Durham where she had grown up copperheads and cottonmouths abounded.

Celia sighed and made her way back towards the house. She knew far too little about snakes—a deficiency she would need to correct if she was going to be working on her thesis in the Congo. Her French was horrid as well, but that would be remedied by two-semesters of intensive language training.

Twilight gathered beneath the ginkgos. Prof. Silverstein’s reception was on its last legs. He was out in front under the Japanese maple, bidding each straggler goodbye. Celia hung around only because he had insisted on driving her back to Cambridge.

This event had been Prof. Silverstein’s annual welcome party, assembling the professors, staff and students of the anthropology department in his patio garden for a meal of grilled prawn, pork ribs and vegetable kabobs.

The menu had surprised her, somewhat. Celia had assumed that he was Jewish. Maybe he was and just didn’t keep kosher.

She had also assumed that he was married. He wore a wedding band, but no one had ever mentioned a wife, and there was no sign of this hypothetical woman at the house in Lexington. Maybe they were separated?

Michael advised the largest gaggle of students in the department—eight in all including Celia—though only four attended the reception. The rest were scattered around the globe from Sierra Leone to Myanmar. She wondered how many grants he needed to support so many.

It still felt surreal that Harvard had accepted her. Her GRE scores had been middling at best, her GPA at Duke only a few points over 3.0. But she had been proud of her essay, based on her undergraduate travels to some pretty wild places, including the Omo region of southern Ethiopia and the far reaches of Loreto Province in the Peruvian Amazon.

Though, it might have been that interview that clinched it. Prof. Silverstein seemed quite taken with her. He had been so wide-eyed and animated during their meeting, chatting her up on all sorts of topics far beyond his research. Odd, that a man of his age and station would admit to liking dubstep. At the time, she had wondered if was amped up on drugs, but now she knew better. He was always this energetic.

And his excitement was contagious. At times if felt almost as if he were the interviewee, applying to be Celia’s adviser. She hadn’t known what to make of this turning of tables. Maybe it was just hard to find dedicated students these days.

Celia glanced up the flagstone path to the front yard. The other students were laughing and clambering into a little Honda as Prof. Silverstein bantered loudly, making liberal use of his hands.

It struck her as odd that none of her fellow students had offered a ride. As a rule, they had been wary of her ever since she arrived on campus. Maybe the cold shoulder was a Boston tradition. Perhaps there was some rite of initiation she needed to pass through to prove herself worthy of their company.

Such a thing would never have happened in Durham, where people went out of their way to make newcomers feel comfortable. Part of the price of coming to Harvard, she supposed.

And well worth it, given the fact that she was studying under none other than Michael Silverstein, one of the leading figures in social anthropology, a global authority in the cultures of displaced peoples, the field that excited her most.