Beezy frowned. "You two don't seem very much alike."
"Well, we're cousins."
"Cousins?" Even that seemed improbable to Beezy.
"Distant cousins."
"Then there must be some other family he could stay with."
"Nope, we're all we got."
"Just you two distant cousins, living here in the same house. How'd that come to be?"
Lying was much more difficult than Berry had anticipated. Still, if he could get past this one small fib, his honor would remain untainted. "It's a long story," he said.
Beezy looked at him intently.
"Our family is real old. My side's from a place not too far from here. Called Lusnelk."
"I've never heard of any town called Lusnelk."
"That's because it's not there anymore. And it wasn't a town, it was a big castle, like, down at the mouth of the gorge."
"That's where I live in summer," said Beezy. "There's nothing there but forest."
"Well, it was right where the forest opens onto the plains, i mean."
"I've never seen any castle there."
"That's because like I said -- it's not there anymore."
"Not even ruins?"
"Nope, not one stone standing on another. Completely destroyed."
"Oh goodness! What happened?"
"Nobody knows for sure. Everyone disappeared."
"Gracious...but what about you? and your cousin?"
"Well, when my side of the family got wiped out, his side tried to take on a lot of the land my family owned, like this town here. But there wasn't enough of them to control it all, and all sorts of newcomers came and just took it over. My cousin's -- Gravy, I call him -- Gravy's ma and pa were the last of the line, and all they had was this one little house. It still hurts Gravy to talk about it, so you probably shouldn't ever bring it up."
"So it's his house?"
"Oh, wait -- no! It's my house, because all of this belonged to my side of the family, but -- see, and this explains why i'm around, too -- nobody even knew about me." Blueberry paused to gauge Beezy's credulity, but she wore a serious pout that may have spelled either annoyed disbelief or an honest attempt to assemble the unwieldy pieces of Blueberry's puzzle. So he dove in. "My grandpa was the youngest son of the Baren of Lusnelk, and he was in charge of the mill. He lived there, outside the castle walls, with my grandma and my dad, but one day, when my dad was just a little baby, a big snow-melt came swooping down the canyon and washed away the mill with my grandma and dad inside it. My grandpa was out at the time -- he was working in the fields. I mean, overseeing the workers. So he survived, but they found my grandma's body down the river."
"Oh, how awful!" Beezy's concern for the woman and her baby superseded her concern for making sense of it all. When Blueberry saw he had won her, his words began to chase each other out of his mouth, one after another.
"Yep. And they thought my dad was gone, too, except he wasn't. Somehow he rode the flood, safe and sound in his bassinet, straight out of a second floor window, down into the river and about twenty miles south to a little village called Eustace."
"I've been there," Beezy approved.
"That's where I was born and raised. My dad grew up there and married my ma. But see, my grandpa never believed my dad was dead, and he never stopped looking for him. And so one night, he shows up at my parent's house out of nowhere. He told my dad all about everything, and that Lusnelk was destroyed years back. They left together before sunrise the next morning, didn't say where they were going. Dad never came back." A real tear rose up and blurred Blue's eye.
"Awful, awful," Beezy muttered. She kissed him on the forehead. "How old were you?"
"Only a baby, but Ma told me about it all when I was old enough, and I set out to get my inheritance."
"This house?"
"It's all that's left. I searched for years and years, but I didn't even find out about my cousin here until just last week."
"Last week? And your cousin just gave it up, no questions asked?"
"That's a real good question." He felt like he was stitching up holes in a hot-air balloon midflight. The job was almost done, but it was a long way down. "You see. . ." he began. "You see this birthmark?" He flipped over onto his other side and pointed to an area on his back with a large, bean-shaped mole. "Looks like a little moon?"
Beezy frowned. "That doesn't look healthy."
"Well, all the men in my family have it. That was the proof."
"All the same, maybe you should get it cut off."
Berry shrugged and flopped back over. "So anyhow, that's why I can't kick old Gravy out. Besides, he was born here! What kind of guy would I be to kick a man out of the house he was born in?" He pinched at Beezy's rump, but she slapped his wrist.
"And you didn't find out anything about your family? I mean what happened."
"Nope. Nobody knows what happened. Except my grandpa, and he disappeared, too, with my dad." Everything was tying itself up nicely.
"What about your mom? Didn't she hear about it from your grandpa, too?"
"Well, she didn't hear much -- had to take care of me, since I was a baby back then. But she did overhear little bits. Something about some real old trouble with another family."
"Who?"
"I don't know who. Some other family, from far away. Out west. I think."
"So that's it? Now you just live here with your cousin?"
"Not much I can do. I've been wandering around for a long time; I'd like to enjoy myself for a while. Now that I've found my long-lost cousin and all. You know -- live life." He grabbed a handful of Beezy's thigh, but she shoved him away. She lay for a long time, just staring at the ceiling. Berry closed his eyes and marveled as he tried to recall exactly how such a massive yarn had unraveled. "Not a bad job at all," if he said so himself.
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