The Nameless Luna novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: The Napkin

After Elden mocks Warrick's dead father, she writes her own Luna contract on a napkin and signs it with her pilot number, and the roll keeper asks for her name.

Warrick didn't answer him.

He finished tying the Otter's tail line, slow and tidy, and walked up the ramp.

I followed with my flight bag.

Annalise saw me and took a step back into Elden's side.

"Where's the Beaver?" she said. "Where's my gown?"

"Ask your pilot."

"You're my pilot."

"Not since this morning."

Elden laughed.

It was a nice laugh. He'd been told so his whole life.

"The Tennants' spare quit," he said. "Did anybody notice?"

He looked me up and down, the wet jacket, the headset around my neck.

"You know, you were almost mine. I'd have had to call you something."

"You never called me anything," I said. "You met me four times."

"Four times too many."

Annalise laughed a beat late, after she checked his face.

Elden turned back to Warrick.

"Tomorrow night the roll keeper reads Coldfoot into the trust. Bring a pen. I'll need your signature on the land."

"I'll be there," Warrick said.

"Alone. Like your father."

Warrick's jaw moved once.

"My father flew that pass two hundred times."

"And then he didn't." Elden smiled wider. "Nerves, Holloran. Mountains stand still. Pilots are the ones who move."

He laughed again, and this time he waited for Annalise to laugh with him.

She did.

Warrick's hands came out of his pockets.

They were shaking.

He put them back in his pockets.

"Careful," Elden said softly. "I know your roll name. Your father's too."

He tipped the umbrella so the rain ran off it onto Warrick's boots.

Then he steered Annalise up the street toward the hotel, her white coat bright in the dark.

Warrick stood on the dock and didn't move.

I thought about the gate that morning.

My mother's face. "Oh. You."

Six years of carrying wine and gowns and gifts to rooms I wasn't welcome in.

I looked at the lit window at the top of the dock.

The café there stayed open late for the fishing boats.

"Come on," I said.

"Where?"

"Inside. I'm cold and I want to write something down."

The café smelled of coffee and diesel.

I took the booth in the back and pulled a paper napkin out of the steel holder.

I held my hand out to the waitress without looking up.

She put a pen in it.

Warrick sat down across from me.

"One year," I said, and wrote it.

"One year."

"Luna of Coldfoot. In the hall, on paper, wherever you need one."

I wrote that too.

"Separate rooms."

"Obviously."

"I can walk any time I want. No notice, no reason."

He nodded.

"Pay. Eight thousand a month, because I'm flying too."

"That's fair."

"It's not fair, it's cheap. I'm a very good pilot."

"I watched you land in Yakutat. It's cheap."

I wrote it down.

"My own hangar."

"We have one hangar."

"Then I want half of it, and a lock."

He almost smiled.

"Your pilot said you have an old Super Cub sitting at Coldfoot."

His face changed.

"My father's."

"Is anyone flying it?"

"No."

"At the end of the year it's mine. Outright. Signed over."

He was quiet a long moment.

Then he took the pen out of my fingers and wrote under my list in big square letters.

Agreed. Warrick Holloran, Alpha of Coldfoot.

He turned the napkin around and slid it back with the pen on top.

I looked at the space under his name.

There was a name printed on my pilot certificate.

It belonged to a woman in a white coat now.

I took the certificate out of my wallet anyway, and I didn't look at the top line.

I copied the number at the bottom onto the napkin, one digit at a time.

Then I signed beside it, a loop and a line that didn't spell anything.

He read it upside down.

"That's you?"

"That's the only part of it that's mine."

He nodded like that settled it.

He folded the napkin twice and held it out.

"You keep it. You're the one who can walk."

I put it inside my jacket, against my sweater.

The waitress brought two coffees we hadn't ordered.

"On the house," she said. "You look like you just got married."

Warrick choked on his.

I paid for them anyway.

Saturday, I slept until ten in a hotel room with a lock that was mine.

Warrick knocked once at noon and left a bag at my door.

Inside was a navy wool dress in about my size, and a note in the same square letters.

You don't have to wear it. You can wear the jacket. I'd wear the jacket.

I wore the jacket.

The Gathering hall sat on the hill above the harbor, old stone with a copper roof gone green.

Every pack in Alaska was inside.

I could smell them from the street, hundreds of wolves in good clothes.

My parents were in there somewhere.

The roll keeper stood at the doors with the moon roll open on a wooden stand in front of her.

She was very old and very small.

Warrick walked up beside me and offered his arm.

I took it.

Through the doors I could see the whole hall turn toward us.

Annalise in a silver gown somebody else had flown down. Elden at the High table. My father, standing, with his drink halfway to his mouth.

The roll keeper ran one finger down the page to Coldfoot.

There was an empty line beside Warrick's name.

She dipped her pen.

"The new Luna's name," she said, "for the roll."

The room went silent.

Four hundred people waited to hear what I was called.

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