perhaps the most forceful.
He nodded, still frowning, acknowledging my point.
“It’s for the greater good,” he grumbled.
I snorted. “The greater good? Wouldn’t that be shooting me?”
“Wanda, that’s shortsighted,” he said, arguing with me as if my answer had been a serious attempt at
persuasion. “What we have here is a very unusual opportunity for learning. It would be wasteful to
squander that.”
“I really don’t think anyone wants to learn from me. I don’t mind talking to you or Jamie —”
“Doesn’t matter what they want,” Jeb insisted. “It’s what’s good for them. Like chocolate versus
broccoli. Ought to know more about the universe—not to mention the new tenants of our planet.”
“How does it help them, Jeb? Do you think I know something that could destroy the souls? Turn the
tide? Jeb, it’s over.”
“It’s not over while we’re still here,” he told me, grinning so I knew he was teasing me again. “I don’t
expect you to turn traitor and give us some super-weapon. I just think we should know more about the
world we live in.”
I flinched at the wordtraitor. “I couldn’t give you a weapon if I wanted to, Jeb. We don’t have some
great weakness, an Achilles’ heel. No archenemies out there in space who could come to your aid, no
viruses that will wipe us out and leave you standing. Sorry.”
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,
though. I told you it gets boring in here. People might want your stories more than you think.”
I knew Jeb would not leave it alone. Was Jeb capable of conceding defeat? I doubted it.
At mealtimes I usually sat with Jeb and Jamie, if he was not in school or busy elsewhere. Ian always sat
near, though not really with us. I could not fully accept the idea of his self-appointed role as my
bodyguard. It seemed too good to be true and thus, by human philosophy, clearly false.
A few days after I’d refused Jeb’s request to teach the humans “for their own good,” Doc came to sit by
me during the evening meal.
Sharon remained where she was, in the corner farthest from my usual place. She was alone today,
without her mother. She didn’t turn to watch Doc walking toward me. Her vivid hair was wound into a
high bun, so I could see that her neck was stiff, and her shoulders were hunched, tense and unhappy. It
made me want to leave at once, before Doc could say whatever he meant to say to me, so that I could
not be considered in collusion with him.
But Jamie was with me, and he took my hand when he saw the familiar panicked look come into my
eyes. He was developing an uncanny ability to sense when I was turning skittish. I sighed and stayed
where I was. It should probably have bothered me more that I was such a slave to this child’s wishes.
“How are things?” Doc asked in a casual voice, sliding onto the counter next to me.
Ian, a few feet down from us, turned his body so it looked like he was part of the group.
I shrugged.
“We boiled soup today,” Jamie announced. “My eyes are still stinging.”
Doc held up a pair of bright red hands. “Soap.”
Jamie laughed. “You win.”
Doc gave a mocking bow from the waist, then turned to me. “Wanda, I had a question for you.…” He
let the words trail off.
I raised my eyebrows.
“Well, I was wondering.… Of all the different planets you’re familiar with, which species is physically the
closest to humankind?”
I blinked. “Why?”
“Just good old-fashioned biological curiosity. I guess I’ve been thinking about your Healers.… Where
do they get the knowledge to cure, rather than just treat symptoms, as you said?” Doc was speaking
louder than necessary, his mild voice carrying farther than usual. Several people looked up—Trudy and
Geoffrey, Lily, Walter…
I wrapped my arms tightly around myself, trying to take up less space. “Those are two different
Doc smiled and gestured with one hand for me to proceed.
Jamie squeezed my hand.
I sighed. “The Bears on the Mists Planet, probably.”
“With the claw beasts?” Jamie whispered.
I nodded.
“How are they similar?” Doc prodded.
I rolled my eyes, feeling Jeb’s direction in this, but continued. “They’re close to mammals in many ways.
Fur, warm-blooded. Their blood isn’t exactly the same as yours, but it does essentially the same job.
They have similar emotions, the same need for societal interaction and creative outlets —”
“Creative?” Doc leaned forward, fascinated—or feigning fascination. “How so?”
I looked at Jamie. “You know. Why don’t you tell Doc?”
“I might get it wrong.”
“You won’t.”
He looked at Doc, who nodded.
“Well, see, they have these awesome hands.” Jamie was enthusiastic almost immediately. “Sort of
double-jointed—they can curl both ways.” He flexed his own fingers, as if trying to bend them
backward. “One side is soft, like my palm, but the other side is like razors! They cut the ice—ice
sculpting. They make cities that are all crystal castles that never melt! It’s beautiful, isn’t it, Wanda?” He
turned to me for backup.
I nodded. “They see a different range of colors—the ice is full of rainbows. Their cities are a point of
pride for them. They’re always trying to make them more beautiful. I knew of one Bear who we called…
well, something like Glitter Weaver, but it sounds better in that language, because of the way the ice
seemed to know what he wanted and shaped itself into his dreams. I met him once and saw his creations.
That’s one of my most beautiful memories.”
“They dream?” Ian asked quietly.
I smiled wryly. “Not as vividly as humans.”
“How do your Healers get their knowledge about the physiology of a new species? They came to this
planet prepared. I watched it start—watched the terminal patients walk out of the hospital whole.…” A
frown etched a V-shaped crease into Doc’s narrow forehead. He hated the invaders, like everyone, but
unlike the others, he also envied them.
I didn’t want to answer. Everyone was listening to us by this point, and this was no pretty fairytale about
ice-sculpting Bears. This was the story of their defeat.
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.
“They… they take samples,” I muttered.
Ian grinned in understanding. “Alien abductions.”
I ignored him.
Doc pursed his lips. “Makes sense.”
The silence in the room reminded me of my first time here.
“Where did your kind begin?” Doc asked. “Do you remember? I mean, as a species, do you know how
you evolved?”
“The Origin,” I answered, nodding. “We still live there. It’s where I was… born.”
“That’s kind of special,” Jamie added. “It’s rare to meet someone from the Origin, isn’t it? Most souls
try to stay there, right, Wanda?” He didn’t wait for my response. I was beginning to regret answering his
questions so thoroughly each night. “So when someone moves on, it makes them almost… like a
celebrity? Or like a member of a royal family.”
I could feel my cheeks getting warm.
“It’s a cool place,” Jamie went on. “Lots of clouds, with a bunch of different-colored layers. It’s the only
planet where the souls can live outside of a host for very long. The hosts on the Origin planet are really
pretty, too, with sort of wings and lots of tentacles and big silver eyes.”
Doc was leaning forward with his face in his hands. “Do they remember how the host-parasite
relationship was formed? How did the colonization begin?”
Jamie looked at me, shrugging.
“We were always that way,” I answered slowly, still unwilling. “As far back as we were intelligent
enough to know ourselves, at least. We were discovered by another species—the Vultures, we call them
here, though more for their personalities than for their looks. They were… not kind. Then we discovered
that we could bond with them just as we had with our original hosts. Once we controlled them, we made
use of their technology. We took their planet first, and then followed them to the Dragon Planet and the
Summer World—lovely places where the Vultures had also not been kind. We started colonizing; our
hosts reproduced so much slower than we did, and their life spans were short. We began exploring
farther into the universe.…”
I trailed off, conscious of the many eyes on my face. Only Sharon continued to look away.
“You speak of it almost as if you were there,” Ian noted quietly. “How long ago did this happen?”
“After dinosaurs lived here but before you did. I was not there, but I remember some of what my
mother’s mother’s mother remembered of it.”
“How old areyou? ” Ian asked, leaning toward me, his brilliant blue eyes penetrating.
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”
“An estimate?” he pressed.
“Thousands of years, maybe.” I shrugged. “I lose track of the years spent in hibernation.”
Ian leaned back, stunned.
“Wow, that’s old,” Jamie breathed.
“But in a very real sense, I’m younger than you,” I murmured to him. “Not even a year old. I feel like a
child all the time.”
Jamie’s lips pulled up slightly at the corners. He liked the idea of being more mature than I was.
“What’s the aging process for your kind?” Doc asked. “The natural life span?”
“We don’t have one,” I told him. “As long as we have a healthy host, we can live forever.”
A low murmur—angry? frightened? disgusted? I couldn’t tell—swirled around the edges of the cave. I
saw that my answer had been unwise; I understood what these words would mean to them.
“Beautiful.” The low, furious word came from Sharon’s direction, but she hadn’t turned.
Jamie squeezed my hand, seeing again in my eyes the desire to bolt. This time I gently pulled my hand
free.
“I’m not hungry anymore,” I whispered, though my bread sat barely touched on the counter beside me. I
hopped down and, hugging the wall, made my escape.
Jamie followed right behind me. He caught up to me in the big garden plaza and handed me the remains
of my bread.
“It was real interesting, honest,” he told me. “I don’t think anyone’s too upset.”
“Jeb put Doc up to this, didn’t he?”
“You tell good stories. Once everyone knows that, they’ll want to hear them. Just like me and Jeb.”
“What if I don’twant to tell them?”
Jamie frowned. “Well, I guess then… you shouldn’t. But it seems like you don’t mind telling me stories.”
“That’s different. You like me.” I could have said,You don’t want to kill me, but the implications would
have upset him.
“Once people get to know you, they’ll all like you. Ian and Doc do.”
“Ian and Doc do not like me, Jamie. They’re just morbidly curious.”
“Ugh,” I groaned. We were to our room by now. I shoved the screen aside and threw myself onto the
mattress. Jamie sat down less forcefully beside me and looped his arms around his knees.
“Don’t be mad,” he pleaded. “Jeb means well.”
I groaned again.
“It won’t be so bad.”
“Doc’s going to do this every time I go in the kitchen, isn’t he?”
Jamie nodded sheepishly. “Or Ian. Or Jeb.”
“Or you.”
“We all want to know.”
I sighed and rolled onto my stomach. “Does Jeb have to get his way every single time?”
Jamie thought for a moment, then nodded. “Pretty much, yeah.”
I took a big bite of bread. When I was done chewing, I said, “I think I’ll eat in here from now on.”
“Ian’s going to ask you questions tomorrow when you’re weeding the spinach. Jeb’s not making
him—he wants to.”
“Well, that’s wonderful.”
“You’re pretty good with sarcasm. I thought the parasites—I mean the souls—didn’t like negative
humor. Just the happy stuff.”
“They’d learn pretty quick in here, kid.”
Jamie laughed and then took my hand. “You don’t hate it here, do you? You’re not miserable, are you?”
His big chocolate-colored eyes were troubled.
I pressed his hand to my face. “I’m fine,” I told him, and at that moment, it was entirely the truth.
CHAPTER 26
Returned
Without ever actually agreeing to do it, I became the teacher Jeb wanted.
My “class” was informal. I answered questions every night after dinner. I found that as long as I was
willing to do this, Ian and Doc and Jeb would leave me alone during the day so that I could concentrate
on my chores. We always convened in the kitchen; I liked to help with the baking while I spoke. It gave
me an excuse to pause before answering a difficult question, and somewhere to look when I didn’t want
I didn’t want to admit that Jamie was right. Obviously, people didn’tlike me. They couldn’t; I wasn’t
one of them. Jamie liked me, but that was just some strange chemical reaction that was far from rational.
Jeb liked me, but Jeb was crazy. The rest of them didn’t have either excuse.
No, they didn’t like me. But things changed when I started talking.
The first time I noticed it was the morning after I answered Doc’s questions at dinner; I was in the black
bathing room, washing clothes with Trudy, Lily, and Jamie.
“Could you hand me the soap, please, Wanda?” Trudy asked from my left.
An electric current ran through my body at the sound of my name spoken by a female voice. Numbly, I
passed her the soap and then rinsed the sting off my hand.
“Thank you,” she added.
“You’re welcome,” I murmured. My voice cracked on the last syllable.
I passed Lily in the hall a day later on my way to find Jamie before dinner.
“Wanda,” she said, nodding.
“Lily,” I answered, my throat dry.
Soon it wasn’t just Doc and Ian who asked questions at night. It surprised me who the most vocal were:
exhausted Walter, his face a worrisome shade of gray, was endlessly interested in the Bats of the Singing
World. Heath, usually silent, letting Trudy and Geoffrey talk for him, was outspoken during these
evenings. He had some fascination with Fire World, and though it was one of my least favorite stories to
tell, he peppered me with questions until he’d heard every detail I knew. Lily was concerned with the
mechanics of things—she wanted to know about the ships that carried us from planet to planet, their
pilots, their fuel. It was to Lily that I explained the cryotanks—something they had all seen but few
understood the purpose of. Shy Wes, usually sitting close to Lily, asked not about other planets but
about this one. How did it work? No money, no recompense for work—why did our souls’ society not
fall apart? I tried to explain that it was not so different from life in the caves. Did we not all work without
