The only thing he absolutely refused to eat was vegetables.
Sometimes he was asleep when I got there. Happy to be awakened. Even happier to be fed. But other times, I found him wide awake and desperate. He flung himself at me, climbed up my arm, draped himself around my neck. Seemed like he wanted to crawl right inside my skin.
I worried about the Tylenol. I wanted to keep him dopey enough that he wouldn’t panic at being alone, but not so completely out of it that he’d miss meals or get sick. So I kept with the quarter tab, twice a day. It wasn’t perfect. But I didn’t know what else to do.
Anyway, I didn’t find any burn marks in the pet carrier. So far, so good. Maybe Sasha’s theory was right.
Except for pet call, there was nothing I had to do—just hang out and keep a low profile. But it wasn’t good for me to have too much time to think. Whenever I sat down for too long, a wave of loneliness swept over me and settled around my heart. A couple of times I forgot myself and reached to ken with Stella.
Nobody there.
If you’ve never had a bird to ken with, you can’t know how lonely that feels. You just can’t.
I tried listening for the critter in the kenning way, tried to feel him down through all the decks. Mostly, I didn’t get anything. But sometimes I felt a faint, buzzy hum that told me he was still alive. Alive and antsy. Lonely. Scared.
It pulled at me. Pulled hard.
So I kept busy. I explored every corner of the ferry—the inside parts and the outside parts, the upper and middle decks. I kept track of where people were, tried not to stick out in any way. I never, ever, ate in the restaurant. I bought food from the snack bar or the vending machines and ate it outside, on deck, where I could duck out at a moment’s notice. I avoided the PHs, especially the one who’d asked about pets. I stayed away from the security guard, who fortunately gave off warning clinks from the assorted paraphernalia hanging off his belt: flashlight, phone, handcuffs, keys, gun.
But Anderson made a habit of appearing out of nowhere and scaring the spam out of me: “Hey, lizard girl!” Very phaging funny. Holding up his phone and taking pictures when I jumped. He pestered me to let him come along with me on pet call. I seriously wanted to strangle the kid. Alternatively, I’d liked to have grabbed that phone of his and thrown it overboard.
Once, Anderson actually managed to sneak down with us at pet call. When I caught him taking pictures, I ratted him out, and the security guard took him upstairs. After that, I worried that Anderson might rat me out—tell that I’d sneaked on the bus.
Good thing I hadn’t told him my name.
The first night, I rented a blanket and a pillow, then took them outside, away from everybody else, and curled up on a deck chair. The engine vibrations rumbled up through the deck, into my bones. I heard the swish of water gliding past; I felt the rocking of the waves. I lay there, looking up at the stars. Which were monster bright. Not just pinpricks, like in Eugene, but spreading blots, like when you touch a marker pen to a damp paper towel.
The cold woke me in the middle of the night. I moved my stuff inside and made a nest for myself on the heated sleeping deck, as far as possible from the bus people. I pulled my coat over my head. It creeped me out to think of people looking at me while I slept. Especially since there might be some kind of alert out on me. Missing girl. If you see her, notify the cops.
But in between pet call and eating and sleeping, impossible to ignore, was the jaw-dropping beauty of the Inside Passage. Rain squalls went floating past, dragging purple shadows across the mountains and the sea. They pelted hard, cold drops on the deck, then drifted off again. And afterward, the sun streamed down through the clouds in liquid gold shafts, piercing the waters with their light. There was a rainbow every time. Seriously. Every single time. And then the sunsets: turning everything the color of peaches or of copper or of blood.
The first day, a pod of Orcas swam alongside the ferry. They stayed with us for miles. The second day, it was dolphins. They partied in the water beside us as if the ferry was a friend of theirs—a massive, dorky dolphin with embarrassing chugging noises and fumes.
The third day, it was three bald eagles soaring overhead. I’d never kenned with wild birds—it’s not allowed, for kids. It could be dangerous.
But I was so lonely for Stella, I couldn’t help it: I shyly reached out and listened. Felt a vibrating thrill of connection. Sensed the pull of their wings, the supporting firmness of the air. Something stirred inside me, something that wanted to push out to the edges of the sky and listen to it all, wanted to know as much of this world as I could possibly take in.
Nighttime was when it was hardest to leave the critter. After the final feeding, he would curl up in my lap and thrum. I’d scratch his eye ridges, his jaw. I felt like telling him things. I used words, in my mind, but I knew it wasn’t words he understood. It was the things behind the words. The promises. The hopes.
Each time, I felt a faint, fizzy thread of something wending back to me. Something warm and happy and comforting.
Taj, now, he might call it imprinting, that something. And you could legitimately call it that. You could.
Alternatively, though, you might want to call it love.
27
MACROECONOMICS
ANCHORAGE, ALASKA
Quinn glanced at his phone, balanced on the arm of the recliner. It was ringing. He checked out caller ID.
That Gandalf guy. From Oregon.
What kind of bivalve would name his kid Gandalf?
The guy had e-mailed Quinn earlier. Said he had information about the egg fossil Quinn was selling online. Of mutual interest. Said he wanted to talk.
Quinn doubted the guy knew anything. Probably on a fishing expedition, trying to pump him for information. Quinn had given him his number, just in case, but he didn’t feel like talking now.
Didn’t feel like studying, either. Economics. He made a face. Could anything be more boring than that?
He cranked up the game on TV. Seattle versus Arizona. Spawn. He downed a swig of Alaskan Amber and let her ring.
Two minutes later, Gandalf called again. Quinn could see he wasn’t going to get any peace until he talked to him. He muted the game. Picked up. “Yeah?”
“You the guy with the fossil egg?”
“Maybe. Why do you want to know?”
Turned out, this was way more interesting than Quinn had thought.
Gandalf claimed he’d seen another egg just like Quinn’s. He wanted to trade information, maybe partner up. He asked where Quinn had gotten his egg, but no way was Quinn going to tell.
He was still ticked about that. Cap had distributed the eggs back there in the cave. Not all of them had broken clean, but they’d wound up with four good ones: one egg per person. Quinn’s egg was his payment for leading them up there. Which was fine. Except that Quinn had wanted to be in. Like a partner. Cap had squashed that plan. Even though they wouldn’t have any eggs at all if it weren’t for Quinn.
“Where did your egg come from?” Quinn asked now.
Gandalf danced around it, hinting, but wouldn’t tell. Then he said, “Have you seen the dragon?”
Okay. That did it. The guy was a loon. Quinn clicked off.
But he was curious, he had to admit. So when Gandalf called back, he picked up again. “I got a URL for you,” Gandalf said. “Check it out.”
Quinn thumbed it in.
It was a dim photo. You were looking through a wire mesh screen into a pet carrier. Bad lighting, but you could see some kind of lizard in there. Some kind of big lizard. It was wearing maybe a pet jacket, like old ladies get for their fluffy little rat dogs.
Quinn had seen quite a few big lizards on TV. This one didn’t look familiar, but that didn’t mean anything.
Still, it was spooky. Quinn remembered the cave, that little skeleton he’d seen. What would it look like if it hatched?
He scrolled up. The picture was part of a blog. Anderson Blogs the Universe. Quinn skimmed through it. This Anderson cl
aimed the lizard belonged to a girl he’d met, and she’d told him it was a Burmese water dragon. There were some pictures of the girl. Anderson had looked everywhere on the Net and hadn’t been able to find anything quite like the lizard. No such thing, he said, as a Burmese water dragon. Could anybody identify it? he wanted to know.
“That’s the dragon,” Gandalf was saying. “The one I saw. It phaging flamed at me. And that’s the girl.”
Quinn sat up straight. “Flamed at you?”
“Yeah. I’m trying to tell you—”
“You’re not trying hard enough! If you want to be my partner, you have to be straight with me right now. Everything. From the beginning. Where did this thing come from? Where did the egg come from? Who is that girl, and how does she fit in?”
Then Gandalf spilled: told Quinn a story he would never have believed if the blog didn’t back it up. About the girl—the friend of Gandalf’s cousin—and her … whatever it was. In the crate with its ridiculous jacket.
“I’m still having trouble with the flaming thing,” Quinn said. “You said the shed behind them was burning, right? Are you sure you didn’t—”
“I know what I saw! I’m telling you, it snorted out smoke and sparks.”
“And what about the wings? I don’t see any wings.”
“They covered them with the jacket.”
Yeah, right.
On the other hand, though, the bidding on Quinn’s egg was huge. It had shocked him, no lie. Some fools thought it was an actual petrified dragon egg.
At least, Quinn had thought they were fools.
And then there was that other egg. The new one, not petrified. The one Dr. Jones had talked him out of. Claimed it was illegal to possess it.
What if these things were actually hatching? What would they be worth?
Donald Trump money. Bill Gates money. Jeff Bezos money.
Now, that was the kind of economics Quinn could get into. Macroeconomics.
He looked down at his phone, scrolled through the school files directory. Textbooks, articles, syllabi. They went on and on. Waiting for him, making him feel guilty. He was so far behind, it seemed like he could never catch up.
“Screw you,” he told them.
“What?” Gandalf sounded upset.
“Hey, not you,” Quinn said. “Listen, partner. Tell me all about your cousin and her friend. Anything that could help. I’ll see what I can find out and get back to you.”
28
A DARKER DARKNESS
INSIDE PASSAGE, OFF ALASKA
Sometime in the middle of the night, I jolted full awake. I lay listening to the sounds—the engine humming, the water swishing by. Moonlight laid long, pale stripes across the lumps of sleeping people. No one stirred. I could sense the faint, trailing echo of something I had heard in my sleep. But I couldn’t quite drag it back.
There. A muffled noise, drifting up from below.
Barking?
Dogs?
Maybe. I probably couldn’t have heard them in the daytime, with all the other sounds to mask them.
I listened, in the kenning way, for the critter.
Faint. Very faint. Seemed like he was sleeping.
Still, I felt uneasy. Had it been dogs barking? What was that about?
I shoved aside the blankets, drew on my coat and purse, and threaded my way among the heaps of sleeping bags, backpacks, bodies. When I came to the door to the stairs, I pushed on it. Testing.
It opened.
Unlocked.
I nudged the door wider. It creaked. The engine noise pulsed louder.
I hesitated. I’d left my duffel back with the blankets. Nothing especially valuable in there, except to me. But maybe I should get it.
A surge of barking, clearer than before. Something happening. Better go now. I slipped through the doorway and tiptoed downstairs.
The car deck had a dim, greeny, underwater look to it, and also the scary vibe of parking ramps at night. Light from the overhead fluorolamps glinted off the humped shapes of cars and trucks, campers and buses. But darkness lurked at the edges of things: on the floor between the cars, in corners, in the high deep hollows of the ceiling.
The dogs had stopped barking. I could hear the ferry’s engines grinding—louder, down here, than above. I could hear the slap of water against the hull of the boat. I could smell the sea.
Another smell too. Faint. A burning smell. Petrochemical, sort of, with an aftertaste of metal.
I moved toward the pet carrier area, then stopped. Footsteps from over there. Clinks. The security guard.
A shaft of light swept low across the deck.
I slunk backward, away. Squeezed into the space between a van and an SUV.
A tongue of blue flame shot out, high in the darkness. A quick burst; then it was gone.
Oh, no.
The dogs started barking again. The flashlight beam swung wildly around and up, searching.
I searched too, in the maze of pipes and ductwork above. Lots of nooks and crannies where a small, floating critter could hide.
I listened for him, in my mind. Found his wavelength. Synched with him.
Still sleeping.
But I could feel a shifting in the ken. I could feel him slowly waking.
Hush, I begged silently. Be calm. Be still.
How had he escaped from his carrier? Had the security guard opened it, or …
That smell. Burnt plastic, maybe? Hot metal?
Had he burned his way out?
Footsteps again. Coming closer. If I tried to move, the guard would see me, he would hear.
Slowly, I unzipped one of my pockets. Felt around in there for the biggest coin I could find. Ah. A fifty-center. I threw it side-hand away from me, as far as I could. It clanked, bouncing off something metal, then clattered onto the deck and rolled away.
The footsteps moved away, fast. Stopped again.
Silence.
A cool breeze raked through my hair. I heard the creaking of ropes, the rattlings of chains. I searched up in the ceiling and at last found what I was looking for, a darker darkness in the hollows between the ductwork and the pipes.
The critter.
He wanted to come to me. I could feel it. He wanted to be held, be fed.
I kenned him happy thoughts. Happy, floating thoughts.
A staticky crackle—a little way in front of me. Then a voice, perfectly clear, from down here on the car deck: “Can’t tell you that. Don’t know.”
A walkie-talkie?
Static again. Then, “Nope. Whatever it was, it’s over. Nothing going on. Quiet as the grave.”
Static.
“Yep.”
Static.
“Nope.”
Static.
“Nothing. Don’t smell it anymore.”
The static went on for a longish time.
Then the guy seemed to lose it. “What do you want from me, man?” he said. “Maybe somebody sneaked down here for a smoke.”
Static.
“I don’t know how! Maybe—”
Static.
“What d’you want me to do, break into every single car down here? There’s only one of me. Can’t be everywhere at once. If the captain’s so agged, maybe he should come down, look arou—”
Static.
“Okay, okay. I’m just saying—”
Static.
“Yeah, whatever. Be right up.”
His footsteps moved away from me. There was a creak, and a heavy thump, and a clang.
What was that?
Silence. I strained to hear the ring of boots on metal stairs, but nothing.
What was he doing?
Then, “Freakin’ weird” I heard him mutter. “They don’t pay me enough for this.”
29
THINGS THAT HAD TOUCHED FISH
INSIDE PASSAGE, OFF ALASKA
I heard the door snick shut behind the guard. I stood waiting in my hiding place for what felt like a monster long time. He might be coming back. Ma
ybe with someone else. Maybe the captain. I sent a stream of kennings up to the critter, trying to calm him, keep him floating up there, out of sight. But I could feel his yearning, seismic fierce. To come down. To be with me.
At last, I couldn’t hold out any longer. I went to stand beneath him and kenned him down. He belched out a crackling flame ball and dropped into my arms.
He felt tense, all knotted up and twitchy. His little heart was fluttering. He climbed up my arm and draped himself over my shoulders. In a minute, he relaxed into me and began to thrum, a liquid vibration that softened my own clenched body clear down to my bones. He tipped his head and nuzzled my chin; I scratched behind his jaw.
“Critter,” I said.
Something funny about his jacket. Patches of … stuff, stuck to the fleece. Something rigid and smooth. Like plastic.
Melted plastic.
The carrier.
So had he burned his way out?
Had he gone too long between Tylenols? Or maybe that stuff had never worked at all.
I needed to see the carrier, find out if it was useable. But going into the pet area right now … maybe not the best plan. If the dogs started barking, the guard might come down again.
Though clearly he didn’t want to. Clearly, he’d been spooked.
Right before he’d gone upstairs, there’d been those noises. The creak. The heavy thump. The clang.
Hmm. Could it be?
I looked around and found it, a small Dumpster in a corner near the stairs. I shifted the critter to one arm. Opened the lid.
And pulled out what was left of the carrier.
Melted. Grotesquely warped and twisted. The door had dropped off, and most of the top was just gone.
I dropped the thing back in the Dumpster.
Useless.
Now what?
The critter was hungry; I could feel it. And I had to find a place for us to hide.
I wandered up and down the rows of cars and trucks, testing doors. Most of them were locked, but not all. And whenever I got inside, I found food.
People travel with food. They just do.
Car food: trail mix, amino bars, corn chips, jerky. Apples, oranges, bananas. Processed cheese and crackers, turkey sandwiches, PB and J. Water in bottles, pop in cans, electrolyte juice in boxes. MoonPies, Frisbee Bars, Oreos, Peanut Blasts.
Ancient, Strange, and Lovely Page 14
