Chapter Fourteen
Cara awoke the next morning to a dead bird in her bed and a pair of not-yet-dead snakes in her boots. Luckily, her screams of terror brought Vero back to her room to finish his breakfast. Within minutes, the reptiles lay on the floor, relieved of their heads.
Not the best way to start the day. Especially for the snakes.
For reptiles, they were actually pretty—with shimmery hides and dozens of delicate antennae extending along the length of their spines. The bird was lovely, too, featherless with opalescent cream-colored skin that caught the faint glow from the window. Still, Cara preferred not to wake alongside Vero’s prey, no matter how sparkly.
Elle giggled from the top bunk. “He must really like you.”
“Earth pets do the same thing,” Cara said, backing away from the carnage. She made a mental note to have the groundskeeper dispose of the bodies. “My friend Tori used to feed a feral cat that lived in the woods by her house. It left dead lizards and mice at her front door for the next five years.” She squatted down to Vero’s height and ordered, “No more presents, okay?”
The way he puffed his chest and jabbered with pride promised that birds and snakes were just the beginning of Cara’s bounty. She sighed and grabbed a clean uniform. At least he’d stopped peeing on her pillow.
“I’m going to practice the spinners before breakfast,” Cara said. But when she tried pulling up her pants, they slouched and nearly fell from her hips. “Aw, man. I need another uniform.”
This was the third time she’d had to exchange her clothes for a smaller size. Not that she was complaining. As much as Cara despised L’eihr food, she had to admit their perfectly balanced diet, combined with Satan’s rigorous strength training, had made her stronger and leaner than she’d ever achieved running track at Midtown High. She only hoped Aelyx wouldn’t miss the junk in her trunk. She was a lot less bootylicious these days.
“So much for the spinners.” There wasn’t time to hit the supply station on the fourth floor, change, practice, shower, and make it back before breakfast. “Guess I’ll meet you at the nursery.”
“I can’t.” Elle hopped down and scanned her wrist, preemptively turning off the room alarm. “My medic adviser wants me in the advanced anatomy class. To get out of it, I’ll need a better excuse than being your constant alibi.”
“Oh.” Cara had never realized how much she’d held her roommate back. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll be fine.”
“Are you sure?” Elle asked. “Because I can arrange to have you sit in with me.”
On advanced anatomy? Cara would rather learn something useful among the kindergartners than zone out during an upper-level course. “Thanks, but I’ll stick with the kids. It’s not like I need someone to corroborate my every move.”
“You’re probably right. Aelyx tends to overreact when it comes to you.” Elle ran a comb through her ponytail while gazing into empty air. “I can’t blame him, though. I would have done anything for Eron.”
Cara held her breath for fear of saying the wrong thing, but then she decided to stop behaving like a coward and start acting like a friend. “I’m sorry. You must miss him.”
Elle didn’t answer at first. But soon she gave an absent nod. “I do. I’m beginning to worry I’ll never stop.”
“That’s normal.” Cara shrugged into a clean tunic and rolled her pants at the waist. “The pain will fade with time, but you’ll always remember him.” Poor Elle. Like the other clones, she’d spent the first sixteen years of her life under the influence of hormone regulators, so she didn’t have much experience with love or heartbreak. To her, this must feel like the end of the world. “It’ll get better,” Cara assured her. “And one day, you’ll feel ready to try again.”
“That’s hard to imagine.”
“You’ll see.” Cara wished she could give Elle a hug, but casual touches made the clones uneasy. Instead, she offered a warm smile. “But there’s no rush—don’t put so much pressure on yourself. Grieve as long as you need to.” Cara moved close enough to deliver a gentle nudge to her roommate’s shoulder. “You’re allowed to be human, you know.”
Elle returned the smile. “I’m glad you’re here.”
During rare times like these, Cara agreed.
By midafternoon, she didn’t feel quite so optimistic.
“What’s wrong with your hair?” asked the little boy tugging Cara’s braid. “I’ve never seen that kind before. It’s ugly, like fire.”
Cara reclaimed her braid and answered in L’eihr. “There’s nothing wrong with having red hair. I think it’s nice.”
“Why does your skin look so pale?” he asked. “Are you sick? Did you lose all your blood?”
“No.” Cara placed her wrist within his coppery hand to show him the pulse in her veins. “On my planet, people have lots of different skin colors. Some humans are darker than you, and some are even lighter than me.”
“But you’ve got spots,” the boy’s friend objected, pointing to the freckles splattered across Cara’s nose and cheeks. “You must be sick.”
“Why do we have to talk out loud to you?” the first boy asked.
She took a deep breath and counted to five, peering around the classroom for the instructor, who’d left Cara in charge during her bathroom break. “Because I can’t use Silent Speech.”
“I knew that,” a girl bragged from her seat on the floor. “My friend Alun told me that human brains are slow. He said they go backward.”
“Well, I wouldn’t say that we’re slow…”
“He said humans are savage,” the girl added, eyeing Cara skeptically. “Do you really eat your young?”
Cara was tempted to say yes, that each freckle on her nose represented an obnoxious kid she’d devoured, but she took the high road. “No, your friend made that up.”
“Are you going to live here forever?” the girl asked.
Before thinking, Cara spat, “No,” then quickly checked herself. “I mean, yes. On the colony.”
But the Freudian slip betrayed her doubts. In truth, she wasn’t sure she could settle there. Not trapped on an island, devoid of any means of escape. Not with mindbenders like Jaxen and Aisly in power. Not with the clones spreading rumors that she ate babies and sported a backward brain. Why wouldn’t Aelyx at least consider defecting to Earth? Why did she have to make the sacrifice?
Maybe she shouldn’t think about that right now.
The young girl brought Cara back to reality with a request. “Tell us a story.”
“Please,” the others begged. “A human story!”
“Okay.” Encouraged by the children’s enthusiasm, Cara sat cross-legged and motioned for the others to form a semicircle around her. While they settled in, she decided on a simple fable that she could shorten to accommodate her limited L’eihr vocabulary: “Hansel and Gretel.”
“Once upon a time,” she began, “there were two children who lived with their father in the forest.”
Drawing on her best theatrical skills, she spun a tale that had the children transfixed, pausing only to explain unfamiliar terms like gingerbread and wicked witch. By the time she reached the scene where the witch had captured Hansel and fattened him up for cooking, the clones’ eyes were wide in rapt attention, their little bodies leaning forward to hang on Cara’s every word.
Cara led them through the story’s climax, ending with Gretel freeing her brother from his cage and pushing the witch to a fiery death. “And then,” she concluded, “they found their father and lived happily ever after.”
But instead of applauding as she’d expected, the children gasped in horror. Then the questions came flying from all directions.
“Do all human fathers abandon their children?”
“Why did they destroy that woman’s home?”
“Did they really burn her up? How barbaric!”
“See, I told you! Humans do eat their young!”
Cara tried corralling their imaginations, but the damage was d
one. The children backed away shrieking, as if she might spring on them and begin nibbling their eight tiny toes, Vienna sausage–style.
“Miss Sweeney…” The instructor stood in the doorway, scanning the chaos. “Why don’t you offer your assistance in the seclusion room?”
Cara’s heart sank. The seclusion room—a padded enclosure where the Terrible Twos went to scream it out. The nursery workers dodged that assignment like a jury summons. L’eihr eardrums were more sensitive to the assault of temper tantrums, likely because the spoken word was used so infrequently.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Head low, Cara slunk down the hall to her post, bracing for the worst. From the earsplitting wail that greeted her when she opened the seclusion room door, she expected to find a dozen toddlers inside. But a single child was the source of the clamor. Not quite two years old, by the looks of him, but man, the kid had a pair of banshee lungs.
Cara greeted the teenager in charge of supervising the child. “I can sit with him awhile if you’d like to take a br—”
“Oh, thank the Mother!” The girl tapped her throat twice in a sign of gratitude, then bolted from the room before Cara had a chance to ask the child’s name.
She observed the boy, taking in the wispy brown locks plastered to his cheeks by tears, tiny hands clenched into fists, his quivering chin slick with drool. During the brief moments he stopped crying, his breath hitched so badly he could barely catch it. Cara didn’t know much about kids, but this didn’t look like a temper tantrum. The boy seemed genuinely miserable.
She sat beside the toddler and pulled him into her lap, then pressed a hand to his forehead to check for fever. “You don’t feel warm,” she said. “What’s wrong, bud?”
He rested his head against her chest and cried out again, seeking comfort by clinging tightly to her tunic. Cara rocked from side to side while patting the boy’s back. Over the next ten minutes, she hummed and bounced and cooed, using every soothing technique she knew, but nothing worked.
He was hurting—she sensed it.
After ensuring nobody was watching from the window, she took his face in her hands and peered into his eyes, opening her mind to him.
“Where does it hurt?” she asked aloud in L’eihr.
Hurt, he mentally repeated, which didn’t help much. Using Silent Speech with toddlers was a challenge because they couldn’t form coherent thoughts. Instead of dialogue, they shared snippets of desire or emotion in a jumble that often didn’t make sense. This time was no exception.
Cara wanted to help the boy, but she didn’t know how. She rested her fingertips against his belly and locked gazes with him in desperation. Hurt? She moved her hand to his head. Hurt? After repeating the query at his ears and throat, she touched his legs. Hurt here? Where is the hurt?
He understood—she felt it within his consciousness. He opened his mouth and pointed inside, then told her, Hurt here, and projected a sensation she recognized at once. She’d known that pain at sixteen, when her wisdom teeth had pushed a jagged trail to the surface of her gums. This baby was cutting teeth—probably his two-year molars.
Anger flared through her, flushing her cheeks and making her hot all over. Teething was a common issue among young children, so why hadn’t the nursery workers checked for this? How long would they have let the boy cry before realizing he was in pain?
And they had the audacity to call her slow.
First, she was going to treat his sore gums with an analgesic swab. Then she was going to tear someone a new L’asshole. Holding tightly to the boy, she pushed to standing and stalked across the room. But when Cara threw aside the door and stepped into the hall, she came to a sudden halt.
Wait a minute.
Had she used Silent Speech with this boy? With words and everything?
Cara’s lips parted and spread into a smile. She’d really done it!
Her anger evaporated, morphing into triumph. After tireless hours of practice, she’d finally discovered the part of her brain required to share complete thoughts. Now that she’d isolated it, the region felt like a muscle she’d never known existed. She flexed it while gazing into the boy’s eyes. We’ll fix the hurt, she told him.
It was easier now!
Hurt, was all he said. He didn’t understand anything more.
She carried him to the first-aid station and strapped him into the counter seat, then fished in the cubby for a plastic swab. She showed it to the boy and opened her mouth to model what she wanted him to do. Open big.
When he obeyed, she snapped the tip off the medicated end and dabbed thick, syrupy liquid over the back of his gums, where bits of white bone had begun to poke through the flesh. She massaged the medication into the swollen tissue and opened her mind to him. No hurt?
Bad taste, he complained, but his pain was gone. Give drink.
“Okay.” She spoke aloud in L’eihr after noticing Gram, the nursery director, striding into the room with an infant on her shoulder. “Let’s get you some water.”
The boy tugged Cara’s cheek with his sticky palm, initiating eye contact. No water. Reed-milk.
“Or milk,” she said for the director’s benefit. “Would you rather have that?”
Milk, he silently repeated.
Use your words, she told him. Say it loud.
“MILK!”
Gram laughed from the changing station. “He knows what he wants.”
Cara left him buckled in his seat while she fetched a glass of reed-milk, which was similar in taste and consistency to soy. In other words, totally nasty. But the little guy loved it. She helped him finish his drink and told Gram his caregivers had mistaken teething pain for a temper tantrum. Gram promised to have a word with his instructor.
Cara guided the boy back to the toddler room and left him with a kiss on the cheek, which he promptly scrubbed away with his fist. That was gratitude for you. But no matter. Nothing could bring her down. Cara’s accomplishment had her beaming like a new quarter. She couldn’t wait to tell Aelyx tomorrow—he would be so proud.
Since the seclusion room was empty and she doubted the preschool instructor wanted any more of her help, Cara decided to sneak off to the intermediate course to blow off some steam. Besides, she was on a roll today. She’d managed to get Elle to open up about her grief, then she’d unlocked the next level of Silent Speech. If good things came in threes, she’d conquer those wily spinners before dinner.
Vero greeted her in the lobby and followed along to the obstacle course, chattering animatedly in his language of chirps and howls. Occasionally, he’d freeze, ears cocked on high alert, and dart into the trees to hunt another prize, but the daytime serpents were too quick for him. Cara strolled at an easy pace, enjoying the warmth of the sun and the citrusy scent of ilar leaves on the breeze. The only sounds were rhythmic percussions of insect calls and birdsongs, both foreign and familiar to her ears. While mating calls varied from one planet to another, love was universal, and it was in the air today.
“It’s beautiful here,” she said to Vero, even though he didn’t understand. “I miss the green leaves, but the bushes and trees back home are dormant now, anyway.”
She wished she had more time to enjoy the outdoors. She wanted to wander deep into the woods, where thick trees blocked the sun, and see what fuzzy wonders grew in the shadows. She wanted to shuttle over the great city wall and catch a glimpse of the beasts there, to discover whether the barrier protected the animals or if the reverse were true. It seemed criminal to overload her schedule to the point where she couldn’t explore this lush place.
The intermediate course was still and silent when she reached it. Even the spinners lay motionless, which gave her a chance to inspect them more closely. Each rotator was constructed like a record player, a round disk raised slightly above its foundation held in place by a central bolt, which turned with the apparatus instead of remaining fixed.
She crouched down and grazed the pebbled surface with her palm. Good traction, a clue that sh
e wasn’t meant to skid from one to the other. She pushed against the outside edge, feeling it give an inch beneath her weight. Common sense told her she could use the bounce to her advantage, but she didn’t know how.
She jogged to the solar panel that powered the course’s moving elements and turned it on. In response, a soft hum arose, breaking the tranquility. Time to get down to business. She set off at a slow run and approached the first spinner, determined to crush the obstacle.
Fifteen minutes later, the only thing she’d effectively crushed was her own butt.
She rubbed her aching bottom and muttered a few swear words while the rotating disks mocked her in a steady whir that resembled demonic laughter. Why couldn’t she figure this out?
“As if I need another reason to feel like a loser here.” Glaring at the nearest spinner, she drew back and gave the base a hearty kick. It felt so good that she stomped the disk with her boot heel, not caring that the act would probably land her on her backside.
But that’s not what happened.
The impact caused the disk to stall ever so briefly…just long enough to gain purchase and leap to the next spinner, had she been standing on it.
That was it—the secret to navigating the spinners was to land as hard as possible on each disk. Cara laughed aloud, startling Vero, who’d begun to doze in a patch of sunlight.
“Eureka!” she shouted, rubbing her palms together. “Now watch me own this course.”
It took a few tries to perfect her technique, but by the fourth attempt, she had it down to a science. When she leaped from the final spinner across the finish line, she pumped her fists into the air and shouted a victory cry sweeter than any chocolate bar. She couldn’t believe the rush of adrenaline surging through her veins. If besting the intermediate course felt this good, she’d probably need to change her pants after mastering the proficient track.
Satan was going to be so impressed. She couldn’t wait to show him.
“Sweeeeeney!” Speak of the devil, she turned to find him waving to her from the courtyard. It was hard to tell from this distance, but he seemed upset. His already broad shoulders were hunched halfway up to his neck as he ran to meet her, a trio of lines creasing his typically smooth forehead.
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