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 are you?” Ian asked, leaning toward me, his brilliant blue eyes penetrating.

“I don’t know in Earth years.”

“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’t want 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.”

“Do so.”

“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 to meet anyone’s eyes. In my head, it seemed fitting; my words were sometimes upsetting, but my actions were always for their good.

I didn’t want to admit that Jamie was right. Obviously, people didn’t like 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 money and share in the products of our labor equally?

“Yes,” he interrupted me, shaking his head. “But it’s different here-Jeb has a gun for the slackers.”

Everyone looked at Jeb, who winked, and then they all laughed.

Jeb was in attendance about every other night. He didn’t participate; he just sat thoughtfully in the back of the room, occasionally grinning.

He was right about the entertainment factor; oddly, for we all had legs, the situation reminded me of the See Weeds. There had been a special title for entertainers there, like Comforter or Healer or Seeker. I was one of the Storytellers, so the transition to a teacher here on Earth had not been such a change, profession-wise, at least. It was much the same in the kitchen after dark, with the smell of smoke and baking bread filling the room. Everyone was stuck here, as good as planted. My stories were something new, something to think about besides the usual-the same endlessly repeated sweaty chores, the same thirty-five faces, the same memories of other faces that brought the same grief with them, the same fear and the same despair that had long been familiar companions. And so the kitchen was always full for my casual lessons. Only Sharon and Maggie were conspicuously and consistently absent.