- •Stephenie Meyer The Host
- •I was surprised at his accusation, at his tone. This discussion was almost like… an argument. Something my host was familiar with but that I’d never experienced.
- •I did not open my eyes. I didn’t want to be distracted. My mind gave me the words I needed, and the tone that would convey what I couldn’t say without using many words.
- •I decided to open my eyes. I felt the need to double-check the Healer’s promises and make sure the rest of me worked.
- •It took me a moment before I could speak. Even then, my voice was just a breath. “What happened to them?”
- •I nodded in understanding. We’d had a name for it on my other worlds. On no world was it smiled upon. So I quit quizzing the Seeker and gave her what I could.
- •I tried.
- •I stared down at my hands and said nothing.
- •I thought her question through carefully. “I don’t think so. Not so I’ve noticed.”
- •I coughed twice and shook my head. I was sure it was over; my stomach was empty.
- •I took a deep breath and resisted the urge to shake her again. She was a full head shorter than I was. It was a fight I would win.
- •I faced the Seeker now, curious to judge the impact of my words. She was impassive, staring at the white nothingness of the bare wall across the room.
- •I jerked away from her, my face flushing.
- •I shrug, and my stomach flutters. “It’s beautiful here.”
- •I let the engine idle as I tried to think of options besides sleeping in the car, surrounded by the black emptiness of the desert night. Melanie waited patiently, knowing I would find none.
- •I was able to contain my anxiety as I walked hesitantly to the vacant door frame; we must be just as alone here as we had been all day and all yesterday.
- •I cringed, shoving the paper away from me, back into the dark cupboard.
- •I pulled the stiff door back and found the mother lode.
- •I’d turned my back on the east to get the sun off my face for a moment.
- •I laughed at her now. The sound was sucked away by the scorching wind.
- •I don’t know, I’ve never died before.
- •I tasted blood inside my cheek.
- •I shivered in the oven-hot air.
- •I looked for only one thing-where Jared was, so that I could put myself between him and his attackers.
- •I’m not ready to die right this second.
- •I was surprised that the strangely fluid babble did not respond in any way to our entrance. Perhaps they couldn’t see us yet, either.
- •I stood where he’d left me, trying to keep my eyes off Jamie’s face and failing.
- •In spite of myself, I smiled at his unwilling interest. “Far away. Another planet.”
- •Ian and the doctor both raised their hands above their heads.
- •I closed my eyes.
- •I folded my arms across my body.
- •It was quiet for a moment, just the sounds of our footsteps echoing, low and muffled, from the tunnel walls.
- •I thought about the word misfit for a moment. It might have been the truest description of me I’d ever heard. Where had I ever fit in?
- •I could feel my cheeks getting warm.
- •I was in about my fourth week as an informal teacher when life in the caves changed again.
- •I glanced at him wildly, searching for that same guilt on his face. I didn’t find it, only a defensive tightening around his vivid eyes as he stared at the newcomers.
- •I peeked through narrowed eyes as Jared whirled to assess the truth of Jeb’s claim.
- •I realized now that Jamie was just as sad as everyone else here.
- •I appraised his fierce expression-the fire in his brilliant eyes.
- •I noticed how he said when, not if. No matter what promises he’d made, he didn’t see me lasting in the long term.
- •I hated this room. In the darkness, with the odd shadows thrown by the weak glow, it seemed only more forbidding. There was a new smell-the room reeked of slow decay and stinging alcohol and bile.
- •I don’t know. This is all my fault!
- •It was a horrible day. The worst of my life on this planet, even including my first day in the caves and the last hot, dry day in the desert, hours from death.
- •It was over, and I knew it.
- •I didn’t answer. I was afraid of giving him something to use against Kyle.
- •I let him have the gun willingly. He laughed again at my expression.
- •I took a deep breath.
- •I shrugged. “a million or so.”
- •I closed my eyes, wishing my mouth had stayed closed. I felt dizzy. Was I just tired or was it my head wound?
- •I was so tired. I didn’t care that Kyle was three feet from me. I didn’t care that two of the men in the room would side with Kyle if he came around. I didn’t care about anything but sleep.
- •Ian started to stand beside me.
- •Ian stared at his brother for a moment, then sat on the ground beside me again.
- •Ian started to rise again.
- •Ian didn’t give him a chance to answer. He yanked the door out of his way-roughly but very quietly-and then slid into his room and put the door back in its place.
- •I didn’t know what I thought. About any of it.
- •I nodded. “Yes. More than strange. Impossible.”
- •I nodded at that, but he kept going, ignoring me.
- •It made a squishing sound and a thud-that was the first thing I noticed-and then the shock of the blow wore off, and I felt it, too.
- •I pulled myself up. “Perfect.” It was true. I hadn’t felt so healthy in a long time. The sharp shift from pain to ease made the sensation more powerful.
- •I laughed. “It’s amazing. If you stab yourself, I could show you… That’s a joke.”
- •I don’t think it’s the No Pain. Not for either of us.
- •I tuned them out. Once Ian and Kyle got started, they usually went on for a while. I consulted the map.
- •I tried to smile remorsefully. I could tell I sounded stiff, like the too-careful actors on the television.
- •I jumped, startled, and the little pill slipped from my fingers. It dropped to the metal floor with a faintly audible clink. I felt the blood drain from my face as though a plug had been pulled.
- •I looked back at the truck, too, a forced smile on my face. I couldn’t see who was driving. My eyes reflected the headlights, shot out faint beams of their own.
- •I shuddered.
- •I hadn’t decided if I wanted to talk to her. At least, that was what I’d told Jeb.
- •I slowed myself to a walk before I interrupted him. I didn’t want to scare him, to make him think there was an emergency.
- •I heard the double meaning in his words.
- •I considered this as we ran through the desert in the growing light of dawn-ran because, with the Seekers looking, we shouldn’t be out in the daylight.
- •It was a story I’d never told them before, for obvious reasons. It was one of my best. Lots of action. Jamie would have loved it. I sighed and began in a low voice.
- •I paused to shudder.
- •I paused to laugh quietly to myself.
- •I nodded, not convinced. “I won’t show you unless I believe that.”
- •I shook my head. “I think he sees where this is going. He must guess my plan.”
- •In answer to my earlier question to myself, no, the face was not less repugnant with a different awareness behind it. Because the awareness was not so very different, in the end.
- •Ironically enough, Ian was the one who took my side and helped hurry the raid along. He still didn’t see where this would lead.
- •I stroked her soft cheek, but there was no response, so I took her limp hand in mine again. I gazed at the blue sky through the holes in the high ceiling. My mind wandered.
- •It just wasn’t as shocking as it used to be.
- •I saw Jeb’s eyes brighten with his unquenchable curiosity.
- •I took a deep breath and walked slowly into Doc’s place. I announced my presence in a low, even voice. “Hello.”
- •I winced-I had a more recent memory.
- •I could hear Trudy talking to the Healer’s host, but I tuned out the words. Let the humans take care of their own for the moment.
- •I stared at him for a few seconds, and then my eyes grew wide. “Sunny’s gone? Already?”
- •Ian lurched to his feet.
- •I turn to look at her, and I don’t know the face, either. She’s pretty.
- •Ian was happy. This insight made my worry suddenly much lighter, easier to bear.
- •Ian squeezed my hand and leaned in to whisper through all the hair. His voice was so low that I was the only one who could hear. “I held you in my hand, Wanderer. And you were so beautiful.”
I was in about my fourth week as an informal teacher when life in the caves changed again.
The kitchen was crowded, as was usual. Jeb and Doc were the only ones missing besides the normal two. On the counter next to me was a metal tray of dark, doughy rolls, swollen to twice the size they’d started at. They were ready for the oven, as soon as the current tray was done. Trudy checked every few minutes to make sure nothing was burning.
Often, I tried to get Jamie to talk for me when he knew the story well. I liked to watch the enthusiasm light up his face, and the way he used his hands to draw pictures in the air. Tonight, Heidi wanted to know more about the Dolphins, so I asked Jamie to answer her questions as well as he could.
The humans always spoke with sadness when they asked about our newest acquisition. They saw the Dolphins as mirrors of themselves in the first years of the occupation. Heidi’s dark eyes, disconcerting underneath her fringe of white-blond hair, were tight with sympathy as she asked her questions.
“They look more like huge dragonflies than fish, right, Wanda?” Jamie almost always asked for corroboration, though he never waited for my answer. “They’re all leathery, though, with three, four, or five sets of wings, depending on how old they are, right? So they kind of fly through the water-it’s lighter than water here, less dense. They have five, seven, or nine legs, depending on which gender they are, right, Wanda? They have three different genders. They have really long hands with tough, strong fingers that can build all kinds of things. They make cities under the water out of hard plants that grow there, kind of like trees but not really. They aren’t as far along as we are, right, Wanda? Because they’ve never made a spaceship or, like, telephones for communication. Humans were more advanced.”
Trudy pulled out the tray of baked rolls, and I bent to shove the next tray of risen dough into the hot, smoking hole. It took a little jostling and balancing to get it in just right.
As I sweated in front of the fire, I heard some kind of commotion outside the kitchen, echoing down the hall from somewhere else in the caves. It was hard, with all the random sound reverberations and strange acoustics, to judge distances here.
“Hey!” Jamie shouted behind me, and I turned just in time to see the back of his head as he sprinted out the door.
I straightened out of my crouch and took a step after him, my instinct to follow.
“Wait,” Ian said. “He’ll be back. Tell us more about the Dolphins.”
Ian was sitting on the counter beside the oven-a hot seat that I wouldn’t have chosen-which made him close enough to reach out and touch my wrist. My arm flinched away from the unexpected contact, but I stayed where I was.
“What’s going on out there?” I asked. I could still hear some kind of jabbering-I thought I could hear Jamie’s excited voice in the mix.
Ian shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe Jeb…” He shrugged again, as if he wasn’t interested enough to bother with figuring it out. Nonchalant, but there was a tension in his eyes I didn’t understand.
I was sure I would find out soon enough, so I shrugged, too, and started explaining the incredibly complex familial relationships of the Dolphins while I helped Trudy stack the warm bread in plastic containers.
“Six of the nine… grandparents, so to speak, traditionally stay with the larvae through their first stage of development while the three parents work with their six grandparents on a new wing of the family dwelling for the young to inhabit when they are mobile,” I was explaining, my eyes on the rolls in my hands rather than my audience, as usual, when I heard the gasp from the back of the room. I continued with my next sentence automatically as I scanned the crowd to see who I’d upset. “The remaining three grandparents are customarily involved…”
No one was upset with me. Every head was turned in the same direction I was looking. My eyes skipped across the backs of their heads to the dark exit.
The first thing I saw was Jamie’s slight figure, clinging to someone’s arm. Someone so dirty, head to toe, that he almost blended right in with the cave wall. Someone too tall to be Jeb, and anyway, there was Jeb just behind Jamie’s shoulder. Even from this distance, I could see that Jeb’s eyes were narrowed and his nose wrinkled, as if he were anxious-a rare emotion for Jeb. Just as I could see that Jamie’s face was bright with sheer joy.
“Here we go,” Ian muttered beside me, his voice barely audible above the crackle of the flames.
The dirty man Jamie was still clinging to took a step forward. One of his hands rose slowly, like an involuntary reflex, and curled into a fist.
From the dirty figure came Jared’s voice-flat, perfectly devoid of any inflection. “What is the meaning of this, Jeb?”
My throat closed. I tried to swallow and found the way blocked. I tried to breathe and was not successful. My heart drummed unevenly.
Jared! Melanie’s exultant voice was loud, a silent shriek of elation. She burst into radiant life inside my head. Jared is home!
“Wanda is teaching us all about the universe,” Jamie babbled eagerly, somehow not catching on to Jared’s fury-he was too excited to pay attention, maybe.
“Wanda?” Jared repeated in a low voice that was almost a snarl.
There were more dirty figures in the hall behind him. I only noticed them when they echoed his snarl with an outraged muttering.
A blond head rose from the frozen audience. Paige lurched to her feet. “Andy!” she cried, and stumbled through the figures seated around her. One of the dirty men stepped around Jared and caught her as she nearly fell over Wes. “Oh, Andy!” she sobbed, the tone of her voice reminding me of Melanie’s.
Paige’s outburst changed the atmosphere momentarily. The silent crowd began to murmur, most of them rising to their feet. The sound was one of welcome now, as the majority went to greet the returned travelers. I tried to read the strange expressions on their faces as they forced grins onto their lips and peeked furtively back at me. I realized after a long, slow second-time seemed to be congealing around me, freezing me into place-that the expression I wondered at was guilt.
“It’s going to be okay, Wanda,” Ian murmured under his breath.