“We need what we have.”
She exhaled softly. “Tessa may not be able to help. She puts herself in danger by doing so.”
“I know that.”
“When do you see her again?”
“Tomorrow night. I’ll ask, see what she can do.”
She nodded, studying his young face, thinking he was growing up, that his features were changed even from just six months ago. “We will help Persia even if Tessa can’t,” she said. “She’s only eleven.”
Hawk smiled suddenly, a wry twist of his mouth that reflected his amusement with what she had just said. “As opposed to fourteen or sixteen or eighteen, which is so much older?”
She smiled back. “You know what I mean.”
“I know you make good apple pie.”
“How many other apple pies have you tried besides mine?”
“Zero.” He paused. “Can we have our story now?”
She put away the dishes and rolled her wheelchair into the common room.
Her appearance from the kitchen was their signal that story time was about to begin. The talking stopped at once, and everyone quickly gathered around. For all of them, it was the best time of the day, a chance to experience a magic ride to another place and time, to live in a world to which they had never been and someday secretly hoped to go. Each night, Owl told them a story of this world, inventing and reinventing its history and its lore.
Sometimes she read from books, too. But she didn’t have many of those, and the children liked her made-up stories better anyway.
She leaned back in the wheelchair and looked from face to face, seeing herself in their eyes, a young woman just a little older in years, but infinitely older in experience and wisdom, with brown hair and eyes and ordinary features, not very pretty, but smart and capable and genuinely fond of them.
That they cared for her as much as they did never ceased to amaze her. When she thought of it, after her years alone in the compound, she wanted to cry.
“Tell us about the snakes and the frogs and the plague that the boy visited on the evil King and his soldiers,” Panther suggested, leaning forward, black eyes intense.
“No, tell us about the giant and the boy and how the boy killed the giant!” Chalk said.
Sparrow waved her hands for attention. “I want to hear about the girl who found the boy on the river and hid him from the evil King.”
They were all variations on the stories she had been told as a child, stories that she remembered imperfectly and embellished to demonstrate the life lessons she thought they should know. Her parents had told her these stories, reading them from a book that had long since disappeared. She thought she might find the book again one day, but so far she hadn’t.
Owl put a finger to her lips. “I will tell you a different story tonight, a new one. I will tell you the story of how the boy saved the children from the evil King and his soldiers and led them to the Promised Land.”
She had been saving this one, because it was the resolution of so many of the others involving the boy and the evil King. But something made her want to tell it tonight. Perhaps it was the way she Was feeling. Perhaps it was simply that she had kept it to herself long enough. The stories lent strength and promise to their lives when everything around them was so bleak. The gloom weighed heavily on her this night. Persia’s sickness and the dead Lizard were just today’s darkness; there would be a fresh darkness tomorrow. The stories brought light into that darkness. The stories gave them hope.
She could feel the children edge closer to her as she prepared to speak, could sense the anticipation as they waited. She loved this moment. This was when she felt closest to them, when they were connected to her by their love of words and the stories made from them. The connection was visceral and alive and empowering.
“The evil King had forbidden the boy and his children from leaving their homes for many years,” she began, “even after he had suffered over and over again for his stubbornness. No one could reason with him, even after the snakes and the frogs and the deaths of all the firstborn of his people. But one day the King awoke and decided he had endured enough punishment for his refusal and ordered the boy and his children to leave forever and not return. Why should he refuse them permission? What did he hope to accomplish? If they wanted to leave, then they should be allowed to do so. His Kingdom would be better off once they were gone.”
“Took him long enough to catch on,” Panther declared.