“You ask more questions that you could find answers to yourself.”
I stay silent this time. The tunnel in my mind that had opened when I found her name has not closed: I look at it again, find the answers floating there. Not words this time but impressions. Feelings. Her gentleness emanates from the tunnel’s mouth, and I can read its colors and shadows the way I would text. I feel lost, like I’m floating in the vast space of the galaxy.
“What is happening to me?” I say softly. One tear slips from my eye and I swipe at it hastily before it leads to more.
“You are listening,” Rasimbukar says. The smooth woodenness of her voice is quieter now, her spots arranged along the outside of her eyes. Their position reminds me of my mother, when she’s giving me “the look.”
“To what?” I whisper.
“To Faloiv.”
I stare at her, trying to learn something else from her wide-set eyes. They’re slanting and dark, and although I can’t distinguish an iris or a pupil, there are layers and shades of black so unfathomable it’s like looking into deep space. She stares back, and I find myself watching the spots on her face as well, waiting for them to move, to tell me anything about what she might be thinking or feeling. But something else is moving instead, on her head. What I thought was a head wrap is shifting, rising, straightening. I hold my breath. Is this an attack? I know, somehow, that she doesn’t mean me harm, but her strangeness leaves me on guard. Any bit of moisture that remains on my tongue evaporates as the material on her head rises, separates into two, and fans out to either side.
Ears. What I thought was a head wrap is actually two large, curving ears that until now have lain flat, backward over the crown of her head, hanging down loose like braids from her neck. They are brown like her, but thin and membraneous: the late-day sun shines through them, giving them a glowing quality. She was tall before, but the large ears give her another six inches and a fearsome quality as well.
“Do you . . . do you hear something?” I ask, trying to be polite. I try not to stare at the ears, but they demand attention.
The spots on her forehead seem to vibrate, rising and spreading. She shows her teeth.
“No,” Rasimbukar says. “I am hot, and my bones are harvesting energy.”
“Your bones,” I say, tilting my head. I can’t make my brain understand what she means. Instead I focus on her ears. “Your ears . . . they keep you cool? Like the maigno?”
“Yes,” she says. The spots settle into the wide pattern. It’s like a smile, I decide. A gentle smile. “Although their hearing abilities have lessened some through generations. We hear in other ways. The way you are beginning to,” she adds.
It’s as if there are pieces of a puzzle floating around in my head, just out of my grasp. Some of them have connected to form something I’m starting to see, but I can’t figure out the shape of it.
“But . . . but why?” I ask.
“That is a question for your mother.”
“My mother?”
“Yes. Now”—the spots settle low over her eyes in an even line—“you need to drink.”
Rasimbukar turns and disappears inside another rhohedron blossom. I almost follow her but decide that if she wanted me to, she would have said so. I stand there alone in the sun. I wonder if Dr. Espada and the finders are looking for me or if they’ve all given up, returned to the compound, and left me to my fate in the jungle the way they did my grandmother years ago.
Rasimbukar emerges from the red petals again, her skin a mottled pattern of brown and red as the coloring from the rhohedron fades.
“Does your skin do that with other colors too?” I ask.
“Yes,” she says. “Now drink.”
She holds a long, thin object above me. It’s red too, with a bright yellow bulb at one end, dangling near my face. A stamen from inside the blossom.
“Are you ready?” she says.
“Sure,” I shrug, my eyes half-closed.
She gently pulls off the yellow bulb of the stamen and liquid immediately flows forth. It pours first onto my face: in my state of exhaustion and dehydration I haven’t quite realized that the plant she’s brought to me is what I’m supposed to be drinking. But when some of it gets onto my lips, soaking pleasantly into the thirsty skin, I open my mouth. The liquid is almost as thin as water but with an underlying vegetable taste, tinged with soil. It’s not pleasant, but I drink it greedily. It’s different from water in more ways than texture: as I drink, it courses through my body. With every swallow, my throat seems to light up. I can almost feel it flowing into my stomach and then finding its way into my bloodstream, filling me with its red energy.
The stamen is empty and Rasimbukar casts it off into the tall grasses surrounding us.
“I feel . . .” I can’t finish the sentence. I’m awake now, all my limpness gone. But I don’t have a word for this. My body is aglow with liquid light.
“You are not thirsty anymore,” Rasimbukar says.
“No.” But I know wasn’t asking. She brought out a few of the stamens, a small bouquet, and breaks a bulb off another. She drinks it easily in only a few swallows. When she finishes, the spots on her forehead spread into the wide pattern.
“You are healthy,” she says, turning to toss the second stamen into the grass too. When she turns back to look at me, the wide-set starry eyes find mine and hold them in a strong gaze. “And now you will do something for me.”
I’m not sure what I can do for her. The jungle of Faloiv—and whatever lies beyond—is her world. What can I do for her here?
“I can try,” I answer.
Looking her in the eyes, the tunnel in my mind widens quickly, almost painfully. It makes me catch my breath. For all her gentleness, now I feel her terror and, suddenly, her anger, spiking and red. Then out of the mouth of the tunnel rises a flashing succession of images: the jungle, dark, night, Rasimbukar crouching in the underbrush alone, and a group of humans—Manx’s bright white curls—dragging a prone figure through the trees. Long-limbed. Brown. Spots covering his back, arms, and neck. It’s the spotted man. Disappearing down the red dirt path toward the Mammalian Compound. Rasimbukar’s pain echoes through my body, reverberating in my chest. She says nothing, her bottomless eyes tell me nothing, but I feel it, and fight to break away from the images before I speak.
“Your father,” I say, knowing. She has told me without words. I can’t quite shake off the secondhand fear—it clings to me like smoke.
“Yes,” she says.
“We took him.”
“Yes. He was abducted at the start of a one-moon journey, a voyage he takes regularly to survey the planet’s ecosystems. When he does not return, my people will begin to look for him. I have told no one what I have seen. Only you.”
“Me? B-but,” I stammer. “But . . . why?”
The spots on her forehead cluster tightly together.