“Do what?”
“Think something at her!”
“At her?”
“Yes, at. Think something that you want her to hear.”
“Um . . . okay.”
He looks awkward and then settles his eyes on me and stares hard, his eyebrows raising slightly. I resist the strong urge to laugh.
“Anything?” Alma says, looking at me for confirmation.
“No. Nothing. All clear.”
“Okay.” She nods, and walks toward the bridge, towing me along. “Next step.”
We stop in the middle of the bridge.
“Now.” She pulls me to the rail and leans on it with her elbows. “Look down.”
“At the water?”
“At what’s in the water.”
I gaze down at the flowing plants, the round red rocks that line the bottom of the streambed, the lazy ripples of the water flowing toward the other side of the dome. At first I’m not sure what Alma is asking me to look for, but a moment later I understand. The buzzing rises slowly, remaining soft, but only after a small school of myn swim into view from under the bridge. The buzz is barely noticeable, but it’s there.
“I hear it,” I whisper.
Alma squeezes my arm.
“Okay, okay. Now focus. What do you hear? What do you feel? Are they . . . saying anything?”
It’s hard to focus on the feeling: the source of it is like a fish itself, small and slippery. But I squeeze a fist in my mind, forcing myself to focus. And among it all I find a feeling, not words, but a shapeless feeling: a need to stay near the bodies swimming around me, a wariness of the shadows looming above me, a darkness over the water before me, which I veer to avoid. The water seems to make calm second nature, but underneath it all, alert vigilance, an ever-present fear so natural it feels like breath.
But then there’s a flurry of . . . something. The fish all scatter, the line I was listening on rapidly shut off: it’s as if the long tunnel through which I could feel the myn’s consciousness was abruptly snapped shut. In the water, the myn have disappeared, hidden away among rocks and plants. I look away and find Alma’s eyes upon me, bright and eager.
“Well?” she says.
“They shut me out, I think. I could feel some of what they were feeling, but then it was like they realized I could hear them and closed the door.”
“Interesting,” Alma says.
“Well of course they did,” says Rondo, who’s been watching me intently. “Just because animals can communicate telepathically doesn’t change the predator-prey relationship. Maybe they think you’re a predator. This kind of mental connection between species doesn’t mean animals are suddenly friends. It’s just another kind of listening.”
“But how am I doing it? And why now?” I feel more exasperation than awe. “Did the philax do something to my brain? Or . . . ?”
“I don’t know,” Alma says, shaking her head. “We need to learn more.”
“Yes, we do,” Rondo says, pushing off from the bridge rail abruptly. “And as soon as possible.”
“He’s right,” Alma says.
“I’m going to go do some digging,” Rondo says. He goes to walk away, but it’s as if he too can hear my thoughts, how much I want him near me. He reaches for my hand and holds it, considering my palm as if all the answers we need are right there.
“And by that you mean hacking,” Alma says.
He rolls his eyes, letting go of my hand finger by finger.
“Yeah. You two find out what you can from Octavia’s parents. They’ll have us back in the Zoo in the next day or two now that Octavia is out of bed, and we need to have a plan before we go back in.”
“What should I ask my mom?” I call after him before he gets too far away.
He turns and walks backward for a few steps, spreading his arms wide with an irresistible smile.
“I’d start with figuring out what happened to that beautiful brain of yours.”
CHAPTER 20
My father is home when Alma and I return to my ’wam. He must have just arrived, because he’s standing in the hallway outside my room. At the sound of the front door sighing open, he turns toward us quickly, looking both relieved and annoyed.
“Octavia,” he says, taking a few steps forward before stopping. His face carries an expression I haven’t seen in a long time. Softness.
“Sir.”
“Where did you go? I thought you were still sleeping and then I came home . . .”
“I was just getting some air. I woke up feeling much better and Alma helped me walk around. We didn’t go far.”
“I see,” he says. He moves into the kitchen, going to the water decontamination unit and flipping it on. “You’ll need to drink a lot of water.”
He glances down at my arm. “You removed your intravenous without issue, I see.” He’s less worried now, the softness leaking out of him. He has questions queuing on his tongue.
I nod apologetically about the intravenous. It’s a strange feeling, knowing that to animals on Faloiv—and the Faloii too—my brain is an open book, but to N’Terrans, people like Alma and my father, I’m as opaque as a stone.
“You’re feeling better?” he says. The light on the water decon unit has turned a soft green, indicating that it’s ready to provide clean water. My father goes to it with a cup from one of the wall compartments and the clear liquid gushes out. It reminds me of the rhohedron nectar, Rasimbukar holding the plant over my wilting face. If I feel better now, it’s because of her.
“Yes,” I say. “But really I was fine. Just thirsty.”
“Fine? I’m impressed,” he says, turning to me with his eyebrows raised. He sips from the water before he goes on. I thought the cup was for me. “Out in the jungle for almost seven hours and you come back without a scratch on you. Your vitals were impressive too.”
“How so?” Alma asks.
“She should have died,” my father says bluntly, watching me. I stare back. “Seven hours without water on Faloiv, in the jungle no less. How she escaped the dirixi is beyond me. She didn’t have her water canteen when she was found outside the compound, but she must have been drinking steadily before then, because she was remarkably hydrated for the period of time she was missing.”
The fatherly concern from a moment ago has all but disappeared.
“I climbed another tree,” I lie. “I never really saw the dirixi, though, just heard it.”
The second part is true, at least.
“I saw it,” Alma says. “Octavia had a good start on it when it went by our tree.”
We all pause. If I could get a glimpse into each of their thoughts, I think I would see Jaquot. His name is a scar.
“I hid in the tree for hours,” I continue. “Until the sun started to get lower. I didn’t want to call for Dr. Espada and the others in case the dirixi came back. I had an idea of where the road was, so I just walked until I found it.”