He has two bits in his palm: a ground-up piece of green glass, and what might have once been a small coin.
O’Malley gestures at Barkah with the coin. “This is you.” He then gestures to me with the piece of glass. “And this is you.”
He places coin and glass next to each other in the center of the clearing, right between the two opposing armies.
“The two of you, together,” he says. “Show both armies it’s possible for us to get along. If our people want to fight, they have to go through you, Em. If Barkah’s people want to fight, they have to go through him.”
I imagine the lines of Springers with their muskets and knives and axes. O’Malley is asking me to stand in the middle of that clearing, face them down as they rush forward, eager to kill us and take their planet back.
I look at Barkah. He’s staring at the map. I wonder if he’s imagining being next to me in that clearing, staring at mechanical monsters pounding toward him, the same machines that killed his sibling, that drove people underground.
Will he be brave enough to stand there?
Will I?
Do we even have a choice?
The sun will rise in a few hours. I could go back to the shuttle, but I already tried talking my people out of war—I failed. Aramovsky is just too powerful. And I get the strong feeling that if Barkah could have stopped this on his own, he already would have.
O’Malley slowly reaches for his belt. I see Rekis and Tohdohbak stiffen, but O’Malley doesn’t draw the knife—he removes the entire sheath, blade still inside. He sets it in front of Barkah. O’Malley raises both hands, palms up, takes a step back.
“Peace,” he says. “Peace.”
It is an impossibly simple association: hands empty, a show of not having weapons. The knife is dangerous; O’Malley could have used it to attack, but he makes a point of giving it to the being that could be his enemy, that could use it against him.
O’Malley is unarmed. Defenseless.
Barkah stares at the sheathed knife. He pulls the hatchet from his belt, the one he used to hack the long-necked monster to bits. He offers it to O’Malley, handle-first.
The combined gestures of trust are unmistakable.
O’Malley takes the hatchet. He bows.
“Thank you,” he says.
Barkah, the Springer that might be a prince, picks up O’Malley’s sheathed knife and slides it into his belt. That’s not what O’Malley intended, I don’t think, but maybe an exchange of weapons means something to the Springers.
Barkah picks up the piece of glass and the coin. He makes a fist around them, turns his body to face me square. There is something ritualistic about the motion, like he wants to make sure I understand how serious he is.
“Peace,” he says. “Hem, peace.”
Lahfah lets out a singing sound that makes me jump. Barkah and the other two Springers join in. I look to O’Malley. Wide-eyed, he shrugs.
The singing stops. Each of the Springers reaches into its bag and comes out with different kinds of food: a long vegetable that looks like a white carrot; a handful of berries in a pocket of cloth; a chunk of dried meat; and something that makes me think back to the warehouse and Farrar’s poisoning—alien culture or not, there’s no mistaking the round, bumpy form of a homemade cookie.
I’d pushed my hunger down, forced it to hide away, somehow. Now it rears its head, undeniable and overwhelming.
The Springers tear their bits of food in half, offer the halves to us. I wind up with dried meat and half a cookie; O’Malley holds some berries and part of the carrot.
“This is ceremonial,” he says. “Sharing food, and the singing. It must be part of whatever they think the weapon exchange means.”
I sniff the cookie. The scent sends my hunger soaring.
“Not eating might insult them,” O’Malley says. “But we don’t know if this stuff is poisonous.”
I sniff the cookie again, smell a trace of that purple fruit.
“Only one way to find out,” I say.
I pop the cookie into my mouth. Why not start with dessert? Sure enough, it is sweet—crumbly and chewy at the same time. There is a funny taste to it, but overall it’s delicious. Maybe anything would be delicious after two days without eating.
“Oh well,” O’Malley says. “If they can’t give us safe food, we’re going to starve anyway.”
He takes a big bite of the carrot. He chews once, twice, then his eyes close in pleasure.
“So good,” he says. “Actual, real food.”
I bite into the meat. It’s so spicy it burns my tongue a little, but I don’t care. I eat it all.
The Springers eat, too, big mouths taking surprisingly dainty bites. They are giving O’Malley and me funny looks. Maybe the way we eat is disgusting to them. I glance at O’Malley—he’s smiling, chewing with his mouth open. Berry juice dribbles down his chin.
Well, he’s disgusting, anyway.
I think about Farrar’s horrible experience. If this food does to me what that food did to him, it won’t take long. I close my eyes, wait for the choking to begin.
It doesn’t.