But in the tired, calm quiet that has settled in on this boat, as we sail our way across the sea, the realizations of the day keep flooding in, crashing and re-crashing like a recycled wave. My sister, my sister, is a plant person. Or, more specifically: My sister is a plant. Who looks like a person. Who came out of a pod. That rose up out of the earth in a trembling field of ice. And then I think about it some more, and then I look at Callie, still the sweet-seeming and sometimes-quiet, sometimes-giddy girl I grew up with, and I try to feel startled and shocked and like the world as I know it has been changed and ruined forever, but then I kind of have to laugh at myself, because of course she’s a plant person! And I’m the dummy who didn’t see it before! She’s always had a thing for being close to the ground, has always needed to sleep on the floor, sit on the floor, touch the ground and the soil. And when she walks, it’s like she needs to be as near to the ground as possible. She needs to be able to touch it, if she has to. This deliberate, low-armed, shifting gait.
And it’s even right there in the official ARO literature! All AROs are required to be near to and have access to a garden or greenhouse. Required! And she loves the sun, loves rainstorms and showers and sprinklers and Super Soaker fights, and she hates taking baths, just refuses to do it. And her crazy diet, and her naps by the window, and her sluggishness during spans when the sun hides behind the clouds. And the way she practically glows when she’s healthy and happy, but when she’s sad or going through a rough time where we’re always back and forth between home and the hospital, she looks so miserable, so physically wilted and worn, that I feel like I’d do anything—something dangerous, violent, unthinkable—just to be able to climb inside her mind and ask her what’s wrong in a language she understands.
My sister is a plant person. Who was stolen from the only place on earth where she knew how to belong. By my father, a scientist, who—I hope—thought he was doing her a favor by taking her away from the weird, silent winds and the snow-cradling trees and the rocky hills and cliffs and putting her in the suburbs, in a house that was warm and dry and safe, with cable TV and microwave ovens and telephones to connect her to anyone in the world except the only ones she wants.
And then I remember that . . . guy. That Iceling who looked like their leader, who was there to greet our Icelings in the Arctic, who disappeared underground, who might have survived the genocide. Where the hell has he been these past sixteen years? There was no way for me to tell how old he is or what kind of Iceling he is, but whether he’s very old and was around when my dad was there or was one of the babies in Callie’s . . . crop who somehow managed to hide and cling to the Arctic when the others were taken, why the hell didn’t he do anything? Because whether he was already there when Callie was born or was born at the same time as Callie, it means the same thing: Someone survived. And if he couldn’t find a way to rescue Callie and the others earlier, then why did he let it happen again? Why did he allow them to die? Why wasn’t he prepared?
But Callie is the plant person, not me, which has been the problem all along and which is the reason why it’s stupid for me to be asking these questions, because there’s no way for me to know. Callie might know. There’s no telling all the things she knows that I can’t know because of my human limitations, because I am limited to merely five out of the probably infinite number of senses there are in this universe.
But there’s one thought during this exhausting and trauma-fueled loop I’m on that I keep coming back to, the one that keeps rearing around and triggering me back to the start all over again. And that thought is represented by one stark, horrifying image, the same image I would use in the encyclopedia entry for this completely surreal experience: the pods. The crumbling, shriveled-up pods that were dead before the government could kill them. If that Iceling, the leader, the one who was already there . . . if he survived . . . if he had at least sixteen years to plan for the next trembling field, the next gen eration of pod people . . . then why would he mess it up so badly? Why wouldn’t he do everything to make sure the island—the field, at the very least—was protected? Bulletproof. That the island was uninhabitable by anyone who was not born from a pod?
But more importantly, why were the pods empty? Why were they already dead?
Were they dead on purpose? Was that the whole point? Were they meant to draw the military here, draw its fire? Was the island supposed to burn? And if the answer to any of these questions is yes, then who was in on it? Was Callie? Her brothers and sisters? Or was it just that one Iceling, the one who disappeared into the ground?