“I’m trying to help,” Gretchen said.
I sighed. “I know, Gretchen. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to bite your head off. I’m just getting tired of having my life be about other people’s choices for me.”
“This makes you different than any of the rest of us how, exactly?” Gretchen asked.
“My point,” I said. “I’m a perfectly normal girl. Thank you for finally noticing.”
“Perfectly normal,” Gretchen agreed. “Except for being Queen of the Obin.”
“Hate you,” I said.
Gretchen grinned.
“Miss Trujillo said that you wanted to see us,” Hickory said. Dickory and Gretchen, who had gotten the two Obin for me, stood to its side. We were standing on the hill where my bodyguards had attacked me a few days earlier.
“Before I say anything else, you should know I am still incredibly angry at you,” I said. “I don’t know that I will ever forgive you for attacking me, even if I understand why you did it, and why you thought you had to. I want to make sure you know that. And I want to make sure you feel it.” I pointed to Hickory’s consciousness collar, secure around its neck.
“We feel it,” Hickory said, its voice quivering. “We feel it enough that we debated whether we could turn our consciousness back on. The memory is almost too painful to bear.”
I nodded. I wanted to say good, but I knew it was the wrong thing to say, and that I would regret saying it. Didn’t mean I couldn’t think it, though, for the moment, anyway.
“I’m not going to ask you to apologize,” I said. “I know you won’t. But I want your word you will never do something like that again,” I said.
“You have our word,” Hickory said.
“Thank you,” I said. I didn’t expect they would do something like that again. That sort of thing works once if it works at all. But that wasn’t the point. What I wanted was to feel like I could trust the two of them again. I wasn’t there yet.
“Will you train?” Hickory asked.
“Yes,” I said. “But I have two conditions.” Hickory waited. “The first is that Gretchen trains with me.”
“We had not prepared to train anyone other than you,” Hickory said.
“I don’t care,” I said. “Gretchen is my best friend. I’m not going to learn how to save myself and not share that with her. And besides, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the two of you aren’t exactly human shaped. I think it will help to practice with another human as well as with you. But this is nonnegotiable. If you won’t train Gretchen, I won’t train. This is my choice. This is my condition.”
Hickory turned to Gretchen. “Will you train?”
“Only if Zo? does,” she said. “She’s my best friend, after all.”
Hickory looked over to me. “She has your sense of humor,” it said.
“I hadn’t noticed,” I said.
Hickory turned back to Gretchen. “It will be very difficult,” it said.
“I know,” Gretchen said. “Count me in anyway.”
“What is the other condition?” Hickory asked me.
“I’m doing this for the two of you,” I said. “This learning to fight. I don’t want it for myself. I don’t think I need it. But you think I need it, and you’ve never asked me to do something you didn’t know was important. So I’ll do it. But now you have to do something for me. Something I want.”
“What is it that you want?” Hickory asked.
“I want you to learn how to sing,” I said, and gestured to Gretchen. “You teach us to fight, we teach you to sing. For the hootenannies.”
“Sing,” Hickory said.
“Yes, sing,” I said. “People are still frightened of the two of you. And no offense, but you’re not brimming with personality. But if we can get the four of us to do a song or two at the hootenannies, it could go a long way to making people comfortable with you.”
“We have never sung,” Hickory said.
“Well, you never wrote stories before either,” I said. “And you wrote one of those. It’s just like that. Except with singing. And then people wouldn’t wonder why Gretchen and I are off with the two of you. Come on, Hickory, it’ll be fun.”
Hickory looked doubtful, and a funny thought came to me: Maybe Hickory is shy. Which seemed almost ridiculous; someone about to teach another person sixteen different ways to kill getting stage fright singing.
“I would like to sing,” Dickory said. We all turned to Dickory in amazement.
“It speaks!” Gretchen said.
Hickory clicked something to Dickory in their native tongue; Dickory clicked back. Hickory responded, and Dickory replied, it seemed a bit forcefully. And then, God help me, Hickory actually sighed.
“We will sing,” Hickory said.
“Excellent,” I said.
“We will begin training tomorrow,” Hickory said.
“Okay,” I said. “But let’s start singing practice today. Now.”
“Now?” Hickory said.
“Sure,” I said. “We’re all here. And Gretchen and I have just the song for you.”
FIFTEEN
The next several months were very tiring.