Page 98 of Strange Lights

Calvin drags Luca to his feet, backs away from me and toward where Meredith and Zara cling to each other and where Eldi lies, sheltered low on the ground at the base of the cages. Where Orion has placed himself between the children and Adele, between the children he’s done so much to protect and the latest threat.

“Ma,” Eldi says, darting toward me, only to be stopped by Orion.

“Eldi, don’t,” I say, my voice cracking.

“You wouldn’t call her Ma if you knew what she was,” jeers Adele.

“We’re well aware that Reggie is your clone,” Luca says. “Most of us are too familiar with being your little science experiments.”

“It doesn’t change anything about who Reggie is,” Calvin says fiercely.

My stomach churns. I want to laugh, cry, throw up.

“Tell them!” I say, whirling toward Adele.

“Why bother?” She gestures at Orion, holding Eldi. “Their kind has never deigned to listen.”

“Tell them! They all deserve to know. Not just Eldi and Orion. Zara and Meredith. Luca. Calvin. They all deserve to know every single thing you’ve told me. Why you hate not just the Beasts but the Chupacabras too.”

“Who are you?” Orion says, face pale with dread.

“You don’t recognize what I am yet?” Adele stares at him, teeth bared, muscles tensed as if she could leap at him at any moment. “Was my life really that insignificant to you?”

“Who are you?” Orion repeats, his voice barely a whisper.

“I was born on a planet far away in a body far different from this one. A planet you, boy, are very familiar with.”

42

Origin

A thrum of shock ripples through the air at Adele’s words.

“When the Beasts came, when your kind left the planet and all the creatures on it to rot and ruin in the Beasts’ clutches, you never stopped to consider all those you left behind. Your species never deigned to consider the rest of us, me and my kind.”

It doesn’t hurt any less the second time around. Adele paces as she speaks. Calm as if she’s told this story a thousand times, although I know she’s only once spoken it aloud.

“The Chupacabras knew of our species but never considered us as advanced as they were. When the Helpers came from the sky, they, too, ignored us, discounted what we had to offer.”

“Who were you?” Orion asks.

“My species was interconnected. Individual organisms, distinct and unique from each other, yet far more interconnected than either Chupacabras or humans would understand. Like aspen, like fungi, connected by roots and mycelium. We were small and lived our lives unobtrusively.”

Me. She describes the life I was made for. Tethers outstretched, living to appreciate merely existing.

“But we had two things the other races didn’t. Magic. And each other.”

For a moment, Orion looks at her with pure wonder at discovering he’s not alone here. And my heart breaks anew at how thoroughly she’s going to destroy that.

“My name? I have no name to give you. It was untranslatable; it was a state of being, shared and ever-changing and understood only by those of us who were part of it. Thoughts, history, decisions were all made as one. A hive mind, a collective consciousness, a family stronger than any other. It made us adept at tethering. We could perform magic on a scale you have never dreamed of on this planet.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Zara’s head swivel toward me. We know a little of this interconnectedness, this codependency.

“And we were overlooked. We were peaceful, but we were the guardians of the planet. The oldest race, older by far than the Chupacabras, perhaps older than the Helpers. Certainly, we were there on that planet first. The prosperity the Chupacabras and the Helpers experienced on my home planet was due largely to the work and magic my family put into the planet. We were like the bees. You benefited from the sweetness of our hard work, but you’d swat us away without a thought.”

Adele looks skyward, toward a home lost long ago. She frowns at the Mothership that hovers in the distance.

“When the Beasts came, we fought back. We tried to save as many of you as we could. But our numbers dwindled quickly. Barely noticed by any of you, though we tried to shield you with our magic, tried to hide you, convince you to run. You never listened to our warnings, never heeded our advice on the rare occasion you managed to hear it. We were never even noticed by the Beasts unless it was to shake off our corpses from the bottom of their feet like messily squashed bugs.”