Page 69 of Butterfly Effects

“Brother,” she said.

“I have two of those.”

“Do they ever get less annoying?”

“I don’t really know. Drew’s a lot older than I am. He was already basically an adult by the time we met, and most of the annoying was from me to him, rather than the other way around. Isaac is still really young, and he’s not annoying at all. Watching him learn how the world works is just … it’s amazing. I love him so much.”

Watching his relationship with Charlotte develop was also fascinating, although I worried sometimes about what would happen if we ever needed to separate them. I understood what it was like to be a young telepath in a world that didn’t think people like you existed; the anxiety, the otherness, the fear. But Isaac had Lottie to lean on, and she anchored and evened him out in a way I could only envy.

Artie had been that for me, as much as he could be. Falling in love with him hadn’t been part of the plan, and had only made everything more difficult, but I couldn’t deny that sometimes I missed how soothing his mind had been, how comforting it had been to make contact with someone whose thoughts I understood from the bottom to the top.

Ikko looked up at me as I spoke, listening attentively. “Is that why you want to go home so badly?” she asked when I was done. “To get back to your brothers?”

“That’s part of it,” I said. “They don’t have any idea where I am. None of my family does. Isaac’s a wasp like me, and so is our mother, but the rest of my family … we’re all different species, and they’ll have no way of following me here.”

“That must be really scary.”

“It’s about the most scary thing I’ve ever thought of, and I’ve seen and done some really scary stuff,” I said. “I want to go home. I want my family.”

“I would, too, if someone took me away from here,” said Ikko. She let go of my hand, gesturing for me to keep following her. I did, feeling her thoughts muffle themselves, like she was standing on the other side of a glassy barrier. The resistance of a full Kairos made the telepathic barriers my family had seem almost negligible. No wonder these people had been able to hide for so long.

Ikko was leading me toward a tree with a trunk that resembled a massive basket, woven from dozens of smaller trunks that had interlaced as they were growing, forming a structure full of openings that stared out on the world like unblinking eyes. Something about it sent a chill along my spine, and I stood up a little straighter, too anxious to slump. Ikko kept walking, not seeming to notice my discomfort.

“Ikko,” I said. “This Eldest Living you’re taking me to see. Who is she?”

“Her name is her explanation,” said Ikko. “She’s the very very oldest of all of us in the whole world. This isn’t the only place we have where we can be safe, but it’s probably the biggest, and the Eldest Living was here when the timing brought us to it. She doesn’t remember Caerus, but her great-great-grandmother did, and she can tell stories about the world our from happened on. She knows everything worth knowing, and she’s the nicest person ever, and she’ll know how you can get your people back, and how you can get home again from here. You can trust the Eldest Living. All of us do, and you can, too.”

We had reached the tree. She stopped outside, gesturing toward an opening in the trunk. “Go on inside,” she said. “It’ll be better if you announce yourself. That way it doesn’t look like somebody made you.”

She turned then, scampering away, back toward the village. I watched her go, feeling suddenly uncertain.

Then I turned, and stepped into the tree.

The interior of the tree was surprisingly bright, thanks to shafts of sunlight shining through the holes in the trunk. White-winged moths fluttered in the shadows between the shafts, the motion drawing my eye for a moment before I realized the center of the room was a ring of chairs made from rough-hewn wood, more humanlike than the furniture in Fetch and Carry’s home, the seats unpadded: they were just plain and hard, making them unappealing to sit on, especially when contrasted with the massive heap of soft things in the middle of the ring.

Pillows and blankets and reams of unhemmed fabric formed a virtual mountain of comforting options, and atop them sat a very old person I assumed was the Eldest Living. She was wearing a knotted shift of bright red fabric, embroidered with what looked like wasp wings around the hems. It was an interesting fashion choice, to be sure, and I paused to study her before coming any closer.

She was definitely Kairos. She could have passed for human, with her wispy white hair and pale, heavily wrinkled skin, but when I tried to brush the surface of her mind to confirm that she was who I’d come to see, I struck a shell as hard as resin wrapped around an insect that had mired itself in amber. There was no getting through that without using force, and maybe not even with using force—it was the strongest mental shield I had ever bounced off of.

“Hello,” she said, turning her face in my direction. “Are you the Sarah?”

“What?” I came closer, unable to help myself. “How do you already know my name?”

“There are people looking for you, little wasp,” she said. “They came out of the space between worlds, into the green not far from here, and my hunters brought them to see me. But they were very poor guests, and they left without allowing us to help them in any meaningful way.”

“Who were they?” I asked, almost frantically. There were only a few members of my family who could potentially travel between dimensions without my help, and I didn’t want any of them to be in danger, especially not because of me. Again.

“The Thomas Price, and the Antimony and the Sam,” said the Eldest Living. “They had a fourth, but she had been lost to the green before my hunters found them, and they worried for her safety. They said they had come to reclaim the Sarah, and the Arthur.”

So they knew Arthur was here on Johrlar? That was encouraging. I wasn’t trying to rescue him alone. “How long ago was this?”

“Oh, hours,” she said, waving a hand almost carelessly. “The suns have moved a great distance since they left me. Would you like to sit and speak with me a time?”

“I’d rather find my family, if you don’t mind.”

“I do mind, I’m afraid. The timing has brought you all before me, and the timing only serves so when the need is great. The wasps search the green for their missing prisoners. They search the green for you. If you walk away, they’ll be free to find you, and possibly to find us as well.”

I blinked. “Are you saying I have to stay here so the Johrlac don’t learn where your village is? I thought you had protections in place to stop that sort of thing from happening. Ikko said that you put up barriers and distractions and other ways to warn the community before anything could happen.”