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“Then what’s the right question?”

“Who.”

Questions begin again, overlapping this time, but I no longer try to answer the loudest voice. I choose which one gets an answer.

“Did Rachel make you?”

“No.”

“Where did you come from?”

“I woke here.”

“Are there more like you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you dangerous?”

“I split wood with an axe. That doesn’t make the axe story true.”

Someone laughs. I hadn’t meant it to be funny.

Another voice asks, “Do you live with Rachel?”

“Yes.”

“Does she own you?”

The question feels different now than it did this morning.

Jose told me the law may not know what I am.

I do.

“No.”

The reporter starts another question, but I continue.

“I belong to myself.”

Rachel takes a sharp breath beside me. I look at her. Her eyes are wet. I know enough not to ask.

Mara raises her microphone slightly. “Do you want people coming to this house to see you?”

“No.”

“Do you want photographs taken?”

“If you ask first.”

“Are you afraid?”

I think about the drones, the cameras, Jose explaining samples and ownership, and all the places beyond Hollis Springs I have never seen.

“Yes.”

A few reporters go quiet. Others don’t.