“They look more like huge dragonflies than fish, right, Wanda?” Jamie almost always asked for corroboration, though he never waited for my answer. “They’re all leathery, though, with three, four, or five sets of wings, depending on how old they are, right? So they kind of fly through the water—it’s lighter than water here, less dense. They have five, seven, or nine legs, depending on which gender they are, right, Wanda? They have three different genders. They have really long hands with tough, strong fingers that can build all kinds of things. They make cities under the water out of hard plants that grow there, kind of like trees but not really. They aren’t as far along as we are, right, Wanda? Because they’ve never made a spaceship or, like, telephones for communication. Humans were more advanced.”
Trudy pulled out the tray of baked rolls, and I bent to shove the next tray of risen dough into the hot, smoking hole. It took a little jostling and balancing to get it in just right.
As I sweated in front of the fire, I heard some kind of commotion outside the kitchen, echoing down the hall from somewhere else in the caves. It was hard, with all the random sound reverberations and strange acoustics, to judge distances here.
“Hey!” Jamie shouted behind me, and I turned just in time to see the back of his head as he sprinted out the door.
I straightened out of my crouch and took a step after him, my instinct to follow.
“Wait,” Ian said. “He’ll be back. Tell us more about the Dolphins.”
Ian was sitting on the counter beside the oven—a hot seat that I wouldn’t have chosen—which made him close enough to reach out and touch my wrist. My arm flinched away from the unexpected contact, but I stayed where I was.
“What’s going on out there?” I asked. I could still hear some kind of jabbering—I thought I could hear Jamie’s excited voice in the mix.
Ian shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe Jeb…” He shrugged again, as if he wasn’t interested enough to bother with figuring it out. Nonchalant, but there was a tension in his eyes I didn’t understand.
I was sure I would find out soon enough, so I shrugged, too, and started explaining the incredibly complex familial relationships of the Dolphins while I helped Trudy stack the warm bread in plastic containers.
“Six of the nine… grandparents, so to speak, traditionally stay with the larvae through their first stage of development while the three parents work with their six grandparents on a new wing of the family dwelling for the young to inhabit when they are mobile,” I was explaining, my eyes on the rolls in my hands rather than my audience, as usual, when I heard the gasp from the back of the room. I continued with my next sentence automatically as I scanned the crowd to see who I’d upset. “The remaining three grandparents are customarily involved…”
No one was upset with me. Every head was turned in the same direction I was looking. My eyes skipped across the backs of their heads to the dark exit.
The first thing I saw was Jamie’s slight figure, clinging to someone’s arm. Someone so dirty, head to toe, that he almost blended right in with the cave wall. Someone too tall to be Jeb, and anyway, there was Jeb just behind Jamie’s shoulder. Even from this distance, I could see that Jeb’s eyes were narrowed and his nose wrinkled, as if he were anxious—a rare emotion for Jeb. Just as I could see that Jamie’s face was bright with sheer joy.
“Here we go,” Ian muttered beside me, his voice barely audible above the crackle of the flames.
The dirty man Jamie was still clinging to took a step forward. One of his hands rose slowly, like an involuntary reflex, and curled into a fist.
From the dirty figure came Jared’s voice—flat, perfectly devoid of any inflection. “What is the meaning of this, Jeb?”
My throat closed. I tried to swallow and found the way blocked. I tried to breathe and was not successful. My heart drummed unevenly.
Jared! Melanie’s exultant voice was loud, a silent shriek of elation. She burst into radiant life inside my head. Jared is home!
“Wanda is teaching us all about the universe,” Jamie babbled eagerly, somehow not catching on to Jared’s fury—he was too excited to pay attention, maybe.
“Wanda?” Jared repeated in a low voice that was almost a snarl.
There were more dirty figures in the hall behind him. I only noticed them when they echoed his snarl with an outraged muttering.
A blond head rose from the frozen audience. Paige lurched to her feet. “Andy!” she cried, and stumbled through the figures seated around her. One of the dirty men stepped around Jared and caught her as she nearly fell over Wes. “Oh, Andy!” she sobbed, the tone of her voice reminding me of Melanie’s.
Paige’s outburst changed the atmosphere momentarily. The silent crowd began to murmur, most of them rising to their feet. The sound was one of welcome now, as the majority went to greet the returned travelers. I tried to read the strange expressions on their faces as they forced grins onto their lips and peeked furtively back at me. I realized after a long, slow second—time seemed to be congealing around me, freezing me into place—that the expression I wondered at was guilt.
“It’s going to be okay, Wanda,” Ian murmured under his breath.
I glanced at him wildly, searching for that same guilt on his face. I didn’t find it, only a defensive tightening around his vivid eyes as he stared at the newcomers.
“What the hell, people?” a new voice boomed.
Kyle—easily identifiable by his size despite the grime—was shoving his way around Jared and heading toward… me.