Текст книги "UnSouled"

Автор книги: Neal Shusterman

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Part Three

Sky-Fallers

Documented cases of cellular memory being transferred to heart transplant recipients:

CASE 1) A Spanish-speaking vegetarian receives the heart of an English speaker and begins using English words that were not part of his vocabulary but were words habitually used by the donor. The recipient also begins craving, and eventually eating, meat and greasy foods, which were mainstays of the donor’s diet.

CASE 2) An eight-year-old girl receives the heart of a ten-year-old girl who was murdered. The recipient begins having nightmares about the murder, remembering details that only the victim could know, such as when and how it happened and the identity of the murderer. Her entire testimony turns out to be true, and the murderer is caught.

CASE 3) A three-year-old Arab child receives the heart of a Jewish child, and upon waking, asks for a Jewish candy the child had never heard of before.

CASE 4) A man in his forties receives a heart from a teenaged boy and suddenly develops an intense love of classical music. The donor had been killed in a drive-by shooting, clutching his violin case as he died.

CASE 5) A five-year-old boy receives the heart of a three-year-old. He talks to him like an imaginary friend, calling him Timmy. After some investigation, the parents discovered the name of the donor was Thomas. But his family called him Timmy.

A total of 150 anecdotal cases have been documented by neuropsychologist Paul Pearsall, PhD.

http://www.paulpearsall.com/info/press/index.html

The Rheinschilds

She’s worried about him. He’s always been obsessed with their work, but she’s never seen him like this. The hours he spends in his research lab, the dark circles beneath his eyes, all the mumbling in his sleep. He’s losing weight, and no wonder; he seems to never eat anymore.

“He’s like this superbrain with no body,” says Austin, his research assistant, who has grown from an emaciated beanpole to a much more healthy weight since Janson hired him six months ago.

“Will you tell me what he’s working on?” Sonia asks.

“He said you didn’t want any part of it.”

“I don’t. But I have a right to know what he’s doing, don’t I?” It’s so like Janson to take everything she says literally. Shutting her out to spite her, like a child.

“He says he’ll tell you when he’s ready.”

It’s no sense trying to get anything out of the boy—he’s got the loyalty of a German shepherd.

She supposes this obsession of Janson’s is better than the despair he felt before. At least now he has something to focus on, something to take his thoughts away from the cascade of events that the Unwind Accord has brought about. Their new reality includes clinics that have popped up nationwide like mushrooms on an overwatered lawn, each of them advertising young, healthy parts. “Live to 120 and beyond!” the ads say. “Out with the old and in with the new!” No one asks where the parts are coming from, but everyone knows. And now it’s not just ferals that are being unwound—the Juvenile Authority has actually come up with a form that parents can use to send their “incorrigible” teen off for unwinding. At first she doubted anyone would use the form. She was convinced its very existence would finally spark the outcry she’d been waiting for. It didn’t. In fact, within a month, there was a kid in their own neighborhood who had been taken away to be unwound.

“Well, I think they did the right thing,” one of her neighbors confided. “That kid was a tragedy waiting to happen.”

Sonia doesn’t talk to either of those neighbors anymore.

Day to day, Sonia watches her husband waste away, and none of her pleas for him to take care of himself get through. She even threatens to leave him, but they both know it’s an empty threat.

“It’s almost ready,” he tells her one evening as he moves his fork around a plate of pasta, barely putting any into his mouth. “This’ll do it, Sonia—this will change everything.”

But he still won’t share with her exactly what he’s doing. Her only clue comes from his research assistant. Not from anything the boy says, but because he began his employment with three fingers on his left hand. And now he has five.

18 • Lev

He bounds through a dense forest canopy, high up where the leaves touch the sky. It’s night, but the moon is as bright as the sun. There is no earth, only trees. Or maybe it’s that the ground matters so little, it might as well not exist. Stirred by a warm breeze, the forest canopy rolls like ocean waves beneath the clear sky.

There is a creature leaping through the foliage in front of him, turning back to look at Lev every once in a while. It has huge cartoonish eyes in its small furred face. It’s not fleeing from Lev, he realizes; it’s leading him. This way, it seems to say with those soulful eyes that reflect twin images of the moon.

Where are you leading me? Lev wants to ask, but he can’t speak. Even if he could, he knows he won’t get an answer.

Branch to branch Lev leaps with an inborn skill that he did not possess in life. This is how he knows he’s dead. The experience is too clear, too vivid to be anything else. When he was alive, Lev never cared much for climbing trees. As a child, it was discouraged by his parents. Tithes need to protect their precious bodies, he was told, and climbing trees can lead to broken bones.

Broken.

He was broken in a car accident and left with deep damage inside. That damage must have been worse than anyone thought. His last memory is a cloudy recollection of pulling up to the eastern gate of the Arápache Rez. He remembers hearing his own voice telling the guard something, but he can’t remember what it was. His fever was soaring by then. All he wanted to do was sleep. He was unconscious before he learned whether or not the guard would let them in.

But none of that matters now. Death has a way of making the concerns of the living feel insignificant. Like the ground below, if indeed there is ground.

He leaps again, his pace getting faster. There is a rhythm to it, like a heartbeat. The branches seem to appear right where he needs them to be.

Finally he reaches the very edge of the forest at the very edge of the world. Star-filled darkness above and below. He looks for the creature that was leading him, but it is nowhere to be seen. Then he realizes with a dark sort of wonder that there never was a creature. He is the creature, projecting his anima before him as he launches through the treetops.

Up above, the full moon is so clear, so large, that Lev feels he could reach out and grab it. Then he realizes that is exactly what he is meant to do. Bring down the moon.

It will be a devastating thing if he plucks the moon from the sky. Tides will change, and oceans will churn in consternation. Lands will flood, while bays will turn to deserts. Earthquakes will re-form the mountains, and people everywhere will have to adapt to a new reality. If he tears down the moon, everything will change.

With infinite joy and absolute abandon, Lev leaps to his purpose, soaring off the edge of the world and toward the moon with his arms open wide.

•   •   •

Lev opens his eyes. There is no moon. There are no stars. There is no forest canopy. Only the white walls and ceiling of a room he hasn’t seen for a long time. He feels weak and wet. His body hurts, but he can’t yet identify the location of the pain. It seems to come from everywhere. He’s not dead after all—and for a moment he finds himself disappointed. Because if death is a joyous jaunt through a forest canopy for all eternity, he can live with that. Or not live, as the case may be.

This room is where he hoped he’d find himself when he awoke. There’s a woman sitting at the desk across the room, making notes in a file. He knows her. Loves her, even. He can count on one hand all the people in his life whom he would be happy to see. This woman is one of them.

“Healer Elina,” he tries to say, but it comes out like the squeak of a mouse.

She turns to him, closing the file, and regards him with a pained smile. “Welcome back, my little Mahpee.”

He tries to smile, but it hurts his lips to do it. Mahpee. “Sky-faller.” He had forgotten they had called him that. So much has changed since he was last here. He’s not the boy he was when they first took him in as a foster-fugitive. That was the beginning of his dark days—between the time he left CyFi and the time he showed up at the airplane graveyard.

Elina comes over to him, and immediately he notices the gray infiltrating her braid. Was it there a year and a half ago and he hadn’t noticed, or is it new? She certainly has reason to have new gray hairs.

“I’m sorry,” he rasps out.

She seems genuinely surprised. “For what?”

“For being here.”

“You should never apologize for existing, Lev. Not even to all those people out there who wish you didn’t.”

He wonders how many of those people are right here on the reservation. “No . . . I mean I’m sorry I came back to the rez.”

She takes a moment to look at him. No longer smiling, just observing. “I’m glad you did.”

But Lev notices that she didn’t say “we.”

“I decided that once you were stable, you were better off here in my home than in the medical lodge.” She checks the IV leading into his right forearm. He hadn’t even noticed it was there before. “You’re looking a little puffy, but you’re probably just overhydrated. I’ll turn this off for a bit.” She shuts down the fluid infuser. “That’s probably why you sweat so much when your fever broke.” She looks at him for a moment, probably assessing what he needs to know, then says, “You have two broken ribs and suffered quite a lot of internal bleeding. We had to give you a partial thoracotomy to stop the bleeding—but it will heal, and I have herbs that will keep it from scarring.”

“How’s Chal?” Lev asks. “And Pivane?” Chal, Elina’s husband, is a big-shot Arápache lawyer. His brother Pivane isn’t one to leave the rez.

“Chal has a major case in Denver, but you’ll see Pivane soon enough.”

“Has he asked to see me?”

“You know Pivane—he’ll wait until he’s invited.”

“My friends?” Lev asks. “Are they here?”

“Yes,” Elina says. “It seems my household is overrun by mahpees this week.” Then she goes to an entertainment console, fiddles with it a bit, and music begins to play. Guitar music.

He recognizes the piece from his first time on the rez, and it pulls at his heartstrings. That first time, he had climbed over the southern wall to get in and was injured in the fall. He woke to find himself in this same room. An eighteen-year-old boy was playing guitar with such amazing skill, Lev had been mesmerized. But now all that remains of him is a recording.

“One of Wil’s songs of healing,” Elina says. “Wil’s music goes on, even if he doesn’t. It’s a comfort to us. Sometimes.”

Lev forces a smile, his lips not hurting quite so bad this time. “It’s good to be . . . here,” he says, almost saying “home” instead of “here.” Then he closes his eyes, because he’s afraid to see what her eyes will say back.

19 • Connor

“He’s awake,” Elina says. That’s all, just “he’s awake.” She is a woman of few words. At least few words for Connor.

“So, can I see him?”

She folds her arms and regards him coolly. Her lack of response is his answer. “Tell me one thing,” she finally says. “Is it because of you he became a clapper?”

“No!” says Connor, disgusted by the suggestion. “Absolutely not!” And then he adds, “It’s because of me that he didn’t clap.”

She nods, accepting his answer. “You can see him tomorrow, once he’s a little stronger.”

Connor sits back down on the sofa. The doctor’s home—in fact, the entire rez—is not what he expected. The Arápache have steeped themselves in both their culture and modern convenience. Plush leather furniture speaks of wealth, but it is clearly made by hand. The neighborhood—if one can call it that—is carved into the red stone cliffs on either side of a deep gorge, but the rooms are spacious, the floors are tiled with ornate marble, and the plumbing fixtures are polished brass or maybe even gold—Connor’s not sure. Dr. Elina’s medical supplies are also state of the art, although different in some fundamental way from medical supplies on the outside. Less clinical, somehow.

“Our philosophy is a little different,” she had told him. “We believe it’s best to heal from the inside out, rather than from the outside in.”

Across the room, the boy playing a board game with Grace growls in frustration. “How can you keep beating me in Serpents and Stones?” he whines at Grace. “You’ve never even played it before!”

Grace shrugs. “I learn quick.”

The boy, whose name is Kele, has little patience for losing. The game, Serpents and Stones, appears to be a lot like checkers, but with more strategy—and when it comes to strategy, Grace cannot be beat.

Once the kid storms away, Grace turns to Connor. “So your friend the clapper is gonna be okay?” she asks.

“Please don’t call him that.”

“Sorry—but he’s gonna be okay, right?”

“It looks like it.”

They’ve been here for nearly a week, and Connor has yet to feel welcome. Tolerated is more like it—and not because they’re outsiders, for Elina and her brother-in-law, Pivane, have been more than kind to Grace—especially after they realized she’s low-cortical. Even when she stitched up Connor’s ostrich wound, Elina was cool and impassionate about it. “Keep it clean. It’ll heal,” was all she said. She offered no “your welcome,” to Connor’s “thank you,” and he couldn’t tell whether it was a cultural thing, or if her silence was deliberate. Perhaps now that Elina knows he wasn’t responsible for Lev becoming a clapper, she might treat him with a little less frost.

Kele returns with another board game, fumbling with black and white pieces of different sizes.

“So what do you call this game?” Connor asks.

He looks at Connor like he’s an imbecile. “Chess,” he says. “Duh.”

Connor grins, recognizing the pieces as he places them. Like everything else on the rez, the game is hand carved and the pieces unique, like little sculptures—which is why he didn’t recognize it right away. Grace rubs her hands together in anticipation, and Connor considers warning the kid not to get his hopes up, but decides not to: He’s much too entertaining as a sore loser.

Kele is twelve, by Connor’s estimate. He’s not family, but Elina and her husband, Chal, took him in when his mother died a year ago. While Elina has offered Connor no information on anything, Kele, whose mouth runs like an old-time combustion engine, has been filling Connor in on a part of Lev’s life that Lev never spoke about.

“Lev showed up here maybe a year and a half ago,” Kele had told Connor. “Stayed for a few weeks. That was before he got all scary and famous and stuff. He went on a vision quest with us, but it didn’t turn out so good.”

Connor placed Lev’s weeks at the rez somewhere between the time he and Risa lost Lev at the high school in Ohio and the time he showed up at the Graveyard, markedly changed.

“He and Wil became good friends,” Kele told Connor, glancing at a portrait of a teenaged boy who looked a lot like Elina.

“Where is Wil now?” Connor asked.

It was the only time Kele got closemouthed. “Gone,” he had finally said.

“Left the rez?”

“Sort of.” Then Kele had changed the subject, asking questions about the world outside the reservation. “Is it true that people get brain implants instead of going to school?”

“NeuroWeaves—and it’s not instead of school. It’s something rich stupid people do for their rich stupid children.”

“I’d never want a piece of someone else’s brain,” Kele had said. “I mean, you don’t know where it’s been.”

On that, Connor and Kele were in total agreement.

Now, as Kele concentrates intently on his game of chess with Grace, Connor tries to catch him off guard enough to get some answers.

“So do you think Wil might come back to the rez to visit with Lev?”

Kele moves his knight and is promptly captured by Grace’s queen. “You did that on purpose to distract me!” Kele accuses.

Connor shrugs. “Just asking a question. If Wil and Lev are such good friends, he’d come back to see him, wouldn’t he?”

Kele sighs, never looking up from the board. “Wil was unwound.”

Which doesn’t make sense to Connor. “But I thought ChanceFolk don’t unwind.”

Finally Kele looks up at him. His gaze is like an accusation. “We don’t,” Kele says, then returns to the game.

“So then how—”

“If you wanna know, then talk to Lev; he was there too.”

Then Grace captures one of Kele’s rooks, and Kele flips the board in frustration, sending pieces flying. “You eat squirrel!” he shouts at Grace, who laughs.

“Who’s low-cortical now?” she gloats.

Kele storms off once more, but not before throwing Connor a glare that has nothing to do with the game.

20 • Lev

Lev sits in shadow on the terrace, looking out at the canyon. It’s nowhere near as dramatic as the great gorge that separates Arápache land from the rest of Colorado, but the canyon is impressive in its own way. Across the dry stream bed, the homes carved into the face of the opposing cliff are filled with dramatic late-afternoon shadows and activity. Children play on terraces with no protective rails, laughing as they climb up and down rope ladders in pursuit of one another. When he was first here, he was horrified, but he quickly came to learn that no one ever fell. Arápache children learn a great respect for gravity at an early age.

“We built America’s great bridges and skyscrapers,” Wil had told him proudly. “For us, balance is a matter of pride.”

Lev knew he had meant that in many ways—and nowhere in his own life had Lev felt more balanced than when he was here at the rez. But it was also here that he was thrown so off-kilter that he chose to become a clapper. He hopes that maybe he can find some of the peace he once had, if only for a little while. Yet he knows he’s not entirely welcome. Even now, he sees adults across the canyon eying him as he sits there. From this distance, he can’t tell if it’s with suspicion or just curiosity.

Lev’s shoulder itches, and there’s a faint throbbing with every beat of his heart. His left side feels hot and heavy, but the pain he had felt in the car has subsided to a dull ache that only sharpens when he moves too fast. He has not seen Connor or Grace since awakening. As long as he knows they’re all right, he’s fine with that. In a way, his life has been compartmentalized into discrete little boxes. His life as a tithe, his life as a clapper, his life as a fugitive, and his life on the rez. He had been here for only a few weeks that first time, but the experience looms large for him. The idea of merging this delicate oasis of his life with the rest of his tumultuous existence is something he must get used to.

“When the council cast you out, it broke my heart.”

Lev turns to see Elina coming out onto the terrace, carrying a tray with a teapot and a mug, setting it down on a small table.

“I knew you weren’t responsible for what happened to Wil,” she tells him, “but there was a lot of anger back then.”

“But not now?”

She sits in the chair beside his and hands him a mug of steaming tea instead of answering. “Drink. It’s getting chilly.”

Lev sips his tea. Bitter herbs sweetened with honey. No doubt a potent brew of healing steeped by the modern medicine woman.

“Does the council know I’m here?”

She hesitates. “Not officially.”

“If they know officially, will they cast me out again?”

Unlike her tea, her answer is honest and unsweetened. “Maybe. I don’t know for sure. Feelings about you are mixed. When you became a clapper, some people thought it heroic.”

“Did you?”

“No,” she says coldly, then with much more warmth says, “I knew you had lost your way.”

The understatement is enough to make Lev laugh. “Yeah, you could say that.”

She turns to look across the ravine at the lengthening shadows and the neighbors trying to look as if they’re not looking. “Pivane took it very hard. He refused to even speak of you.”

Lev is not surprised. Her brother-in-law is very old-school when it comes to dealing with the world outside of the rez. While her husband, Chal, seems to spend more time off the rez than on, Pivane is a hunter and models his life much more on ancestral ways.

“He never liked me much,” Lev says.

Elina reaches out to touch his hand. “You’re wrong about that. He wouldn’t speak of you because it hurt too much.” Then she hesitates, looking down at his hand clasped in hers rather than in his eyes. “And because, like me, he felt partially responsible for you becoming a clapper.”

Lev looks to her, thrown by the suggestion. “That’s just stupid.”

“Is it? If we had gone against the council. If we had insisted you stay—”

“—then it would have been horrible. For all of us. You would look at me and remember how Wil sacrificed himself to save me.”

“And to save Kele and all the other kids on that vision quest.” The doctor leans back in her chair. Still unable to look at him for any length of time, she looks across the arroyo and waves to a staring neighbor. The woman waves back, then self-consciously adjusts the potted plants on her terrace.

“Look at me, Elina,” Lev says, and waits until she does. “When I left here, I was on my way to a terrible place. A place where all I wanted to do was share my anger with the world. You didn’t make that anger. My parents did. The Juvies did. The lousy parts pirates who took Wil did. Not you!”

Lev closes his eyes, trying to ward off the memory of that one awful day. Like Pivane, Lev finds the pain of it too much to bear. He takes a deep breath, keeping the memory and all the emotions it holds at bay, then opens his eyes once more. “So I went to that terrible place inside . . . . I went to hell. But in the end I came back.”

Elina grins at him. “And now you’re here.”

Lev nods. “And now I’m here.” Although he has no idea where he’ll be tomorrow.

•   •   •

Lev comes out to the great room after the sun sets.

“You’re alive,” Connor says when he sees him. Connor is tense, but his stress level does look a little bit lower.

“Surprised?”

“Yeah, every time I see you.”

Connor wears a designer Arápache shirt with a coarse weave and a tailored fit, to replace the rank shirt he had taken from the deputy. It looks good on him, but it’s also an odd disconnect. Lev finds it hard to allow Connor and the rez to share the same space in his mind.

“Love the ponytail,” Connor says, pointing at his hair.

Lev shrugs. “It’s just because my hair is so tatted. But maybe I’ll keep it.”

“Don’t,” Connor tells him. “I lied. I hate it.”

That makes Lev laugh, which makes his side hurt, and he grimaces.

The greetings now begin to feel like a receiving line. Kele comes up to Lev, looking awkward. He was a head shorter than Lev when they last saw each other. Now he’s almost the same height.

“Hi, Lev. I’m glad you came back and that you didn’t come back dead.”

Kele will continue to grow, but Lev will not. Stunted growth. That’s what he gets for lacing his blood with explosive chemicals.

Pivane is there, cooking dinner. A stew of fresh meat—something he probably shot in the wild today. Pivane’s greeting, reserved at first, ends in a hug that hurts, but Lev doesn’t let on. Only Grace keeps her distance, ignoring Lev. Even after their desperate road trip here, she’s still not sure what to make of him. It isn’t until the middle of dinner that she finally speaks to him.

“So how do you know you won’t still blow up?”

And in the awkward silence that follows, Kele says, “I was kinda wondering that too.”

Lev makes his eyes wide. “Maybe I will,” he says ominously, then waits a few seconds and shouts “BOOM!” It makes everyone jump—but no one quite as much as Grace, who spills her stew and lets loose a stream of curses that makes everyone burst out laughing.

After dinner everyone goes about their own business, and Connor gets him alone.

“So what’s the deal here?” he asks quietly. “How do you know all these people?”

Lev takes a deep breath. He owes Connor an explanation, although he’d rather not give it. “Before I showed up at the Graveyard, I came here, and they gave me sanctuary for a while,” Lev tells him. “They almost adopted me into the tribe. Almost. It all got ruined by parts pirates. They cornered a bunch of us out in the woods, and Elina’s son—”

“Wil?”

“Yes, Wil. He offered himself in exchange for the rest of our lives.”

Connor considers this. “Since when do parts pirates negotiate?”

“They were looking for something special. And Wil was something special. I’ve never heard anyone play guitar like he played. Once they had him, they didn’t care about the rest of us. Anyway, since I was there, and I was an outsider, I kind of became the scapegoat. There was no staying after that.”

Connor nods and doesn’t press for more details. Instead he looks toward the window. Outside not much can be seen in the dark but the lights of other homes across the ravine. “Don’t get too comfortable here,” Connor warns.

“I’m already comfortable,” Lev tells him, and leaves before Connor can say anything more.

•   •   •

The cliff-side home is spacious. The individual bedrooms are small but numerous, and all of them open to the great room, which serves as living room, dining room, and kitchen. Perhaps out of morbid curiosity, Lev checks out the room that was Wil’s. He thinks they might have kept it as it was, but they haven’t. They haven’t redesigned it for anyone else either. Wil’s room is now empty of furniture and decorations. Nothing but bare stone walls.

“No one will use this room again,” Elina tells Lev. “At least not in my lifetime.” As everyone begins to settle down for the night, Lev goes looking for Pivane. There’s been more awkwardness between them than Lev has found with anyone else, and Lev hopes he can bridge the gap. He expects to find the man down on the first floor, creek-bed level, in the workroom, tinkering with something. Perhaps preparing hides for tanning. Instead he finds someone he wasn’t expecting.

She sits there at the workbench, her hair pulled back in a colorful tie, looking exactly the same as Lev remembers. Una.

Una was Wil’s fiancée and must have been more devastated than anyone when Wil was taken by the parts pirates and unwound. After that, his petition to join the tribe was quickly denied, Pivane had driven him to the gate, and Lev was set loose without ever saying good-bye to Una. Lev had been glad for that at the time. He’d had no idea what to say to her then, and he has no idea what to say now, so he lingers in the shadows, not wanting to step into the light.

Una is absorbed in cleaning a rifle that Lev recognizes as Pivane’s. Does she know that he’s here on the rez? Elina was very clear that his presence was to be kept low-key. His question is answered when Una says, without looking up, “Not very good at lurking, are you, Lev?”

He steps forward, but Una keeps her attention focused on the rifle without looking at him.

“Elina told me you were back,” she says.

“But you didn’t come to see me.”

“Who says I wanted to?” Finally she spares a look at him, but she keeps her poker face. “Anyone ever teach you how to clean a bolt-action rifle?”

“No.”

“Come here. I’ll show you.”

She takes Lev through the steps of removing the bolt and scope. “Pivane has been teaching me to shoot, and I’ve been finding a desire to do it,” Una tells him. “When he gets his new rifle, he’ll give me this one.”

“A little different from making guitars,” Lev says, which is what Una does.

“Both will have their place in my life,” Una tells him, then directs him in cleaning the inside of the rifle barrel with solvent and a copper brush. She says nothing about what happened the last time he was on the rez, but it hangs as heavy and as dark as gunmetal between them.

“I’m sorry about Wil,” he finally says.

Una is silent for a moment, then says, “They sent back his guitar—whoever ‘they’ is. There was no explanation, no return address. I burned it on a funeral pyre because we had no body to burn.”

Lev holds his silence. The idea of Wil’s guitar turned to ash is almost as horrifying as the thought of his unwinding.

“I know it wasn’t your fault,” Una says, “but Wil would not have helped lead that vision quest if it hadn’t been for you and would never have been taken by those parts pirates. No, it wasn’t your fault, little brother—but I wish you had never come here.”

Lev puts down the rifle barrel. “I’m sorry. I’ll go now.”

But Una grabs his arm. “Let me finish.” She lets go of him, and now Lev can see the tears in her eyes. “I wish you had never come, but you did—and ever since you left, I wished you would come back. Because you belong here, Lev—no matter what the council says.”

“You’re wrong. There’s nowhere I belong.”

“Well, you certainly don’t belong out there. The fact that you almost blew yourself up proves it.”

Lev doesn’t want to talk about his days as a clapper. Not to Una. Instead he decides to share something else. “I haven’t told anyone this, but I had a dream before my fever broke. I was jumping through the branches of a forest.”

Una considers it. “What kind of forest? Pine or oak?”

“Neither. It was a rainforest, I think. I saw this animal covered in fur. It was leading me.”

Una smiles, realizing what Lev is getting at. “Sounds like you’ve finally found your animal spirit. Was it a monkey?”

“No. It had a tail like a monkey, but its eyes were too big. Any idea what it could have been?”

Una shakes his head. “Sorry. I don’t know much about rain forest animals.”

But then Lev hears a voice behind him. “I think I know.” He turns to see Kele standing in the doorway “Big eyes, small mouth, really cute?”

“Yeah . . .”

“It’s a kinkajou.”

“Never heard of it.”

Una smirks at Lev. “Well, it’s heard of you.”

“I did a report on kinkajous,” Kele says. “They’re like the cutest animals ever, but they’ll rip your face off if you mess with them.”

The smirk never leaves Una’s face. “Small, cute, and not to be messed with. Hmm . . . Who does that remind me of?”

That makes Kele laugh and Lev scowl.

“I am not cute,” Lev growls.

“Matter of opinion, little brother. So tell me, did your guide give you any sort of task?”

Lev hesitates, but then decides to tell her, no matter how ridiculous it sounds. “I think he wanted me to pull the moon from the sky.”