"We're ready," Lir said over the phone. "She's already learning. She's a very good girl."

"And…is everything running?" I was anxious, terrified, actually. I'd wanted to be present for this moment but then Michelle had decided to burn a city. "Is she hurting?"

GOOD!

"She's not hurting," Lir said.

STRONG!

"Thanks. Thanks, everyone. Thanks so much."

My phone filled with maudlin mockery from all Walshes: Thaaanks, boo hoo, oh man I love you guys, gosh I'm sooo sensitive. I smiled and shook my head. Buncha jerks.

The Tourist Winnie was the site of the emergency meeting. Mahouts from all over Caravan had gathered. Most of them were Human, but there was a tall, pale Sorn and a tough little Cazador lady.

We were standing in the tiny park where Todd had moped and threatened and fled. Big as a Winnie was, space could still be an issue.

Piscator was not present.

"You were right about him," Lir said. "Wish you hadn't been."

"Me too."

Adaobi lit her dermal cosmetics so she glowed in the night. She blazed purple and white, an irresistible beacon in comfy jammies. "The Gardeners have called upon Caravan, and helping them is our only course," she said in a decent speechmaking voice.

Nods and noises of agreement from the mahouts.

"Our healers can get there in less than an hour," she went on. "And any other volunteers are welcome if you can produce transportation. Our Gardener friends have been hurt by Humans, and we can show them that Humans aren't all monsters. Can anyone commit assistance from your Winnies?"

Hands were raised. I raised mine too. There were tolerant grins from the other mahouts; I was the one with the busted, downed Molly, wasn't I?

Adaobi was really something. She began grouping people into task forces: these people would be on medical aid, those on rescue efforts, and these ones on fire control. She blazed in front of them, a natural leader, inspirational and, I realized, alarmingly sexy. I'd noticed she was cute and smart, but now…

Even her loose, comfortable pajamas seemed magisterial, dignified and regal. Maybe it was just her personality driving that. Maybe it was that I was starting to get really, really dumb for her.

I frowned. Not a thing for me to be doing. And I'm sure she had her admirers waiting for her to get over Lux. This girl was outta my league, like…every girl. But even more.

Flying trucks and cars converged from all over Caravan. Some were already loaded with volunteers, others with medical supplies, still others were the imposing fire-fighting vessels that seemed more like battlewagons. The mahouts began chanting Caravan, Caravan, and the shout was taken up by those in the vehicles.

Adaobi stood at the bottom of the swirling spiral of cars, blazing in the dark. She looked like the contact point where a tornado struck the earth. "Tonight we'll show the world that Humans are better than the Covenant. We'll look back and know we did everything we could to help our friends."

Cars began to peel off into the night. But Piscator's voice boomed, magically or electrically amplified:

"Wait! This isn't what the Winnie Council has decided!"

The cone of flying vehicles kept orbiting over Tourist Winnie, their occupants watching.

Piscator himself stepped up to face Adaobi, and it was clear he'd been running to reach her before the cars took off. "We can't get involved with the Covenant again," he said, panting. "Too much of a risk. We've already been burned by them and I won't have us losing more."

She faced him, matching the volume of his voice. This was clearly a public debate. "They need us, Piscator. What do you suggest, we simply ignore them?"

He stood straight, in his yellow boots and overalls. He'd been out working on a Winnie.

Or planning to.

"This isn't our fight," He said, raising his face to the assembled flyers. "And it wouldn't even be an issue if it weren't for us harboring a fugitive. And Preston Covenant himself." He faced Adaobi. "You knew who he was and still took him in, isn't that the case?"

"I did. He was a lost child, and Caravan welcomes those who need us." She addressed the audience above them herself. "How many of us were born here? None. All of us found our way to this new city and made it our own. Caravan is a sanctuary, and sanctuary means forgiveness."

Adaobi was good at this. The energy of the crowd was swayed by her, I could feel it. They were amped up already, just about to charge to the rescue of the Gardeners, and Piscator's interruption hadn't changed that.

Wait a minute. Harboring a fugitive? In addition to Todd? Piscator had been talking about me!

"Screw this guy," Lir said into my phone.

Piscator scanned the cars overhead, then the ground. He found me, under Todd's moping tree. Accusing finger aimed at my face. "Do we know this person, Caravan? He's Owen Walsh himself, the mastermind behind Sliceday. He destroyed the Earth because of a failed hostage exchange!"

Well that hardly seemed fair, as well as wrong on several counts.

But there was a commotion in the cars above. Shouts. Honking of horns.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

"I lost my home because of you," Piscator shouted. As if he were reading from the same script as Doctor Michelle. "Many of us lost family, our children just heading out over the horizon to explore, and expose themselves to a lethal new world! Caravan, I know you understand the attack we faced, as well as the one launched against the City of Trees, is a direct result of this man here! Owen Walsh!"

I thought about saying: wasn't me. Just a guy who looks like me, thinks like me and thinks he IS me. Otherwise what's the big deal, bro? But I did not.

And I wasn't a public speaker, not like Piscator and Adaobi. I was barely a speaker at all. Who here would have listened?

"We need to continue the migration north," Piscator announced to the circling audience above. "To get as far away from the conflict as possible. I know there are mahouts here who lost people to the Covenant attack. Whose Winnies suffered terribly, and those flames were only the work of one man."

I knew he was talking about Todd, but I wouldn't have been surprised at all if he'd pointed at me, blaming me for the burning and the deaths.

Doubt began filtering down from the watchers. Their Winnies still bore burn scars. Houses were being rebuilt. Schools. And Caravan wasn't an army, as Adaobi had said.

Adaobi met my eyes. She took a breath, about to speak.

I interrupted. "Where you been, Piscator?"

He glared at me. "Out on business. Preparations for leaving."

"Anything keep you from leaving?"

Piscator's eyes narrowed.

Adaobi was starting to get it. Her gaze went from me to Piscator, back and forth.

"All Winnies need to walk," Piscator said patiently, going into a mode of reasonability. "All of them. The herd won't leave a dying Winnie, and the herd needs to leave. Caravan is in danger. In addition to the danger you've put us in yourself, Walsh." He sneered, just a little. "Missster Walsh, Pope Walsh–"

Something fell from the sky with a clank. It wasn't a car. It was a yard-long thing like a car muffler, a flat metal tube. And a spear at the end, one with a hollow point.

It looked like an enormous syringe. The needle end leaked a glowing blue fluid, one that began eating into the ground beneath Piscator's feet. Acrid smoke drifted from the hole.

Piscator raised his eyes, met mine.

"What is that," Adaobi asked him, forgetting the speech patterns of public oration. "That's…is that poison? Is that…"

"It has to be done," Piscator said wearily. "For the good of Caravan. If that Winnie can't walk, it has to be done, and quickly, so we can get to safety." He addressed the circling crowd. Shouting at them. "Caravan doesn't belong in a war with the United States government!"

"You were going to…" Adaobi glared at Piscator. "Molly. You were using this meeting to kill Molly while he was away."

He folded his arms. "For the public good." He gestured at me, straight-armed, open-handed, accusatory. "And you want this to be a mahout? After all he's done? Not just to Caravan, but the world?"

But it wasn't flying. The assembled mahouts and the volunteers above were shouting, roaring. It's one thing to be mad at Owen Walsh. It's another thing to kill a baby Winnie. That's the kind of thing Preston Covenant did.

"What stopped you?" I asked.

"As if you didn't know," he said. His sneer was back. Nose raised. "We couldn't find your Winnie."

Confusion from the flying audience. Couldn't find Molly? The burned-up, lamed wretch?

Then shouts of alarm.

The air flickered. It was like an error in a render pipeline, a glitch in a video game, a cloud that was there, then wasn't, then was. It darkened. Solidified. The watchers roared in astonishment as Molly came out of the Stalk.

She burst into gigantic visibility, larger and stronger than any Winnie I'd seen. Her hide was blazing with Runes I'd painstakingly applied myself. She looked down on Tourist Winnie with tiny black eyes, a shatteringly huge being that sent the flying cars fleeing. Molly moved with speed that was impossible for a thing so gigantic.

You can reduce the pull of gravity on her, Mabruk had said. Without reducing her mass. Without interfering with her biology. Without causing her pain.

POISON

Cold accusation in that voice. Piscator watched with a mix of resignation and frustration.

"Let's go reinflate some balloons," Lir said. His voice was blasting out over the gathering.

Molly lowered her huge head, the size of a church or a small elementary school, and I grabbed her lower lip. Climbed up. Sat midway between the enormous horns, still just buds, but getting longer by the second.

A single hand-sized Bark Wasp was crawling on Piscator's poison-dripping device. It buzzed over to me, lit on my shoulder.

"Say something, Rebound." Lir gave me control of the loudspeaker.

I thought.

Two more of the huge Wasps found their way to me, perching on my other shoulder and the top of my head. More of them. Soon there were dozens in the air around me, around Piscator.

This needs to be addressed, the Wasp Queen said. This needs to be punished.

Piscator heard it. His eyes widened. He took a step back, and it seemed for a moment he might up and flee the scene.

No. Piscator thought he'd been making hard choices for the right reasons. And he might have been correct.

"I'm sorry," I said to the assembled Caravan. "If I could have done it differently I would have. With Todd. Nobody should have died. Nobody should have been hurt. I've been taken in here and I let you good people down. I'll never forgive myself and you shouldn't forgive me either. We're leaving."

My voice cracked on the last word.

Roaring from the cars. Shouting, bursts of emotion.

It was terribly confusing. Human things tended to be. "Giddyap," I said.

Molly backed away from Tourist Winnie. Fast. I almost rolled down the grassy hill of her face.

She moved like a monster in a Japanese sentai show, think Power Rangers. Where the giant characters move quickly, too quickly for being the size of a skyscraper, because they're being portrayed by a Human-sized actor and nobody's bothering to slow down the video to make them seem gigantic.

Molly was like that. A colossal Muppet. She spun on a single foot, Left Rear Lower, in fact, which was armored with living wood, blazing with strengthening runes, girded with steel.

And she ran, taking all of the Walshes. She ran like the world's hugest greyhound, stretching her legs far, far ahead, whooshing them below us. Galloping like the world's mightiest racehorse. Her tread was light. She did not shake the earth. She did not knock over trees. But she almost knocked me off my perch, the wind was so intense.

Off we went.

To the City of Trees. The lights of Caravan shrank behind us, disappeared.

FAST!

"Yes, Miss Good Girl. So fast. So smart."

The wind was making my eyes tear up.

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