He’s already waiting for me when I near the bridge. He stands with his elbows propped on the rail, gazing over the edge at the stream running underneath. As soon as I set foot on the bridge, he speaks without taking his eyes off the water. “I wonder if the fish can hear what I’m thinking.”
I don’t respond. I lean my elbows on the rail too and look over the edge. Below, myn sweep their tails slowly left to right like lazy fans.
“I think your brain has to be wired a certain way for that,” I say.
“How do you figure?”
I shrug.
“I would guess that if animals on Faloiv can communicate with their brains, it’s the result of adaption that has occurred on this planet.”
“Thank you, Dr. English,” he says, raising an eyebrow.
Ordinarily I would smile, but his words only twist my mouth into a frown as the events in my kitchen with both Dr. Englishes solidify again in my mind. I push them out.
“So . . . ,” I say, turning away from the myn to look at him. I study Rondo’s face and notice the way the sunlight makes the line of his jaw glow. I’ve been in classes with him at the Greenhouse since we were small, but he always kept to himself, the shy boy who eschewed group study. How long has he had this face? He must have grown into his nose, his ears—otherwise I should have noticed long ago how much I enjoy looking at him.
“So . . . I snuck into my dads’ study,” Rondo says bluntly, turning to lean his back against the rail of the bridge. I’m jarred from admiring his features.
“Um . . . what?”
He shrugs, looking out at the commune. It’s early and none of the shops are open; most other people are already in the labs or at their various workstations.
“They had left for the Zoo already. So I went into the study and looked through some slides.”
“Why did you do that?” I can’t decide whether to laugh or be scandalized.
He shrugs again. His customary gesture. His fingers drum quietly on the bridge rail, the only thing that ever gives away how busy it must be inside his head.
“We want to know more about the Faloii,” he says. “And it stands to reason that the spotted man you say you saw is Faloii.”
For as long as I can remember, the Faloii have been a shadow just beyond the borders of our education at the Greenhouse. Now that shadow seems to have crept in closer. When has Dr. Espada told us anything about them? Rarely. Our recent conversations—with Espada’s reluctance—have been the most our hosts have ever been discussed. The sudden presence of the Faloii in my thoughts makes me uneasy. The storms that sweep over N’Terra from the jungles never come out of nowhere. They build for several days, the clouds in the distance deepening and bruising, working themselves up into the squall that will overtake the area for three sunrises. The mention of the Faloii feels much like this: the coming of a monsoon, the building up of something heavy and furious.
“You told me I don’t know what I saw,” I say slowly.
“Well, now I’ve seen something too,” he says. “So forget what I told you.”
“What did you see?” I say. “Show me.”
“I can’t,” he says. “I didn’t want to extract the slide in case my dads noticed. But I’m pretty sure the person you saw was Faloii. First off, who else would it be? You said he was taller than your dad, right? Your father’s one of the tallest people in N’Terra.”
I nod, already knowing where he’s going with this. I’d thought the same thing.
“So you just suddenly decided to believe me?” I say. “Your deductive reasoning finally kicked in?”
“It’s not that I didn’t believe you,” he says. He stops drumming the bridge rail to run a hand down over his close-cropped hair. “I just needed more evidence. And now I think I have some.”
“Which is what?”
“I found some slides that document the Vagantur’s landing,” he says. “No photographic material, but two pages of text describing our first interaction with the Faloii. I couldn’t figure out an entry point to see the rest—landing agreements and stuff—and a lot of things were redacted, so I could only read those two pages. But they talk about the initial impressions of the planet and give descriptions of its people.”
“Wait, wait,” I say, interrupting. “You ‘couldn’t figure out an entry point’ for the rest? Rondo, did you hack the slides?”
He looks at me sideways, his smile narrow but obvious.
“Yes.”
I laugh, disbelieving. Who is this guy? I find myself moving a little closer to him.
“You hacked the slides,” I say, still laughing. “I can’t believe you hacked your own parents’ files.”
“Why not?”
“Because . . . I don’t know, because! What if they find out? I can’t imagine that would go over well.”
“You were the one that started all this,” he says sternly, but he’s teasing me. “You wanted to go into the dome that night.”
I sigh. He’s right. But that night I was feeling strange, bold. The boldness feels far away now.
“I just don’t want you to get caught,” I say.
“I won’t. I covered my tracks.”
“So you’ve done this before?”
He drops his chin, gives me a long look. I can’t help but laugh. Talking to him is so easy: the words just come, the questions, the answers. Why isn’t it this easy at home?
“Anyway,” I say. I drop my eyes from his, suddenly self-conscious about the smile plastered on my mouth. We’re not in the labs, but I’ve heard the word decorum thrown at me so many times that it almost feels strange to just . . . smile. I pull in my lips to swallow it. “You said that they described the Faloii?”
“Yes,” he says, nodding. “But all of it was vague. Tall with broad faces. Hands were described as being ‘like an otter’s’ but I don’t know what that means. Wide-set eyes. And something weird about their ears.”
“Weird?”
“I don’t know without a photograph,” he says. “But they were described as unusual.”
“Hmm. Maybe who I saw wasn’t Faloii then. I feel like I would have noticed ears on top of his head, and I didn’t.”
He pauses to consider this.
“What about a tail?” he says.
“A tail?”
“Yes. The document said that one of them had a tail.”
“As in, a tail? A tail tail?”
“Yeah.”
“Just one of them though? Interesting,” I say, but something else nags at me, something I haven’t thought about in days without someone to discuss it with. “Did you happen to see anything in the files about something called Solossius?”
“Solossius?” He pauses and looks thoughtful. “No, I don’t think so. That’s a strange word. I think I would have noticed.”
“Hmm, okay.”
“What’s up?”
I sigh, wishing I actually knew.
“Nothing, just something my father mentioned outside the Beak. Something that has to do with Dr. Albatur. I don’t know much more than that. But all this talk about how Albatur and other people are fed up with the Faloii’s rules. I wonder if this Solossius has anything to do with that.”
He runs his tongue over his teeth, his eyes on the sky. I hide a smile. He always ends up looking at the sun for answers. Or maybe his eyes are unconsciously seeking the stars.
“What about his spots?” I ask, switching gears back to the man I saw. “Did the files say anything about the spots?”
“Yes,” he says, his eyes returning to my face. “Well, kind of. The Faloii were described as having markings on their body.”
“Markings.”
“Yes.”
“That’s not very specific.”
“I mean, spots are markings.”
The commune is starting to wake up. Other greencoats are coming out to roam while their parents are in the labs, enjoying their day off before internships begin. In a few days they’ll be moving into their new compounds. It’s strange to think that this time tomorrow, I’ll be walking into the most restricted dome of the Paw.
“What are you thinking about?” says Rondo.
A man carrying a basket walks onto the bridge, headed across the stream to open his shop. I wonder if the basket carries one of Albatur’s new scarlet banners. I don’t answer right away, standing aside to let the man pass.
“I don’t know. Tomorrow, I guess.”
“Nervous?”
“Not exactly. Curious, maybe.”
“A whitecoat through and through,” he says, turning his eyes back to the fish in the stream.
A while ago, it would have thrilled me to hear it. Now I’m not sure. But my fondness for science and discovery is unchanged. Hardly anyone used to spend time outside their ’wams at one point: the heat drove us straight from lab to home. But then someone in the Paw made the maigno breakthrough, making our clothing more adaptable to the heat. What we don’t know, we will. I wonder if my father still wants to solve these mysteries of our home, or if his sights are set on something else entirely.
“Are you going to tell me why you requested the Paw?” I ask, turning to Rondo. I’m hoping to catch him off guard before he has time to be evasive.
“Am I wrong to want to be assigned with the two smartest people in class?” he says, holding his hands up as if in surrender.
“What, you’re going to try to cheat off our exams or something?”
“Would you let me?”
“Um, no.”
He chuckles. He doesn’t laugh enough. I’ve found that I like the way it sounds.
“I brought you something,” he says, and leans down to touch something at his feet.
It’s the smooth black case he was carrying his first day in the Paw. I didn’t even notice it until this moment, so absorbed in thoughts of the Faloii.
“Your izinusa,” I say, and I can’t bite back the smile that bursts out of hiding.
“Yes.”
He opens the case and lifts the instrument from its bed, bringing it to his shoulder. From the bottom of its curving wood base he pulls what looks like a long feathered stem from where it had been hidden in a groove. He takes it gently in four fingers of his left hand.
“No laughing,” he says, but I can tell by the crease in his forehead that he has no intention of making me laugh.
I’m not prepared for the music. From the delicate look of the izinusa’s neck to the graceful arch of the feather-like bow, I had expected a lighter sound than what Rondo coaxes from the strings. Instead, what flows into my ears is deep and rich with many layers of rising and falling notes. They weave with one another in ways my ears can barely comprehend, and I stare at the bow in Rondo’s fingers, the music filling me up. I feel empty and full at the same time, as if all the smells and sounds of the commune have been summoned by Rondo’s izinusa and swirl around me, waiting for me to make room inside my head. I look up from Rondo’s fingers and find his eyes on me as he plays. I can’t look away. It feels like the red sun has planted itself in my chest. Flowers grow under my skin.
When the hammers on the tower start again, Rondo stops playing, but the music has filled my ears the way the smell of ogwe fills my nose. I’m trying to think of something to say when his hand travels the short distance between us, closing around my bicep. He squeezes the softest part of my arm, a slow gentle pressure that makes my head swirl. When he lets the squeeze go, he leaves his hand there on my skinsuit, the heat traveling through the thin material. I smile.
We stand there for a while. This is a silence I can stand. Under it is only contentment, and for a few moments my head is empty: no sadness for my grandmother, no pain for my parents and the broken pieces of their love, no concern about the egg. Just Rondo: his hand, my arm, and, above us, the sun.