Chapter Thirty-Nine

I crash into Papa’s chest, nearly knocking him off the stool. But he wraps his arms around me, righting his balance. Righting me.

His skin is rough and hard against my cheek. There are ridges along his back where muscle and flesh used to be. He smells like mud and moss and reptile. And yet, none of that matters. The feeling he creates inside me is the same. Papa’s here, with us, once more.

“You’re not dead,” I say wonderingly. I pull back and touch his snout, the smooth underside of his jaw. “And you’re very handsome, for a crocodile.”

“Genetics.” Papa bobs his head. “Where do you think you get your good looks, missy?”

“Hey!” I protest. “Are you saying I look like a reptile?”

“Just the eyes,” he assures me. “The rest, you luckily got from your mother.”

“I always did tell him to use lotion,” Mama says, her eyes twinkling. “He never listened. And now look what happened.”

Papa sighs dramatically and thrusts out his scaly hand. “You win, woman. After twenty years, I finally admit that you’re right on this subject. Happy?”

Mama giggles—and I freeze. How long has it been since I heard that girlish noise? Not since our trip began. Certainly not since her cancer diagnosis. I’d been trying to get Mama to smile 121 times in Koh Samui. I never even dreamed of a giggle.

Joy fills me, wild and fierce. I grip both my parents’ hands, and they hug me from either side. I squeeze my eyes shut and savor the sensation. This moment. This time. I never thought I’d have it again. And it doesn’t matter that Papa’s blood runs cold. It doesn’t matter that tubes are affixed to Mama’s arms. We’re here, transcending our physical bodies. Together. Family.

If I could crystallize this moment in time, I think I could be happy forever. But I can’t. No matter how ferociously I live in the present, time passes. A second from now, two seconds, three seconds, what was once perfect is now a memory. Reality always encroaches. I only have to look at the speckled scales on Papa’s face to see that.

“Why didn’t you tell us sooner?” I ask.

“I wanted to.” Papa bends his snout and nuzzles Mama’s hand. “You have no idea how much I wanted to hold you both in my arms. It’s not easy living inside this mind,” he says softly. “It’s so alien. Unfamiliar. I would’ve loved a reminder of the person that I used to be. But Xander forbade it. If I tried to claim any kind of identity, he said, he would take away all my memories, so that I had no identity left to claim.”

“Did you know it was him, Mama?”

She smiles tenderly at Papa, her thumb stroking over his hand. “I’d like to say yes, that I knew immediately. Who doesn’t want to believe that they would know their soulmate, no matter what form they took? But the truth is: I only suspected. Some of his mannerisms were so familiar. It helped when I saw Mateo transform. That allowed me to wrap my mind around the fact that a mind and a soul could be the same, even though they occupied two different bodies. But I didn’t know for sure until today.”

I settle onto my half of Mama’s pillow. I can’t help but think about my own debacle of a romance, and the anger surges inside me all over again. But I will not let Bodin—or thoughts of him—ruin this moment. So I focus on the sensation of being a little girl again, lulled to sleep by my parents’ bedtime stories. Except that our stories aren’t gentle—and they’re all too real.

“What happened to you?” I ask Papa. “When we left you on the yacht. Did the mother and her baby make it?”

“No.” He ducks his head. “I was frantic. The explosions kept coming. Suzie and her baby lost too much blood, and I couldn’t stem it in time.” He pauses, his reptilian eyes reflecting true regret. “As a doctor, I know that I can’t save everyone—and I learned long ago to accept that. But it still shook me. And, I don’t know… I guess I was too close to the island and the sacred orb, or my emotions were too heightened, because their deaths—on top of not knowing when I would see the two of you again—did more than shake me. They transformed me. I watched as my own hands elongated and my arms shortened. My skin split and hardened. I touched my face, and in its place were sharp teeth and a snout.

“Xander’s people whisked me off the yacht. When I woke again, I was in the crocodile pit with the others. That’s when I began to learn the inner workings of this island.

“We all took a new name,” he continues. “They called me Three because there are only three people in our family. I thought that might have clued you in to who I really was.” He lifts his snout as earnestly as a crocodile can. Mama and I look at each other and burst out laughing.

“Only Papa would think an obscure reference like that would mean anything to us,” I tease.

“Not all of us do The New York Times crossword puzzle every day, my love,” Mama says fondly.

Papa’s shoulders shake—and I think he’s laughing, too. It will take us a while to learn his new cues…if Xander allows us to be together that long.

All of a sudden, I feel crowded in by Papa’s chest on the one side and Mama’s shoulder on the other. “Is it stuffy in here?” I mutter, moving around in the bed.

“It shouldn’t be.” Mama creases her brow. “You can feel the breeze from the ocean.”

I sit up, yank down my collar, and take a deep inhale of the salty air. That doesn’t help. I clamber out of the bed, being careful not to dislodge any of Mama’s tubes.

My parents turn to me with twin expressions of concern, which only adds to my unease.

“What’s wrong, Alaia?” Papa asks.

“You know how when something feels too good to be true, it usually is?” I burst out.

Mama looks from me to Papa to the crystal orb on her nightstand, its glow never ceasing, its energy ever cycling. “Are you referring to us?”

“Well, yes. Mama’s health has improved drastically. Papa’s been returned to us. I might be the Lotus Flower Champion. What does Xander want me to believe? That there might be a happily ever after for me after all?”

“Wait a minute.” Mama presses her hand to her chest, over the sensor. The beeping on the machine speeds up. “You might be what?”

That’s right. In all the excitement of our reunion, my parents don’t know about the, er, other excitement. I fill them in as best I can, from discovering Rae’s double-edged sword to stumbling onto the little boy’s cryogenically frozen body to the dart breaking in midair.

“And then Xander told me to find my peace on the beach with Mama,” I conclude. “‘There are worse ways to live,’ he said, ‘than passing the rest of your days in paradise.’”

I move back to Mama’s side, clasping her hands within mine. “I don’t actually believe I’m the Lotus Flower Champion. That I can bring someone back from the dead. That kind of power…it’s unfathomable. But if, on the miniscule chance that I am, then we wouldn’t have to say goodbye.” My voice shifts high, bordering on pleading. “Isn’t that right, Mama? When you pass, I could bring you back to life, and we could be together forever.”

Mama and Papa exchange a look. I used to think that they had developed their own silent language, through the speed of their blinks and the creases of their eyes.

“That’s not what I would wish for,” she says gently. “Everything comes to pass. Even life. Even me. That’s the Buddhist way.”

“But Mama—”

“When it is time for us to say goodbye, let me go in peace,” she continues. “That’s what I want. That’s all that I desire.”

I duck my head, hot tears flooding my vision. My heart breaks once more—although it shouldn’t. Although I should’ve learned better by now. My goal this entire trip has been to give Mama a peaceful death. I could’ve predicted that this would be her reaction. I knew, deep down, that this was how she felt. And yet, I couldn’t help but hope. Yearn. For an outcome different than this one. For a future where she and I could stay together.

I breathe deeply, reconstructing my fragmented heart. It does me no good to mourn when I don’t even know for sure if I’m the Lotus Flower Champion. When the scenario I’ve proposed is merely a distant possibility. For Mama, I’ll refocus my energies where they’re most productive: on understanding—and defeating—Xander.

I rise from the bed and pace the newly scrubbed tiles. If I force my body into action, then my thoughts will hopefully follow. “Xander doesn’t act without reason. There’s not a generous cell in his body. He’s a scientist through and through. He treats us not as humans but as the subjects in his experiments. Why would he want me to live in relative peace, if he wants the rest of my abilities to manifest? Why would he want me happy and reunited with my parents once again?”

“I didn’t think,” Papa says, his snout swinging back and forth. “For the first time in my life, I didn’t work through the permutations. I was in such a hurry to revive Mama. To tell both of you my identity. I didn’t bother to wonder why Xander granted me permission to use the orb and reveal my identity, now of all times.”

“There is no happiness without unhappiness,” Mama says, her eyes finding Papa’s once more. “No joy without pain. No love without loss. That’s the yin and yang of our world, my love.” She’s talking to me this time, although she uses the endearment interchangeably. The only confusion that it creates is that Papa and I argue constantly about which one of us is actually her favorite.

“Xander knows that he cannot subject you to loss after loss, tragedy after tragedy, without you becoming numb to the pain,” Mama continues. “You would come to expect devastation as a matter of course, and thus, his challenges would no longer yield the same impact. But…if he gives you a taste of happiness…” She moves her shoulders. “…only to yank it away…then he can plummet you to the lowest of lows once more.”

I gape. “But that’s just evil. And I don’t want to be yanked away,” I say in a small voice, edging closer to them. Whatever air I need, I need them even more. “I want to stay right here on this island with the two of you.”

“I know, baby,” Mama says. “But like it or not, Xander’s got us in a bubble. We can only stop thinking about the rest of the world for so long. Our friends are imprisoned. A little boy lays on ice. And we all wait to see what abilities you’ll develop.”

“Don’t think of Xander as evil,” Papa adds. “He’s cold. Calculating. He’s trapped us on this island, and no matter what steps we take, we’re always playing his game. You know what that means, don’t you?”

No, actually. I don’t. I grip the edge of the bedframe, the metal cold in my hot palms, and I’ve never been less sure of anything in my entire life. I don’t know my next move. I don’t know how not to be a pawn.

But Papa’s looking at me, and it doesn’t matter which eyes he uses—human, crocodile, or a combination of both. His steadfast belief in me—to be and do all the things—shines through.

And so, I take a deep breath. Because if he can phase in and out of reptilian form, losing more and more of his humanity each time, the least I can do is fight, no matter how insurmountable the odds.

“What’s that, Papa?” I ask.

“You have to play your own game.”