I woke up with that laughter still ringing in my head.

I opened my main eyes and found to my surprise that I was standing. I opened my stalk eyes and looked around in all directions.

Trees. Grass. A stream running close by. A gentle breeze.

<Home? Am I home?>

I stared at a therant tree. The trunk. The branches. The vines. Impossible! It was Hala Fala! The oldest of the therant trees in the woods near my home. My father had shown me this tree when I was just a very small child. It was my Garibah. My Guide Tree.

I ground my hooves into the grass, taking a sample taste. Yes! It was the grass I had grown up on. The grass of home.

<How did I get here?> I wondered aloud.

I reached out with both hands and placed them on the smooth bark of Hala Fala. And I heard the “voice” of the tree, deep and simple and powerful.

It did not speak in words, of course. Only a handful of trees have ever used words, and even then, it could take them hours to say a single word. But Hala Fala spoke to me, as it usually did, letting me know that it felt my presence. Letting me feel its own strange, slow mind.

<I’m home,> I whispered to Hala Fala.

And then, after all that had happened, I broke down. I sobbed. I cried. I told my guide tree everything in a rush of disjointed emotion. Of course, not even a Garibah can understand stories of space travel, of aliens, of wars and terrible decisions.

But it could hear my shame. It could hear despair for poor, doomed Arbron. It could hear my cries of pain for all I had seen. It heard my fear.

The Garibah could not change what had happened. And it could not tell me that I was forgiven, or that all would be well now. I knew the ritual of forgiveness. <I have made right everything that can be made right, I have learned everything that can be learned, I have sworn not to repeat my error, and now I claim forgiveness.>

But I had not yet made right everything that could be made right. I had not yet learned to understand my own mistakes. I was not ready to swear I would not repeat those mistakes. Forgiveness for all my terrible failings was still a long way off.

But the Garibah, the tree named Hala Fala, heard me, heard my shame and rage. And being heard helped.

My sobbing quieted. I took my hands away from the tree’s smooth bark.

I walked slowly away, crunching up the sweet grass of home and trying, with my exhausted mind, to make sense of what had happened.

Clearly I had used the Time Matrix to carry me through time and space. Without experiencing any passage of time, I was home. But home when? Was this a hundred years ago? A thousand? The Garibah had been alive for seven thousand years. It could be anywhere in that time span.

I remembered trying to turn the Time Matrix to my own visions. And I guess I had succeeded. All these trees, all this lush grass, the kafit bird that fluttered by overhead, the little hoobers that jumped on springy tendrils and stared at me from their comical bulging eyes, all this was home. My home.

And across that stream, and over that next rise, I would see my family home. Just ahead! I broke into a run. I leaped the stream, like I always did, and suddenly I had to be home. I didn’t care what anyone said. I didn’t care. I wanted my mother and father. I wanted to lie down in the deep grass of the scoop and find my old toys and be a child again.

I ran, flat-out, and yes, the slopes were so familiar! And yes, every tree was where it should be. I ran to the top of the rise, ready to look down into our neat, oval-shaped family scoop, and —

I stopped.

There it was: the scoop. The bowl dug out of the ground by my great-great-grandparents and planted with every delicious variety of grass and flowers. And there was the lodge, the blue-plex awning that covered the south quarter of the scoop and kept our things out of the rain.

But just behind the scoop, in a place it could not possibly be, was a waterfall.

It was an incredible waterfall. It fell hundreds of feet from the edge of a cliff. A cliff that simply stood there. No mountains on either side. Just a cliff that rose sharply up from the grass.

I felt a sick queasiness in my stomach.

I was seeing something I had seen before. It was the picture from what Loren had called a cigarette ad. But it was in a place it should not be. In a place it could not be. It was violating the very laws of physics.

This was not home.

I tore my gaze away from the impossible waterfall, and looked around. From the top of the rise I could see fairly far.

What I saw was impossibility piled on impossibility.

But what I focused on first was the sky.

It was a deep red and gold, like the red and gold of my own world. It was also light blue, with fluffy white clouds. And it was green.

Stretching over my head was a sky broken into jigsaw-puzzle fragments. Here a patch of Andalite sky. There a lighter blue. And over there, a shocking green torn by ragged bolts of electricity. Clouds drifted through the paler blue segments and then disappeared when they reached a different segment. Lightning in the green sky disappeared when it reached one of the other patches.

I had never known what the sky of Earth looked like, but now I could guess. It was pale blue, with fluffy white clouds.

And I had never known the sky of the Yeerk world, but now I could guess that, too. It was green and torn by bolts of electricity.

What have we done? I wondered.

And I remembered the laughter of that vast and strange being I had glimpsed.