SIXTEEN MONTHS BEFORE THE TRIAL
Twigs snap underfoot as I walk, breaking like tiny, brittle bones. The journey from our dormitory through the woods isn’t the quickest way to Magic Land—twenty minutes if you travel at a moderate pace—but it is still my preferred path to Princess Palace.
After so many seasons, I know these woods by heart. The gentle curve of the path. The crooked shape of the trees. The coolness of the soil as it crumbles against my fingertips. Once upon a time, Nia and I would race each other home this way from Magic Land. Me, laughing in the light of the moon. Her, singing sweetly as she gathered bluebell-and-fairy-slipper bouquets. Both of us dancing, twirling like pixies through the trees. I walk on, keep my head down. The memory of those days brings only an ache. A longing, for the way things used to be.
Before.
Nobody walks these woods with me now.
“Why take the woods when you can take the monorail?” Eve always asks. “The pine trails are tedious.”
I disagree. Lots of interesting things can happen in twenty minutes. In twenty minutes, you can sing Kingdom Radio’s hit song, “Brave Girl,” eight times all the way through. In twenty minutes, you can rescue a baby bird that has fallen from its nest.
In twenty minutes, you can unearth something you have buried.
In the northwestern clearing.
A thing you have borrowed but must return.
Eleven steps from the tallest pine.
Because that is the rule.
Below the stone with the thin white line.
And … because you found out he has a secret.
I locate him easily inside the Imagine Land stables, mucking out the stalls after my Meet and Greet at the Exotic Species Nursery. He is dressed in his spring uniform, a dark khaki pair of pants and a lightweight evergreen pullover, and is faced away from me, opening a feedbag, when I silently enter his stall. “Good morning.”
Owen startles, turning suddenly at the sound of my voice. In his hand, I see a small pocketknife. The same one he had with him that day in Safari Land.
“Jesus, Ana.” He lets out a big breath, and my infrared sensors detect a spike in his metabolic activity. I have surprised him. “You shouldn’t sneak up on people like that.”
I feel my cheeks flush, a sensation I do not expect given the barn is kept at a comfortable temperature all year round. “I wasn’t sneaking. Maybe you should pay more attention.”
Owen grabs a pitchfork and starts to spread fresh straw bedding around the stall. “Can I help you with something?” He eyes me curiously. “I didn’t see any Fantasist Meet and Greets on the stable schedule this morning.”
I clear my throat. “Here.” I hold out his coat and hope he will not notice the mud stain on the sleeve. “I’m very sorry it took me so long to return it to you.”
He looks up at me. “What’s that?”
“Your jacket,” I tell him. “You let me borrow it. That night at the lagoon.”
I do not tell him about what I found in the pocket when I tried to shake the dirt off the sleeves: a delicate bracelet, with three golden charms.
A seashell.
A dolphin.
A starfish.
Nia’s bracelet.
Why would it have been in Owen’s pocket? Does he know something about why Nia tried to drown the little girl? Does he know what happened to her during those ten weeks prior?
“Borrow?” Owen frowns. “No, I didn’t.”
Does he not remember? In all the days since the incident at the lagoon—twenty-three of them, to be exact—has he not thought of me? Not even once?
After all … I’ve thought of him.
Too many times to count.
Then he says something else I don’t expect.
“I didn’t let you borrow it, Ana. I gave it to you.”
Suddenly, I feel a burst of warmth within my cingulate cortex, the thumb-size piece of synthetic tissue planted deep inside my brain’s limbic lobe. My ears turn uncomfortably warm.
Embarrassment.
“You mean … it was a gift?” I whisper. My mind flashes back to that night. To the chaos and the rain. To the sirens and the screams. I remember the way Owen draped the jacket over my shoulders so gently. The way he noticed I was cold.
“Absolutely,” Owen says. “I don’t need it anymore.”
My grip tightens around the fabric. “Are you sure?”
He shoots me a funny look. “Of course. No big deal.”
Not to him, maybe. But this is the first gift—a true gift—anyone has ever given me. I look down at the jacket in my hands. My head is a sky full of fireworks.
“Thank you.”
“Sure.” And then he smiles at me.
I look away quickly, feeling my face flush. I have seen him smile before, but this time feels different … as if he’s sharing something with me.
Is that how you look at everyone else? Is that how you look at humans?
Immediately, I save the memory in my preferred folder. This way, I will be free to access it and analyze it as many times as I like later, during the Resting Hours. Until sunrise if necessary.
“Why’s it all muddy, though?” Owen asks, noticing the sleeve.
“I tried to clean it. I think I only made it worse. I’m sorry.” For a long moment, he doesn’t say anything, which perplexes me somewhat. Although we are programmed to be sensitive to human emotions, silence is tricky for Fantasists. Sometimes, it can mean a person is feeling shy. It can mean they are feeling scared. It can mean they’re feeling shocked or even moved.
And other times … it can mean they are angry.
Please do not be angry. I only buried it in the woods so the Supervisors wouldn’t find it.
To my relief, Owen doesn’t say anything more about it. Instead, he goes back to cleaning out the stall. I take a seat on an upside-down bucket and watch him work, noticing how pleasant his features are. The arch of his brows. The sheen of his hair. Even the scar above his lip, like a tiny crescent moon. When he’s done, he wipes his brow, and I notice a flash of silver on his wrist.
“I like your bracelet,” I tell him.
The silver glint makes me think of Nia’s bracelet and I sharply remind myself why I’m really here.
He glances at his arm. “It’s a medical ID, actually. Not a bracelet. But thanks.”
A medical ID?
“Are you sick?”
“Nah,” he chuckles. “Healthy as a horse. Just something I’ve gotta wear.”
“Then why?”
His dark brown eyes meet mine. “You sure ask a lot of questions, Ana.”
“Curiosity is a key component of my program,” I explain, burying my embarrassment. “I’m sorry if it’s bothering you. Or … if I’m bothering you.”
“Not at all.” Owen shakes his head. “Honestly, it’s nice having someone to talk to.” He motions to the horses in the next stall and grins. “You know. Besides them.”
I feel another flash of curiosity about this boy—I’ve never met a maintenance worker so involved in hybrid care—but my curiosity is accompanied by a jolt of something else, something like diving into cold water on a very hot day.
“Okay.” I feel a tickle in my chest as I mirror his smile. “I’ll stay.”
We talk for some time, just the two of us, during which I learn many things.
First, that he is nineteen. Young for a maintenance worker.
Second, I learn he speaks three languages.
English, French, and Taiwanese.
Not as many as I speak, of course, but impressive nevertheless.
And third, I learn it is no coincidence Owen spends so much time caring for the hybrids in the FES program. That, in fact, there is a reason.
“Hybrid species have always been my passion,” Owen explains, when I ask him. “I wanted to be a trainer—that’s actually what I planned to study in school, animal physiology and behavior—but I’ve got a heart condition, and the Kingdom said that legally, they couldn’t give me a spot in the training program because of it. But I guess they still really liked my résumé, so even though they hired me as a maintenance worker, they gave me a higher clearance and make sure most of my work’s with the hybrids. This way, I can still be around them most of the time.” He looks at the horses and grins. “It’s not a bad deal, really, minus all the literal crap shoveling. I’m lucky they hired me at all.”
Higher clearance, I think, recalling his ID card. That makes sense.
But then I pause. “Heart condition? What kind of heart condition?”
“Oh.” His smile wavers. I realize my question has surprised him. “I’ve got an artificial valve,” he says after a moment, and I notice something in his voice, a kind of darkness, of detachment, that makes me think this is not his favorite topic. “It’s no big deal.”
“Artificial? What does it look like?”
“The valve?”
I nod.
“I mean…” He clears his throat. “Like an actual valve, I think. It was grown in a transplant lab like any other replacement organ, but there’s also a gadget in there to give me a jump start in case the valve fails.” He shrugs. “Sort of like a backup motor, I guess. So I won’t keel over and die.”
I feel my eyes go wide. “You’re a hybrid,” I blurt, before I can help myself. And then we are both laughing—a big, surprising sensation that fills me with light.
The feeling is so pure and so perfect I never want it to end.
“You know something?” he says once we’ve both caught our breaths. “I guess I’ve never thought of it like that. Maybe I am.” For a minute, we just grin at each other. Something about him, I can’t put my finger on it, makes me forget that he is a maintenance worker and that I am a Fantasist.
Right now, we are just Owen and Ana.
Then, without warning, he leans in and nearly brushes my cheek. “Your skin seems so real.”
“It is real,” I scoff, and pull back, though the very idea of him touching me makes my pulse race. “It was grown in a lab, too, you know. Probably right next to your valve.”
“Sorry, force of habit.” Owen’s face erupts into a big, sheepish smile. He looks down at his hay-scuffed shoes, but after a minute I notice him watching me again. Studying me. As if he’s trying to understand how, exactly, I work.
I suddenly feel brave. Like maybe the rules I’m used to operating within no longer apply.
“There’s—there’s something else I wanted to ask you,” I offer, reaching into the jacket’s pocket. But just as my fingers locate the cool metal chain of Nia’s bracelet, there comes a sudden crashing sound, followed by a sharp, earsplitting scream.
“Oh no.” Owen jumps up, just as one of the winged horses, EFC141, slams wildly against his stall.
“What’s the matter?” I rush to follow Owen. “Is he glitching?”
EFC141 is a large gray Arabian gelding, nearly eighteen hands tall, with ice-blue eyes and massive, blue morpho butterfly wings. Of all the Kingdom’s many exotic species, the horseflies have always been among my favorites, and this male in particular has forever stood out as one of the park’s most stunning of the crossed hybrids. When he was younger, large crowds would gather just to watch him flutter and race around Imagine Land’s rolling green paddock, though nowadays, I rarely see him there, since the newer, more exciting models tend to get more attention.
My eyes go wide when 141 continues to buck and thrash violently in the pen, as if he is possessed. That sweet, playful horsefly from the paddock and this horsefly cannot possibly be the same. “Is he sick?” I ask.
Owen tries to grab 141’s bridle, but the horsefly beats his wings wildly and bares his teeth, nearly biting him. “Not physically,” Owen grunts a reply as he dodges a second nip. “At least—not yet.” The horsefly eventually stops bucking and instead begins pacing around his stall in tight, repetitive circles, wings back. Now his eyes stare ahead blankly, as if he’s in a trance. I can hear the clicks and murmurs inside his motor as it runs rapidly—like a train barreling dangerously down a track—and I worry he may suffer a stroke. Unable to take any more, I rush to the gate. “Ana,” Owen says sharply. “Be careful.”
“I know what I’m doing.” I slip my hand inside my pocket and pull out a small handful of vitamin supplements disguised as sugar cubes, which I always carry with me when I visit the stables. “Hey, you.” I hold a cube over the door of his stall and let out a low whistle. “I brought you something.” After a few seconds, the horsefly blinks and slowly ambles toward me. He lets out a soft, almost bewildered nicker—as if even he doesn’t understand what just happened—and finally helps himself to a cube.
“Wow.” Owen sounds impressed. “How’d you do that?”
“I’ve known these guys forever,” I say softly. “They trust me.” I pause and then ask, “How long has this been going on?”
“As long as I’ve worked here,” he replies. “So at least eight months? And like I already told you, it’s not just him; I’m seeing this sort of behavior across the board. With all the hybrids.”
I frown. “Have you told the Supervisors?”
Owen tenses and looks at the hay-strewn floor. “I don’t think that would be such a good idea.”
“Okay,” I utter in response, and immediately feel frustrated by my lack of tact. Typically, I have little difficulty talking to humans. I know how to engage them. How to mirror them. How to make them share, smile, laugh. I know how to make them feel special, as if they are the only person in the world. But now, suddenly, all I can think about is the silence between us. A silence as deafening as it is quiet. A silence I created, by having said the wrong thing. I scan my memory for backup conversation topics—the weather, the season, his favorite flavor of ice cream—but nothing seems right.
And so I say the first new thing that comes to mind. “Have you ever considered talking to Mr. Casey about it?”
Owen’s expression darkens even further. “Never,” he mutters. “I hate that guy.”
“I hate him, too,” I blurt out, then immediately clap a hand to my mouth.
What is wrong with me? Being around Owen is dangerous. He makes me say things I don’t mean.
“I didn’t realize Fantasists hated anything,” Owen says with a little smirk.
“We don’t!” I say quickly. “I don’t know what came over me. I’m sorry. Please don’t tell the Supervisors.”
“You don’t have to apologize,” Owen says, his voice assuring. “Anything you say is between us.” He reaches out and touches my arm. “Thanks again for your help just now.”
Suddenly, I cannot move, or even breathe. The sensation of his skin against mine is … indescribable. Every nerve ending. Every cell.
Burning.
How is it possible to feel so good and so confused at the same time?
I swallow. “You’re—welcome.”
Our eyes meet, and for a brief moment, though I wonder if I have misread his nonverbal communication, it is almost as if he is seeing me differently. Not as an object, but as something else. Something known, but also unknown.
“They keep some of the older models in here for days at a time,” Owen goes on. “It’s like they think just because they’re hybrids, the animals don’t need the same level of mental stimulation as bio-typicals.” He shakes his head, and I can see from the anger in his eyes just how much he cares.
Something inside me stirs. I like that he cares.
“The thing is, horses are intrinsically social creatures, you know? Even cross-bred horses. They need to engage. They need to play. They need to run.”
“It’s true,” I say softly. I notice the way 141’s wings now hang limply at his sides. “They do.”
“Anyway.” Owen looks as if he’s embarrassed to have revealed so much, especially to a Fantasist. “Never mind. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
But this is my job, I want to shout. Tell me anything, tell me everything, and I will make all your wildest dreams come true.
“I should get back to work.” He shoots me another faint smile before turning to leave. “Nice talking to you, Ana.”
My feet don’t move. My mind says, Go with him. But Fantasists must be invited.
“It was nice talking to you, too.”
We part ways—he heads toward the paddock, while I head back down the stable’s center aisle toward the front entrance—but when I pass the first stall, I notice something small glinting at me in the hay.
Something silver.
Something sharp.
Slowly, I kneel down, my silky gold skirt spreading out around me like sunflower petals. “Borrowed, not stolen,” I whisper before slipping Owen’s knife into my pocket. After all, stealing is when you take something you do not mean to return.
I smile to myself.
And on my honor … I fully intend to return this.