The cuckoo nodded approvingly. “Come with me,” he said, then turned and led me deeper into the trees.
Lacking any real choice, I followed.
* * *
We walked until the compound lights dwindled to nothing behind us. Only then did Mark produce a flashlight and click it on, directing its watery beam toward the ground.
“Sorry to make you come all this way, but, well, we both know things would have gotten really ugly back there if we’d parked any closer,” he said. He sounded almost jovial, like we were old friends going for a walk, and not virtual strangers in the middle of an abduction. “We’ll be at the RV soon.”
“An RV?” I couldn’t quite keep the disbelief out of my tone. “You brought an RV?”
“Had to,” he said. “We don’t squish well, not even when we have a good reason to be working together. It’s a really nice one, too. Modern. There’s even a bathroom it’s not physically painful to use. Amelia and David took a few recreational trips back there while the bedroom was occupied. He’s pretty mad at you, by the way.”
“For what?” I asked. “All I did was hit her with my backpack.”
“I didn’t say it was logical, just that it was there,” said Mark. “Amelia saw you first. That meant she got the duty and the honor of triggering your next metamorphosis. Unfortunately, she couldn’t exactly survive something like that. She died like she lived. Pissed off at the entire world and willing to do whatever she could to destroy it. Honestly, I think David’s mostly angry because he knows that if their positions had been reversed, Amelia would be perfectly happy to have him gone, if it meant you were progressing to your next instar.”
I stopped walking. Mark continued for a few more feet before turning to look at me, projecting polite confusion.
“We’re not there yet,” he said. “Like I said, we have to keep walking.”
“You keep using this word, ‘instar,’” I said. “What the hell does it mean?”
“Can’t you take the definition from me?” he asked. “You should be able to reach out and snatch it from my mind. If you can’t, that’s not my problem.”
“That’s not how I do things,” I said.
“That’s not how humans do things,” he said. “You, though, Sarah Zellaby? That’s exactly how you do things. You act like you have some moral high ground because you only hunt people you’ve decided somehow deserve it, but you’re just like the rest of us. You take. You take, and you take, and you take, and you don’t give anything back. You can’t help yourself. If you could, you’d be useless to us. You want to know what an instar is? Take it.”
I stared at him, feeling my eyes burn as they went white. How dare he talk to me like that, like I was doing something wrong by trying to be careful. Even more, how dare he remind me of what I already knew and wanted to forget about. There were no questions left in my mind, only anger, and the brush of the wind against my cheeks as I focused on him, trying to punch my way through his mental barriers and claim what I needed to know.
His walls were strong. Not as strong as mine, maybe, and not as strong as an anti-telepathy charm, but strong enough that I couldn’t smash through them the way I’d wanted to. I pictured my thoughts as hands, grabbing chunks out of his defenses and pulling them free. They came back as quickly as I could discard them. I made a frustrated noise.
“Okay, you can stop now.” He sounded winded. “That really hurts, you know.”
I stopped grabbing for his mind. “How can it hurt? I’m not touching you.”
“You’re not touching me where anyone can see it, but you’re definitely touching me,” he said, rubbing his temple and wincing. “Wow, you’re strong. I’ll give you this much, princess: you’re almost as impressive as I hoped you’d be. Now come on.”
“I still don’t know what an instar is.” My voice came out plaintive and tight, like a child who expected to be smacked. My gut was roiling. My whole life, I’ve tried not to hurt anyone. Now I couldn’t even bring myself to hurt another cuckoo. Instead, I was following him through the forest, so close to willingly as to make no real difference.
I paused. I was following him through the forest. No other cuckoos had appeared. If I turned and ran back to the compound now—
“Please don’t even think it,” he said wearily. “I wasn’t lying about my backup. They may not be right on top of your family’s property, but they’re close enough, and you’d never make it. This is the kindest way of doing things.”
“It doesn’t feel very kind to me,” I said.
“That’s because you’re the prize,” he said. “The prize is, well, prized. It’s desired and valued and it doesn’t get to have opinions of its own. Opinions are for soldiers and flunkies. You get to sit on a shelf and look shiny until it’s time for you to go to work.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You’ll see,” he said, and started walking again, taking our only light with him.
The woods were so dense and dark around us that I wasn’t sure I could find the compound on my own. We’d gone far enough into the trees that even the minds of the family members I was attuned to had faded into true silence—not just the static of a present but inactive connection. Maybe I’d been complicit in my own kidnapping, but at this point, I was committed.
Something rustled in the bushes behind me, something without enough of a mind for me to latch onto. I shuddered and chased after Mark and the safety of his flashlight.
“Thought so,” he said, once I drew up level with him. “Like I said, we’re almost there.”
“Why aren’t you answering my questions?” I asked.
“Prizes don’t get to ask questions,” he said.
“I’m not a prize.”
“Yeah, you are, princess. Come to terms with that sooner rather than later, if you can. This will be a lot easier for you if you do.” He stepped over a fallen log and paused to offer me his hand. “Careful. The footing’s treacherous here.”
I stared at his hand for a split second before grasping it and using it for leverage as I both stepped over the log and drove myself deep into his mind, past the layers of mental defenses, past the walls whose construction I paused long enough to both admire and study. He knew some tricks I didn’t. I wanted them. I wanted everything.
He wanted me to take? Well, he was going to get everything he wanted, and he was going to get it now.
The word “instar” was floating near the surface of his mind, almost like he’d been waiting for me to come and get it. That was silly—tell a person not to think about elephants and they won’t be able to think about anything else—but I still shrieked silent triumph as I seized hold of it and drew it into my own vocabulary.