Part Four

Osprey sat behind the desk and stared at photographs. They were black and white, sharply focused, a few limbs blurred with motion. One showed a man seated in a wheelchair lifting a small child into the back of a van. Another had caught the man smiling at the girl as she tried to climb into his chair.

The man was young, maybe twenty. His hair was black and thick, but there were deep circles under his eyes and he had a slouch.

Elomi leaned over Osprey's shoulder to trace the little girl's outline with a manicured fingernail. "She's adorable."

"Isn't she?" He smiled and set the photos down on the top of the wide oak desk. The office was cozy and lit only by a green glass desk lamp. "Her birthday is coming up."

"Time for another anonymous gift?"

"I was thinking of a pony."

Elomi laughed, drifting across the room, letting her fingers sweep over a bowl of marble eggs on display. "I'm sure her father's suspicion wouldn't be aroused by a beast of burden mysteriously appearing on the doorstep."

Osprey tucked the photographs into a large desk drawer full of them. Another dozen or so arrived each week. Zion and Alyanna at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Zion and Alyanna at the cathedrals in Rome, Zion and Alyanna lounging on the beach in California. Or, during worse times, Zion in the hospital and Alyanna with her nanny.

Elomi had been speaking, and he hadn't heard a word. "Come again?"

She looked over her shoulder at him, all delicate blue eyes and soft lips. "I said, when are you leaving with the girl?"

He groaned. "Roberts said he'd call within the hour. Tell me, El, am I doing the right thing?"

She shrugged, still smiling. Elomi would smile through anything, which made it hard to tell what she was feeling. "You could take over her mind, whisk her off to a country she knows nothing about and where no one speaks her language so that she's entirely dependant on you, then keep her there until she gives up all hope of ever seeing her family again."

"El," he said softly, hurt.

She shrugged again. "Worked with me, didn't it?"

He put his elbows on the desk and let his forehead rest in the palms of his hands. "You make me feel like a tyrant."

"You are a tyrant." She stepped back until she was leaning against the corner of the desk and eased her tone. "But you're right that she's in danger. Especially now, when she's still changing."

He reached out and picked up one of her hands, bending and unbending the long, smooth fingers. "When I pulled her out of the tub…I felt something. I knew what it would be like if I went to Zion and told him the truth, and if he invited me in. I knew what family means."

Elomi's fingers closed around his. Even when she was touching him she felt a million miles away. "Someday, Osprey. Someday."

"I must be a true bastard to deny her that."

She was about to speak when the phone rang shrilly. Osprey lifted the receiver to his ear and said, "Yes?"

"This is Roberts, sir. I have the information you asked me for."

*~*~*~*

They took Osprey's private jet back to Oregon. Thursy didn't sleep on the flight but sat staring out the window at the red and orange dawn they were flying into. Osprey sat across from her, trying not to stare because he knew it made her nervous.

She had taken a shower - no salt water this time - and changed into an outfit Elomi had loaned her. The flowered sweater was too bland for Thursy's stunningly rich beauty, and the pants were simply too big. She looked small and lost in them.

"How long?" she asked, as if sensing that they would touch down soon.

"Half an hour. Do you need anything?"

She turned her face from the window to him. He felt warm in her sight, and strangely nervous. "No," she said.

She hesitated, prompting him to say, "What is it?"

Thursy forced a smile as if trying to pass herself off as nothing. "When I was in the shower, I noticed that there aren't any marks. From the execution, I mean."

Osprey nodded. "You're completely healed."

"Yes, but your tolerance for pain is much greater as well. Watch."

He leaned forward into the space between their seats and rolled up his shirt sleeve. With one fingernail, he ripped open the skin from wrist to elbow.

Thursy jumped back, a hand flying over her mouth.

"It doesn't hurt," Osprey told her.

"Really?"

"Really." Cautiously, she examined his arm. The flesh was already resealing itself.

"Can you feel it at all?"

"Yes. It just doesn't feel like pain."

"What does it feel like?"

He considered. "Being stroked with a feather."

Thursy looked at him and lifted her eyebrow, then blushed and looked down again. She ran her finger over the skin as the cut closed like a zipper being pulled the length of his arm.

Osprey's heart began to beat hard as she traced the scar. It was pink at first, then white, and then it shrank thinner and thinner. Thursy's fingertip was warm and it made him feel light-headed.

Thursy felt it, too. He could tell by the way her touch stopped and then started again, more slowly.

The blood was rising to his skin; the longer she touched him the hotter it boiled. Sweat broke out on his forehead.

"You said there would be changes," Thursy told him. Her voice was breathy and disjointed as if she couldn’t concentrate.

Osprey’s eyes closed and he fought the urge to grab her, to enfold her in his arms where he could protect her. He would gather her up the way he had Elomi and Reka, and she might hate him at first but someday she would understand, and he would free her to the world again.

"It feels like…" Thursy tried to say. "Is this…"

Gedmark wasn’t her mother, he realized. She was Scotch’s mother, though he had another one and a father to boot. But she had taken care of Thursy and Yared after their own parents were killed-

Suddenly he was freezing. His skin cracked like bent ice when he opened his eyelids and realized Thursy was sitting back in her chair. She had drawn her legs up against her chest and was rocking back and forth in short, controlled motions.

He looked at his arm and saw that the skin was smeared with blood. He touched it but could find no wound.

"Thursy," he said.

She lifted her face. There were tears in her eyes and she was gritting her teeth.

"Let me see your hand."

She slowly extended her trembling fingers. The tips were clotted with blood. "What happened?"

"It’s your old skin falling away. Probably when you take another shower the rest will come off. It’s normal."

He rubbed her thumb lightly and the skin slid off, leaving a faint sheen of blood underneath. Thursy gasped and tried to pull her hand away, but Osprey held onto her wrist while he wiped the blood with a handkerchief.

He could feel the slender, arching bones in her arms beneath the skin. They, too, would slough off, leaving newer, tougher bones in their place. He hated already that she would be in pain and there was nothing he could do.

"I’m sorry," he heard himself say without thinking.

"It’s not your fault," Thursy told him, and he let go of her.

"Excuse me," he muttered. She didn’t reply as he rose and walked to the back of the plane.

The restroom’s tininess pressed down on him as he leaned down to splash water on his face. He couldn’t breathe in here and he couldn’t breathe when he was with her…

There was something he wasn’t seeing. He had never met this girl until today but he felt he knew her well. He had a sense of her heart that was intuitive more than anything else.

But that didn’t explain his sudden insight into her family situation. Even if he had made a wildly lucky guess that Gedmark was Scotch’s mother and not her own, why would he imagine that Scotch had three parents? He had never met anyone else who did.

He shouldn’t have agreed to take her to Oregon. That much was certain. She might not understand how fragile she was right now, but he did, and he should have put his foot down.

And whisked her away to a foreign land…Elomi began in his mind.

Perhaps. Perhaps after she saw Scotch, he still would.

"Sir," the steward called through the door, "we’re about to land."