“I got captured, eventually,” Maya’s clear and steady voice continued. “And I got sent to a factory, basically. Where Elemaki worked. And then, I ran into the Ellimist again. Here, I’ll give you another memory transfer.”
Once more we were plunged into Maya’s world, a world where she had just been a child trapped in anguish and bitter defeat.
But this one incident changed her life forever.
What do you want from this child, I asked the Ellimist silently. Why is she so important that you go to all this effort to ensure that she comes to Earth – comes to me, and the Animorphs.
I was shocked beyond belief when the Ellimist actually answered my question.
We are fighting over her, he said quietly, as Maya’s memories began washing over my mind. We both want her on our side.
We?
Crayak and I.
I sensed an image of a red eye, part machine, part biological, and I shuddered.
He wants her?
Yes. And so do I. That is why we give her gifts. That is why we play with her. She holds the key to something that Crayak does not want.
What does Crayak not want, I asked the Ellimist, simply curious now.
He does not want her to find love.
Find love? How – what? What did he mean?
Crayak had a finger in your pie, as well, the Ellimist told me. He wanted to make you into a Nadar, so you would not be there to adopt Maya. But I chose Issip and Sam as my players, and so he was defeated. Now it is his turn again in this game.
Game? What was he talking about?
Crayak and I play games, Helen. Everywhere. With anybody. But there is one game that we play that designates all these side games. And Maya is the key.
I waited, my breath held.
Maya will be a part of a new creation. A part of something new – something loving.
What was he talking about?
I cannot tell you all. But I did not want Maya to become a Nadar. Crayak won that battle, but I will win the war. Maya will be a part of this new creation, even as a Nadar.
Ellimist, I said silently. I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Wait, he said. It will all be made clear in the end.
Puzzled, I turned my thoughts away from the Ellimist, and focused on Maya’s memory of her working in the Elemaki factory braiding metal strips together.
Ow! I cried as the metal cut the inside of one of my fingers. The blood spilled over the metal and I mentally cursed myself.
Great. I was going to be in so much trouble.
DAUGHTER OF SARANAI AND ALLORAN.
The blood flowed backward, back into my finger, and it healed itself as I watched in astonishment.
I wanted to scream, but my long habits of deference and silence held me. Instead, I looked around the room for him, and saw that everyone but me was frozen in place.
A little boy was there, frozen as he bent over his work.
Osgaron. He was Osgaron’s age. When he died.
Scream at him! Who cares if it is the Ellimist! Osgaron is your brother!
Was.
But I couldn’t. I couldn’t. I couldn’t even remind him of his promise three years ago.
The Ellimist said nothing else, but the room began spinning around me, forcing me to close my eyes. When I opened them, I was standing in a room.
It was an odd room, medium-sized and covered with a light gray grass that gave off no nutrients.
An alien was sitting on a table; it seemed like, although there were several soft layers of something covering the table.
Human, that was it. The alien was a human. It had been three years and I could still clearly remember when I had looked down on their planet Earth and seen them, seen them...
Happy.
This human that was staring at me... I was no Nadar, so I couldn’t tell how it was feeling. But still...
I could sense happiness coming from the creature. Happiness and peace.
Two things that would never be mine.
The human lifted itself up on its two legs. “Hi, um, who are you?” I jumped at the sound of its voice. Startled, I blurted the first thing that came into my mind. You make sounds like a kafit bird with that hole in your face, yet I can understand you.
Then remembering that I was an Elemaki, I said, I’m sorry, I mean, my name is Mayanamar-Semitur-Aventa.
What in the world made me give her my full name?
Going back to the why I had three names in the first place.
We observed each other carefully, and then the human spoke. “Greetings, Mayanamar. My name is Maya Lancing Hesser. I am a female human, or am now. I used to be...”
Her voice faltered off. What did she mean she was a human now? I prompted her with a what?
The human looked at me for a moment, and then closed her eyes, concentrating on something.
She shriveled up rapidly, making me gasp, while wings shot out of where her shoulders used to be. Once she was a full kafit bird she reversed this transformation, back into the human that she had been.
The human then pulled a green-blue band off of her finger, and said, “This is for you,” as she walked toward me.
I stared for a minute, in awe at the balance that this creature had. Forgetting my position, I again asked the first thing that came in my mind. Don’t you fall over with only two legs?
The corners of the slit in her face turned up, but she didn’t answer me. Instead she grasped on of my hands and put the band on the smallest finger of the hand that didn’t hold my brother’s fur.
What is it? I asked.
“It’s a ring, she explained. “A... gift. Well, ok. You know how I just turned into a kafit bird?”
Yes, I responded. How could I forget that?
“This ring will give you the power to do that. To morph. And more. See, when you morph you can only stay in that body that you morphed into for two hours.”
My genetic translating chip heard the word hours, but noted to me that this human’s hours were different from mine. So accordingly, I asked, What is hours?
The corners of the hole in the human’s face turned up again. “You have an internal clock that will tell you what two hours is,” she explained. “However, with this ring, you can stay in morph as long as you like. Only don’t go past the limit unless you have to, because the more you do so, the harder it is to get back to your original self. Also, once you morph with it, you can’t morphs without it.”
I looked up at this human that was giving me such a strange power. How do you morph?
“You concentrate on the animal you want to morph into while touching it. That is called acquiring. Then you take your hand away and concentrate on it by yourself. To get back to your own body you think about your own body. Oh yeah, and one more thing. Give me your tail.”
I stared, puzzled, but lifted my tail so that it rested in her hand. The human gently nicked my finger with the ring on it, and a drop of blood slid down and touched the ring, which glowed red. The human then released my hand.
“Now no one can use the ring except you. Don’t lose it. And after you try it, hide it in your kafit bird morph. Just concentrate on your body without the ring and it will work. And also, when you morph, it returns you to its original DNA, so basically morphing heals wounds. Creator’s blessing,” she finished.
Now I was really confused, but the smallest glimmer of hope began to grow. Thank you, I told her softly.
“Go now,” she responded.
How?
“Just step backward. The time portal will carry you back.”
I stepped backwards obediently, and the room began to spin like the work room had before, when the human cried, “Wait!”
I looked up, startled.
“Don’t ever give up. No matter what happens. Don’t you ever give up.”
Alright, I responded.
“I’m serious, don’t ever give up. And –”
The room spun more rapidly, making her last words fuzzy and unclear just as I reappeared in the work room.
What had she said? Tell princjhakt we won? What was a princjhakt? And won what?
It could have been a dream. It should have.
Except the ring, she had called it, was on my finger.
The factory was back to normal, and I quickly continued returning to braiding the metal bands, ignoring the fact that both my hearts were racing.
The day finished quickly after such an enormous event that no one else noticed.
What kind of creature was the Ellimist that he could transport me to... wherever he had taken me?
A very powerful one.
And again, what did he want of me?
Maya’s question shook me to my core. What did he want of Maya?
A new creation, he had said.
“I sneaked on board a ship with Andalites, but they dumped me in an escape pod. I got sucked through a Sario Rip to Earth,” Maya continued, without a trace of bitterness tainting her voice.
Oh, Maya, what do these creatures want you for?
“And then, I was going to crash, when the escape pod started slowing down. I landed really softly, actually, and didn’t die although the pod did get blown up to bits. And then, it was weird, actually, I heard a voice say, ‘You owe me.’ It wasn’t the Ellimist though.”
Crayak. It had to be. The Ellimist had said that they were fighting over Maya; they were giving her gifts…
Should I tell her?
NO, the Ellimist said, suddenly coming back. Do not tell her. She must make her own choices.
I could influence those choices.
And how do you know that your influence wouldn’t turn her to Crayak?
I was silent.
Maya told us the rest of her story as we sat there on the couch. She told us how she found Eun-hee, a small North Korean girl who had adopted Maya as a sister. She told us how they had starved together, until they got captured and put in a North Korean concentration camp. She told me of her murders there, and then of Oba, the sixteen-year-old boy who had died urging Maya on.
And then she told me about how she had lost control, and how on the banks of the Yalu River, she had lusted after the blood of the North Korean soldiers and had torn them all open.
“Then I stayed with the pearl fisher for a while, who killed Eun-hee. This is where I met Oscar. He was a slave to that man. After the pearl fisher started selling us off, I told Oscar to kill him. Oscar is a Nadar, too, you know.
“Then the pearl fisher sold me to pirates. I killed them all – beginning to see a pattern? – and then stayed for a year with the dolphins after morphing one of them.”
Maya’s voice would have grown wistful at this point, but I realized that she had been putting on feelings and emotions for us, and now that we knew her to be a Nadar, she was no longer bothering.
“A year. That saved me, I think. I went to America, and met up with some street kids. Oscar was there too – he said some soldiers or someone had picked him up after he killed the pearl fisher. I created a gang with them, and we fought together. There was this other girl – Anna – who took me in like Eun-hee, and she died, too. Not surprisingly – I seem to bring death wherever I go.”
Her words took me by surprise, and I looked up almost inadvertently. Did she really bring death wherever she went?
“A couple street kids became Nadar, after we burned the guys alive who raped and killed Anna. Then you guys picked me up, and that’s pretty much it.”
Her words hit me separately and repeatedly, her speech delivered without emotion or regret. Oh, Maya, what happened to you to make you like this? A Nadar, yes, at the banks of the Yalu River, but how many of these deaths weighed on you?
Do you know, my daughter, I cried out in my mind, that these deaths were to shape you? Crayak wants you to be a Nadar, oh, Maya; don’t go down that path of hate.
But even as she looked at me with dead eyes, I feared that it was too late.