"Hold on and back up a second. Let's analyze this," Sam said suddenly from my right.
I turned to glare at him. An analysis? Where did he think he was, at school?
Sam ignored me, and turned to Maya. "Maya Lancing Hesser. That's you, right?"
Maya shrugged. "Could be."
I resisted the urge to retort, no it's just another random Maya Lancing (since there are so many of them) that is married to someone named
Hesser…
I knew someone named Hesser…
Don't tell her, was the thought that filled my mind at that moment. Don't tell her.
"Well, it has to be doesn't it?" continued Sam. "Unless it's your daughter or someone."
"I don't think it's me," started Maya carefully, "Because it's obvious that this woman is not a Nadar. No Nadar could be like this."
"Okay, then what about the princjhakt? What's that?"
"Prince Jake," breathed Maya, looking interested for once in her life. "I'm supposed to tell Prince Jake that we won… what though? This war? Well, I mean, no duh. It's not like that woman would tell me that Jake and I won a video game, or something."
Neither of us asked if she was going to tell Jake or not. Why would we? We assumed, just like obedient mortals do, that she would do so.
Sam and Maya continued debating, throwing back and forth different ideas of what this time loop meant. She showed us the ring, and we told her we were proud of her. We told her about the Resistance, and we told her the names of the contacts.
But I didn't tell her who Hesser was.
In later years, she would often ask me, why? Why didn't you tell me?
And I could only respond with a smile, Nadar instinct.
She too would laugh then, because I was anything but a Nadar.
There were times, though, when I doubted the Ellimist's judgment.
Like when he allowed Maya to get tortured.
Oscar got the radio call and with two words, he took off sprinting. "Maya's hurt," he told us.
Sam got into the car and followed Oscar, picking him by the side while I stayed at home, wringing my hands together.
Maya's hurt? What did that mean?
Whatever could hurt a Nadar?
Stop it, I scolded myself. Don't view her as a Nadar, view her as a child, one who can and probably will get hurt.
They came back, eventually, and the look she gave me stopped me in my tracks.
Gone was any trace of a child, of a daughter whom I could hold and give advice about boys and school. Gone was Maya Lancing.
I am a Nadar, her steely gaze told me. Leave me be to fight and to die.
"Oh, Maya," I whispered, longing to reach out and touch her, to bring her back to the world of love.
"I want to be alone," she said distinctly, and I let her go upstairs, let her slip through my fingers as I lost the child she could have been, forever.
A few minutes later we heard a scream, and Sam and I rushed upstairs to find her kneeling on the floor, tears streaming down her cheeks as she chanted, "Only with blood can blood be repaid!"
Yes! I wanted to shout. You're right! But not by your blood – only with the blood of the Son of God! Maya, stop trying to pay for your own sins – you can't! You can only be made pure and sinless by the blood of the Lamb!
But she couldn't hear me, and all I could do was love her and love her and love her and love her and love her until I despaired of ever breaking down the wall that she had built around her heart.
I heard her whisper in her sleep, whispering awful things about blood and death and payment, but I only caught one thing that stood out clearly.
"You haven't paid. This is just a start, over and over again until you are dead, for only with blood can blood be repaid," Maya whispered. "That's what they say to me, always. It will ring in my head until the day I pay or until the day I am forgiven. But who would ever forgive me?"
And always, always, she ended her feverish whisper with, "If anyone actually could."
And I held her hands and wept, because I longed to tell her, "Yes, someone can forgive you, and he did and does and will do forever. All you need to do is accept the forgiveness that is free for the taking."
But she had deafened her ears and hardened her heart and all I could do was pray.
The hospital called me while I was at work, and for a flash I was reminded of how they had called me for Eva, and for a moment white-hot terror seized me in its grasp and didn't let go.
Your husband, they said. He's hurt.
Whatever could hurt Sam?
Shivering, I left the building and went to the hospital that Sam was at, hoping that everything would be ok, that this life I led would be fine, that…
I was thrown back into a memory as I walked up the hospital steps.
Crayak had a finger in your pie, as well, the Ellimist had 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.
Now it is Crayak's turn in this game.
And I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that Crayak's move had been against Sam.
I burst into the emergency room and my hand flew up to stop my gasp. Sam's face was bruised beyond belief, and the blood ran down in cuts all over his body.
He lifted a weak hand to me and I took it, kneeling by the bed.
"What is it, Sam," I whispered, desperately, pleadingly. "What is it?"
"Maya," he whispered back through cracked lips. "Don't let her hurt after…"
A fit of coughing seized him while a blinding rage and jealousy seized me. How dare he talk about Maya, now!? I was his wife! How could he think about her? It was her fault, anyway, that –
"Helen," Sam croaked. "I can see it in your face. You're blaming her."
I shook my head vehemently, trying to deny it while the first tears began spilling down my cheeks. "Yes," I whispered.
He smiled, at gently reached out to tuck a stray wisp behind my ear. "Do you remember when we first met?"
"How could I ever forget?" I asked. "You were the first boy ever to respect me, and then you gave me a fifty."
Sam smiled again. "They told me the girl was safe."
"What girl?"
"The girl that the man was dragging into the bar. That was why I went into the bar, to stop him."
This time God helped me to banish all thoughts of blame, and I asked him, "What was her name?"
"Becky," Sam replied. "The man was calling her Becky Coles."
A faint smile came to his lips as he looked up at me for the last time.
"I love you," he said, just as sweetly and as earnestly and as sincerely as he had said it so many years ago. "And I'll be waiting for you at the Eastern Gate."
And then he slipped away, my beloved Sam, because there wasn't enough blood in the hospital to keep his heart pumping, there wasn't enough blood in the entire world to keep my Sam alive.
But I would see him again, and for now, that comfort was enough.
I didn't notice Maya again until we were back in our house, and then I turned to her and saw the fire burning in her eyes, and I knew.
"Did you kill them?" I mouthed, tears still on my cheeks.
She nodded, and I wept.
For a moment I was glad, and I prayed, desperately, earnestly, so God help me, do not let me rejoice at death – regardless whose death.
It took a while, but slowly, I was able to forgive my husband's murderers as I continued to live, continued to be a mother, continued to care for my children, continued to love the hurt and vulnerable world that would strike out before caring because nobody cared.
But Maya, I knew, would not forgive them, and I doubted she ever would.
But she never told me, and I didn't bother to find out. If she were fighting Yeerks, the less I knew the better.
Until the day she warned me to stay away from the Talent Show, until the day she called me to pick up several kids and to tell me that they were the Andalite Bandits our spies told us about, then I opened up to her and told her everything.
"I told you my story already," she says. "So I guess that's it, huh? Do you think Rachel's mom meant this when she asked you to talk to me?"
We laugh, and I reach out a hand to stroke her cheek. She's changed, I notice. The Animorphs changed her. She has a reason to fight now, and that makes a lot of difference.
"Well, I better go to bed then," she says nonchalantly, as if this entire time meant nothing. And who knows, maybe it doesn't. Maybe all it means to her is that my life was harsh as well. That my life was equivalent to hers, but I turned away from being a Nadar. I chose a different path.
She goes upstairs to bed, and I wait on the couch silently. I hear the water turn off and on, and then I sneak upstairs to see if everyone is in bed.
I visit the oldest first – my Sam. His upturned face beckons to me, and I hold my breath, for he is as handsome as my husband ever was. The moonlight splashes on his face, and he turns, mumbling something in his sleep.
Dear Sam, will we ever tell you of these secrets? Father never told you, did he…? Will I? Our home, so open and friendly holds terrible secrets.
Terrible secrets, but not bad ones. For I will tell you one day of my life, one day when the Yeerks are gone and we are free.
I hold my son and sing to him, a song of love, something simple, just to let his subconscious know that I love him.
I move to the next child's room, and do the same, for each child, pausing for a moment at the room that used to be Cyndi's, and wishing that she could have her childhood back.
Then I enter Oscar's room. He's on the floor of course, and so I pick him up and carry him to the bed. He is heavier then I realize, and I look at his face and realize that he's growing up to be a man and is no longer a little child.
If he ever was a child, being a Nadar.
I hold him, and I sing to him again, but before I am done he opens his eyes.
"Why do you do this every night?" he asks in a whisper. Simple curiosity or maybe he's dying to know, or maybe he doesn't care – I don't really know. But I answer all the same.
"Because I love you."
He doesn't understand, but he accepts it, and goes back to sleep. I know that when I am gone he will crawl out of the bed and go back to the floor, and I give him that, I let him sleep where he will because his heart is with Maya, and where she goes, he will go, and what she does, he will do.
And lastly, the room of my daughter, the Nadar who I have told my life to, a full life that no one but God knows. She too is sleeping on the floor, although maybe she isn't sleeping. I pick her up and carry her to the bed and sing to her, and she doesn't ask why, because maybe in this song she hears a little of my life, a little of the bitterness and sadness that has followed me throughout my entire life. Maybe she knows now why I sing of love each night. Maybe she knows that I will remember Issip's words forever – love is stronger then hate, he told me, right before he slipped away and died.
I leave her in the bed, and I go back to my own room, a room I had converted into two because I don't need a huge master bedroom just for myself. I go to that room and I pray, I pray for Maya and for Oscar and for Sam and for the other children and for the Animorphs and for Becky Coles and for the Joshuas, and for the fathers who beat their children and I pray for all of them, the whole world over because I cannot hold them all and say, "I love you, it'll be ok," to all of them.
Only God can, and so I pray that He will, and I know He did love them, and He does love them and He will love them for much longer than forever.