Meeting Read online

  “The Krithi just dropped you and Bikos here and told you to make it on your own?”

  Sibyl winced again. “Please don’t call them that!”

  “What? Krithi? What’s wrong with Krithi?”

  “Krithi is the drone people, the worker class that’s too low to converse with. They have no brains. It’s an insult. The people who took care of me, Bikos, and the Hasible were Methry, special trainers, members of the Kalithri, which is the teaching and government class.”

  “Okay,” Maya said and shrugged again. “What do they call their planet, then?”

  “Thrixa,” Sibyl said.

  “Okay. The Thrixa people just dropped you and your egg here? And Bikos and Rimi’s egg?” The kettle whistled, and Maya poured hot water into the cocoa mugs and handed one, with a spoon, to Sibyl.

  Sibyl stirred, staring down into her mug. Then she glanced up at Maya. “Gaelli arranged for me to have that host family. I thought Bikos had a host family, too, but I got dropped off first, so I didn’t see where he went. And we have help lines,” Sibyl said. She frowned and drummed her hands on the table. “We can call the Methry if we’re in total distress. I don’t get why Bikos didn’t do that.”

  Maya sat down, her warm mug gripped between her hands. The spoon jangled as she set the mug on the table. She stirred the lumpy powder into the hot water. The scent of chocolate drifted up. Rimi, you were there. Do you remember anything about this?

  I remember we had guardians when we were still in the hot place. I couldn’t count then, but when I think now, I remember three beings were most concerned with us, making sure we got enough to eat, enough rest, that we were comfortable. Also, they made Bikos work and learn and be busy with things I couldn’t understand.

  When Bikos was so sick, right before he gave you to me, did he think about calling these guardians? Maya wondered.

  Rimi was quiet. Finally she said, He had many many thoughts. He was very sick. And he was confused. We were not inside each other’s minds the way you and I can be; we had bonded, but it was not the complete bond you and I share. What I remember about it: before he got really sick, he met someone and talked to them. It wasn’t one of the Krithi, but it was someone who didn’t feel local either. Someone who confused him. Many of Bikos’s feelings shifted after this encounter. He had been thinking he would find help from the Krithi, or Thrixa, and then that avenue was cut off. The new person made everything inside him shift. Then he just wanted to find someone with chikuvny who was not Krithi. He was thinking about saving me, and then I was so sick I couldn’t really think, either, though I was trying to save him, but I couldn’t do anything inside the seed. I don’t remember that part very well, except we were both in such distress. Rimi’s self flushed with warmth, and she hugged Maya a little tighter. Then we found you, Mayamela.

  I am so glad, Maya thought, and then said to Sibyl, “He was so sick when I met him I didn’t get to ask him a lot of questions, and I wouldn’t have known enough to ask him that one. It was kind of overwhelming. One day, everything’s pretty much normal, except my family just moved here from Idaho, and the next day—space aliens, and sissimi, and—” Maya shook her head.

  “Whoa,” Sibyl said. “I say again, whoa. So you kinda got drafted!”

  Maya nodded. She smiled. “Rimi is so great.”

  Sibyl smiled, too. “I know what you mean.” She stirred her cocoa, but before she could drink it, the golden scarf stuck its end into the mug and made slurping sounds. “Hey! Except once in a while! Yiliss, you are so bratty.” She gave her scarf a little slap and dragged the drinking end out of the mug, then peeked in. “Whew, there’s a little left for me.”

  Maya laughed. “I can make you another cup. Maybe he wants one of his own.”

  “I don’t want him to get spoiled,” Sibyl said.

  Yiliss lifted a golden end and waved some fringe at Maya.

  “Maybe he needs chocolate,” Maya said. She mixed up another mug of cocoa from the still-warm water in the kettle and put it down near Sibyl’s first mug. Yiliss dipped an end into it and made big sucking noises. His whole length rippled from one end to the other and back.

  Sibyl frowned at Maya. “Well, he says thank you, he needed that, and I say, hey, what did I say about spoiling him?”

  “But—” Maya frowned and stared at the floor, trying to work this out. “Okay, sorry,” she said. Was that bad, for me to give him something he wants when she says he can’t have it?

  He said he needed it, Rimi thought. You would give me something if I needed it, wouldn’t you?

  If I could. Mostly it seems like you get what you need for yourself.

  You would give me everything I needed if you could, Rimi said. I don’t want to fuse with Yiliss. I don’t know if I like him anymore, and I don’t want him to know our secrets. Although I want to learn how he attacked me, so I can use it if I need to, and learn how to defend against it. I don’t like it that she won’t give him things he wants.

  Dad says there’s a difference between need and want, Maya thought.

  Rimi was silent. Then she thought, I’m glad you gave him cocoa.

  Thanks, Maya thought.

  “Sorry,” Sibyl said. “I kind of, well, I’m not the best at talking to people. Still trying to figure that part out.”

  “How do you get along with your host family?”

  Sibyl wrinkled her nose. “Not so well. There’s a boy. He’s fourteen and creepy. Sometimes it seems like he wants to kiss me, and sometimes he just wants to beat me up. Yiliss discouraged him from that, all right.” She smiled, her eyes fixed on distance, and nodded. “Then there’s another boy who’s nine, and he’s pretty much okay, but he snoops, and sometimes he steals. I didn’t bring a whole lot of stuff with me from Thrixa. He took my worry stone, though, and I don’t think it’ll be easy for me to get another. Going through the portals is so expensive. . . .”

  “Portals?” Maya said. She didn’t trust Sibyl, but Sibyl seemed to trust her. Maya felt a little icky asking Sibyl questions about secret things when she planned to tell the Janus House people everything she learned. Or maybe she wouldn’t tell them everything. So many secrets. She couldn’t keep track of who knew what.

  “That’s how we travel from one planet to another. It’s not like spaceships. You walk through this weird red light. There’s a lot of—well, it hurts, but it goes pretty fast. And somehow you end up somewhere else.”

  “Weird,” Maya said. “And it’s expensive?”

  “Yeah, it’s intense, kind of painful, and it uses a lot of energy, so they save it for special projects.”

  “You’re a special project?”

  “Sure. So were Bikos and the Hasible.”

  “What kind of a project are you?”

  Sibyl opened her mouth, closed it, fiddled with Yiliss. “I don’t think I’m supposed to talk about it.”

  “Oh, okay.” Better not to push. Maya changed the subject. “You say you’re not good at talking to people, but I saw you sitting with Helen and some other kids at lunch the other day. You’ve been making friends here.”

  “Not really. Helen is just really nice. She invited me to sit with her and her friends. Awkward. I don’t know how to talk to people, I really don’t.” She sipped the remains of cocoa from her cup. “Like jokes. I totally don’t get jokes. Everybody’s laughing and I don’t get why.” She wove her fingers through Yiliss’s end fringe, which twined around them, made knots, and untied them. “Back home, we had jokes I could understand.”

  “Back home on Thrixa?”

  “Yeah.”

  Just then Peter and Mom breezed in through the backdoor. They stopped when they discovered Maya and Sibyl.

  “Maya? What happened to your piano lesson?” Mom asked.

  “I was feeling kind of sick, so I called Ms. Barge and told her I couldn’t come,” Maya said. “I feel better now. Mom, this is Sibyl. Peter, Sibyl. Sibyl, my mom and my little brother, Peter.”

  Sibyl nodded. She fiddled with her
scarf.

  “Hi, Sibyl,” Peter said. He had Sully’s water bowl in his hand. He went to the sink and poured out the old water and refilled the bowl, then opened the backdoor and whistled.

  Sully came in, smiling a drop-mouthed dog smile, and sniffed at the bowl Peter set down. Then he looked at Sibyl. His black lip lifted in a growl. The sound spun out and out. Sibyl stood and backed away from him, her hands wrapped in Yiliss.

  “Sully!” Peter said. He grabbed Sully’s collar and pulled him back out the door, shut the door behind him. “Sorry. He usually doesn’t do that.”

  “Dogs don’t like me,” Sibyl said. “Anyway, I guess I should be getting home now. Thanks for the cocoa, Maya. See you tomorrow.”

  “Okay,” Maya said. She walked Sibyl out.

  On the front porch, Sibyl looked at Maya. “I’m really glad we talked,” she said, and then she ran down the steps and on up the sidewalk.

  “Maya,” her mother said when Maya returned to the kitchen, “I’m glad you’re socializing so much at school, but you can’t just blow off a piano lesson because you feel like it.”

  “I’m sorry, Mom. It was kind of an emergency.”

  “Did this emergency involve throwing up?”

  “Almost,” Maya said. She remembered the shuddering shakes and terrible off-balance feeling she’d had after Yiliss had shocked her.

  Her mother stared at her for a long, uncomfortable minute. “All right,” she said at last. “I’m glad you thought to call Ms. Barge.”

  “Thanks.” Maya picked up Sibyl’s two mugs and her one, rinsed them, and put them in the dishwasher. She checked the kitchen clock, a black cat with eyes that moved back and forth and a tail that twitched from side to side as the clock ticked. It was a little before four. “I have to run next door.”

  “Practice first,” said her mother.

  “Can’t I practice after curfew? I will, I promise. An hour instead of half an hour.”

  Mom sighed, then said, “All right.”

  Maya grabbed her pack and headed for Janus House.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Maya knocked on Columba’s door. Columba opened it. “Maya. What is it?”

  “I have—I know—I found one of the missing sissimi.”

  “Kiri ah! Come in!”

  Maya followed Columba into her kitchen and sat at the table.

  There is someone else here, Rimi said.

  What? Where?

  Standing against the wall by the power picture. It’s Evren. He is in that twizzle mode he stays in when he’s at Music Night.

  Invisible. Maya stared at the wall with the power picture on it. She couldn’t see even a ripple in the air.

  “Tell me,” Columba said, sitting down across from her.

  “But—Evren—did you know Evren is here?”

  Columba heaved a sigh. “Evren is my apprentice, practiced in stealth, and you’re not supposed to be able to detect him.”

  “Rimi can see him.”

  “Ah. An interesting wrinkle,” Columba said. “Evren, uncloak.”

  Evren faded into sight. “Hi, Maya.”

  Maya squinted at him. “Stealth, huh? Are you really interested in my sister?”

  “I like her.”

  “But you taking her for a walk—”

  “You’re right. That’s a job. I’m supposed to distract her, maybe give her bad information,” he said. He came and sat down at the table, touched Maya’s hand. “Don’t look at me like that. This is one of the nicer ways we have of handling a problem like Candra, and I really do like her.”

  “Maya, let’s not get off track,” said Columba. “You have something to tell us.”

  Maya studied Evren, deciding whether she wanted to tell him. If he was Columba’s apprentice, he probably knew lots of secrets, and she could tell he could keep them, too. Anyway, once she told Columba about Sibyl, Columba would probably tell Great-uncle Harper and a lot of other people. Then what would happen?

  “What happens when I tell you this?” she asked.

  “We need to get in touch with the Interportal Force. You know the sissimi was stolen. It’s a criminal matter.”

  “But he’s bonded now. They can’t reverse that, can they?”

  “I don’t think they can.” Columba straightened. “You’re worried about what will happen to the person and the sissimi ?”

  “Yes,” Maya said.

  “I respect that.” Columba tapped her fingers on the table, one hand, then the other, in a complicated, galloping pattern. She stared at the ceiling, her eyes moving. She lowered her gaze to meet Maya’s. “If the situation is stable, we will just take stock of it. No sudden moves. We may need to assign a watcher.” She glanced toward Evren. “Evren is our best watcher. In all likelihood, I’ll need to bring in someone from the Force, maybe Ara-Kita because of her sissimi knowledge, or another sissimi bonded pair. This is an interportal matter, Maya. It affects many worlds. It’s all of a piece with the Krithi movements of late. Lots of people are worried about this.”

  Rimi?

  You need to tell, because otherwise you’ll be sick with worry.

  Maya closed her eyes and let out a breath. Then she sat up straight and faced Columba. “It’s another seventh-grade girl, named Sibyl Katsaros. Her sissimi is a scarf she wears around her neck. She says the third stolen sissimi went to a person called the Hasible, and he was sent somewhere else, to—to Shostrunim? Is that right?”

  Is this right? Maya asked Rimi.

  Yes.

  “Rimi says it’s right. Shostrunim.”

  “Shostrunim. That’s Ara-Kita’s home planet,” Columba said. “Or Ara’s, anyway. Did this girl tell you anything about the Krithi plans for these stolen sissimi?”

  “She says the word Krithi is an insult,” Maya said.

  Columba frowned. “It is?”

  “She said it means drones or lower-class people. The Krithi call their planet Thrixa, and the teachers and government people are Kalithri, and some other people are Methry. I kind of lost track after a while; she used so many words I didn’t know. So I might have some of that backward.”

  “Interesting cultural notes. Plans, Maya?”

  “She said she and Bikos and the Hasible were special projects, but then she clammed up.”

  “Anything else?”

  “The guy who sent her here fixed her up with a foster family. Oh, and her sissimi attacked us, and it hurt.”

  “Are you all right?”

  Rimi, are we all right?

  All your systems are balanced again, and I have incorporated the force used against me. I will analyze it tonight while you sleep and learn how to use it and defend against it.

  “We’re okay, but I had to cancel my piano lesson, and now I’m in trouble with Mom about that.”

  Columba laughed. Then she coughed. Then she laughed again. “Sorry. I shouldn’t laugh about you being in trouble, but it’s such little trouble compared to interportal theft and stealth and plans to violate edicts and create mischief.”

  “I guess,” said Maya. “Anyway, I have to get home now and practice the piano.”

  Columba rose. “Maya, thank you so much for coming to me. Has Sarutha talked to you about apprenticing with me?”

  “She mentioned it.”

  “Please consider it, my dear. I have so many things I could teach you and Rimi, and I’m sure Rimi could teach me a few things.”

  “All right,” Maya said.

  “Maya, can you draw us a picture of Sibyl?” Evren asked.

  “What? Oh. Sure.” She got out her sketchpad and drew several pictures of Sibyl. Sibyl looking belligerent. Sibyl looking lost. Sibyl with her hands buried in her scarf, a tender look on her face. “This is Yiliss, Sibyl’s sissimi,” Maya said, pointing to the scarf in each picture. She tore the pages out of her book and handed them to Evren.

  “These are great. You’re really good,” he said. “Thanks, Maya.”

  “Sure.” She shouldered her pack. “See you tomorrow.”<
br />
  “Yes,” said Columba.

  As Maya headed out, the door to Benjamin’s apartment opened and he emerged. “Hey, Maya. What are you doing here on an off day?”

  “Things to report,” Maya said. Should she tell him about Sibyl and the sissimi? She decided she should. The Janus House kids were already suspicious of Sibyl. They should know why. Or maybe Columba was supposed to decide who got to know what, but she hadn’t told Maya not to tell anyone.

  “Sibyl has a sissimi,” she said.

  “Aya!”

  “But, in other news, do you have plans for Halloween?”

  “Aya!” he said again, and then, “We don’t really do things on Halloween. We strengthen the wards so nobody trick-or-treats here, and that’s how we celebrate. I like your pumpkins.”

  “I’m trying to talk Gwenda into going out with me. You could come, too.”

  He smiled and shook his head. “What would I dress as? I’m boring.”

  “You’re not boring,” Maya said. “You’re just secret. The point of Halloween is to let your secret self out. I think you’d make a great pirate.”

  “A pirate!” He laughed. Then he stopped and looked into the distance. “A pirate,” he said, in a different tone of voice. “Yo ho. Which secret self are you going to be?”

  Maya bit her lower lip and said, “Rimi is my secret self. We have to figure out how to show that.”

  “You’re going to show it? But—”

  “The thing about Halloween is everyone wears a costume, and they all think everyone else is wearing a costume, so we can come as we are, and they’ll think it’s fake.”

  “A pirate,” Benjamin said. “Does the costume cover me so no one will recognize me?”

  “It can if you want it to.”

  He looked at her, then nodded. “I want it to. I want to go with you, too. Thanks for asking me.”

  “Well, sure,” said Maya. She looked at her watch. “Gotta go home and practice piano.”

  “But wait. Sibyl has a sissimi. That’s kind of major.”

  “Ask Columba about the rest.” Maya waved and slipped out the double front doors.