I sleep until I wake, and I have no idea what day or time it is, or how long I’ve been tucked away in this cave, but I have an urgent need to crawl out and become one of the living again.

  I wait to hear Tier’s admonishing voice, but then realize I am alone. Just getting uncovered from the blankets wipes out most of my energy, but I force myself to sit up and look around. I spy some water bottles near the bank of com devices Tier has displayed on a makeshift shelf.

  I pad over there in my socks and gulp a full bottle down in seconds, then reach for another. When I’ve had my fill I look down at my bandages and almost retch it back up. The skin wrap is high-quality and stretched tight over my hand and between my fingers so I can see the outline of what’s left. Most of my pinky and ring fingers on my left hand are just gone. I wonder if the nightdog ate them or left them on the floor of the cave.

  The devices on the shelf suddenly come alive with light and then I hear words in a language I don’t understand fill the cavern. "Tier," I call, just in case he’s nearby, but get no response. I stand up on my tiptoes to get a better look at the coms. They are little rectangle cards with smooth data displays. They show a map, much like the one I saw on that first day with Tier, and I wonder if they are trackers. Does the little beeping sound mean they’ve found us? I recall Tier’s words a few days ago, that these people who were tracking him weren’t his people. I pick one up and watch the little blinking light and listen to the foreign language. To my surprise, I can pick out a few intelligible words.

  Then the talking stops and the device in my hand goes quiet, just as another one blinks and beeps, then settles back to sleep. Getting woozy standing there, I grab them all and take them over to the sleeping bag and drop them into the soft tumble of blankets. I look at them, one by one, but now they are all silent and the blinking has stopped. The one that was speaking is definitely alien tech, because I don’t recognize the language. I pick that one up and tap it in various places on the screen, but it doesn’t respond.

  There are about five others that appear to be Mountain Republic standard issue. He must have taken these off soldiers that he killed over the past few days. This brings up ugly memories that I wish I could forget. It’s difficult to merge the two versions of Tier: one as alien out to kill everybody and the other as the kind guy with wings who washes my hair and tells me stories.

  All of the MR devices have a transparent "out of range" warning splashed across their screens except one. And this one does look like a tracker. I don’t dare touch it, in case it activates our location. I stop cold when I realize that I just grouped Tier and me into us and the MR soldiers into them.

  If Aren had still been alive would I still feel this way?

  I don’t have time to answer because Tier swoops into the cavern and lands next to the sleeping bag. His eyes are wild as he sees me holding the MR tech. "What did ya do?" he demands.

  "Nothing, here," I say as I hand it over.

  "Did ya touch it?"

  I shake my head.

  "Tell me exactly what happened."

  "It flashed and beeped. That’s it." I wait for his eyes to say he believes me, but I’m a little put back when I don’t find the trust. "That one," I say, pointing to the avian device, "was talking."

  He plucks it off the blanket and looks at it in earnest. "Tell me what it said, Junco."

  I’m almost ready to tell him I don’t know, but I realize that I do. "It gave positioning coordinates for a pick-up window. I didn’t catch it all, that’s all I know."

  "Was it in English then?" he asks, even though we both know damn well it was not in English.

  I shake my head.

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  "Then how do ya know what it said?"

  I shrug. "I have no idea," I say as a long heavy sigh erupts. But he smiles, apparently happy about this development.

  "You know because it’s imprinted inside of ya. The language and culture of the avians. Just being around us draws it out."

  "Is that good?"

  "Better than the alternative."

  I’m afraid to ask, but I do anyway. "What’s the alternative?"

  He doesn’t answer, just stoops over to pick up the coms and carries them back to where they should have been on the wall.

  "Did ya try and read the letter, then?"

  I’m about to say what letter when I spy the crumpled piece of paper I tossed aside before leaving the tunnel. I look up at Tier, but he’s no longer interested in our conversation, so I crawl off the sleeping bag and reach out for the ball of paper with my good hand, and begin to peel it open and smooth it out.

  The writing is thick and decorative. I’m not sure if all their writing is this way, or Tier just has stunning penmanship, but I am impressed by how beautiful it looks to my amateur eye. I study each line, willing myself to understand, but I get all the way to the end of the full page document before anything clicks. It’s my name, but not in English, so that’s some progress. I stare at the lines that spell out Junco and I am in love with how it looks on paper. And written by Tier.

  "Translate it to me, please!"

  "That would defeat the purpose of the letter, Junco," he answers under his breath.

  "What’s that supposed to mean?" But he ignores me and goes back to inputting something into one of the devices.

  I take another look at the writing and find that Tier’s name also stands out to me as intelligible in the markings at the end, like a signature. My mind goes directly to the absurd and I wonder if it could be a love letter. I blush at my thoughts and glance up to see if Tier is looking at me, but he’s not even close to being interested.

  No, it’s probably not anything like that since he wrote it before all the hot springs stuff happened.

  My mind swings to the polar opposite: what if it explains things I don’t want to know? This strikes me as the more real possibility.

  I smooth the letter out a little more, then fold it neatly into quarters and search out a pocket in my alien canvas pants, and slip it inside. That’s when it hits me. "Shit! The papers." It comes out louder than I expected and Tier glances over with a quizzical look on his face.

  "Everything OK?" he asks.

  I’m not sure, really, so I hesitate. I never opened the envelope. I was just taking it to Dale. Old Ben Wassing pushed it into my hands as I was rushing out of the funeral that day I hit the deer. He mumbled something about the estate and Dale. Then winked at me like a dirty old man and said it was private.

  Which to me translates to secret.

  "Hello?" Tier asks. This time he’s got a look on his face and is starting to get up.

  "My horses," I finally blurt out, not wanting to share something I’m not quite sure about just now. "My horses are alone back at the farm."

  "Should I care what this means?"

  His attitude ticks me off and I’m not in the mood to talk anyway. "Forget it."

  Instead of going back to his business, he comes over to me instead. "Yer papers and yer horses? I don’t see the connection."

  Apparently someone hears everything, regardless of how he answers you. "Nothing, just some documents my father left for Dale. I really was just driving them out to him that day, ya know."

  He winces his disagreement. "And the horses?"

  I shrug. "Our barn manager, Michael, quit several months ago, so no one’s taking care of them because I picked up the slack."

  Tier looks away then, and I am just about to turn as well when he says, "I don’t mean to be harsh, Junco, but yer not going to need to worry about yer horses anymore."

  His directness stuns me. "What’s that supposed to mean?" I ask, irritated at how little my life means to him.

  "There are no horses in space, darlin’."

  The whole situation hits me then, and even though I knew his objective was to take me somewhere the idea of leaving Earth never even entered my mind. I am stunned silent. And then he walks back over to his tech devices as I stand up, furious. "You’re going to take me off the planet?" Just uttering the words makes me feel absurd.

  He stops and turns and the look on his face tells me everything I need to know, but the words that come out in his thick accent bite just the same. "Junco, I’m a soldier and I have a mission. So, yes. I will be ripping ya from yer little horse, yer flying acrobatic tricks, and yer quaint little Council. You can huff all ya want over there," he continues, "but the simple truth is that yer imaginary life as a Farm Family daughter who lives in Council 3 of the Rural Republic, in the United Republics of Earth – is now over. The sooner ya accept that, the easier it will all be from here on out."

  "You don’t even know if I’m one of you. I’m not avian and I’m not leaving Earth."

  "Everything has a consequence, Junco. Just remember that."

  I slump back down on the sleeping bag and turn away from him. He seems satisfied with the outcome of his sharp words because I hear his footsteps as they cross the cavern to where his previous business is waiting.

  But if he thinks I will just fall into his clutches without a fight and leave my whole life behind, he will make the same mistake Cole did. Underestimate me at your own risk, birdman.