Page 27 of Mislaid in Parts Half-Known

Cora looked around. All of them had apparently made it down the slide relatively unscathed; Emily had a scrape on one elbow and Sumi’s nose was bleeding, but that was the extent of their visible injuries. The feathered dinosaurs were gathered around Stephanie once again, crooning and creeling as she stroked their heads and spoke to them in a voice too low to carry.

“She looks really happy here,” she said.

Kade followed her gaze. “Isn’t that the point? You or I wouldn’t be, and so we were never offered a door that led here.”

“But will shealwaysbe happy in a world with no other people, and no one to take care of her if she hurts herself or gets sick?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Will any of us always be happy anywhere? I was sad plenty in Prism, even when I still thought I belonged there. From the things you’ve told me about the Trenches, you were sad there, too. Remember?”

Cora hesitated. “I wasn’t always bubbling over with joy, no,” she said, after a moment to consider. “I saw people die. I killed people. They were monsters and they were trying to destroy us, but they were still people until they weren’t anymore. I did terrible things for excellent reasons, and I’d do them all again if I had the chance. But I wasn’talwayshappy. I also wasn’t alone, or in a place where no one could take care of me.”

“That’s the second time you’ve said that,” he said. “What makes you think she doesn’t have people who’ll take care of her? Those dinosaurs are clearly pretty smart, and she can communicate with them, even if she’s not using words we understand. Do you really think they’ll run off and leave her to die if she breaks her leg or something?”

“No.”

“As for alone… people are social, as a rule. But there’s no one way to be a social animal. She’s not alone. And even if she were, we couldn’t force her to leave with us. The dinosaurs would never allow it.”

“They do have an awful lot of teeth,” said Cora.

Antsy walked toward them, Hudson riding on her shoulder. “Hudson can fly up and scout for the big predators; his coloration is enough like the juvenile form of the local flying predators that they leave him alone, and we’re too big for them to try to take. Plus apparently, they’ve taken a few bites out of Stephanie, and they didn’t like the way she tasted.”

“Mammals aren’t a thing here yet,” said Stephanie, walking toward the forming cluster with two of her “family members” pacing alongside her, heads bobbing and lips relaxed. They looked friendly, when they weren’t snarling. “So we don’t taste like food. That’s fine when you’re dealing with bugs or little dinos, not so fine when you’re dealing with the big guys or the venomous ones. Big guys chew you up and spit you out, doesn’t make you any less dead. Venomous ones let go fast; again, doesn’t make you any less dead.”

“Huh,” said Kade, shooting a quelling look at Cora. Sheshook her head and made a zipping motion across her lips. “Well, we’re just glad you’re happy here.”

“Never been happier,” said Stephanie. “I was never a ‘people person.’ I can get along with them pretty well, but they made fun of my hair and my skin, called me all sorts of names, and you know, anything can be an insult if you shape it the right way before you throw it. ‘Albino’ isn’t an insult, but they turned it into one, every single day.”

Cora blinked. “But your eyes—”

“Albinism in humans doesn’t always mean pink eyes. We can have blue eyes, even brown, depending on how much pigment we’ve got. Try telling that to middle school kids. I have to stay out of the sun as much as possible, which hey, now I live with a colony of feathered dinosaurs under the canopy of a massive rainforest. There are clouds in the sky like,allthe time. I get infections more easily than a lot of people do, but most of the bugs that have figured out how to infect and attack mammals won’t evolve for awholelot of years. This is where I belong. This is where I want to be. And if I get eaten by a big lizard who doesn’t realize that my proteins will give it a tummy ache, well, that’s the price I’ve got to pay.”

“I never thought of it like that,” said Cora.

“So Hudson can find us a safe path back to where we left the Door, and we can go relieve Christopher before Vineta finds him and shoves him through and we all wind up trapped in the Land of the Lost.” Antsy glanced at Stephanie. “No offense.”

“None taken. It’s nice to have guests, but you’re making the family nervous, and you make a lot of noise. I’ll be glad to see you go.”

“I found a fruit that tries to run away when you touch it!” chirped Sumi. “Can I have one for a pet?”

Kade glanced to Stephanie, who was shaking her head and making violent “no” gestures. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Sumi. Come on, let’s get moving.”

Sumi sulked but came to join the others.

“Where’s Emily?” asked Antsy, looking around. When she abruptly stopped and made a small gasping sound, the others turned to see what she was looking at.

Emily was dancing with one of the dinosaurs.

The steps were improvised, but they matched each other swoop for swoop and spin for spin, hair and feathers flying. It was beautiful and strange and something they could never have seen anywhere else, not if they had lived for a thousand years.

One of the other dinosaurs chirped, and Emily’s partner stopped, head ducked in what looked like a strange combination of embarrassment and regret. It nudged Emily’s cheek with the tip of its muzzle, then ran back to join the rest of the flock, allowing itself to be preened back into glossy sleekness. Emily walked over to the group.

“Dance is a universal language,” she said, in answer to their questioning looks. “He seemed to want to talk to me, so we did.”

“What did you talk about?” asked Antsy.

“Dancing, mostly.”

Hudson launched himself into the air with a frantic flurry of black-and-white wings, rapidly gaining altitude and circling high overhead for a moment before gliding back down and saying, “Follow me.”

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