Molly Fyde and the Land of Light

combination almost guarantees a spill of information. With Lady Hooo unconscious, there’s no way of knowing what you know or don’t know.”

“Trust me,” Cole thought to Dani, “I know less than nothing. Why don’t you fill me in—how’s Anlyn? Am I a prisoner here? Where are my friends? And how are you talking in my head?”

Dani leaned forward and placed both hands, wide apart, on the table. “Whose soldiers are outside the door, boy?”

They stared at one another for a while. Both thinking—but deeply. Silently. Dani leaned back again, folding his hands in his lap. “Forgive my outburst. I am worried for Lady Hooo as well; as such, I am not myself. According to Lady Fyde—”

“Molly?! Where is she—?” But Cole couldn’t force his thoughts to rise above the alien’s.

“—insists that you rescued Anlyn from captivity, and if this is true, you deserve an answer. So. I will give you one before we begin our session. One answer, an honest one, to any question you like. And then you will begin responding to my questions.”

Cole considered the offer. In his heart, he wanted to know where Molly was and whether she and the rest of the crew were safe. His natural curiosity, however, wanted to riddle the inner workings of the red bands. Meanwhile, the philosopher in him shouted down the rest, wanting to know the root of common forms, the riddle that taunts every theory in the field of biology and serves as the foundation for all major religions.

These questions and more rattled around in Cole’s head. He saw the muscles in Dani’s vast neck twitch under his blue skin and could sense—could almost know—that he was becoming impatient. It just made it harder for Cole to think. To choose.

Panic spilled over his litany of queries, drowning them, making it impossible to pick the best response. The pressure to get it right dried his mouth out. He felt as if something important was taking place—and he was about to blow it. He reached for his sweating glass of water.

Dani leaned forward, mirroring his movement, his mouth contorting into a new expression. “Well?” The strong and confident version of Cole’s voice sliced through his worrisome thoughts.

Then, in a flash, Cole’s very confusion provided the answer he was looking for. It dawned on him that he was being offered a single answer from Dani, but that didn’t mean it would be the last question he ever asked anyone. Many of the trivial ones would be answered in time, if he was patient. In fact, the reason he had an impossible time choosing was because he didn’t know the trivial from the profound. And that was the question.

Cole’s hand, still frozen in the shape of a cylinder, stopped short of the dripping glass of water. He brought his other hand up and clasped the two of them together. Leaning toward Dani, he forced a calm thought to the surface:

“My question is this—” Cole took a deep breath.“Which question should I have asked?”

Dani froze for a moment, then his mouth changed into something new. A shape with teeth. One of his large, powerful hands shot up into the air between he and Cole and came crashing down with lightning speed. When his flat palm hit the stone table, it rang out like a cracked whip, an impossibly high note ringing in the air for too brief a time to have been so loud. The glass of water leapt up, throwing a small wave over the lip to join the puddle of condensation below.

Dani’s entire body shook, his cooing transforming into a growl as throaty pockets of air moved back and forth through his vibrating cheeks. The Drenard raised his hand from the table, pointed at Cole, then made a fist. He shook his head, which roared with the vibrato of a small engine. He waved his fist in the air and hit the table with it again.

Cole leaned back in his chair, distancing himself from the display. When Dani shot out of the seat across from him, he wondered if he’d been wrong—if he really did have only one question left in him. But Dani didn’t rush around the table in attack, he strode out of the room and into the hallway, fighting to form words through the amplified and gruff cooing sound.

Swiveling in his chair to watch the alien go, Cole felt his body surge with adrenaline, preparing for danger and defense. He heard Dani struggling to give commands to someone outside, the sound of coarse hacks mixing with the forced purring of their language.

Less than a minute later, his interrogator returned and stood in the doorway, a beverage of some sort in his hand. The Drenard took long swigs from it, his physical attack subsiding.

“Dani?” Cole squeezed the mental word through a crack in his confusion.

His interrogator raised one hand and continued to drink. “I am fine. I just haven’t laughed that hard since I was your size. It felt… amazing.”

Dani lowered the glass and tilted his blue head slightly to one side, took a deep breath, then let it out. “There are two ways I could answer your question. If I answer it honestly, I will cheat you, for the truth is: that was the question you should have asked. I only realized this as soon as you thought it to me.

“I could satisfy my end of the bargain by admitting this, couldn’t I? I could point out that you did ask me the right question and you would get nothing. But your choice suggests something interesting: that you are looking for the beginning of a path, rather than a method of skipping to the end. And even though you will never walk down the trail you seek—not now that you are here with us on Drenard—I would like to reward you with more answers than I initially promised.”

Dani took another long pull from his stone cup, studying Cole over the lip. When he was done, he made a popping noise with his mouth, jerked his head to the side, and formed in Cole’s head what he assumed were the same words:

“Come with me,” Dani thought.

Cole stood, the surge of fear draining away, and followed Dani into the hallway. Two armed guards framed the door, but Dani acted as if they weren’t there. He turned left, away from Cole’s room and further down the long passage. Cole hurried to keep up, having to nearly jog in order to match the alien’s long strides.

As they hurried past room after room, Cole noticed more than half had gold bars lowered in front of the door. He read them as “occupied” signs, wondering which one Molly was being kept behind.

He wondered it too loudly.

“She’s not on this hall,” said the voice in his head. “Males only. Women have an extremely important status in our culture, unlike your own. Ah, so many answers that I feel like giving you now. Even if Anlyn pulls through and confirms our worst suspicions about you, I will always respect you for that single insight.” Dani looked down at the carpet. “And the laughter,” he added.

Cole glanced up at his walking companion, his head just above the Drenard’s elbow. It felt strange to be having a conversation without eye contact and in the near-silence of their bare feet shuffling through the lush pile of the runner.

“You have yet to answer the question,” Cole reminded his unusual captor, “nor have you asked me what you want from us. We just came to drop off a friend and get some supplies—”

“We will sort that out when and if Anlyn recovers—and all of my hopes are that she will—but you will not be leaving Drenard anytime soon. We cannot allow that. Anlyn should know this, which is why we find the story you and your friends are giving us a bit hard to believe. Especially since there are… inconsistencies.”

Cole wondered what this meant as they reached the end of the hallway. Dani paused in front of the massive door that spanned the width of the passage; he turned and addressed the consternation on Cole’s face and in his thoughts. “Forget these things for now.” The alien waved one hand and reached for the door with the other. “You will have many years to dwell on them here. But first, let me show you where here is,” he thought.