That night, Falija came into my bedroom and climbed up onto my bed, digging her claws into my shoulder. I woke to see her frightened face inches from my own, eyes as big as moons. I held her while she curled up on my chest, shivering as though she’d been frightened half to death.
“What is it?” I whispered. “Falija, what is it? Tell me.”
“In my head,” she said. “There’s a whole world in my head, and I can’t shut the door in between…” Then she said something in another language that went on and on, and she shut her eyes and just lay there, shivering like an abused animal. At first I didn’t realize what she’d said, but then it came to me. She was speaking Gentheran. I wrapped my arms around the little person, to comfort her, and we stayed that way for a long, long time. Falija would shiver, then she’d calm down, then she’d make this pitiful little noise and shiver all over again.
“My home,” she whispered. “My home is the land of Perepume on the world of Chottem. I can see the cliffs of Perepume, where the spray from the green ocean smells like spicebush and pine. I see the forests, where the wind sings in the boughs. I hear the tongues of Perepume, lilting and laughing through the long nights. They were there, inside my head, in my mother-memory. The words you read to me opened the door to the mother-memory all at once, and it scared me. I didn’t know where I was!”
I held her tight. “That must be how your people pass on information,” I said, trying to sound very calm, as though it wasn’t anything unusual or strange. “I wish our people could do it that easily. I’ll bet you know all the history and geography now, without even having to read a book or study about it.”
Falija looked confused for a moment, but then her ears came forward, and she did her cat smile. “I think I do. I really do.”
“That would be wonderful,” I said enthusiastically. “Gloriana will be so jealous! Just think, no homework.”
“What’s homework?” Falija asked.
I explained about school. It seemed to soothe her to hear me talk, so I went on about being in school myself, when I was younger, and how difficult some classes were. “But your way, you just have one sort of scary night—and that’s our fault for forgetting the book until now. But, you have it! It’s all right in there. Oh, Falija, I really envy you.” And it was true, I did.
Falija curled a little tighter against my chest and seemed to doze off for a while. Then she woke up, and said, “Grandma, they have human people in my world.”
I half opened one eye and said sleepily, “Do you suppose that’s why your family left you with Gloriana? Because they already knew about human beings?”
Falija looked puzzled. “Maybe. They’re in my world…no, a special few of them live among us. And there are bad creatures, Thongals. They were on Fajnard, too. They tried to capture the king and queen of the Ghoss, who barely escaped…” Her eyes got big, and she didn’t say anything more for a long while. I slept.
“It’s part of a story,” said Falija loudly enough that my eyes snapped open. “It starts at the beginning, and it goes on to the end. Shall I tell it to you?”
“You can’t just pick out the important parts?” I suggested sleepily.
“No. One tells it all, or one doesn’t tell it. I think Glory should hear it, too. It’s a long story…” She stood up. “I’ll go get her. We’ll come back here.”
And she was out the door, silent as a shadow.
They came back up the hill together, Falija draped over Glory’s shoulder. I turned on the light as they came near, the light scoring deep shadows into the ledge before the house and throwing an amber glow on the bottoms of the branches.
Glory opened the door and yawned. “Falija says you have something important going on here.”
I was at the stove, putting on the kettle. Falija jumped up on the sofa while Glory came to set out the cups and get the sugar and tea out.
“What kind of tea, Grandma?” she asked.
“Oh, that strong one I use to wake up with,” I said. “I’ll never get back to sleep, after, but never mind.”
Glory measured the tea. The kettle boiled, the tea was steeped, and we moved over to the sofa, where I put my nose in the steaming cup and felt better immediately.
“All right,” I said to Falija. “What is it?”
Falija said, “I now have the memory I got from my mother before I was born. It just didn’t open up until tonight.”
“How did this mother-memory get into your head?” I asked.
Falija got wrinkles between her eyes, looked puzzled for a moment, then said, “In early pregnancy, our females duplicate a certain part of their brain, and the duplicate moves down what’s called an epispinal duct to the womb, and this mother-brain part connects to the baby’s mind before the skull grows around it. Then, after the baby is born, that mother-mind gradually makes connections with the baby’s brain, and, when the child learns to speak our language, the words link up and open the way to all that information.”
I chewed on this for a while. “Not until the child learns to speak?”
Falija said, “That’s why the book was so important. Ideas are expressed in words, and even the ones that are thought of in pictures or feelings need words to decode them, so babies have to have words in our language to tie them to the mother-brain. If I’d grown up among my own people, I wouldn’t have needed the book, because I’d have heard the words from the first. It’s very interesting, isn’t it? There’s so much of it, it will take a long time to absorb it all.”
I said, “You already know some things,
