ARE YOU? YOU DON'T LOOK LIKE A HUMAN TO ME.
I felt a queasiness in my stomach. I looked at the body I had. A body that was equal parts boy and bird.
"What do you want from me? Why are you making me do things I don't want to do?"
WHAT HAVE I MADE YOU DO, TOBIAS?
"You put me in places I don't want to be. You've dragged me into this stupid mess with these two Hork-Bajir."
The Ellimist dissolved from bird to human. But not entirely human. He was a human with wings. He looked like I did at that moment. And
when he spoke again, it was with a simple, human voice.
"Once I put you and your friends in a position to give your own former species a chance. I looked deep into the future, and found a way to help you - without using my power directly. And now, you are in a position to help the Hork-Bajir. Do they not deserve the same chance as humans?"
"You're trying to save the Hork-Bajir race from the Yeerks?"
The Ellimist smiled again and shook his head. "We do not interfere. We do not use our power for one species against another."
"Bull," I said.
The Ellimist let that go with just a faint smile. "I will not force you, Tobias. And I will not guarantee you will even succeed. There is every chance you will die and the two Hork-Bajir will die, and all will have been a waste."
"Thanks. That really cheers me up," I said. "Why me? Why stick me with this job? What am I, some kind of hero?"
The Ellimist didn't laugh. "Tobias, you are a beginning. You are a point on which an entire time line may turn."
I guess that should have made me feel important. But it didn't. I wasn't interested in being flattered.
"You want my help?" I asked the Ellimist. "Fine. Then I want yours.
You're just about all-powerful, according to Ax. You can make entire galaxies disappear if you want. I don't know why you don't just make things happen the way you want them to. But, hey, whatever." I looked him right in the eyes. Right into eyes that were a disturbing mirror image of my own.
"You want me to lead these Hork-Bajir to this place you've put in my head? Fine. But I want to get paid for my services."
"And what do you want, Tobias?"
"You know what I want," I said, almost choking on the words. "You know."
"Yes. But do you know what you want, Tobias?" the Ellimist asked. "And if you get it, will you still know?"
And suddenly, without any sensation of movement, I was back in the dark of the forest.
It was a long night. I can tell you that for sure. A very long night.
Even the Hork-Bajir were worn out by the time the first faint gray of predawn started to appear.
The whole time I was waiting to see a bunch of Taxxons suddenly show up, followed by heavily armed Hork-Bajir. Or else Visser Three in one of his awful morphs. Every shadow looked like it could be an enemy.
And I had other enemies in the forest to worry about. I was extremely aware of the fact that any number of other birds and various hungry mammals were noticing me and thinking maybe I'd make a nice snack.
But I was riding atop a Hork-Bajir. And none
of the forest predators could quite figure out how to deal with that.
At one point a pair of wolves, probably scouting for their pack, stood a few dozen yards away and watched us pass.
Wolves are very smart animals. They didn't know what the Hork-Bajir were. But they knew for sure they didn't want to mess with them.
Deer scampered away from us. Owls dismissed us. We were obviously not mice, and that's all the owls cared about. Foxes slunk away. Raccoons froze. Only the forest's most fearless creature ignored us and went on about its business.
In fact, I had to stop Ket Halpak from stepping on one.
"Stop! Stop! Nobody move!" I yelled, having seen the warning stripes of this most fearsome animal.
"Yeerks?" Jara Hamee responded.
"Taxxons?" Ket Halpak asked fearfully.
"No. Worse. A skunk. Just let it go on its way. Nobody move a muscle till it's gone."
"Hah! Small animal! Not kill Jara Hamee!"
"No, it won't kill you. It'll just make you wish you were dead."
I didn't know how much ground we had covered by the time we finally took a rest. I can't judge distances on the ground very well anymore. All I knew was that the sky was a shade lighter than absolute black. And the Hork-Bajir had
started to stumble a lot. They were beat. And I was starving.
"Do you need something to eat?" I asked the two Hork-Bajir.
"We eat," Jara Hamee agreed. Without any delay, he walked over to a tree. A pine of some sort. He drew back and slashed at the tree trunk with his elbow blade.
SCCCRRAAACK!
He sliced it straight up, opening about a three-foot gash in the bark.
With his wrist blade, he began to slice the bark away in chunks ranging from a few inches long to almost a foot square.
He tossed slabs of the stripped bark to his mate and took some for himself.
"That's what you eat?"
"Yes."
"ls that how you eat back on your own world?"
He chewed the bark and seemed to be looking far off. "When Jara Hamee small, Jara Hamee eat from the Kanver. Eat from the Lewhak. Eat from the tali Fit Fit."
"Are those all trees? I mean, are they like these trees?"
"Better," Ket Halpak said.
"Better," Jara Hamee agreed.
I got the feeling Jara thought he might have
insulted me by dissing Earth trees. "Earth tree good," he added.
"Earth tree good," Ket Halpak agreed.
It made me smile inside. There were times when my life was just so utterly insane I could only laugh. A pair of goblins from some far-distant planet were worried they'd hurt my feelings because they didn't like pine bark.