LAKE STANNOUS, CALIFORNIA
Mitch held Kaye’s hand as a group of more than twenty youths tightened its gyre around them. Morgan had been drawn aside and now stood surrounded by three young men. He held out his hands and smiled nervously, face flushed, windbreaker pulled off one shoulder. He looked surprised.
Several other adolescents and a female in her late seventies were searching Morgan’s truck, looking, Mitch guessed, for communications or tracking equipment. They were all quiet and serious.
“We’re trying to find a girl named Stella Nova,” Kaye repeated. The air was thick with persuasion. Mitch felt woozy and confused already, despite the nose plugs they had manufactured in the motel bathroom out of toilet paper and vanilla-scented lip balm.
An older male, also in his seventies, with ruddy cheeks and an unruly halo of reddish hair shot with gray, came through the gyre and reached to take Mitch’s and Kaye’s hands in his. He wore a denim jacket with brass buttons. Except for his round face and SHEVA features, he might have been an itinerant farmworker. “There was no need for you to come,” he said pressing their hands to his chest.
“We’re her parents,” Kaye said, eyes pleading. “We’ve been looking for her for years.”
“She isn’t here.” The old man’s cheeks freckled in rapid patterns, unreadable, and his emerald green irises sparkled with yellow and brown. His accent was mild but Mitch could still detect a hint of eastern European. Mitch tried to think clearly, tried to resist the onslaught. Any minute now, he was certain, they would all get back in the truck and drive away, sure they had made a mistake—no matter what Morgan would tell them had happened.
For the first time, Mitch felt frightened, being among his daughter’s people.
The old woman stood beside the old man and spoke a stream of over-under in another language.
“Georgian,” Kaye said to Mitch. Mitch and Kaye tried to pull their hands back, but the old man was strong and would not release them and Mitch did not want to start any kind of struggle. They stood in a tight triangle with the old man, who was no longer looking at them, but had focused on the old woman and the adolescents.
“They’re your friends!” Morgan shouted, struggling against the clasping arms, his voice breaking with anger and frustration. “I wouldn’t bring no enemies here, you know that. She’s famous! She’s been on Oprah!”
The old man let their hands go, but still the gyre of youths, red-headed, strawberry blond, sandy brunette, all colors—Mitch had never seen so many varieties of SHEVA child—stayed close and fever scented the air.
Mitch doubted he would ever enjoy chocolate again.
Kaye stammered a few words of Georgian, then asked the old couple, in English, “When did you come here? Where are you from?”
“Stella!” Mitch shouted at the buildings adjoining the turnaround.
The old man touched his finger to Mitch’s lips. Mitch bent his head like a submissive dog and fell silent.
“Please,” Kaye pleaded. Mitch supported her as her legs gave way.
“Go home,” the old man said.
“Go home,” the children said in many voices, over and under, a rising, singing, all-too-convincing and reasonable murmur in the late afternoon warmth.
Mitch saw something from the corner of his eye. He raised his head and stood on tiptoes to look over the crowd. A face he knew, like Kaye’s, like his mother’s, moved steadily toward the gyre from the direction of the gray buildings. He tried to keep the young woman in sight through the bobbing heads and singing mouths and gold-flecked eyes. She wore a baggy pair of black pants and clogs and a white sleeveless blouse. Her shoulders were narrow, like Kaye’s, and her arms were tanned to a reddish bronze, like a statue in a park. Her cheeks formed a butterfly pattern that Mitch recognized instantly, the complicated expression revealing both surprise and uncertainty, and then unwitting greeting.
“She’s here!” Mitch said, choking.
Kaye saw Stella and stood up straight and tried to shove her way out of the circle. The youths crowded in to stop her.
Stella stopped outside the gyre, arms crossed, looking this way and that as if she had not found what she had come looking for, or did not want to see it.
Kaye beat at the young people to get free, using no words, just grunts and shrieks.
Stella suddenly dashed forward and grabbed at the members of the gyre.
The old man lifted his hands, the woman did the same, and the gyre dropped back, leaving Kaye and Mitch and Stella at the center of a loose and expanding crowd.
A breeze whispered through the trees and across the gravel turnaround and dispelled the scent. Stella hugged her mother, then reached around Kaye’s shoulder and grabbed Mitch’s arm and pulled him in, as well.
Other youths arrived, curious, waiting to join in and do whatever was necessary.
“See!” Morgan shouted triumphantly. “Would I shit you? Man, let them be! They’re family!”
They said good-bye and thanks to Morgan, and Mitch shook his hand. Morgan was sternly told by the old Shevite man that he was not to return again, ever.
“Hey, it was worth it,” Morgan said defiantly. He waved farewell as Stella led Mitch and Kaye to a small meeting room at the back of the old bowling alley.
“They’re unhappy that you’re here,” she said, pulling out chairs around a battered wooden table. She motioned for them to sit. The window at the back of the room was dark; night had fallen. “They don’t want us to be found.”
“Who are they?” Kaye asked, too sharply, but she could not help herself. “Cult leaders? What are their names, Bo and Peep?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Stella said.
“They wouldn’t talk with me,” Kaye said, trying to control her agitation. “Do they hate us so much?”
Stella shook her head, unable to answer for the moment. She could not easily explain how complicated an answer to that question might be.
“I sympathize with all of you,” Kaye said. “We both do, Stella. They have a marvelous story, I’m sure of it, but we have been looking for so long, we were so afraid!” She pounded the table hard enough to make the floor vibrate and the window rattle.
Mitch placed his hands over hers. “We’ve both been searching.” He watched Stella with alternating expressions of relief and anger.
“I’m sorry,” Stella said. “Will and I came here after the bus accident. It was for the best.”
“Will?” Mitch asked. “Was he the boy?” John Hamilton had told them about putting Stella and Will in the car with Jobeth Hayden. Hayden had been arrested by state police in Nevada and turned over to the FBI, but she had never been charged with anything.
She had had no idea where the children might have gone. Piles of crumpled paperback pages had been found in her car.
“You saw him in Virginia, in the long building where you found me. Where the girl died,” Stella said.
“I don’t remember much about him,” Mitch said.
“He was my friend,” Stella said. She turned to Mitch, examining his face with shy, flicking glances, her own face turning dark and her pupils dropping down to pinpricks. Mitch had never seen his daughter looking so down, so discouraged.
“Was?”
“He’s dead.”
“How did he die?” Kaye asked.
Stella shook her head and looked away.
“Did he fit in, here?” Kaye asked cautiously.
Stella shook her head once more. “He lived with humans too long. They hurt him. They made him wild. He couldn’t fit with any deme, not even mine.”
“You’ve lived with humans,” Kaye said softly.
“Not the same.”