"Fill!" Rowan glowered. "Be nice."
Fillister zipped around her. "Remember what you told me? He insulted your dad! You called the boy a stinky, good-for-nothing, drunk baboon who—"
"Hush!" Rowan blushed. "He apologized. Be nice, Fill. He's our friend now. He agreed to watch all The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, and Star Wars movies with me. And he's going to draw all the characters for us."
Bay blinked. "I did? I mean, I am?"
Bloody hell, she is mental, he thought.
Rowan nodded and gripped his hand. "Of course you are. Now come on! I've set up a temporary shelter for now near the furnace. It's nice and warm there, and I have a spare blanket. You can live with me here in the ducts. They sometimes call exterminators, but I know how to escape them. I want to stress something important. Stay in the ducts during busy time." She stared into his eyes. "All right? Before dawn, we can go down to rummage for food, use the bathrooms, fine some scryls, and maybe—maybe, and only if the coast is clear, play some arcade games. But mostly, we stay hidden here in the ducts. Aliens hate humans, and it's safe in here. Got it?"
She began crawling away, tugging his hand.
"Actually," Bay said, "I was going to fly out of Paradise Lost. On my starship. In a few minutes."
Rowan froze.
She released his hand.
She stared at him.
"Oh," she said. "I'm sorry. When I saw you crawling in the ducts, I thought that . . ." She hid her face. "I'm so stupid."
"I told you we couldn't trust him!" Fillister said.
Bay glared at the dragonfly. If only I had a fly swatter . . .
Rowan dried her eyes. "It's all right, Fill. I just . . . I got too excited. I guess I was lonely, and . . ." She blinked rapidly. "Never mind. He has a spaceship. Why would he stay here with us? We've never needed anyone else, right?" She took the dragonfly into her hands. "Come on, Fill." She began crawling away. "Let's go find a new place to hide, and—"
"Rowan," Bay said softly. He reached out and touched her wrist.
She turned back toward him, eyes huge and damp.
"Yes?" she whispered.
I don't need anyone else! Bay had said so many times. I'm alone! I'm free!
What a bunch of hogwash.
"Come with me," Bay said. "On my ship. It's not a large ship, but it's larger than a duct. And I can't promise you an easy life—I mostly just travel from bar to bar—but sometimes there are nice, sunny planets, and—"
Rowan leaped onto him and embraced him. She wept. For a long time, she just cried, and he wrapped his arms around her and stroked her hair.
"Thank you," she whispered, tears wetting his shirt. "Thank you." She looked up at him and smiled. "Do you have a monitor on your ship? And electronics? Of course you do!" Her smile grew into a grin. "I can patch in the Earthstone, and we can watch Lord of the Rings and Star Wars! Oh, and Willow! Wait till you see Willow! And you have to watch the Monty Python movies—I'll make you watch them—but I think I'll teach you Dungeons and Dragons first. You'll find tons of stuff to draw from Dungeons and Dragons! Oh, and remember, you have to read the Harry Potter books before you watch the movies, but with Game of Thrones you can—"
"All right, all right!" Bay laughed. "Go easy on me. I haven't used the Earthstone in years. I was still on Disney by the time—"
By the time your father stole it, he wanted to say. He stopped himself.
Rowan bit her lip and lowered her head, her smile gone. Then she looked up at him, and light filled her eyes.
"When can we go?" she said.
"Now!" Bay said. "My ship's ready." He reached out to take her hand. "Are you?"
"No," Rowan whispered. "I'm scared. I'm terrified. I'll go with you, just . . ." She took a deep breath. "I've been living in these ducts since I was two. Can I have a few moments? To steel myself."
Bay nodded. "Take your time. On some distant world, my sister once dared me to jump off a cliff into the sea. And did I mention there were sharks? It was easy for her. I spent about an hour up there until I finally worked up the nerve. And flying into space is even scarier."
"I feel like Samwise Gamgee the hobbit, too scared to leave the Shire and go on an adventure." Rowan bit her lip. "Sorry. I talk a lot about movies and books. It's pretty much all I've had for the past fourteen years. Everything that I know, I learned from the Earthstone. I wish I could show you Lord of the Rings! You'd understand me better. But the damn crab shot up my damn monitor." She slumped. "It took Fillister and me ages to build that rig, to create an adapter that can access the Earthstone's data, then stream it to an alien monitor. We had to code an entire assembly-level translation algorithms, converting the data between human and alien APIs. The raw binary data is still in the stone, but all our interface code is gone."
Bay began to rummage through his pockets. "Actually, I have a minicom here. Human tech. It should be able to access the Earthstone pretty easily."
Rowan's eyes lit up. "Really?"
He nodded. "Really. Actually, I'm pretty sure I've used this very minicom with the Earthstone before. I was eight years old when we lost it. My dad used to let me use the Earthstone sometimes." He smiled. "Disney, remember?"
He pulled out his minicom, a computer the size of his palm. Instantly, its interface picked up the Earthstone, displaying a library of its data.
Rowan gasped. "It doesn't even need a cable. Of course! Human-to-human tech. Wireless."
Bay nodded, scrolling through the Earthstone's data. "Man, I remember some of this. I used to play these games. Watch some of these cartoons. Let's see, movies, movies . . . Ah, here we go!"
Rowan leaned closer, pressing her body against his. "Wow! Your interface is much nicer than what Fillister and I coded. Damn! You can even see thumbnails and previews! We just displayed green text on a black background." She pointed. "There! That movie! The first Lord of the Rings film. Your screen is even smaller than mine was, I think, but—whoa!"
The minicom cast out a beam of light, projecting the film on the duct wall.
"Cool, huh?" Bay said.
Rowan watched with huge damp eyes. She reached out and clasped his hand.
"I've never seen it so big," she whispered. "It's beautiful."
The movie played. Bay lay on his side, facing the projection on the duct wall. Rowan squeezed in beside him, lying with her back against his chest. She was small enough that he could watch the movie over her shoulder. The girl was tiny.
Living in the ducts all her life, surviving on scraps, I'm amazed she's alive at all, Bay thought.
Rowan was enraptured by the movie, but Bay looked down at her instead. The film shone on her eager face. She smiled at a funny scene, a tight-lipped smile, perhaps still self-conscious of her teeth.
I can't even imagine what your life here was like, Bay thought. I was taught to hate your family. The family that betrayed ours. You're an Emery. I'm a Ben-Ari. But in here, we're both just human.
He looked down at her black eye again.
Who hurt you, Rowan? Was it the marshcrabs?
Anger flared in Bay. He wanted to find whoever had hurt this girl, to slay them with his bare hands.
I will rip apart anyone who hurts you again.
She glanced up at him. "Don't look at me. Look at the movie! The best part is coming up. The Mines of Moria!"
He smiled. "All right, all right."