“And Meg sees it as an active image,” Merri Lee said. “We think that’s part of it. By driving through the Courtyard—or walking or riding as a passenger—Meg is an active participant in a moving, changeable image. The land changes with the seasons. . . .”
“But my apartment doesn’t change,” Meg finished. “The furniture stays in the same place unless I move something.”
Simon started to scratch behind one ear. Then his face colored as he realized his ears were Wolfy. Not meeting their eyes, he shifted his ears back to human shape.
“There’s not a lot of stuff in your apartment,” he said. “Not much furniture. We don’t need much. . . .” He trailed off.
“Neither do I,” Meg said. “Neither do the other girls.”
“So . . . more Simple Life than Crow’s hoard?”
She hadn’t seen either of those things, but only one sounded soothing. “If Simple Life is more like our apartments, then, yes, like that.”
“The immediate problem is the girls living on Great Island, right?” Merri Lee asked.
Simon hesitated, then nodded, leaving Meg to wonder who else needed help.
“Whoever is looking after the girls should clear their rooms of extraneous visuals—pictures on the walls, figurines on the tables, things like that,” Ruth said. “They can take photos of all those things and make up a binder of images. Maybe allow each girl to look at the images and select a handful of items she would want in her room, then allow her to position them. But once she has ‘set’ her room, the girl’s room cannot change unless she is the one making the change.”
“Also, take a photo of each room as reference for the adults so they don’t inadvertently change something,” Merri Lee said. “Even a small difference of putting a book on a different shelf can be disorienting for these girls. Which we all learned when I moved the stack of CDs earlier today.”
“Routine,” Ruth said. “Flexibility wasn’t part of the care or training in the compound. Everything that is different is a stressor for the girls.”
“Someone could make a binder called ‘Our Village’ or ‘Ferryman’s Landing,’” Merri Lee added. “The girls can study images ahead of time, and their teacher or caretaker can discuss what else they might see, like cars moving on the street or people riding bicycles. Static images combined with a moving image. Then they can go out as an adventure, to see those things for themselves.”
Simon focused on Meg. “You didn’t have those things.”
“But I have the routine that shapes the days. And I don’t need a binder for the Courtyard because I’m familiar with most of the roads and buildings now.” She wouldn’t remind him that she hadn’t expected to survive more than a few weeks, so she had gorged on images and experiences, determined to live while she could.
And she wouldn’t tell him it was often her fear of what the scent of blood might do to predatory instincts that kept her from cutting more often than she did.
“Does that help?” she asked.
“It helps.”
“Will you tell me why you’re angry and sad?”
He glanced at Merri Lee, then looked at Meg and whined softly. “Some of the blood prophets have left the compounds. You saw them walking by themselves near roads. And some of them . . .”
Meg understood then why Merri Lee wouldn’t tell her what she’d seen that morning. “I saw images that indicated some of them would die.”
“Yes. But the terra indigene are searching for the girls now. So are the police. We’ll find them, Meg. We will find them and get them to a safe place.”
How many girls had she seen? “Where will you take them?”
“To Intuit villages or terra indigene settlements,” Simon said. “Whatever is closest to the spot where we find them.” He paused. “What should we do when we find them?”
What would have helped me if I had been alone and frightened, if I had been found by strangers?
“Images,” Meg said. Merri Lee and Ruth nodded vigorously. “Tell the girls what is happening. Tell them how they will get from where they are to where they’re being taken. We all have general images about traveling. Tell them the sequence so they can recall the training images that match. Then, if you can, show them a picture of the room that will be the safe place.”
Her arms suddenly prickled so badly they burned, but she didn’t dare rub her skin. Simon would recognize the warning of prophecy. So would Ruth and Merri Lee. They knew she shouldn’t cut again today, having cut herself this morning, and Simon was already upset. She didn’t want to think about how he would howl and growl if she pulled out the razor a second time in one day.
“I have to go,” Simon said. “The rest of the terra indigene need to know these things.”
“So do the police officers involved in rescuing the girls,” Ruth said. “You should call them too.”
He bared his teeth to show he didn’t like someone giving him an order, but the teeth stayed human size, so he must have thought Ruth was right. That was probably the real reason he growled at them and said, “You write this down for the Guide.”
Before they could protest, he walked out of the sorting room and slammed the back door as he left the office.
“Well . . . ,” Merri Lee sputtered.
“I guess we should start writing The Dimwit’s Guide to Blood Prophets,” Meg said.
After a moment, Ruth nodded. “Yes, we should. And I think we should find someone who can draw so we can add a cartoon Meg pointing out important items.”
“What?” Meg yelped.
“The cartoon Meg could be named Meg Pathfinder,” Merri Lee said. “And she could provide Trailblazer Tips that other girls would find useful.”
“I don’t think we should call it Dimwit’s,” Ruth said. “Maybe just The Blood Prophets Guide.”
“Yes,” Meg whispered. The painful buzz under her skin faded to a light prickling in her fingertips. Then that, too, was gone. “A guide for the girls as well as the people trying to help them.”
“All right.” Merri Lee clapped her hands. “Let’s see if we can use the computer in the Business Association’s room to write up these first notes. Who should we ask for permission? Vlad or Tess?”
“Whichever one we find first?” Ruth said.
“The office needs to stay open a while longer,” Meg said. “You go ahead and get started.”
“You’ll be okay here on your own?”
“Arooeeooeeoo!Arooeeooeeoo!”
Meg sighed as Skippy’s yodeling arroo sounded just outside the sorting room’s delivery doors. “I’ll be fine. I’ll walk out with you.”
“Aren’t you going to let him in?” Merri Lee asked.
“Not until I’m sure he’s not trying to sneak a mouse into the office,” Meg replied. “Especially since Nathan isn’t here to sniff them out.”
Her human friends hurried to the back door of A Little Bite. The juvenile Wolf, sans any furry toys, came into the office.
As Meg carefully filed the photos Ruth had taken for their experiment, she thought about the tone of the other girls’ voices when they talked about the Guide. Not a dismissal of whatever bad thing was happening to the other cassandra sangue, but a distraction, an effort to help.
And that was a different kind of reference. A Life Reference.
Meg labeled that audio memory “cheering up a friend.”
Standing at the upstairs window that gave him a view of the paved area behind the stores, Simon watched Merri Lee and Ruthie hurry toward A Little Bite while Steve Ferryman yapped at him over the phone.
“They didn’t say you had to remove the wallpaper from the rooms, just the extra things that make the room look too busy,” he said when Steve stopped for a moment. And why did humans put paper on walls anyway?