Zoe`s Tale

"They were in the trees," Hickory said. "They were pacing you from above. Moving ahead of you. We heard them before we heard you."

I felt weak. "Them?" I said.

"It is why we took you as soon as we heard you coming," Hickory said. "To protect you."

"What were they?" I asked.

"We don't know," Hickory said. "We did not have the time to make any good observation. And we believe your friend's gunshot scared them off."

"So it wasn't necessarily something hunting us," I said. "It could have been anything."

"Perhaps," Hickory said, in that studiously neutral way it had when it didn't want to disagree with me. "Whatever they were, they were moving along with you and your group."

"Guys, I'm tired," I said, because I didn't want to think about any of this anymore, and if I did think about it anymore—about the idea that some pack of creatures was following us in the trees—I might have a collapse right there in the common area. "Can we have this conversation tomorrow?"

"As you wish, Zoë," Hickory said.

"Thank you," I said, and started shuffling off toward my cot. "And remember what I said about not telling my parents."

"We will not tell your parents," Hickory said.

"And remember what I said about not following me," I said. They said nothing to this. I waved at them tiredly and went off to sleep.

I found Enzo outside his family's tent the next morning, reading a book.

"Wow, a real book," I said. "Who did you kill to get that?"

"I borrowed it from one of the Me

"You're asking a girl from a planet named Huckleberry if she's heard of Huckleberry Fi

Apparently not. "Sorry," he said. "I didn't make the co

"Listen," I said. "I wanted to thank you. For what you did last night."

Enzo looked up over his book. "I didn't do anything last night."

"You stayed behind Gretchen and me," I said. "You put yourself between us and whatever was following us. I just wanted you to know I appreciated it."

Enzo shrugged. "Not that there was anything following us after all," he said. I thought about telling him about what Hickory told me, but kept it in. "And when something did come out at you, it was ahead of me. So I wasn't much help, actually."

"Yeah, about that," I said. "I wanted to apologize for that. For the thing with Dickory." I didn't really know how to put that. I figured saying Sorry for when my alien bodyguard very nearly took your head off with a knife wouldn't really go over well.

"Don't worry about it," Enzo said.

"I do worry about it," I said.

"Don't," Enzo said. "Your bodyguard did its job." For a second it seemed like Enzo would say something more, but then he cocked his head and looked at me like he was waiting for me to wrap up whatever it was I was doing, so he could get back to his very important book.

It suddenly occurred to me that Enzo hadn't written me any poetry since we landed on Roanoke.

"Well, okay then," I said, lamely. "I guess I'll see you a little later, then."

"Sounds good," Enzo said, and then gave me a friendly wave and put his nose into Huck Fi

"Congratulate me, Babar," I said. "I think I just had my first fight with my boyfriend."

Babar licked my face. That made it a little better. But not much.

FOURTEEN

"No, you're still too low," I said to Gretchen. "It's making you flat. You need to be a note higher or something. Like this." I sang the part I wanted her to sing.

"I am singing that," Gretchen said.

"No, you're singing lower than that," I said.

"Then you're singing the wrong note," Gretchen said. "Because I'm singing the note you're singing. Go ahead, sing it."

I cleared my throat, and sang the note I wanted her to sing. She matched it perfectly. I stopped singing and listened to Gretchen. She was flat.

"Well, nuts," I said.

"I told you," Gretchen said.

"If I could pull up the song for you, you could hear the note and sing it," I said.

"If you could pull up the song, we wouldn't be trying to sing it at all," Gretchen said. "We'd just listen to it, like civilized human beings."

"Good point," I said.

"There's nothing good about it," Gretchen said. "I swear to you, Zoë. I knew coming to a colony world was going to be hard. I was ready for that. But if I knew they were going to take my PDA, I might have just stayed back on Erie. Go ahead, call me shallow."

"Shallow," I said.

"Now tell me I'm wrong," Gretchen said. "I dare you."

I didn't tell her she was wrong. I knew how she felt. Yes, it was shallow to admit that you missed your PDA. But when you'd spent your whole life able to call up everything you wanted to amuse you on a PDA—music, shows, books and friends—when you had to part with it, it made you miserable. Really miserable. Like "trapped on a desert island with nothing but coconuts to bang together" miserable. Because there was nothing to replace it with. Yes, the Colonial Me

You could tell a few of the Colonial Me

We did what people do in situations where they go without: We adjusted. I hadn't read a book since we landed on Roanoke, but was on the waiting list for a bound copy of The Wizard of Oz. There were no recorded shows or entertainments but Shakespeare never fails; there was a reader's theater performance of Twelfth Night pla

And as for music, well, this is what happened: Within a couple days of landing a few of the colonists hauled out guitars and accordions and hand drums and other such instruments and started trying to play together. Which went horribly, because nobody knew anyone else's music. It was like what happened on the Magellan. So they started teaching each other their songs, and then people showed up to sing them, and then people showed up to listen. And thus it was, at the very tail end of space, when no one was looking, the colony of Roanoke reinvented the "hootena

The Roanoke Hootena