Marin stopped at the door of one of the longhouses and leveled her gaze on me. “You’ll see.”

She pushed the door open and I stepped inside. It had a single room, long and narrow, lit by windows and several large skylights in the roof. Living trees made up the longhouse’s support beams, growing into each other so fluidly that it was hard to see where one ended and another began. Two rows of beds lined the walls. In the back corner, a dark-haired man sat on one of these, looking out the window, his back to me.

“This is our guesthouse,” Marin said. “It’s where our new arrivals live until we can find a household for them to join. You’re welcome to stay here—”

She said something else, but I didn’t hear what. The man turned around to look at me and my ears completely shut off. There was no sound. Everything was muffled, like when it snowed in Tierra Nueva. No one in the room but me and him. And seeing him now, right in front of me, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to hug him or punch him right in the jaw.

“Dad,” I blurted. “What the hell are you doing here?”

◦ • ◦

He looked confused for a moment, like he didn’t recognize me. Well, it had been two torquing annums. I had grown almost fifteen centimeters in that time, and my voice had gotten a lot deeper. Dad, on the other hand—he didn’t look like he’d aged a day. The only difference between the last time I’d seen him and now was that his face was covered with messy stubble, thick enough to almost be a beard, but not quite. He was even still wearing his factory uniform, though it was completely filthy.

He stared at me for a long minute, then recognition flashed in his dark eyes. “Isaak?” he whispered, his voice gravelly and thick, as if he hadn’t spoken in days.

“Yeah,” I said, clenching my hands into fists, trying to choke down the emotions roaring in my chest. I hadn’t expected to feel this angry when I saw him again, especially after finding the time postern. I’d been telling myself that maybe it wasn’t his fault—maybe he hadn’t meant to leave us—but the built-up rage of two annums of being on my own, having to be the man of the house, never knowing what the hell had happened to him—it was like a living thing now. I couldn’t shut it off.