Ryo nearly broke a leg as he rushed to get there. In the excitement of the moment the humans had not considered the effect their appearance might have on his intelligent and impressionable passengers.

He had not intended that the children confront their nightmares so soon.

Matthew remembered the first times.

He wasn’t sure why he’d been chosen, but he was glad that he had been. The world they were visiting was a neat place, full of brightly colored bugs and flying things, and interesting creepy-crawlies to poke sticks at through the clear surfaces of shallow ponds.

He didn’t have much time to do that, since they kept him and the others playing with the funny-shaped kids. They were nice, so he didn’t mind not being allowed outside so much.

Bonnie and the big bug, Ryo, had told him that his new friends were children just like him, only of Ryo’s people. But they didn’t look anything like little Ryos at all. In fact, when Matthew first saw them his initial reaction and that of his friends had been one of pity. They had no arms or legs. How could anyone play without arms or legs?

They had huge wormlike bodies. That was kind of icky at first, but they also had pale colors running just under their skins that were awful pretty. It was funny to see these colors change from green to blue, from red to yellow and back again. Matthew wished he could change color like that.

They smelled real nice, too. Like a field of cut grass, or the hem of his mother’s dress, or the laundry when it was new. The grown-ups were afraid at first that he and his friends would be frightened of the larvae, as they called them. That was silly. How could anyone be afraid of someone who smelled so nice and didn’t have arms to hit you with or legs to kick you with? The larvae, like his best friend Moul, were a lot more afraid of Matthew and the other human children than the human children were of them. *

On the ship he’d learned to recognize a lot of the funny whistlewords and click-talk. That was good, because the Thranx kids didn’t know any real speech at all. Matthew was the best of the bunch and he was proud when the other kids asked him to translate. As the weeks went by, however, both groups learned from their counterparts. Because the larvae had flexible mandibles, it turned out they could talk human even better than Ryo.

This seemed to surprise the grown-ups as much as it pleased them. Matthew shook his head. Some grown-ups were just plain dumb. After all, a stick is a stick whether you call it a stick or a whistleword.