He turned to look directly at me. “We have things that will bring your world much benefit, Jacob—things of beauty, things of value. We have medical technology, for example, that will mean that many who might have died in the next year will live, instead.”

I thought for a moment. “If I had known that, I would have given you Ralph without so much fuss. I would have hated you for it, but I would have given him to you.”

“Of course you would have. That was not the issue. We are a trading race. It was not your compassion for your own kind that mattered to us; it was your honor. Can we trust you? That was what we needed to know.”

“Can you?” I asked, my voice small. “I had to be pushed.”

He stopped me. “Your impulses are good,” he said softly.

We sat in silence for a moment. Finally Nnnnnn moved his green hand in a circle, indicating the stream, the forest, the city. “I know you feel like an alien here,” he said softly. “But that is because you are thinking too small. Yes, you are from another world. So am I. If we think of ourselves only as dozens of those worlds, then here we are indeed the aliens. But think in larger terms, Jacob.” He swept his hand in a half circle across the sky. “Look at the grandness of it. You are a part of that, as well. Your planet, my planet, Kwarkis—they are all a part of something bigger. If you think in terms of planets, then here you will always be an alien. But you and your people can be more, if you choose. You can be citizens of the universe. If you see yourself that way, you will never be an alien, no matter where you go. You will simply be—one of us.”

Lifting Ralph from his lap, he handed him back to me.

I looked at him.

“It was not necessary that I have the animal,” he said. “What was important was that you fulfill your responsibility to me. I am glad that you did. It will mean much for your world.”

He put his hand on my shoulder.

Ralph snuggled into the crook of my arm and went to sleep.

The stars shimmered above us.

I stared out at them, wondering how many I would visit.

The Giant’s Tooth

EDGAR TWONKY had no intention of getting eaten by a giant the morning he left for Cottleston Fair.

Sometimes these things just happen.

He was ambling along, humming tunelessly while he dreamed of what he might buy for Melisande with the money he hoped to make from his eggs that day, when an enormous hand swept down from the sky, scooped him up, and deposited him in a mouth the size of a cave.