“How do your Healers get their knowledge about the physiology of a new species? They came to this planet prepared. I watched it start—watched the terminal patients walk out of the hospital whole.…” A frown etched a V-shaped crease into Doc’s narrow forehead. He hated the invaders, like everyone, but unlike the others, he also envied them.

I didn’t want to answer. Everyone was listening to us by this point, and this was no pretty fairytale about ice-sculpting Bears. This was the story of their defeat.

Doc waited, frowning.

“They… they take samples,” I muttered.

Ian grinned in understanding. “Alien abductions.”

I ignored him.

Doc pursed his lips. “Makes sense.”

The silence in the room reminded me of my first time here.

“Where did your kind begin?” Doc asked. “Do you remember? I mean, as a species, do you know how you evolved?”

“The Origin,” I answered, nodding. “We still live there. It’s where I was… born.”

“That’s kind of special,” Jamie added. “It’s rare to meet someone from the Origin, isn’t it? Most souls try to stay there, right, Wanda?” He didn’t wait for my response. I was beginning to regret answering his questions so thoroughly each night. “So when someone moves on, it makes them almost… like a celebrity? Or like a member of a royal family.”

I could feel my cheeks getting warm.

“It’s a cool place,” Jamie went on. “Lots of clouds, with a bunch of different-colored layers. It’s the only planet where the souls can live outside of a host for very long. The hosts on the Origin planet are really pretty, too, with sort of wings and lots of tentacles and big silver eyes.”

Doc was leaning forward with his face in his hands. “Do they remember how the host-parasite relationship was formed? How did the colonization begin?”

Jamie looked at me, shrugging.

“We were always that way,” I answered slowly, still unwilling. “As far back as we were intelligent enough to know ourselves, at least. We were discovered by another species—the Vultures, we call them here, though more for their personalities than for their looks. They were… not kind. Then we discovered that we could bond with them just as we had with our original hosts. Once we controlled them, we made use of their technology. We took their planet first, and then followed them to the Dragon Planet and the Summer World—lovely places where the Vultures had also not been kind. We started colonizing; our hosts reproduced so much slower than we did, and their life spans were short. We began exploring farther into the universe.…”

I trailed off, conscious of the many eyes on my face. Only Sharon continued to look away.

“You speak of it almost as if you were there,” Ian noted quietly. “How long ago did this happen?”