Huey and Zeke nodded vigorously, but in Rector’s case, it was more tentative. After all, it depended on what she was going to tell them. There was always the chance he’d need to share it with his boss. Unless he didn’t go back to the Station … although he had a good idea that that wasn’t an option. Well. He’d see what he could do about that.

“Good, good. You’re good boys, I’m quite certain,” she said, flicking only a hint of a glance at Rector. “But other people might think it’s a little nuts. And by ‘other people’ I mean the Doornails and the rest of the white folks. Huey, I can’t say about you and yours.” She unfolded her fingers and placed her hands flat on the table before them. “Rector, Huey, I think you saw something that ain’t human. Something that weren’t never human. Something inexplicable, to use the word the Station men are throwing about. A monster, but not a monster.”

Rector said, “I don’t get it.”

She fished around for the right words, and upon finding them, she laid them out carefully.

“Imagine that none of you boys had ever seen a bear before. Now, if I told you there are bigger bears than the ones we got here—up in Alaska they have ’em twice the size of an outhouse—you’d believe me, maybe. Wouldn’t you?”

“Kodiaks!” Houjin exclaimed. “I’ve heard about them.”

“So imagine you didn’t know what a bear was, but you were out in Alaska, looking for gold or some fool adventure. And say a Kodiak popped up out of the woods, stood up on his back feet, and came right for you. If you didn’t know what a bear was beforehand, and if you survived the meeting, you’d run home and tell people you’d seen a monster, wouldn’t you?”

Solemnly, Zeke said, “Yes, ma’am, I believe I would.”

She continued. “But a Kodiak isn’t a monster—it’s nothing but a big ol’ bear, as natural as the sun rising in the morning. But no one sees Kodiaks much, because there’s never been too many of them. And the same applies here. My own people have been in this land for more years than you folks have been keeping history, and even we—”

Houjin interrupted, pointing at Rector and Zeke. “Longer than their history, maybe.”

“Oh, all right—I don’t know how long they’ve been writing books in China. But my people have been here an awful long time, and we barely know a thing about these creatures. But when we talk about them, they’re called ‘the elder big brothers.’”

“Elder … big brothers?” Rector repeated slowly.