"The ice melting did all that?" I gasped.

Kanik nodded enthusiastically. "And it got hot. Really hot. Fish died because the water wouldn't hold as much air. Plants couldn't grow where they were supposed to, and millions of people starved."

"Millions?" I was skeptical, convinced he'd made a mistake in his choice of number.

Kanik simply nodded again, making sure I could understand. "Millions, because once upon a time, there were a lot of people on the planet. Now? Not so much. And everything is bigger." He lifted the other book and opened it. The words made no sense, but the picture did. It showed a man beside a dog, or maybe a wolf. "Back then, they looked like this." He flipped a few pages. "Now, it's like this." The canine's back reached the man's ribs instead of his thigh.

"That's amazing!"

He laughed. "Coming from a girl who spent her life underground? I'm sure. Rabbits used to weigh about ten pounds. Now they're closer to forty. Everything is bigger, and that makes it a lot more dangerous."

"Cows?" I asked, thinking of the things I'd read about in my forbidden library.

He shook his head. "Didn't live. Supposedly, there are some on the other side of the sea, but none here. All extinct."

"Deer?"

He stood and held his hand just above his head. "A lot bigger. One feeds a few families, though."

I gestured to the book he held. "And that's your language?"

"Yes."

"It doesn't look like English," I pointed out.

He turned the book so the words faced me. "It will once you know the rules. The first thing to know is that double-V, what you call a double-U, is pronounced differently. Like V. That's why it's Vestrian, not Westrian."

"Why would it be Westrian?" I asked, sure I'd missed something.

"Because," he explained, "we live in the western hemisphere of the Earth. When people shifted to share one language and the borders of countries no longer meant anything, English became Vestrian."

ThirtyZasen

Rymar and I made a light lunch for the four of us. It used the remainder of the bird from the night before. Twice, Orin - Ayla - offered to help. Both times, one of the guys assured her she didn't need to. Then Rymar muttered to me how he had no interest in eating anything made by someone who didn't know about spices, let alone the difference between duck and pheasant.

Which was something else I hadn't thought about, but it made sense. The girl had been surprised at the simple meal we'd made last night. She'd called the trail food we'd made from game caught and all but burnt over an open fire "juicy." Supposedly, her meals in the Mole base had been made from simply vegetables, fungus, tubers, and meat.

In other words, she knew nothing. And yet, she'd mentioned that her supposed wedding had been held in the "dining hall." To me, that sounded like a communal area, and potentially a tactical target. And now that we knew what language she spoke - and could fumble through our vastly different accents to communicate - I might even be able to convince her to tell me more.

Which meant I should do something nice for her first. So, that evening, while Kanik was showing her another map, I told Rymar where I was going and slipped out the back. The girl probably wouldn't even miss me. She'd been hanging on every bit of information Kanik was willing to give her all day long.

And while he was giving her a lot, none of it was the sort of thing that worried me. Their discussion was about stuff every child should know, like the landmass we lived on, the types of predators in the forest around us, and how old books were treasured for the knowledge we were still trying to replicate.

As I sauntered down the street, I thought about that. Maybe keeping her ignorant would be safer, but it also seemed pointless. Somewhere, the girl had learned things. Not enough of them, but a few. We could discuss things like wolves and oceans, which there was no way she'd seen those underground, so Moles clearly had some basic knowledge.

Then again, she'd also mentioned the sins of men and women. She'd talked about God and the Devil. Those were religious terms I knew well from my own faith, but her version sounded warped and twisted. I didn't even want to consider the implications of her marriage!

Soon enough, I reached my mother's house. Lifting my hand, I rapped on the door and then tried the handle. When it opened, I stepped inside and called out.

"Mom? Jeera?"

"Zasen!" my mother replied from somewhere deeper inside. "Your sister is out with Brielle right now."

"I actually wanted you," I told her.

"One second!"

So I got comfortable on her couch, kicking my taloned feet up on the coffee table. A moment later, my mother walked into the room, swept my feet to the floor with one hand, then claimed the chair beside me without missing a beat. She still wore her white coat, which meant she hadn't been home from work long.

"How's your prisoner?" she asked.

"Sunburned," I told her. "Severely. I was hoping you'd have some remedy for that?"

"Mm..." Standing up again, she vanished around the corner, heading back towards her bedroom. "Is she complaining of pain?"

"She doesn't complain," I yelled back.

"Right, she doesn't speak Vestrian." I caught the sound of her rummaging, and then she was back. "Well, it probably is painful, and this has a minor pain reliever in it. Should help with her feet too." Then she passed me a large jar of some kind of cream.

"Mom," I said, "she speaks English."

My mother's eyes widened and she dropped back down into her chair. "Like, from old books?"

"I think so," I agreed. "She calls it English, but she pronounces the letters all weird. The vowels are open and change from word to word, which was why we didn't figure it out on the walk here, but I think we're starting to get it now."

"We?"

"Kanik and me," I explained. "Rymar's struggling, but he never really had a reason to learn English."

"Except for middle school," she agreed. "But you can communicate with her? Has she told you why she's here?"

Yeah, that was sort of the problem. "She says it's because she stabbed her husband with a fork."

"Husband?"

"One she didn't want to marry."

That made Mom blink hard as she tried to process my words. Shaking her head proved she'd heard me, because none of that made sense. At least not without a lot of horrible things to go along with it. Then she pushed back her silver-and-black braids to scrub at her dark-skinned face.

"Zasen, did they rape her?" she finally asked.

"I don't think so. She said he kissed her and then she stabbed him with a fork."

"Good for her!"

Which made me laugh. My mother might not have a tail, but she was just as vicious as any of the warriors I worked with to protect our town. Then again, my sister and I had inherited it from somewhere, and it certainly hadn't been from our tailed father.

"Kanik thinks she was abused," I offered next.