On his way home that morning Johnny tried to set his mind to practical matters and to stop dreaming. (He’d been imagining a life for Faye and himself living in a little house on the prairie, far away from the rest of the world, where they had some cattle, and he would spent his nights composing a book on Lemurian tales and stories, which would be a huge international hit, and he would travel the world as a famous chronicler interviewing lemurians everywhere, Faye at his side, and he’d bring Pearly…)

…Enough of that. He needed to address some very practical questions: where and how could Faye and he live together in this very real and hostile world? Could they move north, live in some place like Chicago or New York, where lemurians were supposedly much more accepted? Would mixed couples also be acceptable over there? He strongly doubted it.

He had spoken to other lemurians over the years who’d lived North, drifters and vagabonds who traveled through these parts. Some of them said they actually preferred the South to the more liberal North. Humans didn’t bother a lemurian in the South if this lemurian kept their head down and knew their place. Sure, a lemurian had more rights in the North—on the condition one acted as human as possible. Dress like a human, walk and talk like a human, go to school, go to church, go to work. It didn’t sound very terrible to Johnny.

Could he expect Faye to come with him? Leave behind her home, her family and friends, to set out with some scruffy lemurian for some unknown future? If she felt this love as strongly as he did, he most certainly could and she most certainly would.

At the edge of the shantytown he could make out Pearly in the distance, waiting for him outside their shack. She’d seen him, too, and waved.

She would wait like that for him every morning, and if he was home earlier than she, he would wait for her. She would now put a kettle on the fire, and cut some slices of bread, make tea and bake some eggs, bacon and beans. Pearly often acted more like his mother than their mother ever had. They’d sit and talk low, have their meal outside, not wanting to wake mother, who slept behind a curtain in the one room shack.

He saw Pearly’s expression, her eyes, change as he walked up to her, and he immediately knew why—and he cursed himself, cursed his stupidity! He’d never before seen that serious expression on her face. “You’d better go and wash, wash up good before mother wakes,” she told him, without any emotion in her voice.

How could he have been so foolish? How could he not have realized how much he smelled of Faye after such a night? If he’d been downwind Pearly would have sensed it a mile off.

She clearly hadn’t been thrilled when she realized what had been going on between Faye and Johnny. She must have smelled there had been a change in Johnny yesterday, but hadn’t said anything. He must have smelled in love, like Faye had smelled earlier that night. (Oh dear, his mother must have smelled this as well..!) Johnny wondered why it upset Pearly so. Hadn’t she and Faye become great friends in a very short time? Shouldn’t she be happy for the both of them? The way she had looked at Johnny… She had looked so coolly at him, cold, like… well, like his mother usually looked at him. She had reminded him of his mother, and it had made him shiver.

He arrived at the lake carrying a pail of soda. Lemurians normally didn’t wash themselves, they brushed their fur every few days and it pretty much cleaned itself. But those lemurians that worked in, say, a slaughterhouse did have to wash themselves, obviously. A freshly washed lemurian always felt socially awkward, as someone’s natural smell told a lot about them, and was in itself a form of communication, both consciously and unconsciously. Rat-catching was generally a rather clean profession, but often Johnny had to get under cellar floors, which were sometimes dry, dusty and cobwebbed, but often wet and very filthy, since rats would come out of the foul drains. So Johnny washed his fur regularly, out of necessity, but never enjoyed it.

The lake was still damned cold in the spring. He cleaned himself with gritty soda, cursing again his stupidity. Did he have to do this every time he got close to Faye? He cursed truelove, which was about to give him a whole lot of trouble and worry. Not only Faye and mother (oh, dear…mother…), but also the other lemurians in his community wouldn’t approve of him colluding with a human girl. They had in the end accepted Johnny as part of the community; once they had got to know him, and had realized halflings weren’t all that bad, really, and were even quite useful and served a purpose in this society where lemurians were dominated by homo sapiens. If they would just take the time to get to know Faye, Johnny thought, they would— He cut that thought off, he was being silly, and he cursed the Great Current for throwing him this curveball.

Faye was dreaming a dream very clearly inspired by the stories Johnny and Pearly had told her. She dreamt that Johnny and she lived in a tropical jungle, with both monkeys and lemurs in the trees making a lot of noise, unclear if they were playing or fighting. And they lived alone in the jungle, as husband and wife, and they had a huge chicken, as big as an elephant, and Faye would bake an egg, big as a barrel, above a fire. They were happy together, and travelled the dense woods, while distantly Faye heard her mother holler, trying to pull her out of this dream, and ignored it. Up close the trees looked like they were made of concrete, and looking up, she saw they had no leaves, and in the sky the stars twinkled at her, it was night, and the trees were now buildings, as high as—

Her mother busted into her room, saying she had called her three times already, what was going on? Faye moaned (she just wanted to sleep). What’s the matter, her mother asked, was she ill? “No,” Faye moaned, “I’m fine, mom.”

Was she ill? She should have said, yes, she was ill. She could have stayed home for the day, she could have slept. It was too late now she realized bleary-eyed, listlessly chewing her breakfast. The twins were rearranging the food on their plates, based on some cryptic system, ogling each other’s progress, her father contentedly read the newspaper and her mother hummed as she whirlwinded through the house.

Other kids would do it all the time, feign illness for a day off school, but Faye never had, so she had automatically had said she was fine. She had always liked going to school, as square as that sounded.

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Think about being in love, she told herself, that’ll wake you up. She could still feel her love for Johnny, but it didn’t give her wings like it had yesterday. Today she recognized all the trouble that would come with her impossible love. Today she just wanted to sleep. Or die.

She pushed her pedals towards Patty. God, she was tired. Her bike, the world, her own body didn’t seem very solid. She felt as if she was still half-dreaming and everything was made from the stuff dreams are made of.

Patty opened the door (Faye didn’t remember knocking, or walking up the drive. Like being in a dream, she would miss moments and large swathes of the day) and asked wide-eyed, “Are you okay?”

Faye wanted to say—

“You look terrible,” Patty continued, barraging her with a torrent of questions, “didn’t you comb your hair? And you acted so weird yesterday! Are you alright? It’s not to do with Johnny returning is it? Golly, he hasn’t been bothering you again, has he?”

Faye thought: now she was just going to tell her, she was too tired to keep pretending. As she was about to tell her, her throat constricted and she felt tears well up behind her eyes. She was going to cry hard. But why? She was happy to be in love, wasn’t she? Johnny was the best! Patty would be happy for her, wouldn’t she? Patty loved Pearly, and she would like Johnny just as much. Of course she would be happy for her, and she would simultaneously worry for her, because it would all be so very hard, loving a lemurian in this world that wouldn’t approve. A world that didn’t approve because it didn’t know Johnny like she did. All the world saw was a lemurian… She did want to tell Patty, who was now looking at her curiously, but she felt she would cry like madwoman as soon as she started. She swallowed her tears away, and gave Patty a crooked smile, “No, I’m fine, just really, really tired,” she said. “I didn’t sleep much last night. Cramps, you know.”

“Oh, cramps!” Patty seemed relieved. “I know all about cramps,” she said cheerily, and merrily went on monologuing on the pitfalls of menstruation as they cycled to school.

Faye’s day at school was a joke. She would doze off, hadn’t made her homework, brought the wrong books, walked into people… She was laughed at, and she laughed with them a couple of times, knowing she was acting like a complete cornball.

She did take great care not to run into Claudette (who wasn’t a classmate of Patty and her, being half a year younger, and many years wiser), Claudette would probably see right through her and would ask the wrong questions, or guess at the truth right away.

She rode home, having told a very worried-looking Patty she was going to bed. No, she would make her homework tonight. She promised, yes. Bye!

She went straight up to her room, saying to her mother, as she heavily mounted the stairs, she had a lot of homework, no Patty wasn’t coming, bye!

She opened the door to her room and was about to sigh relief (her bed was within reach!), when her heart stopped between beats.

“God!” she exclaimed, quickly closing the door behind her, “what are you doing here?” she asked in her loudest whisper.

Pearly sat on the edge of her bed. Looking very seriously at Faye.

“We need to talk,” Pearly said.

“What are you—? Did my mother sent you up to my room?” asked Faye, who didn’t understand.

“I came through the window. Johnny told me how you climb up the tree to get in and out unseen.”

So, she knew about them!

“You need to stop this business with Johnny,” Pearly told her, very matter-of-factly.

Business?

“Why?” asked Faye, dropping her backpack on the floor, and wanting nothing more than to be left alone and crash onto her bed. She had the feeling she was missing a lot of information here, and was too tired to ever catch up. Why would Pearly be against their romance? She was her friend, wasn’t she? And she wanted her brother to be happy, didn’t she?

“Because it will get Johnny killed!” said Pearly emotionally.

“Killed? Are you crazy?”

“This world is no joke, you know,” Pearly said, pointing her lemurian finger at Faye, “it’s no joke for lemurians. When they find out about you two, well, the worst that will happen to you is you’ll be made fun of for a while, but they’ll kill Johnny, string him up, hang him from streetlamp! Johnny thinks I don’t know what this world is like, what humans are like when lemurians don’t know their place. But I know. I just don’t want to think about it every day. Johnny will try and hide facts from me, doesn’t want me to grow up hateful like our mother, but I know. Only Johnny and I know how to read and write in our community, so when folk receive letters from far-off relatives, I often have to read these letters to them, and sometimes they dictate their responses to me. I’ve done that for years, even though most of these letters aren’t fit for little girls. So I know, alright!”

“But— but, everybody was nice to you, weren’t they? Patty, my family? Heck, our teacher told us you were welcome to visit our school one of these days!”

“Your school?” Pearly said, slightly taken aback. “I’ll tell you why everybody was nice to me,” she said, back on the offensive, “because I’m a little girl. They don’t see me as a threat, they think I’m cute, like a puppy! And I act cute! Because I like it when people are nice to me. But I’m not sure if I’m really like that, deep down. I’m not always happy, you know. When I act happy, I don’t do it just for other people, but it also makes me forget my troubles. Acting happy often makes me happy, so that works for me.”

“Yes, it works for me as well, but you’re not acting very happy or cute now,” said Faye, realizing that was a lousy thing to say, but she was too tired, and there was still someone sitting on her bed. Sue her.

“People will soon stop thinking I’m cute, you understand? I grow up fast. How will I act then? If people start to see me as a menace, will I start to act like a menace? Maybe I will, I don’t know. They see Johnny as a menace, it doesn’t matter he’s half human, he’s still a lemurian to them. So if he steps up to a human girl, they deport him. If he touches a human girl, and smells like her after a night of hanky-panky, they’ll come for him and kill him, and they may just burn our whole village down for good measure. Humans don’t see our community as a threat, it’s small, and mostly made up of old lemurians, so it’ll only get smaller. Sometimes I think mother only had me to spite the humans… But when a boy from our community messes around with a human girl, well, there’s no telling what they’ll do!”

Hanky-panky?

“Well…” said Faye, as she walked past Pearly and flopped down behind her on the bed, face first, and Pearly got up from the edge of the bed, and sat down on the chair by Faye’s tiny kid-desk. “… we can’t just stop our ‘business’, because were in love! We’re in truelove!”

“Ha!” Pearly said, not really laughing (and so loud, Faye worried her mother might hear them). “Truelove? What is this, are we living in a fairy tale? How could it be truelove? Johnny can’t have children, he’s a halfbreed! You’re just both being foolish. Johnny wishes he was born a human, though he’ll never admit it, not even to himself, and you’re just a silly girl who takes pity… no matter what… let me tell… really…”

Pearly was probably telling some hard truths, but Faye lost her struggle against the drowsiness, and drifted off.

When Faye’s mother woke her up, calling her down for dinner, Pearly was gone. She had closed the window on her way out.