“Mother! Are you okay? I came as fast as I could..!”

She looked up and her gaze settled on her son’s face. She saw him now with new eyes. Even his smooth-skinned friend at his side, carrying two rocks in his fists (to protect her?), didn’t nauseate her now.

“…Are those boys gone? Old Lady Prism came to warn us, but she must have taken ages to get to us. Are you okay?”

The poor boy appeared genuinely worried about her, his mother, who had never treated him as a son. It devastated her. She had allowed the old lemurians to lay her down on a bed, as her legs had gone quite wobbly from the shock; they were still fussing about around her. She felt strong again—she just needed to get her bearings again.

“I’m fine, son,” she said, sitting up.

“…Are you?” Johnny seemed taken aback. She realized she probably hadn’t called him son since he was but a cub.

“I am. Very fine. I ran the boys off. Though I’m afraid we won’t have heard the last of it. I whacked one of them on the side of the head, the one with the largest mouth. I only wanted to stun him, it was a slap, but I’m afraid there was a lot of pent up anger driving the slap. I think I really hurt him. I then broke his wooden club in two on my knee, which is still sore, and told them I could do the same to any of their limbs. It scared off the rest of them. They might return with more people, or with the police. Or perhaps they might not want to tell anyone about them being run off by a small female lemurian...”

Her son looked at her with a puzzled expression. He probably couldn’t believe this was his mother—she had just spoken more words to him than she had in the complete past year, and she had looked him steadily in the eye, which she hadn’t been able to do since he could remember. And he was correct, she believed: he didn’t know this woman. She wasn’t sure if she herself still knew who she was. The woman she’d been for the past ten years was gone now.

“Where’s Pearly,” she asked.

“I think she’s at the lake, fishing… mom.”

What a precious boy! ‘Mom’.

“Go get her, son. I wish to tell you both of my life and where I’ve been.”

“I was raised near a little town called St. Augustine, in Florida,” their mother began…

“By the sea!” said Pearly, who really hoped to see the sea someday.

“Indeed, by the sea. That’s what I told you, and that’s all I told you, because I believed the sea was the only nice thing about my youth. But this isn’t true. I had some great times growing up. I had fun, and I even had friends…

“…I didn’t think I’d ever tell you this…but…I was raised by humans.”

“Humans?!” said Pearly and Johnny simultaneously, and they shared a look and then turned back to their mother, amazed. They were back in their own home, around a wooden crate serving as a table; their mother on a chair, Pearly and Johnny sitting cross-legged on the floor. Johnny had made tea. Pearly had brought back a trout and carp, which she would prepare tonight for dinner. From outside murmurings poured in: the lemurians and Mexicans were still astir after the visit of the teens with baseball bats.

“I never knew my parents. In fact, I wouldn’t meet another lemurian until I was fully grown. I grew up in a large mansion with countless rooms. Here had lived the Preston family for almost two hundred years, and members of four generations lived there at the time. They must have been very rich, but they lived rather frugal. They had a lot of servants, but would often toil themselves by their servants’ side as well. I was raised with the many children of the family. And I loved them. They were my family. We played together and we were taught together. Lessons were given by the older generations of the family, and consisted for a large part of Bible studies. The Prestons were a very religious family.

“There were other foster children beside me, and there were some children of the servants—all of these, I later learned, were Native Americans. All were raised the American way as good Christians. They had American names and only spoke English. Like me. My name was Rebecca.”

“Rebecca?” laughed Pearly. “But your name is Dawn!”

“It is. I picked my own name later, in the Lemurian tradition. I think I’m still Dawn, but I always believed I had long ago killed Rebecca, but she was only sleeping. She woke up today, and wonders what’s become of the world…”

Their mother fell silent for a minute. Pearly and Johnny waited patiently. They had too many questions to ask… they’d better simply listen first.

“I’m not sure why the Prestons took me in, or why there never came another lemurian. Maybe I was just an experiment. A trial run.

“Whenever one of the Indian children would use their own language, they would be punished—beaten with a cane on the palms of their hands or on their buttocks, and they’d be told to lose their savage tongue and speak civil.

“I suppose that’s what the family believed they were doing: they were civilizing us, and they believed they did God’s work.”

“I was rarely punished, because I was a good girl. As long as I behaved I could go to class each day, eat lunch with the Preston children and play afterwards.

“Like I said, I loved the Prestons like family, but they hardly loved me back. They weren’t cruel, they were mostly kind folk, but I was never allowed to have dinner with them, and in the evenings I was confined to my own room in the servants’ quarters.

“I believed that if I behaved good enough I would one day be allowed to sit at their table, and break bread together, as the Bible said. I never did.”

“Being lemurian, I grew up faster than the other children, both physically and mentally. But I quickly learned that flaunting my progress did me no favors. I think it disturbed the Prestons. Civilizing a savage was one thing, but I had of course no business surpassing any of their children in any way.

“So I learned to keep my wits to myself, because I was a good little girl.

“But no matter how much I wished to stop growing and stop changing, I did grow older. And questions grew in my mind: why was I so very different from all others? How did I come to be here? And many, many more questions, big and small.

“Some of the answers I eventually got from the servants, after pestering them about it, who were always so very serious and so very sad. They were all Native Americans, and like the Prestons, they too had been in this mansion for generations.

“They didn’t know much about where I came from, but some had seen me arrive as a tiny baby in the hands of one of the Ministers of the Church—and they believed I was an orphan.

“Others had once heard stories about a far-off island where my kind used to live, though they didn’t know how we were called or how the island was called. An island full of my kin sure set my imagination on fire..!

“When I asked them about their own origins they grew even more cautious. They weren’t supposed to even remember where they had come from. They were brought up with the idea that the Indian in them had died, but the man, or woman, lived. They’d been taught they were the lucky ones.”

“The wariness with which the servants treated me came to an end when I opened a door which I wasn’t supposed to open, and which was supposed to be locked. Behind it I encountered a teenaged boy who was very unnerved by my appearance. He was a tall boy, with very long, shiny black hair, which I had never seen on a boy.

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“The servants had kept the boy hidden since birth. His parents were two servants who somehow had retained some of their pride, and didn’t want the boy to be ‘converted’, as they called it. They had managed to keep the pregnancy from the Prestons, and had fixed the boy a room hidden behind the larder.

“They had taught him in the ‘ways of their people’. He had only ever left the mansion at night, but once he was full-grown they would sent him out into the world.

“They were very alarmed when I happened upon the boy by chance, but once it was clear I wasn’t going to tell the Prestons about it, they trusted me to keep their secrets, and they opened up to me more, and I would spent more and more time with them. I especially spent more time with the long-haired boy, who was very glad to have someone his own age to talk to, and who introduced himself as Hoetoo’ôtse.

“I was much impressed by the boy, who told me many Indian stories and told me of the history of his people. He seemed to experience things completely different from what I was used to. Now that I had someone and something to compare the Prestons and their teachings with, I started to doubt their cause and even started to doubt their God.

“Hoetoo’ôtse and I spent a lot of time together, hidden away in his room. I loved the boy, and I truly believed he loved me—even though he didn’t want anyone to know about our love. I thought he was ashamed of me, or of our love, and it made me feel small and ugly, and it made me hate myself and what I was more than I already did. The boy who’d been kept a secret all his life now had a secret of his own.

“But this secret became hard to keep when I turned out pregnant.

“I could smell his fear, and when he told me we could run away together, I could smell he was lying, and it broke my heart.”

“I had never told anyone, not even Hoetoo’ôtse, of my ability to smell emotions, which at times seemed like I could read minds. Neither had I ever told anyone of my great strength. I had become very proficient at hiding who I really was.

“I decided to save everyone the shame and the sin of my pregnancy, and left home.”

“Being out in an unfamiliar world, lost and alone, I truly became aware of just how very different I really was. The sight of me angered some people, disgusted others, and scared the rest. I quickly learned to avoid people.

“I ate from garbage bins and I stole. Later I learned to hunt. I survived, even though nobody had ever taught me how. I learned how to listen to my instinct. Everything I had learned was useless.

“As I hunted, using only my sense of smell, hands and teeth, I understood I was no longer ‘civilized’. Hunger had made me the savage I never was. This was years before I named myself Dawn, but I think this was when Rebecca started to disappear.”

“I found a half-collapsed house deep in the woods, and here I gave birth to Johnny. I didn’t name him, even though I was in no way familiar with the lemurian practice of children naming themselves when the time came. He was ‘baby’, and later he became ‘boy’. We stayed in this house in the woods for years, and we were happy.”

Johnny slapped the crate, and the teacups jingled. “I used to think that was just a dream!” he said. “I dreamed a lot about living in the woods, I used to call those my ‘green dreams’. I used to think that’s all they were, dreams. But they were memories, it was real..!”

“It was real,” said his mother, “but perhaps also a dream”

“You taught me to read in the woods I remember now!”

“Yes, I found shelves filled with books in the house, though many were moldy, and these I burned. We had lived there for months when I stumbled on an overgrown human skeleton. When I pulled away the weeds, I discovered it lay toppled on top of a neglected vegetable garden. I think that garden saved our lives.”

“Very occasionally humans would happen upon our home, hunters and trappers, but I was always warned in advance by my nose, and I would hide with the child. These men quickly lost interest in the collapsed home and would move on.

“Until one day a very different scent came on the wind. A scent both new and very familiar. It was a small group of lemurians, and they too had followed their nose, and it had brought them to us.

“They looked strange and ugly to me, but I immediately understood I was looking at them with eyes of self-loathing. Their scent helped to quiet my nerves: they smelled friendly and welcoming.

“They took me into their midst, and together we travelled the land for over a year. One of them was Silver, Pearly’s father.

“Yay!” said Pearly.

Her mother gave her a mournful look before she continued. “Silver taught me a lot, but he had no love for my child. Neither did the other lemurians in the group. They taught me about the Great Current, and the paths our lives are supposed to take. They taught me how humanity had long ago lost all sense of their nature, and had strayed from the path. They were no longer part of the Great Current, and were in fact often acting against the Current—and how they might well one day ruin the Earth in the process.

“And I would curse the Prestons, who had raised me according to their unnatural human ways. And I cursed their God and I cursed their Bible.

“And… I started to look at my own son with new eyes, and his human features glared back at me. He reminded me of my old masters who I now hated with all my heart.

“Silver told me of the stars, and of the children that were supposed to be born. And he told me of other children, who weren’t supposed to be born, but were born anyway—who went to great lengths to be born. He explained to me how my son was to blame for my unfortunate life amongst the humans. The future children had great power over present circumstances, he explained… and I believed him!” She looked at Johnny with agonized eyes, and she gave a low moan. “I blamed my son for all of it…”

“It’s okay, mother, I’m still here. And I forgive you…”

And his mother grabbed his hand tightly, and held it, and said, “But I still believe he was right, you see? I still believe you are responsible, you see? But now I see it wasn’t an aberration, it wasn’t a curse, it wasn’t sinful. You weren’t an aberration! You were always part of the Great Current! You see…I’ve known about you and the human girl for weeks.”

“Okay…” said Johnny doubtfully. She was still holding his hand very tightly and he didn’t know where this was going.

“I believed you were afflicted with the same disease, or insanity, as me. For I had truly loved Hoetoo’ôtse, and now I could smell the love you cherished for another human. I didn’t say a thing. I was sure it would catch up with you, and you’d get whatever you deserved. Love can light up your life, but it can also burn it down. This is a life lesson that can’t be taught, it has to be experienced. And if you brought ruin to as all, then perhaps this was the Great Current’s way of righting past mistakes.

“I also know how strong your love has become, and how careless it has made you. I can put two and two together, and you didn’t make it very hard for me. When last week washed your sheets and matrass, and had soaped down your bed, the complete floor and the door, in your rush, this one time, you had forgotten to wash yourself.”

“Oh…” said Johnny.

“Oh!” said Faye. “You mated here?! What’s wrong with you?”

Johnny didn’t know what to say. Part of him still waited for the other shoe to drop, and for his mother to start scolding him, and box his ears and throw him out of her house.

“And then today, Johnny, when those boys that had come looking for you had left, the girl turned up…”

“She did?”

“I had met the girl before, and knew her scent well. But it had changed, and I clearly recognized the change. And suddenly everything changed. I changed. I now saw that my whole life, you, everything, was meant to be. It was all part of the Great Current. You, Johnny, have a future! The girl is pregnant!”