We had been left alone in the dome of the Elfangor, a strange mix of aliens bound together primarily by our exclusion from any position of command. The remaining three humans were huddled together near one of the many trees, seemingly comforted by the proximity of their fellows. Even from the grassy field where Aximili and I ran, it made me feel anxious to see them crowded together so. The strange morph-capable nothlit who claimed to also be human seemed to agree; he was perched in a tree a good distance away from all and glared, perplexingly, at the dome itself.
The resident scientists had been prodding at the nothlit for days. Some were of the opinion that he wasn't really sentient at all but merely some cruel experiment of the humans'; others believed that he was at least partially human, but refused to accept his story of being a nothlit, despite the obvious evidence that was his ability to remain in his bird form well past the time limit and still morph. All scoffed his attempts to draw the mystical Ellimists into the works, though even Aximili supported his claim. Far more worrisome to my mind, however, was the strong resemblance of his human morph to the yellow haired human of my memory.
Noticing the focus of my stalks on the bird, Aximili spoke.
‹He is my shorm.›
I remained silent, not knowing how to reply. Still uncertain what the nothlit was or how he was involved in any of this, I was entirely unprepared for such declarations. Shorm. It was a word seldom spoken of, a bond never questioned; to ask Aximili to explain himself would be unthinkable, yet that was precisely what I wanted.
I had slowed in my running, thoughts more on the strange puzzle that had been set before me than on consuming the good grasses of home. The long winding steam, gurgling between its sloping banks, was nearby; I made my way toward it rather than address Aximili.
Shorm. Shorm with a...what was he? Was he human, as he claimed? It seemed unthinkable; unthinkable that a human should find a way out of the prison that was being trapped in a morph and not share this gift, unthinkable that Aximili should have befriended such a one. Shorm.
As I dipped a hoof into the brook, I stated, mainly for the sake of having a response, ‹Aldera was a nothlit, in the end.› Perhaps I could tell him of her devotion to the Hork-Bajir, how she gave so much - too much? - for her own shorm. Perhaps -.
‹Yes, I know,› Aximili replied calmly. ‹I met her, once.›
I swung my stalks around to stare at him. He knew? He knew her? How could he possibly? How could anyone? She had died on that miserable planet, died along with the Hork-Bajir child she claimed as her own; died because of my actions, and because her father had believed in the decency of others. She had died before Aximili was born; before even his brother had been born, as far as I knew. I wondered then, not for the first time, if anything any of the people of Earth told me would ever make a bit of sense.
‹How?› I asked finally, attempting to keep my raging memories in check.
‹It is a complicated story, War-Prince, and not fully mine to tell. Let me say simply that death is not always a barrier to memories, and that Hork-Bajir know many tales.› He had moved to stand beside me at the stream, his hoof also in the fresh water. I saw one stalk turn back to the tightly bunched humans, now far away and difficult to see clearly; the other regarded me nervously.
Bitterly I reflected that such had been the response to every direct question I had yet asked of anyone: the humans seemed annoyed, or perhaps frightened, by me; Aximili was cryptic and anxious; and the nothlit would not speak to anyone except to say once, resentfully, that if this ship was to be named after Elfangor, it ought to at least have some mice for a hungry hawk. It had made me shudder to hear his voice in my head, speaking that name; I was glad when he was silent.
‹Did you...› Aximili began, hesitantly. I looked sideways at him, through one of my main eyes; he was shifting slightly from one hoof to another, still nervous. ‹Do you remember a warrior named Arbron?›
That name; that name alone was enough to propel me into a torrent of memory: the two arisths, impatient to fight, impatient to win; the two humans, scared of us all yet strangely defiant. The yellow haired female, the one who had died, and the stubborn male, who grew, perhaps out of the universe's sick sense of irony, to be one of Esplin's favorite host-bodies.
‹Aristh,› I whispered. ‹Aristh Arbron until that final day...until I lost them both...›
We had traveled in my ship, my Jahar, each thoroughly tired of the others before the first day was out. There was a mission - a slow mission. We were to drift toward the planet Earth at sub-relativistic speeds to return the humans to their home. But we didn't; we didn't, and Arbron was lost, Arbron and the other aristh, the one I sometimes dreamt had been Elfangor.
Aximili was staring at me now with his main eyes, his stalks scanning the trees around us. It was deeply ingrained paranoia that made him do that, something neither of the arisths had had. I started to tell him of this, but he interrupted, prompting,
‹Elfangor.›
This echo of my own thoughts startled me. Had I spoken aloud? It had been so long since I had had control over anything that I suspected I occasionally did voice my thoughts uncensored; Esplin had, of course, never let any words leave my head but those he had dictated, and I had fallen out of the habit of conversation. Even when I was free of him, it did not matter how loudly I screamed or how subversively I whispered, for my voice was contained within a device Esplin claimed was of his own making, and died unheard. For a brief time, I had been able to converse after a fashion with the psychic Leerans, unfettered by Esplin's grip on my voice, but that was long ago.
‹Elfangor?› I repeated cautiously, testing the name against my memories of the Andalite, and of the aristh. ‹No; it was not Elfangor. But I...I cannot think of his name.›
‹You've...forgotten. His name.› Aximili looked incredulous, and no wonder; the shame he believed I had admitted to was great. One did not simply forget a name, a name given by tradition stronger than law. The second and third names might be dropped by friends, or in conversation, but to simply forget was anathema. He paused, then nodded. ‹Okay. But what was he like?›
His use of the humans' expression - a nod and the all-encompassing "okay" - surprised me. Had he even noticed, or was it so ingrained in him as to pass out of his mind without thought? I wondered anew if there was any hope for Aximili's plans to return to the homeworld. Even to one who had lived with an alien in his head for so many years, he seemed at times incredibly foreign. Aximili was not human, of course, but neither was he any longer wholly Andalite.
‹Not forgotten; no,› I insisted, feeling suddenly that it was very important for someone to understand. Aximili was no longer fully Andalite, yet was I either, at that? ‹But it was not Elfangor, could not have -›
‹Arbron said it was Elfangor,› Aximili interrupted harshly. ‹He said he was brave and loyal and -›
‹If it was Elfangor, it was not the Elfangor everyone knew,› I replied in a similar tone, ignoring Aximili's flinch of surprise. ‹You do not understand. They were but children; they thought they knew what was best. He refused to shoot them. The Yeerks. The damned fool refused to kill them! I thought to force him, to teach him - it was a war, people died, he had to know! - but then he...he gave me to them. To the Yeerks. To Esplin.›
I felt my body shuddering, but it was beyond my control. The memories had fallen into place and I wished only that they would return to their widely scattered positions.
Aximili was staring at me now with three of his eyes. The fourth, rather than searching our surroundings as it had been, regarded first the bird flying toward us, then swung around to join its fellows. His focus promised death.
‹No!› he shouted, his tail launching forward to press its blade into the skin of my neck. ‹You lie! You are not my brother's fault! Elfangor was good, Elfangor was brave, Elfangor was -›
‹Ax!›
It was the nothlit.
‹Ax, you've got to calm down. I don't care what he did, you can't kill him, not now.›
Aximili spared one stalk for the bird, then added the second in what appeared to be alarm when he noticed the other humans running clumsily across the grass. The bird was himself growing into a human. I wondered vaguely what he meant by the change, but Aximili and his tail-blade were more pressing interests.
‹You didn't hear, Tobias. You didn't hear!› Aximili replied, a surprising note of desperation in his voice. The sharp blade remained suspended near my throat. An image of myself leaning into it, welcoming the harsh flesh into my own, appeared tantalizingly in my mind. No; not that. Certainly I was still capable of killing myself without help.
"I don't care," the nothlit repeated in his human voice, coughing through a mouth that was still hard and yellow. He reached out with a still-forming arm to clasp Aximili's shoulder. "We didn't kill him during - during the war when Visser-fucking-Three was in his head, and you are not going to kill him now over some argument."
Aximili's main eyes were now focused squarely on the human boy, though his stalks were no less deadly in their regard of my throat and my own tail.
‹He said Elfangor gave him to the Yeerks, Tobias. That Elfangor was responsible for this - this abomination.›
More than the tail-blade at my throat, more than the necessity of being saved by this half-human child, more than the horror of my recent realization, it stabbed at my hearts to hear that word in Aximili's voice.
"Ax!" another human voice cried. It was Aximili's Prince Jake - my prince now, as well, though it seemed unlikely that I would be wanted. "Ax, what are you doing? Tobias?"
The boy ignored his prince, glancing balefully at me before returning his two human eyes to Aximili's face. "Ax, you can't just kill everyone who says something bad about Elfangor. Maybe he's wrong, maybe he didn't mean it. Maybe the Yeerk just told him that. Let up. It's over. It's got to be over."
Aximili slowly nodded his head, reaching across his own chest to place his hand on top of his friend's. Standing thus next to the boy, green eyes meeting brown, he looked more human than I would have thought possible. In different circumstances, I might have thought him in morph.
‹You're right; I'm sorry,› he said after a time, then focused again on me. The look of outrage had not softened, but it seemed to have been restrained. ‹I apologize,› he said stiffly. ‹I asked you to tell me what you remembered; it is my own fault that you did. And I - I should not have called you that. I am sorry.›
The tail blade was retracted from my neck and Aximili stepped backward, arms held close to his torso to show he would not need them for balance, did not plan to attack. Prince Jake looked on, appearing suddenly too exhausted to be interested. For a moment, we regarded one another silently, but then came a sudden burst of noise as the other two humans, a boy and a girl, arrived, wet mouths hanging open and nostrils flaring as they gasped for air.
"What the hell was that about?" the boy demanded of Prince Jake. "I heard them yelling, then you started running and screaming that we had to go find them, but here they are and everything's hunky dory?"
Aximili looked away, his stalks again scanning the area for danger while his main eyes regarded the stream. Prince Jake sighed deeply.
"I don't know, Marco, okay? Ax went nuts and Tobias talked him out of it. That's it."
"But what - why's he -"
"Marco, I really don't care right now. There's nothing I can do!"
"Jake -" the girl began, reaching toward him as the nothlit had to Aximili, but Prince Jake was already gone, long legs carrying him beyond her grasp.
"Damn it," the darkly haired boy muttered, letting himself fall on to the grass with his hands over his face. His words held the cadence of prayer. "God damn it all."