Neteyam and Prisha looked up, and saw the furious face of Rob Hathaway.

"What the hell are you kids doing?" he asked. "You're not going outside, are you?"

Neteyam stood up straighter. "Dr. Singh is not my mother," he said. "She can't tell me what to do."

"Neteyam, she's trying to keep you from getting killed before your father can get here," Rob said. "Don't be an idiot. Come here." He stepped towards them.

The prospect of freedom, so close a moment ago, was slipping away again. It was just like at the caves – Neteyam had been caught in the act, and if he didn't do something right now he would never get another chance. They would keep him under lock and key forever.

Worse... they would tell Dad how Neteyam done nothing but hurt himself and be in the way since the moment he'd arrived. Even if Dad still wanted him back in this body, would he still feel the same after hearing what Reet would have to say?

He could only think of one way out of this. It wasn't a good idea. If it didn't work, he was going to be in infinitely more trouble, but it was all he had. Neteyam pulled out the knife he'd dug up at the village site and held it to Prisha's neck, pushing her in between himself and Rob. She stiffened in horror. Viraj, on Neteyam's left, covered his mouth with both hands and edged away towards Rob – and Rob himself stopped dead.

"Ngaytxoa." Neteyam whispered an apology to Prisha, and felt her relax, but only slightly.

Rob held up his hands, and when he spoke his voice was a warning. "Neteyam..."

"Back off, or I'll cut her throat!" Neteyam said. "Prisha, open the airlock."

Without moving her head or neck, she felt around at the wall on her left and found the button. As she'd predicted, an alarm went off as the door, long disused, grumbled open. Neteyam backed into the little room beyond, pulling her with him, and she shut the door again. Through the small window in the middle, they saw Rob come running up to open it again, only for Viraj to tackle him and knock him over.

Neteyam slid the knife back in his belt, and Prisha immediately turned around and shoved him against the outer door. "Never do that again!" she said. "You scared me to death!"

"I said I was sorry! I couldn't think of anything else." He put his mask.

Prisha opened a compartment with a red label on it and took one out for herself, which she quickly put in place before opening the outer door. Cool, moist cavern air rushed in. Neteyam stepped down, into a back passage nobody used much. It wasn't in the direction he'd hoped to go... they'd have to double-back. He thought about taking the narrow space behind the humans' habitats, where people would be less likely to look for them, but if anybody did catch them there, they'd be trapped. Better to stay in the open. He set off for the main caves.

"Come on," he said to Prisha. "You'd better come with me as far as the exit."

"In case you need to threaten me again?" she asked, still angry.

"I won't hurt you," Neteyam promised.

"No, but you'll still wave a knife near my throat! What if you slip?" But she followed him down a flight of natural steps and into a tunnel that led up to the camp.

"I won't do it again unless I have to. Now you know what to tell your mother, at least."

"She'll never let me out of her sight again," Prisha complained. "The next time there's somebody we don't know within a hundred kilometres she'll lock me up!"

Another distant explosion made the rocks vibrate around them. Dust and cobwebs fell from the ceiling, and there were shouts from the People – but they weren't shouts of panic or alarm. They were instructions to hurry up, to get going. When they stepped into the open, Neteyam and Prisha found frantic activity. Banshees were restless, shifting their weight on their perches and snapping at each other as their partners got them geared up with saddles and armour. People were passing weapons around, both traditional arrows and spears and human-made pistols and rifles. Neteyam saw a rack of the latter and thought about stealing one, then reminded himself that these had been manufactured for the use of avatars and recoms. Like the bows, they would be far too big for him.

Margo was in her avatar, having a frantic conversation with one of the Omatikaya women. Neteyam caught snatches of their words on the way by – Pa'ay was still at Kilvanoro, and somebody should be sent to let her and the others there know that this was happening. He didn't stop to listen to the rest. Instead, he kept his head facing forward and took long strides, walking like he had a purpose.

This seemed to work. Margo wasn't looking at them, and the People were far too busy to pay much attention. They passed through the big cavern and Neteyam chose another tunnel that sloped down.

As the light from camp died around the first corner, replaced only by the pulsing blue-green glow of the moss on the walls, Neteyam could hear Rob Hathaway shouting his name.

The place he had in mind was near the bottom of the mountain. An opening there had been infiltrated by vines that connected to a network of smaller boulders – though still the size of human buildings – all around. Kids in the camp had made games out of clambering along them like prolemurs. From there he could make a start at getting back to the ground.

They were getting close, when Neteyam suddenly saw light ahead. This wasn't the bioluminescence, this was the cold, pale yellow light of early dawn. That wasn't right, was it? There should be another ten metres of tunnel, at least. He'd been here dozens of times with his siblings... Tuk and Spider were particularly fond of the place. Had he forgotten something again?

It seemed like he had, because Neteyam climbed over a waist-high boulder onto to find himself looking down into a foggy abyss. Part of the rock face had dropped away and taken most of the vines left. Prisha, behind him, grabbed his arm to keep him from falling. He took her wrist and leaned forward for a better look. About forty metres below, just barely visible through the morning mist forming around the mountains, he could make out what was left – huge chunks of the mountain slowly rotating in the magnetic field, with the tangle of vines draped between them.

When had that happened? Had it been after the night the kids were taken prisoner and Neteyam had the last memory of his old life? He wanted to hope so. He didn't like to think he'd forget something like this.

"You can't go that way," said Prisha.

Neteyam reached out cautiously. A couple of vines were still dangling within reach, although they were thinner than he'd like. He took one and tugged on it. It seemed to be securely anchored.

"Can you?" asked Prisha.

He let go of her arm and pulled on the vine in both hands. It held. Neteyam made sure his backpack and knife were secure, then turned to Prisha, momentarily thinking again of kissing her, just because... but she'd backed away from the opening and was out of reach.

"Thank you," he said.

"No problem," she replied tremulously.

Carefully, Neteyam swung one leg through the crack, then the other, and turned around to hang below the vine with his knees hooked over it. He put his weight on it very slowly, little by little, in the hope that he'd have time to react if something broke. It seemed secure. He began making his way, hand-over-hand, along its length, towards a large chunk of rock about twelve metres away and a little above them. From there, he could get a view of the whole situation, without the bottom of High Camp in the way.

It hurt, of course. Everything always did. Neteyam's shoulder was still sore from where Syulang had lifted him, and it didn't like this treatment at all. Closing his right hand tightly was difficult with it in the cast, and his wrist ached. He did his best to ignore both, and inched his way along. There were more vines dangling from his destination into the fog. He'd have his choice of ways to go... as long as he could figure out where things were in the rising fog.

Once he made it down, he would have to figure out where Dad, Max, and Dr. Spellman had landed their craft. Neteyam had some ideas for that... vehicles needed an open area, but they would want cover nearby so that the Sky People wouldn't spot them from above. There were places along game trails that might be suitable. Neteyam would just have to check as many as he could.

At least he didn't have to worry about being mistaken for an enemy, as he had when he'd first misguidedly set out for Hell's Gate. The only People who would be in this area were the Omatikaya, and they now all had some idea who he was. They would not harm the boy they believed to be Jake Sully's nephew.

Another distant boom could be heard. Neteyam shut his eyes and hung on to the vine as he felt a brief breeze pass over him, all that was left of the distant shock wave. A moment later, however, his his eyes suddenly flew open again as he heard something much closer and much more ominous – a groaning.

Neteyam looked back. Prisha, though pale with terror, was leaning out of the opening so that she'd be able to see how far he'd gone. She turned her head, trying to see the spot where the vine was anchored, but it was invisible from her vantage. Neteyam, however, could see it clearly. A patch of moss had fallen away and was dangling in midair, tendrils flailing as the plant tried to find another holdfast. A shower of pebbles slid down the side of the mountain.

"La'ang," Neteyam swore under his breath, and tried to climb faster.

As soon as he moved, the groaning began again. Again, he tried to hurry, but the next time he grabbed it, the vine gave a violent jerk. He held on tight and looked back again. Another piece had come loose. Prisha was reaching for the other end, hoping she could hold it up for him. That was a bad idea.

"Go back!" he shouted, waving at her. If she stayed where she was...

The cliff gave way.

Prisha screamed, but she was out of view as Neteyam found himself in freefall. There were no parachute trees up here. The vine was ripped from his hands as he tumbled head over heels, unable to even see what he might be heading for.

Then he was bouncing in a tangle of vegetation. He'd landed in the vines that had come away in the original collapse, now strung between boulders below like a safety net. He just barely had time to take this in when a large rock landed nearby. The vines held, but Neteyam was forced to roll towards it, hitting his already bruised ribs. The rock stayed in place, wedged in a gap in the vines, but Neteyam kept going, coming to rest on top of something alive, but not in any position to see what it was.

Everything was in motion. The stones holding up the net were much smaller than the surrounding mountains, the size of a titanothere or one of the human aircraft, and the collapse had set them bobbing, dancing, and spinning in the air. All Neteyam could do was hang on and wait for things to calm down.

"Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god," whimpered Prisha.

Neteyam turned his head, and realized that the thing he was lying on was her. She had laced her arms and legs through the network of vines and had her eyes clamped shut, unwilling to even look at her surroundings. Her hair was full of rock dust and her glasses were askew on her face, but she didn't appear to be injured.

"Prisha?" Neteyam asked. He hoped he wasn't hurting her, lying with his head and shoulders, across her lower back, but he didn't dare move yet.

"We're alive, right?" she asked.

"Yes. We just need to wait for the rocks to stop moving."

"Oh, god."

Neteyam swallowed, his eyes focused on infinity as the boulders danced above him, dropping pebbles and clumps of vegetation as they did. Now what? Somehow Prisha had to get back up to High Camp, but if they called for help, anybody who heard would insist on taking him back, too. He couldn't just leave her dangling here terrified, though... this was absolutely not what she'd pictured when she'd once told him wistfully that she wished she could go outside. He'd have to make sure she was safe... somehow... before getting on with his plan.

Slowly, the rocks calmed their motion, but at the same time, the fog thickened until it was all around them, a blanket of white through which only shadows could be seen. That was going to make climbing very dangerous, without knowing what was around them. Still, it wasn't safe to just hang here when more vines could break at any moment. They had to get somewhere sturdier.

It was through this sea of fog that Neteyam heard a familiar sound. This one was, fortunately, not dangerous like the groaning vines or falling rocks. This was a war horn – a pawk, the instrument he'd named his banshee for. It echoed off the cliffs, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere, and was then joined by the cries of a hundred banshees as they took wink. Neteyam sat up to look, but the animals were lost in the brightening fog. He could only hear their cries, and the sound of the pawk, grow fainter as they moved off in a flock, heading south.

Those were the warriors, he realized. They'd been waiting for the fog to use it as cover, and now they were going to meet the Sky People. There would be no help from them.

"Prisha," he said, "let's get up onto the rocks."

"What if it breaks again?" she asked, her eyes still shut tight.

"It won't. All the vines together are much stronger." He wasn't going to tell her that they'd probably been weakened by bodies and rocks falling into them. "Open your eyes. Don't look down, look at me."

She turned her head towards his voice and did as he said. Her cheeks were streaked with frightened tears.

"Just follow me. I'm heavier than you. If it'll take my weight, it'll take yours," he promised, and started up.

The tangle was much easier to climb than a single vine or rope would have been. There were plenty of hand and foot holds, and the slope made it much like climbing the Mother Loom back at the village. His boots meant any sort of grip with his toes was out of the question, but the texture on their bottoms performed something of the same function. Still, Neteyam went slowly, wary of his own diminished ability and the need for Prisha to follow, carefully testing each place he took hold of. He looked back repeatedly to make sure she was coming.

She was, with her chin high and her eyes resolutely fixed on him so she wouldn't be tempted to look down. She'd probably never climbed anything taller than a metre or two in her life before, Neteyam thought. He would have to figure something out... maybe she had a device on her she could modify somehow, perhaps to contact her own father.

They made their way up to a rock about the size of the tank where Dr. Augustine's avatar was kept. It wobbled in the air as Neteyam climbed onto it, and then reached down to help Prisha up after him. They got onto the most level part of it they could find, where they sat down to catch their breath. Prisha took a deep breath and pulled her mask away from her face so she could wipe her cheeks and adjust her glasses before replacing it.

"I'm sorry," she said quietly.

"You should have gone back as soon as I was out," Neteyam said.

She winced. "I'm totally useless. This is why I stay inside and stick to computers. I'm good at computers." She hiccuped.

Neteyam looked away. After the past few days he knew very much what it was like to feel useless, and it was terrible. He wouldn't wish it on anyone. Misguided as it might have been, Prisha had been trying to help. "I should have called out sooner. You didn't have time to move."

Prisha raised her head and looked around, but the fog was all around them now. "You should keep going," she decided. "I'll stay here. Somebody will find me."

"Not for a while. They've all flown off to fight," Neteyam said. If not for this absurd situation, he and Pawk could have been among them! Or would they... would Dad have made him stay behind? "I doubt anyone in the Camp will hear us if we shout, but the fog will go down as the sun comes up. When it's gone we can figure out a signal." His blue shirt wouldn't stand out... they needed something bright. It was a pity Prisha didn't dress like her mother. One of Reet's sparkly blouses would have done nicely, but Prisha was wearing a hooded shirt in a sombre heather gray.

Prisha thought for a moment, then brightened. "How about this?" she asked, and unbuckled her wristwatch. "It'll reflect the sun onto the top of the clouds. Somebody could see that, right?"

"Yes," said Neteyam, with an approving nod. The People sometimes used pieces of obsidian, or human-made mirrors, to do exactly that.

Prisha smiled. She seemed to feel better knowing that having got them into this mess, she could also help get them out.

From somewhere far away, there was another rumble, but that was the last one for a long time. Instead, there was only eerie silence as the fog drifted around them, slowly getting brighter as the morning sun illuminated it. For a while it was so bright that Neteyam wanted to close his eyes. Then it began to melt away, revealing the blue sky and the mountains all around them. Below in the valley, where the sunlight hadn't yet reached, it formed a thick, fluffy layer, with the floating mountains bobbing in and out of it to create wisps and swirls. Higher objects cast long shadows on the cloudtops.

Prisha, who had so far been keeping low to the surface of their boulder so she wouldn't feel like she was going to fall, now sat up to see better. "I wish I had a camera!" she said. "That's some view."

"Yeah," said Neteyam. It was better from the back of a banshee, with the rocks and vines flying by on either side of him, and his heart pumping in rhythm with Pawk's. He wondered how the battle was going.

Prisha held up her watch so the transparent face could catch the sunshine. She directed the bright reflection first across the bottom of the looming mountain that housed High Camp, to be sure she had a handle on how it behaved. Then she moved it across the cloudtops below them in wide circles, trying to be as visible as possible. Hopefully someone would see before the fog dispersed entirely, forcing them to think of a new plan.

It seemed to work remarkably quickly. Prisha was in the process of rearranging her legs, trying to get more comfortable, when a person on a banshee rose out of the mist and circled them once to get a look. That was just long enough for Neteyam to register that the animal, a blue male, was familiar, but not for an opportunity to see the rider's face. Then banshee and Na'vi swooped in and landed almost right on top of Neteyam and Prisha.

Prisha, startled, dropped her watch. It bounced on the stones and went over the edge as the added weight sent the boulder into a rocking rotation. Neteyam grabbed her arm to keep her from falling after the watch and flattened himself against the stone to stay stable. From there, he looked up to see who had found them.

It was the last person Neteyam had expected to see... but exactly the one who was likely to try such a close-call landing.

"Lo'ak?" he asked, astonished, at the same moment Prisha exclaimed the same name.

"Hi, Prisha!" said Lo'ak in English. "How did you get dow... oh, wow." His eyes widened as he took in Neteyam's new face.

This was it, then. Neteyam was, at last, going to have to explain himself to family. How would Lo'ak take it? Would he even believe it.

There was no room on the boulder for Lo'ak to dismount, so he stayed perched on his banshee's shoulders to look down at the two humans. Neteyam noticed that he was wearing some new jewelry – a bracelet made of small shells, with one or two more woven into his hair. Those must be from the new seaside clan they'd joined. Same with the crossbow hanging at his side, a small one made of curling strips of bone.

"What are you doing here?" asked Neteyam. The humans had mentioned Dad coming, but nobody had said anything about Lo'ak.

"I'm here to meet you, I think," said Lo'ak. "You're my cousin, right? I've seen old recordings of Dad when he was human and you look so much like him. Tuk and Kiri both have a stomach bug, so Mom and Spider wanted to stay with them, but I came. You two need a lift? It's a long way down."

Neteyam had several more questions, but he couldn't turn down that offer. He helped Prisha get gingerly to her feet, where she took Lo'ak's extended hand. He pulled her up to sit astride the banshee's neck in front of him, then reached for Neteyam. Neteyam offered his left had so he wouldn't pull on the same shoulder Syulang had, and Lo'ak easily lifted him to sit behind him.

"Hang on," he said, and the stone was thrown into swaying motion again as they leaped into the air.

Several thoughts all went through Neteyam's head at once. He'd never expected the first family member he would meet like this to be Lo'ak, and he had no idea what he was going to say... not that he had any better idea what he would have said to Mother, or Dad, or Kiri, or Grandmother.

Like everyone else he'd interacted with, Lo'ak was as big as a giant now... but it was oddly less troubling than it had been with Syulang, or Pa'ay and Tarsem. Maybe it was because Neteyam was standing with his arms around his brother's shoulders as Lo'ak crouched, meaning their eye levels were about where they were supposed to be. Maybe it was simply that at the moment he was only looking at the back of his brother's head.

But the idea that overtook all the others was how the wind caught his braids and threw them around, how it flapped his clothing, and the feeling in his stomach as they went up and down, side-to-side, weaving their way between the floating boulders. It brought back snatches of memories, of sitting in front of Mother or Dad as a small child, being taken somewhere by air and having no control over what was happening. It hadn't been frightening then and it wasn't exactly frightening now, but it was a very different experience from riding a banshee Neteyam himself had tsaheylu with.

"What's your name?" Lo'ak asked, shouting over the wind.

"Me?" asked Neteyam.

"Of course, you!" said Lo'ak. "I'm Lo'ak, she's Prisha, this is Tìtstew, who are you?"

"I..." Neteyam wasn't ready, but he couldn't lie... not least because the only human name that came to mind was the one Bush had tried to call him by, Nate or Nathaniel. Even if he'd wanted to deceive his family, he would absolutely not have let Bush name him.

"Look out!" said Prisha, pointing.

The boys turned their heads to look. Another figure on a banshee was rising out of the clouds below them, but this was not one of the Omatikaya warriors. This was a recom in dark green battle uniform, a rifle on her back and armour on her mount. At this distance it was hard to be sure, but Neteyam thought it was the woman named Georgia Konstopoulos.

She was getting closer. If Neteyam could see and potentially recognize her, then she could do the same, and perhaps she already had. Her had was going to her throat for her com choker.

"Do something before she reports to the others!" Neteyam urged.

"I've got this, Cuz," Lo'ak promised. "Hang on!" He unhooked his crossbow, raised it to his eye, and fired.

The bolt shot off and went straight through Konstopoulos' hand, through her neck, and kept going. Maverick the banshee screamed in pain, while his rider crumpled. They were still linked as they both dropped out of the sky into the fog below. Prisha shrieked and covered her eyes.

For a moment Neteyam couldn't believe what he'd just seen, but then he whooped in joy and pride. "Ha! Good shot!" he cried out, squeezing Lo'ak's shoulders. "Now, that's a mighty warrior!"

By the time he realized what he'd said, it was too late to take it back. He felt Lo'ak's muscles stiffen, and then Prisha screamed again as they lost control. Like Maverick a moment earlier, Tìtstew simply dropped out of the sky. Suddenly they were surrounded by fog all over again, with floating boulders and dangling vines flickering by perilously close, and Neteyam couldn't even be angry at Lo'ak for it. This was entirely his own fault, for not thinking before blurting that out.

"Tìtstew! Tìtstew! Mawey!" Lo'ak ordered, but it was his own recovery from his moment of shock that let them pull out of their fall – and not a moment too soon. They were only metres above the forest canopy, still dark in the shadow of the fog and the mountains. Tìtstew levelled out and swooped in against a fat-trunked Omputangek tree. The banshee's talons dug into the bark soft, and curls of wood spiralled out as they slid down to only three metres above the actual ground, where they finally came to a stop. The three young people let go and dropped the last bit of distance to land, thankfully, in a patch of soft, soggy green moss.

Prisha rolled over, got to her hands and knees, and immediately began to retch. Neteyam crawled over to her, his hands and knees squelching on the moss, to grab the strap of her mask – he couldn't imagine what it would be like to throw up without removing it. She, however, jerked away from his touch as if he'd hurt her, then shook her head and curled up.

"I'm okay. I'm okay," she said, both hands on her chest as if to stop her heart from hammering its way right out of her body. Neteyam could feel his own heartbeat pulsing in his ears, and he was breathing hard. Behind him, Lo'ak was leaning on the tree with both hands, his shoulders heaving as he, too, tried to get air into his lungs.

The words had just slipped out. Neteyam hadn't even thought about them... and he'd nearly killed all three of them.

Lo'ak finally seemed to get his wind back, and turned to look at Neteyam and Prisha, crouched in the moss behind him. The green juices from it had soaked into the knees of their trousers and the cuffs of Prisha's sleeves, and when Lo'ak took a step towards them, Neteyam could see green-tinted fluid welling up between his brother's toes.

Lo'ak himself didn't even seem aware of the damp. His eyes were huge, the whites visible at both corners, and his face as pale as if he'd just seen a ghost... which was entirely reasonable. For a moment there, he must have thought he'd at least heard one. He shook his head as if to clear his vision and then looked again, and only then did he finally speak.

"Neteyam?"

"Yeah," said Neteyam. He stood up and shook out his right arm to try to stop the shoulder aching again. There were green stains all over his clothes from climbing on vines and landing in the moss, but he didn't seem to have any new scrapes or cuts. The clothing had done its job of protecting him.

Lo'ak's mouth opened and closed a couple of times as he visibly struggled for words. "How is it you?"

Neteyam had already answered that more than once for other people... and maybe the third time really was, as the humans said, the charm, because this time he managed to meet his brother's eyes as he told the shortest possible version of the story. "The Sky People brought me back in this body. They wanted to question me. I escaped and went back to High Camp, and now I'm just trying to get to Dad. Where is he?"

"He's with the warriors," said Lo'ak. "He told me to stay with Dr. Patel and Dr. Spellman at the samson, but then Tìtstew came back." He glanced up to make sure the banshee was still there – he was – and then crouched down to talk on Neteyam's eye level. "After we first landed, Dad decided to try whistling for his banshee just to see if it worked and it did, so he told me to stay put and went up to the Camp. When he came back he said they were going to try to get the Sky People into a trap, and I wasn't allowed to come..."

"But as soon as you had Tìtstew, you decided to go anyway," Neteyam guessed. "Typical."

"I wasn't going to fight!" Lo'ak protested. "I just wanted to take a look. I had a feeling I should be there."

Neteyam rolled his eyes. "Have you noticed how every time you have a feeling you've gotta do something, I end up saving your skxawng ass?"

Before he even finished saying that, Neteyam knew exactly how his brother would reply: Lo'ak was going to point out that he had just saved Neteyam from being stranded on the boulder, and then he was going to be insufferable about it for days. Somehow, though, that wasn't what happened. Instead, Lo'ak's back and neck straightened as if he'd just been slapped, and then he knelt down on the moss and hung his head.

"I'm sorry," he said. "Bro... I am so sorry, you don't even know. I honestly never expected... I just didn't want to leave Spider there. It was my fault. It was all my fault to begin with."

"What was?" asked Neteyam with a frown – and then felt a shiver as he realized that Lo'ak must be talking about something to do with his own death. The people at Site Nine had said he'd been shot and even who'd done it, but Neteyam didn't know the exact circumstances, beyond 'a battle at sea'. How could that be something Lo'ak felt a need to apologize for?

"When you got..." Lo'ak paused "You don't remember?"

"They... they sort of didn't get all of me," said Neteyam. "When they had you and Spider and the girls that one night, before we left for the east, did they do something to you with a bright blue light?"

"One of them had this little machine that they ran over all three of us," Lo'ak remembered. "They shined it right in our eyes, and we saw spots."

"Okay, when Mother and Dad and I showed up, one of them used it on me. It flashed in my eyes, and that's the last thing I remember before I woke up in this body. Somebody at Site Nine, where the recoms are based now, told me that because they did it from a distance they might not have gotten everything. I've got these gaps in my memory. I don't remember the humans leaving Hell's Gate, although I'm sure we must have helped them. I didn't remember Syulang's name."

"You didn't remember Syulang?" asked Lo'ak. "I hope you didn't tell her that."

"Of course I didn't," Neteyam huffed. "She doesn't know who I am, anyway. Tarsem and Pa'ay wouldn't tell anybody because they didn't want Grandmother finding out."

Lo'ak's ears pricked up. "They must have told Dad. He said he had something important to tell me, but he had to protect High Camp and we could talk about it later."

If anybody had asked Neteyam whether he wanted them to tell his father, he would have said he'd rather do it himself, as he had to Margo... but knowing he didn't have to was a colossal relief. Somebody else had to deal with that first reaction, and Neteyam would only have to see Dad after he'd had some time to think about the situation. He wouldn't be greeted by shock or denial.

He thought about that for a moment, then looked at Lo'ak again. His brother was sitting there in the wet moss staring back at him, wide eyes flicking from face to hands to feet and back again. What was he thinking?

"You believe it's me, right?" Neteyam asked.

"Oh, yeah. Nobody else would immediately start telling me off for disobeying Dad after I'd just saved your life," said Lo'ak. He paused a moment, then touched his forehead. "I see you, Brother."

Something in Neteyam's chest tightened, and he felt tears suddenly prick at the corner of his eyes. He hadn't had time to process this yet, any more than Lo'ak had... but they'd spent the last few minutes talking to each other and Lo'ak never seemed to have questioned his identity. How could he? Who else would have made that silly 'mighty warrior' comment?

"I see you," Neteyam replied, knowing it was true: Lo'ak did see him. Lo'ak put his arms out, and Neteyam stepped into them for a hug.