The Host (The Host 1)

Chapter 59: Remembered

The beginning would feel like the end. I'd been warned.

But this time the end was a greater surprise than it had ever been. Greater than any end I'd remembered in nine lives. Greater than jumping down an elevator shaft. I had expected no more memories, no more thoughts. What end was this?

The sun is setting-the colors are all rosy, and they make me think of my friend. . . what would her name be here? Something about. . . ruffles? Ruffles and more ruffles. She was a beautiful Flower. The flowers here are so lifeless and boring. They smell wonderful, though. Smells are the best part of this place.

Footsteps behind me. Has Cloud Spinner followed me again? I don't need a jacket. It's warm here-finally!-and I want to feel the air on my skin. I won't look at her. Maybe she'll think I can't hear and she'll go home. She is so careful with me, but I'm almost grown now. She can't mother me forever.

"Excuse me?" someone says, and I don't know the voice.

I turn to look at her, and I don't know the face, either. She's pretty.

The face in the memory jerked me back to myself. That was my face! But I didn't remember this. . .

"Hi," I say.

"Hello. My name is Melanie. " She smiles at me. "I'm new in town and. . . I think I'm lost. "

"Oh! Where are you trying to go? I'll take you. Our car is just back -"

"No, it's not far. I was going for a walk, but now I can't find my way back to Becker Street. "

She's a new neighbor-how nice. I love new friends.

"You're very close," I tell her. "It's just around the second corner up that way, but you can cut right through this little alley here. It takes you straight there. "

"Could you show me? I'm sorry, what's your name?"

"Of course! Come with me. I'm Petals Open to the Moon, but my family mostly calls me Pet. Where are you from, Melanie?"

She laughs. "Do you mean San Diego or the Singing World, Pet?"

"Either one. " I laugh, too. I like her smile. "There are two Bats on this street. They live in that yellow house with the pine trees. "

"I'll have to say hello," she murmurs, but her voice has changed, tensed. She's looking into the dusky alley as though she's expecting to see something.

And there is something there. Two people, a man and a boy. The boy drags his hand through his long black hair like he's nervous. Maybe he is worried because he's lost, too. His pretty eyes are wide and excited. The man is very still.

Jamie. Jared. My heart thumped, but the feeling was peculiar, wrong. Too small and. . . fluttery.

"These are my friends, Pet," Melanie tells me.

"Oh! Oh, hello. " I stretch my hand out to the man-he's the closest.

He reaches for my hand, and his grip is so strong.

He yanks me forward, right up to his body. I don't understand. This feels wrong. I don't like it.

My heart beats faster, and I'm afraid. I've never been scared like this before. I don't understand.

His hand swings toward my face, and I gasp. I suck in the mist that comes from his hand. A silver cloud that tastes like raspberries.

"Wha -" I want to ask, but I can't see them anymore. I can't see anything. . .

There was no more.

"Wanda? Can you hear me, Wanda?" a familiar voice asked.

That wasn't the right name. . . was it? My ears didn't react to it, but something did. Wasn't I Petals Open to the Moon? Pet? Was that it? That didn't feel right, either. My heart beat faster, an echo of the fear in my memory. A vision of a woman with white-and-red-streaked hair and kind green eyes filled my head. Where was my mother? But. . . she wasn't my mother, was she?

A sound, a low voice that echoed around me. "Wanda. Come back. We aren't letting you go. "

The voice was familiar, and it was also not. It sounded like. . . me?

Where was Petals Open to the Moon? I couldn't find her. Just a thousand empty memories. A house full of pictures but no inhabitants.

"Use the Awake," a voice said. I didn't recognize this one.

Something brushed my face, light as the touch of fog. I knew that scent. It was the smell of grapefruit.

I took a deeper breath, and my mind suddenly cleared.

I could feel that I was lying down. . . but this felt wrong, too. There wasn't. . . enough of me. I felt shrunken.

My hands were warmer than the rest of me, and that was because they were being held. Held in big hands, hands that swallowed them right up.

It smelled odd-stuffy and a little moldy. I remembered the smell. . . but surely I'd never smelled it before in my life.

I saw nothing but dull red-the insides of my eyelids. I wanted to open them, so I went searching for the right muscles to do that.

"Wanderer? We're all waiting for you, honey. Open your eyes. "

This voice, this warm breath against my ear, was even more familiar. A strange feeling tickled through my veins at the sound. A feeling I'd never, ever felt before. The sound made my breath catch and my fingers tremble.

I wanted to see the face that went with that voice.

A color washed through my mind-a color that called to me from a faraway life-a brilliant, glowing blue. The whole universe was bright blue. . .

And finally I knew my name. Yes, that was right. Wanderer. I was Wanderer. Wanda, too. I remembered that now.

A light touch on my face-a warm pressure on my lips, on my eyelids. Ah, that's where they were. I could make them blink now that I'd found them.

"She's waking up!" someone crowed excitedly.

Jamie. Jamie was here. My heart gave another fluttery little thump.

It took a moment for my eyes to focus. The blue that stabbed my eyes was all wrong-too pale, too washed out. It wasn't the blue I wanted.

A hand touched my face. "Wanderer?"

I looked to the sound. The movement of my head on my neck felt so odd. It didn't feel like it used to, but at the same time it felt the way it had always felt.

My searching eyes found the blue I'd been looking for. Sapphire, snow, and midnight.

"Ian? Ian, where am I?" The sound of the voice coming out of my throat frightened me. So high and trilling. Familiar, but not mine. "Who am I?"

"You're you," Ian told me. "And you're right where you belong. "

I pulled one of my hands free from the giant's hand that held it. I meant to touch my face, but someone's hand reached toward me, and I froze.

The reaching hand also froze above me.

I tried to move my hand again, to protect myself, but that moved the hand above me. I started shaking, and the hand trembled.

Oh.

I opened and closed the hand, looking at it carefully.

Was this my hand, this tiny thing? It was a child's hand, except for the long pink-and-white nails, filed into perfect, smooth curves. The skin was fair, with a strange silvery cast to it and, entirely incongruous, a scattering of golden freckles.

It was the odd combination of silver and gold that brought the image back: I could see a face in my head, reflected in a mirror.

The setting of the memory threw me off for a moment because I wasn't used to so much civilization-at the same time, I knew nothing but civilization. A pretty dresser with all kinds of frilly and delicate things on top of it. A profusion of dainty glass bottles containing the scents I loved-I loved? Or she loved?-so much. A potted orchid. A set of silver combs.

The big round mirror was framed in a wreath of metal roses. The face in the mirror was roundish, too, not quite oval. Small. The skin on the face had the same silver undertone-silver like moonlight-as the hand did, with another handful of the golden freckles across the bridge of the nose. Wide gray eyes, the silver of the soul shimmering faintly behind the soft color, framed by tangled golden lashes. Pale pink lips, full and almost round, like a baby's. Small, even white teeth behind them. A dimple in the chin. And everywhere, everyw

here, golden, waving hair that stood away from my face in a bright halo and fell below where the mirror showed.

My face or her face?

It was the perfect face for a Night Flower. Like an exact translation from Flower to human.

"Where is she?" my high, reedy voice demanded. "Where is Pet?" Her absence frightened me. I'd never seen a more defenseless creature than this half-child with her moonlight face and sunlight hair.

"She's right here," Doc assured me. "Tanked and ready to go. We thought you could tell us the best place to send her. "

I looked toward his voice. When I saw him standing in the sunlight, a lit cryotank in his hands, a rush of memories from my former life came back to me.