"It's just that he's worried about Smokehill too," Martha said in an undertone, as we were cleaning out one of the raccoon cages at the orphanage the next day. I blinked at her. I hadn't realized she'd gotten over being afraid of him in the last two years. I wanted to say that what Eric worried about was Eric but I was two years older too and I finally knew what Dad had been talking about when he'd told me that we were lucky to have him. Although why it was like he had to make up for all the good stuff and hard work he did by being sheer torture to be around is one of those mysteries of life.

"He got worse right after the poacher got killed," Martha went on. Well, I knew that, but at the time I was too Lois-possessed to recognize any subtleties about worseness, beyond the part about him cleaning odorata's cage more often because I wasn't available. And since then while I still put my away-from-Lois hours in as evenly around the Institute as I could I really dreaded the time within hoarse-bellow range of Eric, which I hadn't before, and lately, when I'd started taking three or even four hours away from Lois, one and a half in the morning and maybe two and a half in the afternoon, depending on how mellow she seemed to be feeling about it, that meant I had to show up at the zoo every day and I felt like Eric was leaving worse marks on me than Lois ever did.

"And he's got worse again lately," she added. "I'm quite worried about him really." She looked over her shoulder — toward the noise of Eric's voice roaring about something or other — with a tiny frown and she looked all grown-up and wise.

"Only you — or your mother — would waste time worrying about Eric," I said, probably rather bitterly.

Martha was silent for a minute while we lifted the raccoons hark into their nice clean cage and gave them a few peanuts to make them think the process was worthwhile. Raccoons are pretty easy if you’re nice to them. It doesn't have to be a hugely complicated niceness with raccoons. When I'd first had Lois some of the orphans didn't like me for a while; I suppose I must have smelled like the enemy although I can't really see a dragon bothering with little stuff like chipmunks and sparrows. It was the raccoons that were willing to overlook my kinky new smell first and then in one of those weird ripple effect things everybody else decided that I was still okay too, as much as any human (any human bearing food) was okay and I'd never had any trouble since and occasionally something seemed to like me better. I'd had my first hands-on experience with a Yukon wolf cub about ten months before. (Because of Julie when San Diego's nursing bitch died they sent her one surviving cub to Eric.) It still hadn't started biting me — I don't mean puppy bites, I mean biting — weeks after everybody else was wearing heavy gloves and boots, including Eric. Curiosity probably killed the raccoon about the same time it killed the cat though.

Finally Martha said, "I know he picks on you. But he has to pick on someone and you're— you're really the most Smokehilly of all of us, you know? You've got that same okay-maybe-there's-a-world-out-there-but-I'm-not-interested thing that he does. You were like that before— before." Even out of earshot of anyone else, away from Lois you didn't say her name. "Even your dad and my mom have more of a clue."

I looked at her and felt my look turning into a glare. The idea that I was even more clueless than my dad wasn't going over too well either. "Are you trying to tell me that Eric hates me because I'm like him?"

Martha laughed. (She wasn't afraid of me at all.) "No. I think he picks on you because you're what he'd've liked to have been. Do you know he grew up in the city? Washington, DC. Twelve stories up. He started out with goldfish and turtles because they were small and cheap and they didn't make a lot of noise, and he could get them past his parents, who were some kind of lawyers for the government." Which only goes to prove that Martha can get anyone to tell her their life story. "And you know I think he's horrible to the investigators deliberately. Let them waste their time on him."

It kind of made me thoughtful, especially since Martha had the same idea about Eric and the investigators as I'd had. I might've come up with the idea out of perversity as much as anything, but Martha was coming at it straight on and still thought so. So on the last day — I'd be leaving before dawn the next morning, the better to smuggle Lois past anyone who might be looking blearily out their kitchen window waiting for the kettle to boil — I actually tracked him down in his office. I admit I wavered on the threshold, before he'd seen me.

He was crouched over his computer (very unhealthy posture: someone should tell him: not me) where he was surrounded by piles of papers even scarier-looking than my dad's — this was partly because the window was always open in there (any time the temperature was above freezing) and not only wind and rain came through but also Eric's crow and this summer's crow offspring. A lot of crows croaking and creaking together actually sound a lot like Eric (in a good mood). But it was only Eric (muttering to himself) this afternoon.

I stepped firmly over the doorsill and as Eric whirled around in his chair with a scowl no mere teenage boy could hope to compete with, I said, "I just wanted to say thanks for everything you've taught me about— about animals. And stuff. It's going to be really useful when I'm out at Westcamp."

He'd stood up when he recognized who it was, which didn't help his mood any because in the last year I'd got seriously taller than he was, and with him glaring at me I forgot the rest of what I was going to say. So I stuck my hand out instead. This was not planned. There is no way I would have planned such a great opportunity for Eric to make a jerk out of me, when he refused to shake it. But he did. Shake it, I mean. It felt like a perfectly normal hand too. A little more callused than some, maybe — like a Ranger's hand. And then I turned and fled. Trying not to look like I was fleeing, of course, but I was. But Eric must have been as spooked as I was because he didn't shout anything after me.

So I got back to Billy and Grace's house — my house for the last almost two years — actually feeling kind of good, like I'd achieved something. I was in a bad way.

I was already as much packed up as I was going to be before tomorrow morning and adding the toothbrush and so on so I didn't have anything much to do — except play with Lois, of course. There was always playing with Lois. I'd often wished she slept more, like dogs do, and we'd never found a way to pen her up effectively. As she'd got bigger and friskier we'd tried. But she had a habit of simply walking through anything she didn't think should be there, and I didn't want her to hurt herself. Or to get any ideas about like house walls. In her mutant armadillo way she was pretty tough and strong. When she'd first been doing her I Am Master of All I Survey thing she'd managed to get herself stuck between two rungs of one of the kitchen chairs and she'd cracked the chair frame before I got her out — and she'd still been pretty little then. Although some of how the chair frame had got cracked was because she'd rushed screaming to Mom, and Mom took some collateral damage while as you might say fighting for the off switch.

But I was glad of the distraction that afternoon because while there is no way I'd've admitted it I was feeling kind of strange about this trip. It could have been only the grindingly ongoing thing of Lois as this increasing problem — plus I'd never done anything like this study I was supposed to be doing — because I really was going to try to do it, as well as hide Lois where no one could find her — plus I'd never been away from the Institute that long either — plus I had no idea how long that was going to be. The longest I'd ever been away was when I'd found Lois, and that wasn't exactly a reassuring memory. Did I just say "it could have been only"?