I breathed a huge sigh of relief. It was Jake.

"0h, man, am I glad to hear your voice, Jake," I said. "The woods are full of Taxxons and Hork-Bajir and human-Controllers and anything else the Yeerks can throw at us."

Not to mention hungry bobcats, I added silently.

"Yeah, we noticed," Jake said. "They almost marched right into a couple of guys out fishing in one of the streams. We managed to scare the fishermen off, or they'd be Taxxon meat now."

"We? The others are with you?" I searched the sky. Yes. A bald eagle. An osprey. "l see Rachel and either Cassie or Marco," I said.

"Ax is on the ground. Marco is around somewhere. Oh, there! Above you!" I looked up just in time to see an osprey come ripping down through a wisp of low clouds in a stoop.

"Yee-hah! Tobias!" Marco yelled giddily. "Gotcha!"

"This is so not the time to be messing with me!" I yelled. "l was about one feather away from being kitty food. And I'm hungry and I'm tired and I'm mad."

"Chill, Tobias," Jake said kindly. "You can relax. We're all here to help you now."

I heard Cassie's thought-speak voice coming from fairly far away.

"Tobias, we've been thinking. You know how you seem to keep ending up in just the right place at just the right time?"

"0r just the wrong place, depending on how you look at it," I muttered.

"We're thinking maybe there is some

other. . . power. Some force. Some person interfering with you. Kind of manipulating you."

If it had been anyone but Cassie, I would have probably said something sarcastic. Like "No, duh." But it's impossible to be sarcastic to Cassie. "Yeah, it definitely is someone messing with me," I said. "An old friend of ours."

"Who?"

"it seems the Ellimist is trying to save the Hork-Bajir. Not that he'll admit that"

"Hmm. Ax was right," Cassie said. "He guessed it was the Ellimist." Rachel was close enough now to communicate. "Yeah, and you know how Ax feels about that guy. Or creature. Or whatever the Ellimist is. Ax says to watch your butt. The Ellimist plays games with people."

I thought of the Ellimist's promise to me. To give me what I most wanted. But when I recalled the conversation, I couldn't exactly remember an actual promise.

I felt a chill in my bones. Had the Ellimist really promised to make me human again?

"Are you okay, Tobias?" Rachel asked. I could tell from her tone that it was a private message. Only I could hear it.

"Yeah. I guess so," I said. "The Ellimist says he'll . . . he'll . . .

you know. Make me human again."

Somehow putting it in actual words didn't sound right. And yet that was what I wanted. To be human again. To live like the others. To eat cold cereal and fried eggs for breakfast instead of hunting and killing.

To walk. To spend my nights inside, in a bed. To sit down and watch TV.

Or just to sit at all.

"Tobias, that would be so great!" Rachel said.

"Yeah. But like Ax said, the Ellimist plays games. And we still have to save the Hork-Bajir without getting wiped out ourselves."

In a thought-speak voice Jake and Cassie and Marco could hear, too, I said, "Follow me, guys. I'll take you to our two alien friends."

I turned at an angle to the breeze. It was coming up just behind my right wing. It can be hard flying that way if the wind is too strong.

You have to keep correcting your direction because the wind will kind of sneak up and push you off-course.

We flew hard and soon left the Yeerk army behind. I spotted the two Hork-Bajir through the trees. They looked like they were talking.

Looking closer, I realized they were holding hands.

I felt embarrassed, just dropping out of the sky on them. "Hey, you two," I said. "l'm coming in. Some friends are with me."

We landed in the trees. And now we were facing a serious decision. A life-and-death decision. The others were all close to the two-hour time limit. They needed to demorph.

But so far we had not revealed our true species to the Hork-Bajir. If they were ever recaptured by the Yeerks, the Yeerks would have access to everything in their heads. Every memory.

"Jake?" I asked. "What are you guys going to do?"

"lt's a big gamble, letting these two know what we are," he answered.

"l don't mean to get all CIA about this," Marco said. "But if they know we're human, they can't ever be captured by the Yeerks. I mean -"

"l know what you mean," I interrupted.

"Probably better to be dead than a Controller, anyway," Marco said.

"Easy for you to say," Rachel said.

"Let me talk to them. Jara and Ket are my friends," I said.

"Hork-Bajir?" Marco crowed. "These two walking Cuisinarts, these two seven-foot-tall lawn mowers, these living razor blades are your friends?" I ignored Marco. I looked at Jara Hamee. "Jara Hamee. I need to know something. If the Yeerks capture you -"

He didn't even let me finish. He flung out a bladed arm, slashing the air. Then, more care-

fully, he pointed at his own head. Right at the scar from the cut he'd made. "No more Yeerk here. Free! Or no Jara Hamee. No Ket Halpak.

Only free!"

"Free or dead," Ket Halpak said harshly.

"l see why you like them, Tobias," Rachel said. She fluttered down from the tree. She began to demorph.

I heard Jake sigh. "Well, I guess we take a chance."

Within a few minutes everyone was human again. Except me, of course.

I guess we surprised the Hork-Bajir. I don't know what they expected us to be, but it wasn't human. The two big aliens just stood and stared.

And then, when they realized what Jake and Rachel and Cassie and Marco actually were, they laughed.

"KeeeRAW! KeeeRAW!"

At least, I think it was laughter. Who knows how a Hork-Bajir laughs?