I glanced over at Gretchen, stifled a laugh, and then broke down and started crying. Gretchen came over to give me a hug, and after a good long while, I told her everything. And I do mean everything.

She was quiet after I had unloaded. "Tell me what you're thinking," I said.

"If I tell you, you're going to hate me," she said.

"Don't be silly," I said. "I'm not going to hate you."

"I think they're right," she said. "Hickory and Dickory."

"I hate you," I said.

She pushed me lightly. "Stop that," she said. "I don't mean they were right to attack you. That was just over the line. But, and don't take this the wrong way, you're not an ordinary girl."

"That's not true," I said. "Do you see me acting any different than anyone else? Ever? Do I hold myself out as someone special? Have you ever once heard me talk about any of this to people?"

"They know anyway," Gretchen said.

"I know that," I said. "But it doesn't come from me. I work at being normal."

"Okay, you're a perfectly normal girl," Gretchen said.

"Thank you," I said.

"A perfectly normal girl who's had six attempted assassinations," Gretchen said.

"But that's not me," I said, poking myself in the chest. "It's about me. About someone else's idea of who I am. And that doesn't matter to me."

"It would matter to you if you were dead," Gretchen said, and then held her hand up before I could respond. "And it would matter to your parents. It would matter to me. I'm pretty sure it would matter to Enzo. And it seems like it would matter a whole lot to a couple billion aliens. Think about that. Someone even thinks about coming after you, they bomb a planet."

"I don't want to think about it," I said.

"I know," Gretchen said. "But I don't think you have a choice anymore. No matter what you do, you're still who you are, whether you want to be or not. You can't change it. You've got to work with it."

"Thanks for that uplifting message," I said.

"I'm trying to help," Gretchen said.

I sighed. "I know, Gretchen. I'm sorry. I don't mean to bite your head off. I'm just getting tired of having my life be about other people's choices for me."

"This makes you different than any of the rest of us how, exactly?" Gretchen asked.

"My point," I said. "I'm a perfectly normal girl. Thank you for finally noticing."

"Perfectly normal," Gretchen agreed. "Except for being Queen of the Obin."

"Hate you," I said.

Gretchen grinned.

"Miss Trujillo said that you wanted to see us," Hickory said. Dickory and Gretchen, who had gotten the two Obin for me, stood to its side. We were standing on the hill where my bodyguards had attacked me a few days earlier.

"Before I say anything else, you should know I am still incredibly angry at you," I said. "I don't know that I will ever forgive you for attacking me, even if I understand why you did it, and why you thought you had to. I want to make sure you know that. And I want to make sure you feel it." I pointed to Hickory's consciousness collar, secure around its neck.

"We feel it," Hickory said, its voice quivering. "We feel it enough that we debated whether we could turn our consciousness back on. The memory is almost too painful to bear."

I nodded. I wanted to say good, but I knew it was the wrong thing to say, and that I would regret saying it. Didn't mean I couldn't think it, though, for the moment, anyway.

"I'm not going to ask you to apologize," I said. "I know you won't. But I want your word you will never do something like that again," I said.

"You have our word," Hickory said.

"Thank you," I said. I didn't expect they would do something like that again. That sort of thing works once if it works at all. But that wasn't the point. What I wanted was to feel like I could trust the two of them again. I wasn't there yet.

"Will you train?" Hickory asked.

"Yes," I said. "But I have two conditions." Hickory waited. "The first is that Gretchen trains with me."

"We had not prepared to train anyone other than you," Hickory said.

"I don't care," I said. "Gretchen is my best friend. I'm not going to learn how to save myself and not share that with her. And besides, I don't know if you've noticed, but the two of you aren't exactly human shaped. I think it will help to practice with another human as well as with you. But this is nonnegotiable. If you won't train Gretchen, I won't train. This is my choice. This is my condition."

Hickory turned to Gretchen. "Will you train?"

"Only if Zoë does," she said. "She's my best friend, after all."

Hickory looked over to me. "She has your sense of humor," it said.

"I hadn't noticed," I said.

Hickory turned back to Gretchen. "It will be very difficult," it said.

"I know," Gretchen said. "Count me in anyway."

"What is the other condition?" Hickory asked me.

"I'm doing this for the two of you," I said. "This learning to fight. I don't want it for myself. I don't think I need it. But you think I need it, and you've never asked me to do something you didn't know was important. So I'll do it. But now you have to do something for me. Something I want."

"What is it that you want?" Hickory asked.

"I want you to learn how to sing," I said, and gestured to Gretchen. "You teach us to fight, we teach you to sing. For the hootenannies."

"Sing," Hickory said.

"Yes, sing," I said. "People are still frightened of the two of you. And no offense, but you're not brimming with personality. But if we can get the four of us to do a song or two at the hootenannies, it could go a long way to making people comfortable with you."

"We have never sung," Hickory said.

"Well, you never wrote stories before either," I said. "And you wrote one of those. It's just like that. Except with singing. And then people wouldn't wonder why Gretchen and I are off with the two of you. Come on, Hickory, it'll be fun."

Hickory looked doubtful, and a funny thought came to me: Maybe Hickory is shy. Which seemed almost ridiculous; someone about to teach another person sixteen different ways to kill getting stage fright singing.

"I would like to sing," Dickory said. We all turned to Dickory in amazement.

"It speaks!" Gretchen said.

Hickory clicked something to Dickory in their native tongue; Dickory clicked back. Hickory responded, and Dickory replied, it seemed a bit forcefully. And then, God help me, Hickory actually sighed.

"We will sing," Hickory said.

"Excellent," I said.

"We will begin training tomorrow," Hickory said.

"Okay," I said. "But let's start singing practice today. Now."

"Now?" Hickory said.

"Sure," I said. "We're all here. And Gretchen and I have just the song for you."

The next several months were very tiring.

Early mornings: physical conditioning.

"You are soft," Hickory said to me and Gretchen the first day.

"Despicable lies," I said.

"Very well," Hickory said, and pointed to the tree line of the forest, at least a klick away. "Please run to the forest as quickly as you can. Then run back. Do not stop until you return."

We ran. By the time I got back, it felt like my lungs were trying to force themselves up my trachea, the better to smack me around for abusing them. Both Gretchen and I collapsed into the grass gasping.

"You are soft," Hickory repeated. I didn't argue, and not just because at the moment I was totally incapable of speaking. "We are done for today. Tomorrow we will truly begin with your physical conditioning. We will start slowly." It and Dickory walked away, leaving Gretchen and me to imagine ways we were going to murder Hickory and Dickory, once we could actually force oxygen back into our bodies.