That was like having children around, never being allowed to settle to anything in peace. When she knew someone watched her, noticing her choice of colors, textures, shapes, stitches, words, she could not concentrate. Even when the creatures didn’t interrupt intentionally, their very interest was an interruption. She tried to get them involved in projects of their own, as she would have with children. If only they would settle to something, then she could get on with her own activities. She offered dull beige beads from the fabricator for them to paint, bits of cloth and colored yarn. But although they would twine the yarn into twists and curls, and even dip the beads in color, they would not settle to any of it. Just when she thought they were engrossed, so that she could mutter to herself as she worked out what she wanted to do next, there they would be again. Clustered around, hanging over her. Watching. Outside, it wasn’t so bad. In the open, they didn’t seem quite as large; she didn’t feel their presence as overpowering. She grew used to having one of them in the garden with her, eager for the slimerods she tossed it. They no longer knocked down the corn, or trampled the ruffled leaves of gourds and squash. They followed her as she made her regular tour of the meadows to check the sheep and cattle. Eventually the animals grew used to them, and quit shying away. It could be almost companionable, walking along on a breezy day with one or two of them. She found herself talking to them quite naturally, and imagining the meanings of the grunts and squawks she got in return.

But inside, they were always a nuisance: slightly too big to share the working spaces comfortably, yet determined to learn what she did and how. She felt constrained, crowded. They would not attempt entry if she locked a door against them, but she could not relax inside, wondering what they were getting into outside. That, too, was like having children around. She had more than once used the bathroom for sanctuary when her children were little, but she had never stayed long. She knew too well what might happen… at least with children. With these, she didn’t know; she could only worry. The near-nesting one decided first. It is a guardian. It is a nest-guardian.

Right hand drumming wavered, steadied. It cannot be; these are not nests.

Nests were. Quick gestures evoked the picture-machine and its images. Nests were… the guardian stays. Left-hand drumming. It is so, these were nests, and it is so, that this could be the guardian… the only guardian left.

Old… it must be so old. Shivers of shoulders, a courteous glance at their eldest, so much younger than the eldest of their People, but an elder still.

And, the near-nesting one added, it knows so much about all those boxes and things that light and move

and speak…

If it is speech.

It is speech. It answers them.

Things that talk.

That in a tone that expressed hunger better than words, a visceral growl. They all straightened a little, breathing faster: game in view. Things that talked, that did things, things they could recognize as useful, to move water, to make heat and cold, to draw pictures and make noises. More dangerous things like those the invading monsters had used to destroy the nestmass. They could taste that bright blood, that wriggling intelligence.

It would nourish the young, the near-nester said. That went without saying, but a near-nester always said the obvious, and repeatedly; that was how to tell they were close. That knowledge in the monster’s head, those things, would nourish their young if only… It cannot be eaten, the eldest reminded them. It is monster; it will not nourish. A quick flurry of right hand drumming, then left hand, then confusion of rhythms as they worked it out. Of course it could not be eaten; guardians were guardians, not prey.

Not eaten. Not eaten but… tasted? No. A lurch to the rhythm, of the nausea they had felt tasting the dead monsters at the nesting grounds. Breathed, said someone finally. A vast gasp, as they all tried that idea. Breathed. Yes. As they passed new things to each other, breathing them into the air and catching them in again, so they could breathe the monster’s wisdom.

Its speech. Who will learn to breathe it?

A harsh, guttural exhalation from all of them. A soft flurry of knuckle-beats on belly and breast, mouths open, trying out the sounds.

It is hard. That from the youngest. Eyes rolled.

It is a monster; it would not be easy.

The singers would do better. Eyes rolled that way. No true singers had come with them; none had been interested enough, not with the story of the invasion and war to sing. Who will go?

Silence. Without drumming, they knew their choices now, and their decision formed in silence. One stood, then another. A moment’s pause, then a third stood.

It is too important. We must have all three legs of the stool.

Left hand drumming, slow and sad, but without any flutter of weakness.

Tell the monster?

Show the monster. We will learn.

In the morning, the whole crowd of them — if that was indeed all — waited outside her house. Ofelia looked them over, wondering what was coming. Three of them came nearer, and one at a time curved over until their heads were at the level of her waist. What was this?

“Do you need something?” she asked. Bowing, it must be, and what did bowing mean to them? No answer, not even the grunts they were now producing regularly in response to her speech. “Want cold?” She opened the door wider and waved them in. They didn’t come. Instead, the others moved apart, and let the three begin to walk away down the lane.

Puzzled, Ofelia followed. Were they trying to lead her to something that needed repair? When they turned into the lane that led to the river side of the settlement, she was sure of that. It must be the pumps — although water had spurted out of her faucet and shower normally that morning. Perhaps they wanted her to show them how the pump controls worked. She had been expecting them to want that. The three walked on past the pump house, with her behind them, the others trailing. It reminded her of processions, of something ceremonious in which she did not know her part. Past the pump house, down the meadow into the tall grass by the river. Ofelia slowed. She didn’t like to walk in the tall grass; it cut her feet and made fine stinging lines on her bare skin.

Now the three stopped, and turned to face her. They bowed again. One of them approached, and touched one of her necklaces with its talon. A soft trill. Then a wide-armed gesture, as if waving to the whole area, then a jerk of the head to the river. Certainty flared in her mind: they were leaving. All of them? She turned to look at those behind. They stood in a ragged line, unmoving. Were they going to try to make her leave? She couldn’t. She couldn’t eat their food — they had to know that. The one who had touched her necklace did so again, this time slipping the talon under it, delicately, hardly grazing her skin. What? Did it want that? And why? Ofelia lifted her hands to the necklace, and slowly lifted it over her head. It was the one with slimerod cores among the beads she had made and painted; the colors of this one were greens and yellows with a few blue beads. Not her favorite; she didn’t mind giving it up, if that was the question.

She held it out, and the creature took it, looking in her eyes as if memorizing her face. If it was leaving, perhaps that’s exactly what it was doing. When it finally looked away, it stowed the necklace in one of the stoppered gourds hanging from its shoulder belt, pushing the stopper in firmly. Then another bow, and the three turned away.

She had not seen them near the river before; she did not know if they could swim… she felt a stab of fear for them, as if they had been her children after all. Things lived in the river that ate other water-creatures; the colony had once lost a child to something scaly with large teeth. Then she saw the slender boat move out of the reeds, into the river, and realized all over again how alien they were, how adapted to their world. They had made a long narrow craft of a something — skins? — sewn around a framework of bent wood. The seams formed a brickwork pattern; she wondered what sealed them from the water. And the paddles — long double-bladed paddles, the tips of the long blades pointed, dipped in and out of the water, moving the strange craft along the surface of the water as quickly and easily as one of the water-striders. The colonists had had nothing like that; she had never imagined something like that. The colony boats had been one-piece shells, large enough to hold twelve adults, square on the ends, with a small engine mounted on one end. She remembered helping to build the launch site for the boats, that first season. The fabricator could not make anything that size, so when the last boats were lost, they had done without. It had not occurred to anyone to build something this small. Ofelia stared at it, trying to imagine wrapping cowhide around a wooden framework. Perhaps it could be done… if someone thought of it first. She looked back at the ones left behind; they watched intently until the craft reached the far shore of the river, a tiny sliver it seemed, and with a last wave their companions disappeared into the forest there. Boat builders. Boat designers. They must have built that boat after they got to the river; she could not imagine them carrying boats like that across the grasslands where they lived.