Pepper quivered, like a drying seedpod rasping along the dirt in a stiff wind.

She had not experienced dying before, so she was curious. But she also hadn’t experienced such hearty emotion before, or not so she’d recognized at the time. True, she’d felt for the colony a distant sort of patriotism that had been romance and religion alike to her. Beyond this, she’d had ambitions — ambitions to a private name and a license to work abroad at night. But that was about it. She hadn’t had feelings. Heavens. They weighed so much —

— they weighed so much —

— she could hardly flap her wings to get her blood going and dispense those pesky feelings.

Nor can I name them, she thought. I got neither the skill nor the practice.

With some effort she turned her head to look at her captor. He was a human, and humans were known to be stuffed with feelings. It was their curse and their charm. How did he manage it?

Having grown up in a skibbereen colony, Pepper knew more about human beings than What-the-Dickens could. She knew enough to be scared out of her wits. She understood that humans could be vicious, stupid, corrupt, and insensitive.

They could lie with a talent that beggared belief.

Frequently they smelled awful, too.

In the plus column — as if she could ever add one and one! — Pepper conceded that Gage was only a child. And human children haven’t yet had time enough to grow crooked. Human children are often breezy of spirit, warm of heart, devout in their prayers, and hopeful to boot. They like stories, they run and shriek and kick balls across the grass for no apparent reason. They only occasionally stink, for nothing in them has begun to decay.

And this lad Gage, her client, seemed decent enough.

Except for the little business of his locking her in a cage until she died. That was in the minus column, and it was a big fat minus.

The boy had drawn up a chair to his desk. Perched there, he lowered his chin onto his folded hands on the desktop, so he could look through the narrow bamboo struts of the cage and watch Pepper in captivity.

“Are you comfortable?” he asked.

Skibbereen aren’t supposed to talk to their humans. Skibbereen in captivity are supposed to pretend to be bugs and pass away as briskly as possible.

But I feel — disobedient, thought Pepper. Worried enough to feel — is it called — chatty?

“You just don’t look comfortable,” he said. “What if I folded up a washcloth and set it inside for a kind of little mattress? If we had marshmallows in the house I could creep downstairs and get one for your pillow. It’d be just perfect.”

He looked sad at the thought that he lived in a house lacking in marshmallows.

I’ll resist the urge to talk to him. I’ll force myself to sit up and fold my legs and swivel around so my back is to him.

Though the labor of the gesture exhausted her, she managed. She felt no pride in her stubbornness, but she liked noticing her feelings. You could keep changing, even on your deathbed.

“Don’t be like that!” he said. “I’m just trying to keep you safe. You should have seen what McCavity did to Charlotte, Orville, and Wilbur. It was disgusting. Feathers and blood everywhere.”

“Why don’t you get rid of her?” she snapped over her shoulder; suddenly she couldn’t help herself. “What kind of a person harbors a known murderess like that?”

“Who would want her? Who could put up with her?” he replied. “I can’t send McCavity to the cat pound. They might put her down — kill her — and then I’d be just as guilty as she is.”

“You’ll be as guilty as she is if you don’t let me go.”

“Oh, are you worried? Don’t worry. I like you, you know. I’ll take care of you. You can be my pet. Nothing good ever happened to me before this.”

“Enjoy it while it lasts,” she said aloud, before she could stop herself. I’ll die before you can show me off to your friends, kid. I’ll be a browning leaf stem, no more than that.

It was almost as if he could read her mind. “I won’t give you away to anyone. I don’t have any friends anyway. I can just enjoy it being the two of us. But now I know: I’m a person that something can happen to. I never guessed. I always thought I was going to be the kind of person nothing ever happened to. I’d have to stand in the background of all the class photos, being blurred to everyone, and blurred to myself.”

It sounded familiar: like being a skibberee who failed at her exams and had her license suspended. “You don’t get out enough,” she said.

“I’m a child: what are my options?” he replied.

“I ain’t here to do career counseling for a ten-year-old,” she snapped, and added to herself, I’m trying to collect my thoughts before I die. “Why don’t you go, oh, play a board game?”

“Board games are boring. After the first time, you know how they have to end. It’s only a question of how you get there.”

“Then read a book. Books can end any number of ways.”

“I don’t have any books. We can’t afford them. We’re not what you’d call prosperous.”

“That’s what libraries are for.”

“The community library is only open on Saturday mornings, and on Saturdays we always go to tailgate fairs and sell my mom’s pot holders and my dad’s hand-painted wooden duck decoys.”

Pepper gave up. She began to shudder with an unfamiliar chill.

“Are you cold?” said Gage. “Can I get you a blanket of some sort? I have a little pencil case with a sliding door. I could line it with tufts of cotton pulled off the ends of ear swabs. You could stretch out in it.”

“That sounds like a coffin. That’s human practice. No thanks.” But Pepper was oddly pleased at the attention.

“What if I bring the desk light closer to warm you up?” he said, and pulled the gooseneck of his lamp over the cage.

She shrieked. What was he trying to do, bake her dry as a skeleton?

Gage swung the lamp back. “Well, are you hungry, then?” he asked.

“For freedom, for flight, for privacy,” she replied, “Yes. For food, forget it.”

“Am I supposed to let you go?” he said. “Is it that sort of a thing? Don’t you have to give me a wish then, for my charity?”

“I don’t got to give you anything,” said her words, but she felt her eyes steam up, in anger or confusion. Couldn’t this human being do a kind thing without being paid? True, tooth fairies were in the business of trade, but weren’t humans rumored to be capable of kindness? Sometimes?

“Come on, let’s be fair. I saved your life. McCavity would’ve torn you to shreds. If you don’t give me a wish, can’t you give me something I don’t have? Why don’t you tell me about yourself?”

“I’m hardly here anymore. I don’t count.”

“I know so little about anything,” he said, “but you count to me.”

If I start thinking about counting, I’ll confuse myself. “You don’t read enough,” she said. “That’s how to learn something about something.”

“We covered that already. Tell me a story about yourself.”

“Once upon a time,” she said, “there was a little tiny fairy named Bluebell Berrybush. Every day she flitted from flower to flower minding her own business. One day she was trapped by a grotesque child, and she died a hideous miserable death, but still minding her own business, which was a comfort to her in her final moments. The end.”

“Your name is not Bluebell Berrybush,” he said. “I may be only ten, but give me a break. I’m not a nincompoop.”

“What’s the least amount I can tell you before you grant my freedom?” she asked. “I don’t got long, you know.”

“I’m not sure,” he said. His eyes looked large, as if he were surprised that his gambit showed signs of paying off. “Start, and keep on, and we’ll know when you get there.”

“You drive a hard bargain,” she said, but the sparkles in her wings were beginning to fade, and her toes curled downward a little.

“You got my tooth,” he said. “Are you really the Tooth Fairy?”

She hid her face in her hands. “You could say so.”

“I thought there wasn’t any such thing as the Tooth Fairy. That’s what all the big kids say.”

“Big kids know everything, don’t they.” She was surprised she had the strength to sound sarcastic. “Does that prove I don’t exist, just because big kids grow out of believing in me?”

Gage wasn’t a quick thinker. He couldn’t answer the question. “The Tooth Fairy. Wow!” he said. “There really is one. I didn’t think those old stories and legends had any truth to them. Can you shed any light on Santa Claus?”

“Not my department.”

“Easter Bunny? Four-leaf clovers? Leprechauns and rainbows and pots of gold?”

“Pots of bunk if you ask me, but I’m not an expert witness.”

“Wishing on a star? Wishing on a coin thrown in a fountain?”

Pepper didn’t want to talk about wishes, because a wish was just exactly what she wished to have the use of right now. She drew her arms around her small legs and huddled into a tighter bundle. “No comment.”

Gage could tell the subject of wishing was a hot one. “If you won’t give me a wish,” he said in a low voice, “maybe I could give you one. What do you wish for now?”

“You know perfectly well. I’d rather die as a free agent than as a captive.”

“But you’d die alone,” he replied. “I know what it’s like to be alone myself — I’m an only child. It’s no good.”

Pepper hesitated.

Then she broke another rule.

“I wouldn’t die alone,” she whispered. “I’m not the only one. There are others of us.”

“No!” he whispered back.

“Yes,” she said, “but if I tell you all about it, I’ll jeopardize their safety. We live by — what was that nursery motto they hammered into us? — ‘camouflage and subterfuge.’ The most basic rule is not to draw attention to ourselves. Still, I give it to you straight: Let me go, and I try to make it to the colony. At least I’ll die within sight of my home.”

“You’re nearby? Here in Fern Hill?” He was almost breathless with excitement. “Right near here?”

“Use your head. How else could we do our work unless we had local chapters?” she said.

“Can I see it? Can I take you there?”

“Huh. I can just imagine the things those jokesters would say if I brought a human boy home for breakfast.”

“But — if it’s near enough for you to reach by flying, surely I could walk there… .”

Her hunger for home — as strict and uncompromising as her home was — raked through her. She convulsed with longing, her chin touching her toes. “Don’t tempt me,” she begged. “We’re supposed to die alone, and if you talk to me about returning home, I don’t know what I’ll do.”

“Let me help,” he said. “I didn’t ask for you to come here. I didn’t set McCavity on you. All I ever wanted was some news of the outside world — the world outside this safe, safe, safe house. You’ve given me some news. Come on. Why not? I won’t have to get too near. I won’t make you introduce me to anyone. I can set you down somewhere nearby, and then just stand back and watch.”

And blow our cover for all time, thought Pepper. We’d have to abandon the colony by tomorrow night. We’d move out the bank, we’d hire woodworms and carpenter ants to chew our careful chambers into disrepair so thorough it could never be read as a built environment. The Undertree Common would be history, and who knows what the future would hold for Division B of the Northwest Sector?

But who knows what the future holds for me, either, except death if I say no, she thought tremblingly, with a rare, if desperate, courage. Courage, or dread. Or both.