Five minutes passed. Ten. No more rips opened, and no one came out of the castle to investigate either. For the time being, Meg was alone with the unusual stranger who’d been dumped at her feet.

Carefully, she pressed the palm of her hand against his forehead.

The boy’s skin was dry and cool to the touch. His messy blond hair was soft and fine, almost like Jenny’s hair. How strange. A few scattered freckles dotted the bridge of his nose.

Meg lifted his arm by his wrist, frowning. He had long, narrow fingers on broad hands with slim wrists. No callouses to speak of.

Whoever he was, he didn’t work outside much.

And he was tall.

Very tall.

Taller than Tolan, and Tolan was the tallest person Meg knew. Tolan stood head and shoulders higher than the tallest Josharon. This boy was several inches taller than that.

Watching the boy’s face, Meg checked the pockets of his jacket. Inside one of them, she found a leather wallet, which she opened.

A plastic card inside displayed the boy’s image, along with his information. Along the top in bright red letters, the card read California Driver License.

“Taylor,” Meg read with squinted eyes, “James A. San Franciso, California.” Meg sat back slowly. “I was right. You are from Terran.”

The boy didn’t respond.

She looked in the other sections of his wallet and found a second card that bore his image, alongside a yellow and orange logo shaped like a firebird.

“Peregrine Agent,” Meg mumbled, reading the text. “Hm. So, Mr. James A. Taylor from San Francisco, what are you doing in Rainbow Valley?”

The boy lay still.

Meg lowered her ear to his chest. His heart thumped steadily under her ear, and his breath stirred her bangs. He was alive. Nothing seemed to be bleeding. Maybe he had a head injury?

Meg replaced both cards in the boy’s wallet and probed the back of his head with gentle fingers. Outside of a lump on the back of his skull, she could detect no damage. As long as he wasn’t bleeding and he had a pulse and was breathing, surely that meant he was all right.

“But how did you get here?” Meg gazed down at him.

Meg sat down next to him again and lifted his hand. She pressed her palm against his, marveling at how far short her fingers fell in comparison to his. She lowered his hand into her lap and held it.

“Okay, think.” She shut her eyes. “Think with your brain. Not with your heart. What to do, what to do?”

With a sigh, Meg opened her eyes and watched the boy’s face, his expression so serene that he could have been sleeping. His features were so different from Danny’s. His nose was longer. His skin wasn’t as dark, further evidence that he didn’t spend much time outside.

Wonder what color his eyes are. Meg absently ran a finger over the arch of the boy’s eyebrow.

So strange. So unusual.

For ten years, the only human faces she’d seen had been her siblings, and whatever photos they had brought with them from Terran. Tolan and Velanna had human features, except for their ears. The Josharons, of course, weren’t human at all. They were more like foxes who walked upright.

This boy was something different than Meg had ever seen. Was he—beautiful? Was that what you called a boy who was pleasant to look at?

Chewing on the inside of her cheek, Meg glanced at the castle.

She needed to make up her mind quickly. Velanna never came out to the west garden, but with Meg’s luck, this would be the day she did.

“Okay,” Meg said again, turning her attention to the boy. “Look, Mr. James A. Taylor, you’ve put me in a really awkward position. I’m sure you didn’t mean to, but you need to know the facts.” She patted the top of his hand. “If you were awake, this would be a lot easier.”

Meg waited.

James A. Taylor said nothing.

“You’re not very helpful.”

No response.

Meg sighed. “I don’t know what you want,” she said. “I don’t know why you’re here. I don’t know how you’re here. You’re Terran. You’re not supposed to be able to be here.” She tightened her hold on his hand. “But you are here. And I really need to talk to someone from Terran. I need help—help that Velanna can’t give me.”

Meg stared at the boy’s face.

“As far as I see it,” She gathered his hand close, “we have two options. I can tell Velanna. Or I can not tell Velanna.” She grimaced. “One of those is bound to be a bad idea, but I don’t know which one it is right now.”

She could tell Velanna. Velanna would panic, even though she’d say she wasn’t, because Celticans never panicked. Terrans had no place in Rainbow Valley. Terrans were dangerous and ignorant and careless.

Velanna probably wouldn’t hurt him, but she wouldn’t be happy to see him. She’d want to send him back right away.

Meg caught her breath.

She’d want to send him back.

It made sense. James A. Taylor didn’t belong in this world. Assuming his arrival was an accident, a similar natural occurrence to what had brought the Mitchells to Rainbow Valley a decade earlier, he wouldn’t insist on staying. He’d want to go home.

But what if I can get him to help me first?

She tightened her hold on his long fingers.

If she could convince him to send a message for her, at least any surviving family who were still alive in Terran would know for sure what had happened to Charles and Annabelle Mitchell’s children. 

“I’ll tell Velanna,” Meg said, “but not now.” She nodded. “Right now, I’m going to hide you until you wake up. And then, I’ll convince you to help me.” She grinned. “You’ll like me. I’m nice.”

James A. Taylor said nothing.

“So what do you say? I help you, and you’ll help me?”

The boy didn’t answer.

Meg gathered his hand in hers and shook it. “That’s going to have to do.” She smirked. “Deal.”

She scrambled to her feet and scanned the area. Now for the hard part: Getting him inside the castle without being seen.

She’d have to avoid Danny and Jenny too, wherever they were. The last thing she needed was them finding out that someone from Terran was in the castle. Jenny would bombard the poor boy with questions about rubber ducks and fuzzy slippers, and Danny would just want to arm wrestle.

 Meg grabbed the boy’s arm and slung it across her shoulders. Grunting with the effort of lifting him, she managed to get him partway off the ground before her knees began to shake.

“Yep. That’s not going to work.”

She lowered him gently to the ground and stretched her back out.

“How am I going to do this? I can’t even pick you up.” She crossed her arms and scowled at him. “Are all Terrans as big as you?”

It wasn’t that he weighed so very much. For all his height, he was slender with legs like a giraffe. Even if Meg could lift him and carry him through the castle, she’d drag his feet the entire way.

She turned in a circle, eying the garden for anything she could use.

“Aha.” She snapped her fingers.

She’d spotted an old deep wheelbarrow parked against the garden shed. It had been there since she had relocated all of her cactus plants into the garden space. Everyone in the castle knew that she often moved her plants back and forth, so it wouldn’t be unusual for them to see her struggling through the corridors with a wheelbarrow.

“It’s perfect.”

Meg dashed to the garden shed and pulled the wheelbarrow away from the wall, guiding it over the gravel to where the boy lay. She swept out the inside and grabbed both of the boy’s wrists.

“This is going to be the hard part.”

It took a while, but she was able to wrangle the boy’s limp body into the wheelbarrow. The tray was deep enough that most of him fit inside. She crossed his legs at the knees and spread a tarp over the top of him.

“I hope you like cactus plants,” Meg said, tucking his blond hair under the tarp. “Don’t worry, though. This sheet is thick enough to keep you from getting stuck. As long as you don’t move around very much.”

She bent and began loading the wheelbarrow full of potted cactus and succulent plants. This wouldn’t take long. She could load the wheelbarrow up, push it inside, get it to her room, and get the boy out before anyone knew what had happened.

The boy would wake up. They’d become friends. Then she could tell Velanna what happened, and the boy would get a message to their family.

Best of both worlds. Problems solved, and all that.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Taylor,” Meg said as she set a cactus plant on his head. “We’ll get you home safe. But you can’t blame me for not wanting to let this opportunity go. You’re the first person from Terran I’ve seen in ten years!”

She paused, staring at the succulent in her hands.

“This is my home,” she said quietly. “I don’t want to leave. I don’t want anything to change. But if we do have an uncle and an aunt and a cousin who are alive, I want them to know we’re okay.” She set the succulent in the wheelbarrow. “I hope you can understand that. I hope you’re willing to help me. You won’t have to do anything else. I promise.”

Meg glanced at the castle again.

“On second thought, you’ll probably have to answer some of Jenny’s questions after I tell Velanna about you. She’ll be crushed otherwise.”

Meg put a cactus on top of the boy’s chest.

“But I’ll protect you from Danny and his arm wrestling.” She smiled. “With skinny arms like yours, he’ll trounce you.”

Once Meg had fully loaded the wheelbarrow with cactus plants and succulents, she stood back and stared at it. The boy’s unconscious body was completely concealed.

Perfect.

Now she just had to get him to her room.

Meg hurried to the door into the castle and propped it open. With any luck, Tolan and Velanna were no longer in the family kitchen. Meg had to cross the kitchen in order to get to the hallway that led back to the west wing.

Sure, she could go around, but the deeper she went into the castle, the higher chance she’d run into a Josharon. And a Josharon would be able to smell the human under the cactus plants.

“We’ll just go straight through,” Meg said. “We belong here.” She turned back to the wheelbarrow and paused. “Oh. The books.” She ran to the shed and grabbed the encyclopedia and her father’s journal, and she set them in the midst of the plants on top of the boy.

Meg gripped the handles of the wheelbarrow and lifted and pushed. The single tire at the front of the wheelbarrow groaned and turned, and Meg pointed it toward the open door in the side of Prism Castle.

This is going to work.

She grinned as she struggled to push the wheelbarrow over the threshold of the door.

We’re going to make it inside. The boy is going to be just fine. And I’ll be able to get a message to our family. Her eyes burned with tears, which didn’t make a lot of sense. Maybe it was excitement. Maybe it was relief.

The boy would help her. She knew he would. They hadn’t spoken. She hadn’t seen his eyes. But the shape of his face seemed kind. Meg couldn’t explain it, but she had a sense about the boy already.

Whoever James A. Taylor really was, he would be her friend. Meg was sure of it.