Chapter 12

The route curved ahead; the stop was on the other side. Sasha stopped crying as the sore throat overcame her, her voice almost a snore. It made me very sad to hear her like that, but as long as she didn’t like me, she would reject me.

I had a theory about it, and it had to do with the fact that her mother wasn’t one of us. In the first weeks of life, all babies, human and hybrid alike, rely on smell while they cannot use their eyes or recognize faces. I didn’t smell like her mother, I smelled like something else. And she didn’t like it. I went back to rocking her, kissing her cheeks and talking to her in whispers until she calmed down; I cursed for not having some kind of crib or baby carrier. I made a mental note to get one in the next city. A baby carrier would help keep her warm and would free up both my arms for a while, so I could carry her even more comfortably.

It was thanks to my daughter’s silence that I heard the roar of that engine.

***

Mirko grabb