“What’s a scion?”

“It’s a plant that’s taken from one plant and grafted into another. You were taken from our world and put in the human world. A scion.”

“But why? Are there lots of…scions?”

“Nope. At the moment, there’s just you.”

“Why me?”

He leaned forward a little. “I can’t tell you everything, and you have to respect that, but I’ll tell you what I can, okay?”

Laurel nodded.

“You were placed here twelve years ago to integrate into the human world.”

Laurel rolled her eyes. “I should have known. Who else would put me in a basket on someone’s porch?” Her eyes widened when Tamani laughed. “Did you do that?”

He laughed harder now, throwing his head backward in his amusement. “No, no. I was too young. But when I joined the sentries here, I pretty much got briefed on your whole life.”

Laurel wasn’t sure she liked that idea. “My whole life?”

“Yep.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Did you spy on me?”

“It’s not exactly spying. We were helping.”

“Helping…right.” She folded her arms across her chest.

“Really. We had to keep your parents from finding out what you are.”

“That sounds like a really seamless plan.” Her tone turned sarcastic. “Hmm, how should we keep these two humans from finding out about faeries? Oh, I know, let’s plop one on their doorstep.”

“It wasn’t like that. We needed them to have a faerie child.”

“Why?”

Tamani hesitated, then pursed his lips.

“Fine, Mr. I’d-tell-you-but-then-I’d-have-to-kill-you. Why didn’t you send me out here as a baby?” She chuckled a little awkwardly. “Trust me, I’d have fit in the basket better if I wasn’t three.”

Tamani didn’t smile this time. “Actually, you were quite a bit older than that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Fairies don’t age the same way humans do. They’re never really babies. I mean, they look like human babies when they first blossom, but faerie babies are never helpless the way humans are. They’re born knowing how to walk and talk, and mentally they are about the equivalent of…” He considered for a moment. “Maybe a five-year-old.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Then they age a bit slower physically, so by the time a faerie looks like a three-or four-year-old, they’re actually seven or eight…and mentally they act like they are about eleven or twelve.”

“That’s weird.”

“You need to remember that we’re plants. Nurturing helpless young is what animals do. Not plants. Plants produce seedlings and those seedlings grow on their own. They don’t need help.”

“So what, faeries don’t even have parents? I don’t have faerie parents somewhere?”

Tamani bit his lip and looked at the ground. “Things are very different in the faerie realm. There’s not much time to be a child and not enough adult faeries to just sit around and watch kids play. Everyone has a role and a purpose, and they take on those roles very early. We grow up quickly. I’ve been a sentry since I was fourteen. I was a mite young but only by a year or two. Most faeries are practicing their profession and living on their own by fifteen or sixteen.”

“That doesn’t sound very fun.”

“Fun isn’t really the point.”

“If you say so. So, I couldn’t come as a baby because I could walk and talk, right?”

“Yep.”

“So how old was I when I did come?”

He sighed, and for a moment Laurel didn’t think he would tell her. Then he seemed to change his mind. “You were seven.”

“Seven?” The idea was a little shocking. “Why don’t I remember anything?”

Tamani leaned forward, his elbows on his thighs. “You have to understand before I answer that, even though you don’t remember, you agreed to all this.”

“All what?”

“Everything. Coming here, fulfilling your role, living with the humans, all of it.

You were selected for this a long time ago, and you agreed to come.”

“Why don’t I remember?”

“I told you I can make humans forget they saw me, right?”

She nodded.

“That’s what they did to you. Once you were at the age that you could pass for a human child, they made you forget your faerie life.”

“Like, with a potion or something?”

“Yes.”

Laurel sat stunned. “They made me forget seven years of my life?”

Tamani nodded solemnly.

“I…I don’t know what to say.”

They sat in silence for several minutes as Laurel tried to comprehend what this meant for her. She began adding up the years Tamani claimed she had lost.

“I’m nineteen?” she asked in amazement.

“Technically, yes. But you’re still just like a fifteen-year-old human.”

“How old are you?” she asked, anger heavy in her voice. “Fifty?”

“Twenty-one,” Tamani said quietly. “We’re almost the same age.”

“So they just made me forget everything?”

Tamani shrugged, his face tense.

Laurel’s tight clutch on her temper came loose. “Did you guys even think this through? A million things could have gone wrong. What if my parents didn’t want me? What if they found out I don’t have a heart, or blood, or that I don’t hardly have to breathe? Do you know what most people feed three-year-olds?