In Other Lands

by Sarah Rees Brennan

“Really, Sunborn? No, really. All right then. Tell me about computers.” “Well . . .” Luke said, and looked shifty about the eyes. “They’re boxes . . . but you can write things in them. And read things in them. And there are cats in them who are funny for some reason. They’re like—boxes of infinity. And! You keep the wikipedia in them!”

“Sorry, what?” asked Elliot. “Are you telling me that Luke is cast as the maiden fair and I am the bit-part evil floozy?”

“Elliot’s not hot enough to play Red Rose,” Adara sneered. “Excuse you, I am a tornado of recently matured sexuality,” Elliot told her.

Luke looked torn between weeping and punching Elliot. Elliot understood that this was an eternal struggle.

“Do not have a catfight, boys, even if it is that time of the month,” said Serene, and when she saw them staring at her, she explained: “You know—women shed their dark feelings with their menses every month? But men, robbed of that outlet, have strange moodswings and become hysterical at a certain phase of the moon?”

“Violence proves nothing,” Elliot said. “Might prove some things,” said Luke.

“I have often worried that . . . being a woman, I can be oblivious to other people’s feelings, and I am less able to talk about and deal with emotional situations. I have sometimes thought that if I were a man, or—or perhaps a human woman, I would have been able to treat you with more tact and sensitivity when we were younger.

“You cannot dally with a man and then abandon him without a word. A man’s heart is like a flower: beautiful but delicate, easily crushed by a careless hand.”

“Please don’t sit down,” said Adara. “I can’t be seen associating with you sober, in daylight, in lunch-table intimacy. My social standing would not recover.”

“I heard you fought as bravely as any woman in the battle last eve,” Swift told Luke generously.

“Boys!” said Myra, at the same time as Golden said: “I fear human men are not given the chance to develop their natural masculine intuition.”

“Excuse me, sweetheart,” said Elliot. “Darling? A moment of your time? Sugarplum? Sugargrape? Sugarassortedfruitsandvegetables?” Luke did not even turn his head. “HEY, LOSER!” said Elliot. “Elliot,” Luke said at once,

“Um,” Luke said. “I’m very embarrassed. Please go.”