The Host (The Host, #1)

by Stephenie Meyer

“My job is to help this soul adapt herself to her new host without unnecessary pain or trauma. And you are here to interfere with my job.” Still slowly surfacing, acclimating myself to this new world of senses, I understood only now that I was the subject of the conversation. I was the soul they spoke of. It was a new connotation to the word, a word that had meant many other things to my host. On every planet we took a different name. Soul. I suppose it was an apt description. The unseen force that guides the body.

“In so many millennia, the humans never did figure love out. How much is physical, how much in the mind? How much accident and how much fate? Why did perfect matches crumble and impossible couples thrive? I don’t know the answers any better than they did. Love simply is where it is.

This place was truly the highest and the lowest of all worlds—the most beautiful senses, the most exquisite emotions… the most malevolent desires, the darkest deeds. Perhaps it was meant to be so. Perhaps without the lows, the highs could not be reached. Were the souls the exception to that rule? Could they have the light without the darkness of this world?

“There was no hatred in your heart,” I whispered. “That you existed is proof that we were wrong. We had no right to take your world from you, Walter. I hope your fairytales are true. I hope you find your Gladdie.”

“It’s not the face, but the expressions on it. It’s not the voice, but what you say. It’s not how you look in that body, but the things you do with it. You are beautiful.”

How sad. How frightening. To be filled with so much hate that you could not even rejoice in the healing of a child…. How did anyone ever come to that point?

Laughter was like a fresh breeze—it cleaned its way through the body, making everything feel good.

“You are the noblest, purest creature I’ve ever met. The universe will be a darker place without you,” he whispered.

Perhaps there could be no joy on this planet without an equal weight of pain to balance it out on some unknown scale.