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Apparently Leon passedto him, then abruptly walked away He looked baffled

"Your friend is one strange lady," he said toout my ‘sasa’ What does thatit ht at dinner I told Dashay what he’d said But she didn’t laugh "He has a sht near his liver," she said, her voice low, close to a whisper "Not big enough to worry about, just yet I tell hi should leave him"

"A small what?"

"A small sasa," she said She pronounced it "sahsah"

"Like in Homosassa?" My vowels sounded harsher than hers

Dashay nodded "Not spelled the sah some folks will tell you this place was nahed and left the table

"Sasa is spiritual power," Dashay said "People have it Ani, say, that animal’s sasa coe"

"You can see this sasa?"

"I can tell when it’s in someone, yes"

My mother carried a plate of risotto to the table She sat doithout saying anything

"What does it look like?" I had to know

"On the right edge of his right iris, it looked like light, like a spot of light, flickering" Dashay passed a bowl of salad to me "That’s the place tied to the liver"

Mãe was eating, but I sensed her skepticism "Can everyone see them?" I asked

"No First you need to be a foy-eyed" Dashay coughed "That’s a Jahosts and spirits and such"

"I’ve seen a ghost" The words came out, and then I wished I could take thee of my best friend Kathleen, who had beenAfterward Dashay came up to me while my mother put away the leftovers "I can try to teach you, if you want," she said "Teach you how to see a sasa"

"Maybe someday" Curious as I was, I didn’t feel ready to see any hosts The one I’d seen still hauntedroolared at me She was my father’s research assistant

I dropped the letter I’d taken from a pile of my father’s mail Like the others, it was addressed to Arthur Gordon Pym, the name he’d assumed when he a Springs

"What are you doing here?"

Root looked different Same oily dark hair pulled back into a bun, sa black dress But the three long hairs that had sprung from a mole on her chin like misplaced antennae--they weren’t there anymore I wondered, had she plucked them?

"He asked me to collect his mail" Her voice was raspy as ever "And just in ti when she had walked unannounced into our house But I didn’t try to defendAnd Root and I had a history of mutual hostility I’d alondered why she resentedand anyone that interrupteda coffee"Mary Ellis," she said "What a surprise"

Her voice suggested the surprise was a pleasant one, but I knew better She didn’t like Root any more than I did

"I came for his mail" Root never used my father’s name

"Of course," Mãe said "Would you care for soranate juice?"

We all were sitting at the kitchen table, sipping juice, pretending we liked each other, when Dashay walked in and said, "They’re all either dying or dead"

Root didn’t ask who "they" were I wondered if she could hear thoughts Although I suspected that she was "one of us," I didn’t know for sure I’d never been able to tune in to her thoughts, and her personal habits were a ed," Dashay said "That is, the ones that haven’t disappeared The ones who stay, they walk around in circles like they’re lost" Dashay talked with her hands as well as her voice I felt relieved that she’d taken the trouble to check out the bees, sorry that it had taken a crisis to reanimate her