Chapter 49:
The Seeker that killed Wes is Wanda's Seeker. Because Jeb wanted Wanda to have a chance to talk to the Seeker before they killed her. Killing the Seeker would be the best option, the only option.
"So why did I feel as though I was at the disadvantage? Why this strange premonition that she would be the one to walk away from our confrontation?" Wanda is still not sure if she wants to talk the the Seeker.
"I was wondering...Why? Why coudn't you let me be dead, like the rest of them? Why were you so determined to hunt me down? I didn't want to hurt anyone. I just wanted...to go my own way."
"How to finish that sentence? I didn't want...the Seeker to die? No. That wasn't true. I didn't want...to hate the Seeker? To hate her so much that I wanted her to die. To have her die while I hated her. Almost as if she died because of my hate. If I truly did not want her death, would I be able to think of a way to save her? Was it my hate that was blocking an answer? Would I be responsible if she died?"
"But...but what if I could do both? What if I could save her life and keep everyone here safe at the same time?"
"Because I could save the Seeker. Of course I could. But it would cost me. A trade. What had Kyle said? A life for a life." Wanda knows now what she must do.
Chapter 50:
"Wanda, I..." Melanie struggled for words. Still, the joy I expected from her did no come. Again, this touched me. "I don't think I can let you do this. You're more important than that. In the bigger picture, you are of much more value to them than I am. You can help them; you can save them. I can't do any of that. You have to stay."
"I can't see any other way, Mel. I wonder how I didn't see it sooner. It seems so completely obvious. Of course I have to go. Of course I have to give you yourself back. I already knew we souls were wrong to come here. So I don't have any choice now but to do the right thing, and leave.You all survived without me before; you'll do it again. You've learned so much about the souls from me--you'll help them. Can't you see? This is the happy ending. It's the way they all need the story to finish. I can give them hope. I can give them...not a future. Maybe not that. But as much as I can. Everything I can."
"No wonder the success rate for resistant hosts was so low here on Earth. Once we learned to love our human host, what hope did we souls have? We could not exist at the expense of one we loved. Not a soul. A soul could not live that way."
"The shortest, the most important, the most heartbreaking of lives. The life that would forever define me. The life that had finally tied me to one star, to one planet, to one small family of strangers."
"Such a great hatred. Sharon would rather kill her own happiness, Doc's, too, than forgive him for helping to heal Jamie...I wondered if that would change when I was gone, or if they were both so rigid in their grudge that it would be too late for them to change. Whate an extraordinarily stupid way to waste time."
"There's something else I'm going to ask you for, Doc. I don't want to...I won't be shipped off to another planet. This is my planet, it truly is. And yet, there's really no place for me here. So...I know it might...offend some of the others. Don't tell them if you think they won't allow it. Lie if you have to. But I'd like to be buried by Walt and Wes. Can you do that for me? I won't take up much space."
Chapter 51:
"They didn't want to feel like monsters. Not again. They're trying to make up for before, only a little too late--and with the wrong soul." Jared on why the Seeker was getting "special treatment" as a prisoner.
Chapter 52:
"I find myself unable to be the death of you, Wanda. I can't stand it."
"We thought of my memories, the pretty ones. The ice castles and the night music and the colored suns. They were like fairytales to her. And she told me fairytales, too. Glass slippers, poisoned apples, mermaids who wanted to have souls..."
"We made a good team: one attending to the soul, the other to the body. Everyone was taken care of." After Wanda separed The Seeker's soul from her host, with the help of Doc.
"I'd done many things I had not wanted to do since joining the humans, but I couldn't remember any this sharply and pointedly painful. Even deciding to trade my life for the Seeker's--that was a huge, vast hurt, a wide field of ache, but it was almost manageable because it was so tied up in the bigger picture. Telling Ian goodbye was a razor-sharp piercing; it made the greater vision hard to see. I wished there was some way, any way, to save him from the same pain. There wasn't."
Chapter 53:
"The Seeker's host body was named Lacey; a dainty, soft, feminie name. Lacey. As inappropriate as the size, in my opinion. Like naming a pit bull Fluffy." Or a three-headed dog.
"In answer to my earlier question to myself, no, the face was not less repugnant with a different awareness behind it. Because the awareness was not so very different, in the end."
"Everyone wanted to see the miracle for themselves. It didn't even seem to matter to most of them that she was...difficult. She was welcome. More than welcome. Again, I felt a little of that bitter jealousy. But that was silly. She was human. She represented hope. She belonged here. She would be here long after I was gone."
On the way back from sending the Seeker's soul off, and grabbing two Healers to take back, Wanda had Ian take her to a fast food place, switching sides of course. He was a little grossed out that Wanda was dipping french fries into her shake. She made him try one, he said it was interesting. Melanie also thought it was gross. "That's why I'd cultivated the habit in the beginning. It was funny now to think of how I'd gone out of my was to annoy her."
"Maybe I didn't want to live on this sad planet with so much death. Maybe nothingness was better."
Wanda showed Doc how to separate the female Healer from her host. Before they were able to do the male Healer, he had woken up. "The Healer stared straight at me, his face childlike in his bewilderment. I knew why his eyes were on me--the lantern's rays danced off both his eyes and mine, making diamond patterns on the wall." "'Why?'" he asked me." He committed suicide. And murder, though the Soul didn't see it that way.
Chapter 54:
"I so much wished that the soul had waited for an answer, so I could have tried to explain it to him. He might even have understood. After all, what was more important, in the end, than love? To a soul, wasn't that the heart of everything? And love would have been my answer."
"Was it too late? Was she lost? WAs she already gone? Just as dead as the male body? Were all of them? Were there only a very few, like the Seeker's host, Lacey, and Melanie--the shouters, the resisters--who could be brought back? Was everyone else gone? Was Lacey an anomaly? Would Melanie come back the wasy she had...or was even that in question?"
---Amelia
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