There was no grubbing to be done this year. For the first time since they had started cultivating the trees, they were letting the silkmice move into the Sassoak groves.

The climate had gone from harsh to just a little bit harsher. No one had particularly noticed.

According to Gerd, the equatorial climate had gone from uniformly warm and muggy with occasional showers to uniformly warm and muggy with frequent massive thunderstorms.

In the earlier years, homes in that area had been constructed as nothing more than raised floors with roofs over them to take advantage of the slightest breeze, since it never cooled off to speak of. He said that now most homes had been retrofitted with wall-flaps which could be dropped before an approaching storm.

A significant number of people were talking about moving the settlement a little North or South to take advantage of the coolness of Winter. The more astute among them pointed out that they would have extra heat in Summer, of course.

Unless they wanted to move with the seasons, they had realized they were situated in the best area.

There were a few families that had traded places between arc/trop and equatorial villages. Gerd's ship had provided the the transportation.

Nathan was now seventeen. He looked every day of nine. It had gotten distinctly awkward. His peers tended to stop talking when he approached. He knew better than to think they were talking about him behind his back. But it was still frustrating that they didn't freely share their banter with him as they had.

Younger kids were drawn to him like moths to a light, to the consternation of both Nathan and the kids' parents.

He didn't want to be rude, but he really didn't want them hanging around.

He'd taken to spending most of his free time in the mountains and foothills with Olos. Without the grubbing, there was a lot more free time.

Olos had continued using his Nathan-skin and was occasionally spotted in the hills and mistaken for Nathan, a situation Nathan had great fun with.

When a puzzled friend would ask how he'd gotten back to the village so fast, he would say it was one of his mutant super-powers. (One of his peers had referred to him as a mutant first, but he had liked the term so much he used it himself - even if it wasn't technically correct.)

While Nathan's social life was not stellar, it was tolerable until Marcus came along.

Marcus was the local bully. He was physically larger than the other ten year-olds and used that advantage mercilessly.

After successfully intimidating his peers, he had taken notice of Nathan. Nathan had been small for his age before the virus, so he seemed the perfect victim to Marcus.

Being seventeen in a nine year-old body proved advantagous, and Nathan had managed to outmanuever and get away from Marcus several times before today.

This time it was an ambush, and Nathan had no warning until he was being pummeled by the larger boy.

"He kept trying to tell Marcus the danger he was in, but that only seemed to make him mad. By the time Marcus seemed to be satisfied, Nathan had lost two teeth, and he was pretty sure his nose was broken.

He lay gasping for breath as Marcus started walking away. He managed to say hoarsely "You need to wash my blood off of you right away."

Marcus stopped, turned, and held up a bloody fist. "You mean this blood?" He asked. To Nathan's horror, Marcus licked the blood on his hand. Immediately, his face puckered as if he'd tasted a green persimmon. He spit and said "Even your blood tastes bad, punk. Can't you even bleed right?"

Nathan took a painful breath. "You just killed yourself," he said.

"Are you threatening me?" Marcus asked, approaching Nathan again.

"He never threatens anyone," Olos said.

Marcus froze, looking back and forth between Olos and Nathan. "There's two of you?" he asked, shocked.

"Go home," Olos said, then approached Nathan.

"That just means twice the fun," Marcus said. He rushed Olos, who stopped and turned to him.

Olos had no time to say anything else before Marcus reached and rammed Olos in the chest with his head. Marcus rebounded, staggering.

"Go home," Olos repeated.

Marcus stood as if debating what to do. He stepped over to Olos and crouched to look at him face to face. Olos never flinched, but stared at Marcus intently until Marcus punched him in the gut. There was a crunching sound.

Marcus dropped to his knees, holding his injured hand. Then he staggered back to his feet and announced "I'm not finished with you guys", then stormed off.

Olos was able to fuse Nathan's broken bones back together, but there was still a lot of healing that needed to happen. Nathan walked home in pain, dreading Marcus' fate. He told Dan about it immediately, but as he had feared, there was no treatment yet for the virus. They could only hope Marcus had spit out enough of the virus, and had a strong immune system. Nathan insisted in going with Dan to explain things to Marcus' parents.

It seemed a bit odd to be essentially apologizing for getting beaten up by their son, but they needed to know Marcus had been infected.

When they saw Nathan they began apologizing profusely. This wasn't the first time one of Marcus' victims had been brought to their door by angry parents.

It was hard for Dan to get a word in edgewise, but he was finally able to explain that Marcus had exposed himself to Nathan's virus by licking his blood.

They were at first incredulous, then angry at Dan for creating a 'poisonous' son. (Everyone knew by now about Dan's unconventional treatment of Nathan's cancer.)

By nightfall, Marcus had the fever. Two days after that, he was dead.

Marcus' parents called a town meeting a few days after that. The topic was predictable - they wanted Nathan exiled from the community.

They argued that Nathan was a walking time bomb, and that this would happen again.

The general consensus however was that Marcus had been well warned and had chosen to disregard the warnings. His death, though tragic, would reinforce the warnings all kids received about physical contact with Nathan.

Bottom line, Nathan didn't need to leave.

There were some murmurs of good riddance of Marcus, not entirely unheard, as people left the meeting. Many of their children had been his victims in the past.

Despite being vindicated at the meeting, Nathan felt a great deal of remorse about Marcus. He knew he had done nothing wrong, but he agreed with Marcus' parents about being a time bomb.

He knew too, that despite how people had stood up for him at the meeting, he would always be viewed differently from now on - if not as a murderer, then as someone to avoid.

He felt he had to leave, but didn't want to hurt his parents. He also didn't want to burn any bridges medically. He wanted to be sure his father had an ample supply of his DNA to research a cure for his virus.

His discussions with Olos became planning sessions for his departure.

Dan brought in the frozen package and set it on the table.

"Is that?" Mariah began.

"It's Olos' skin," Dan said. He's done it. Not quite the way I expected, but he's gone. He left a note with the skin. The skin is for DNA samples for my research. I guess he didn't realize I have plenty already. He's gone with Olos to live in the mountains."

"In the dead of Winter?!"

"He said not to worry about that. Olos won't let him freeze, and he's moving closer to the equator. Here, read for yourself," he said, giving her the note.

Nathan looked down at the village that had been his second home. He had lived there nearly as long as he had lived on Deutscherwelt.

It was odd to look at all the snow and yet be comfortably warm. Olos was literally surrounding him and pulling energy from the ground and air to create a warm bubble around him. Olos had explained that he was redistributing energy, not generating it. A few feet below the ground was now a patch of extremely cold soil. There would probably be a permafrost trail well into the summer if anyone were to dig under their path.

The only downside of the bubble was that it melted the snow just before he walked over it, meaning he was constantly walking in mud.