Eights Origin

copyright © 2012 by pittacus lore

eight’sorigin

EightsOrigin_txt_ed3.indd 1 8/6/12 12:57 PM


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i’ve reached the point where i don’t know how long I’ve been alone anymore. I should have been

keeping track all this time, I guess, marking off days,

noting as the weeks and months passed. Or has it

already been a year by now? Maybe, maybe not. I really

have no idea. I do know that it has been longer than a

season and shorter than a lifetime.

I’m definitely taller than I used to be. My hair now

falls almost to my shoulders and my arms have grown

thick and ropy with muscle.

But there’s no one to ask how much I’ve grown or

what else about me may have changed. There’s no one

who remembers what I looked like before. The only

one who really knew me was Reynolds, and he’s gone.

Here, now, there is only me—me and the mountains

and the sky and the animals. Sometimes I wonder where


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I stop and the rest of it begins. Sometimes I think there is

no difference at all.

It might drive some people crazy, living like this,

but the quiet keeps me company. I spend my days

swimming in the lakes and running through the

mountains. I have no name, and I like it that way

because when I’m myself, not trying on some new,

different identity, my memories return. I try to linger

only on the ones that make me happy and skip over

the ones that are painful, but sometimes it’s hard to

know which are which. Sometimes they are one and

the same.

I’ve learned that some memories surprise you and

reveal a sharp edge just when you least expect it. I could

be wandering through the woods, stumbling down

rocky mountain paths in search of dinner and thinking

about a happy time with Reynolds—the two of us wan-

dering through the markets of New Delhi, me sucking

on a juicy mango as he tells me a story about the life

he left behind on our faraway planet, his face at a cer-

tain angle where the light catches his laughing eyes, his

smile tilted up at the corner just so. Then, suddenly, the

scene will shift and I’ll see those same laughing eyes,

that same tilted smile, but they’ll be for Lola. And just

like that, the memory becomes darker, terrible. And I’ll

be taken back to the time she betrayed us.

e i g h t ’ s o r i g i n


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I never cry with these memories. But sometimes I

scream.

I should have been able to save him.

I blame myself.

Reynolds had been training me for that moment ever

since we arrived on Earth, first teaching me to be fast

and strong and then, when I was older, teaching me to

master my abilities—my Legacies—for the day I would

confront my enemies, the ones who drove me from

Lorien to this distant planet.

When I discovered that I could move objects with

my mind, Reynolds taught me how to exercise my

brain like a muscle, until I could go from lifting a

small pebble to lifting almost anything. And then,

when I disappeared one day on a crowded street only

to find myself a block away from where I’d started, he

taught me to control my teleportation power so that I

could do it whenever I wanted, as easily as blinking

my eyes.

And he taught me about who I really am. Who we

are: that there are others like me out there somewhere.

In the beginning there were nine of us. We are

called the Garde. I know from the scars on my ankle

that there are only six of us left. Three are dead. I also

know that someday, somehow, I will rejoin the others.

I am Number Eight.

p i t t a c u s l o r e


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But without Reynolds, I have no idea how to find

them. I don’t know what they look like; I don’t know

their names. My Chest—the only physical tie I still had

to my planet, Lorien—is also gone and I’m vulnerable

without it. But coming together again is part of our des-

tiny. I believe that as much as I believe in Lorien. So I

can only hope that one of the others has a plan. That

they know more about the rest than I do. That the other

Garde find each other, and then find me, before the

Mogadorians return again.

Because even though Reynolds had been helping me

develop my Legacies, training me for the day when I

would come face-to-face with the Mogadorians and be

able to defeat them, I wasn’t ready. Alone, I couldn’t

stop them. Because of the Charm, I did not become just

another scar on the ankles of the rest of the Garde. So

they killed Reynolds instead.

After Reynolds was killed, I stayed up here in the

mountains by myself. I didn’t know where else to go.

For a while, I thought I might die up here, alone, forgot-

ten by the others.

Then, one day, I woke up from a long sleep to see a

small black rabbit sitting right next to me. He was just

staring at me.

“Hey, Rabbit,” I said. They were the first words I’d

spoken aloud in ages. The rabbit tilted his head but

didn’t run away, even when I sat up.



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“Boo!” I said. He still wasn’t scared. It almost

seemed like he felt sorry for me—like he didn’t want

me to be alone.

We just looked at each other for a while. It made me

feel good to have company, and then I pretended he was

a real person who could understand me and told him

first one joke and then another. It was obvious from the

way his nose twitched that I was really cracking him

up. For a few minutes, I felt like my old self.

And then I was a black rabbit too. I didn’t even

notice it happen at first—I just knew that the world

seemed different. Everything was bigger but also easier

to understand. Smells and sounds took on their own

form and shape; paths appeared where they hadn’t

been before. My memories gave way to instincts.

The rabbit and I began chasing each other through

the bushes, jumping over rocks, darting behind trees.

Just having some good, old-fashioned rabbit-style fun.

Then I heard a noise behind me. It was nothing—just

a rock falling—but before I knew it, I’d been frightened

back into my own body. The other rabbit was gone.

I never saw him again, but he’d reminded me that I

had a job to do, that I had to stop feeling sorry for myself

and start having some fun again. He’d also showed me

my newest Legacy—the power to change shape.

I wonder if I would have been able to save Rey nolds if

I’d had this shape-changing Legacy when Lola betrayed



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us. Late at night, when I can’t sleep and Rey nolds’s final

moments are flashing through my mind, I imagine how

I might have done it. I picture myself turning into a lion

and ripping the Mogadorians to shreds. Or becoming

a dragon and breathing flames and destruction down

on them.

But these are still only fantasies. Because even

now, even though I’ve had this Legacy for a while and

have been practicing as often as I can, I can’t become a

dragon or a lion. And I don’t know what good the ability

to become a bunny is going to do against an alien army.

I’ve tried—have spent hours in my cave making

myself angry, trying to summon a lion’s fierceness and

strength and pride. It never works. I can only become a

small black rabbit.

This morning I wake up and crawl out from under the

outcropping of rocks where I have made my home and

look up at the sky. Just like always. I know that I can’t

stay here forever, but I also know that I’m not ready to

leave yet. I stretch and yawn and try to be grateful that

I’m still alive.

It’s not until I take on my rabbit form to go forage for

food that I realize something’s different. I can smell it:

There’s someone nearby. I am not alone on this moun-

tain anymore.



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I should be frightened, but I’m not. Not yet, anyway.

I’m mostly curious.

Without thinking about the danger, I bound through

dirt and grass and rocks toward this smell that I don’t

understand but that I know is out there.

When a hawk swoops down at me from the sky, my

heart begins to pound and I move faster, leaping into a

thick green bush where I will be safe from his preda-

tory eye. The hawk screeches in frustration at losing

sight of his tasty meal and soars back into the sky. He’ll

have to find his lunch somewhere else. I hear you can

get a mean samosa not too far away.

I wait a few moments, cautiously sniffing the air,

before I creep out again and continue on my path.

I finally find what I’ve been seeking near the lake.

A man sitting against the rocks with his eyes closed.

He’s wearing a peaceful smile.

Although he is old and gray and wrinkled, he has

a strength about him too, a quiet confidence that has

something to do with the way he’s smiling. I suspect

that he’s more than he seems, though I don’t know why

I think that. Or what that could even mean.

Reynolds’s death taught me never to trust anyone.

If Reynolds hadn’t trusted Lola—hadn’t fallen in love

with her—he never would have told her our secrets.

Then she never would have been able to betray us to



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the Mogadorians. And Reynolds would still be alive.

Trust is dangerous. But as much as I resist it, I can’t

help trusting this man.

I watch him from a distance for a while. In my rabbit

form, I can instinctively understand what another crea-

ture is going to do next from just the tiniest gestures

and signals. There’s something about this man’s steady

breathing, the way his eyes are moving lazily behind

his eyelids and the way his ears are pricked, that tells

me he knows I’m here watching him. But I also know

that he’s not going to approach me. He’s just going to sit

there. I could stay or go. It’s up to me. Finally he laughs

and opens his eyes.

Then, before I even realize what I’m doing, I have

hopped into the bushes, shed my rabbit skin, and

teleported behind a line of trees in the opposite

direction. When I step out from behind a tree, I am

standing before this strange man in my human form.

Number Eight.

His eyes land on me. “Hello,” he says.

“Hi,” I say. I decide to use the name I’d taken on when

Reynolds and I moved here to India. “I’m Naveen.”

“I am Devdan,” he says. “I am happy you have

found me. You have much power, but you have much

more to learn.” He reaches into a leather pouch and

pulls out a green, fresh leaf. “But first, would you like



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a piece of lettuce?” he says, and offers it to me. I stare

at him, confused.

“I’m sorry I don’t have any carrots,” he says with a

sly grin. “But rabbits like lettuce too, don’t they?”

A smile spreads across my face. For some reason,

I feel like I’ve known this man all my life. I feel like

he has known me forever too. Like he would know

me in any form. The weight of regret and loneliness

and despair that I have been carrying with me for so

many months lifts from my shoulders, and suddenly

I’m laughing.

The man looks at me curiously for a moment, and

then he begins to laugh too. It’s like someone has just

told us each the world’s funniest joke.

Somehow I know that this man will teach me

more than I ever believed was possible. Perhaps more

than even Reynolds could. He can teach me about

this shape-changing power. He can teach me that

it’s one thing to become a bunny but that to become

something powerful—something that can defeat the

Mogadorians—takes much more than fear or anger.

It takes strength.

It takes knowledge and focus and trust.

More than anything, it takes faith.

But for now, I am just a rabbit. And a boy known as

Number Eight.



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Eights Origin