| #19: The Departure |
Detailed Plot: The Animorphs do a mission like many others: They witness a human-Controller getting blamed for something going wrong and being dragged off to see Visser Three, so they decide to help her, hoping she'll help them by revealing secrets. But after they attack, Cassie becomes disgusted by having killed a Hork-Bajir and decides to quit the Animorphs. Cassie then finds out her Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic is getting shut down because they lost funding, so everything she loves is being taken from her. When her friends come to confront her about quitting and try to talk her back into participating, she tells them that it's not just about having one bad battle. It's about becoming numb to others' pain and suffering. Cassie doesn't want to be a warrior. So, she stays firm on quitting. Jake tells her she shouldn't morph if she isn't an Animorph, and she promises not to. At one point she thinks she senses someone following her or looking at her, and wonders whether the escaped leopard that's supposed to be in the area is targeting her, but the eyes are the wrong height. Cassie is pretty mopey after that and tries to get back into her old life. She rides her horse and decides to clean out a trough, only to find that Ax has already done it. But then she has a feeling of being followed and watched, and shortly after that a little girl trying to outrun a bear bursts onto the scene. Cassie saves her by riding away with her on the horse, but they fall into the river and get washed deep into the woods, and Cassie nearly drowns. The little girl saves her. The girl introduces herself as Karen, and quickly makes it clear that she is no ordinary kid. She says she's been following Cassie since she morphed from a wolf into a human (she thinks) because she was the one who destroyed the girl's brother's host body (a Hork-Bajir). The girl wants to know what Cassie is and wants to get proof that some of the attackers weren't Andalite bandits but somehow were human--that or they've figured out how to stay in morph for more than two hours without losing their abilities. Cassie pretends the girl is crazy and makes a splint for her injured leg and gives her a stick for a crutch, trying to figure out how to get them both out of the forest. Karen keeps making statements about how she knows Cassie is an Andalite, or whatever her suspicions are, and Cassie keeps just ignoring what she's saying and treats her like a little girl, even when she demands that Cassie stop playing a stupid game. Cassie worries, though, that the upcoming storm or the leopard in the area might get them. Cassie wants to investigate a cave to make sure it's okay for them to go into--they don't want to disturb a wild animal--so she sneaks off and morphs to a wolf, but part-way through she remembers her promise to Jake and can't bring herself to do it. Then the leopard does show up and tries to attack Karen, at which point she pulls out a Dracon beam and tries to kill it. She's a bad shot, though, and Cassie does another partial wolf morph to scare the creature away. Karen finds out her suspicions are correct. Despite Karen knowing about Cassie, she still doesn't destroy her. Cassie helps her, instead, and Karen opens up a little about the Yeerks' "right to expand" and the fact that Yeerks have parents, etc. Cassie shares a little of her own beliefs, and it seems the little girl is realizing that Cassie has morals. But still she keeps taunting Cassie, talking about how she'll feel when she's a helpless puppet after the Yeerks win, making fun of her and baiting her with suggestions about loving the rush of battle. Cassie, for her part, manages to counter well with psychological barbs about the innocence of the Yeerks' hosts and how even the little girl she's enslaved is probably pitying her. Despite all she's done and all she supports in the Yeerk Empire, Cassie insists that she does not hate her. Cassie does find out during this conversation that not all Yeerks want to take unwilling hosts, which never occurred to her. But then all at once the leopard returns and tries to take Karen, knowing she is injured and easy prey. Cassie has no time to react, but Marco happens to be flying above in osprey morph and he dives and distracts the leopard long enough for Cassie to start morphing to wolf. The leopard doesn't want to deal with that and starts dragging its prey away, and Karen is screaming for help, claiming she'll let Cassie go if she saves her. Cassie, however, isn't likely to win against the leopard when she's only a wolf, so she calls for Marco's help. Karen continues to cry, and Cassie believes she is hearing the real Karen, the host. Cassie is nervous because she is no longer sure she wants to risk her life for her enemy, and she's considering just letting the leopard have Karen. Marco arrives in gorilla morph, and the leopard knows when it is outclassed, so it goes away with a look in its eyes like it's telling them it will return when they least expect it. Turns out Marco was looking for Cassie because she didn't come home last night, and he's suspicious because she morphed in front of the little girl. Cassie has to admit that Karen knows what she is, and Marco thinks it's no big deal because little kids aren't likely to be believed. Cassie surreptitiously tells Karen that she can't let Marco know that Karen is a Controller or he will kill her, believing it's too great a risk to let her live. Marco is curious about why she's whispering to the girl, and he claims he'll go away and come back as himself in a minute. Cassie takes the time to try to reason with Karen, telling her to pretend to just be a kid, but the Yeerk realizes Cassie is trying to get her to change sides. Marco overhears and understands everything, because he's arrived in osprey morph and is listening with his excellent hearing. He thought-speaks to them and says you can't change parasites' minds; you just have to bury them. So Karen goes on a rant about the self-righteousness of predators versus parasites, and says there's no difference between humans killing cows and Yeerks controlling humans. Cassie doesn't want the little girl host, the real Karen, to get sacrificed in this fight, and she insists that the Yeerk leave Karen's head so they can hear from Karen herself. Then, making a split-second decision, Cassie morphs to a wolf so Marco can't stop her and presses her ear to Karen's, inviting the Yeerk inside to come into her head. Marco is hysterical and reminds Cassie that it may now be her who has to die. Cassie learns the Yeerk's name: Aftran-Nine-Four-Two. She also learns that Aftran was not exactly being truthful when she claimed she didn't want a weak little-girl host. She was glad to be out of the war and into a body that wouldn't be used to fight, because battles made her sad. She shares Aftran's memories of her brother, Estril-Seven-Three-One, and Cassie's own memories of the fight are being shared at the same time. Aftran feels sorrow and Cassie feels guilt. One by one Aftran goes through Cassie's secrets, surprised of course that the Yeerk invasion is being harassed only by five human kids and an Andalite cadet. She enjoys Cassie's morphing memories and shudders over her various sorrows. And she seems perplexed that Cassie felt guilty over destroying a termite queen. Cassie is terribly worried that this Yeerk is going to take her and turn her in, and that all the Animorphs will be taken too. She feels she's made a horrible mistake. And from up in the sky, they see two things. One is a search party--some of whom are Controllers--about to find little Karen. The other is a group of birds--the Animorphs--coming to rescue Cassie. Aftran is shocked to see that they know about Kandrona rays and how to starve a Yeerk out of a person. She might die, and Karen will probably be killed if she is found to not be a Controller anymore. Cassie suggests they make peace, and tells Aftran that she understands that reverting to her natural form and not taking hosts will be a sacrifice but that her own beliefs all suggest that she herself would do it if it were her. "But I'm not you," she reminds the Yeerk. And soon after, instead of taking Cassie to civilization where it will all be over, she goes back to Karen. In thought-speak, before reaching Karen, Aftran tells a human-Controller that the "Andalite bandits" are about to come their way. But Cassie realizes she didn't reveal that they aren't all Andalites. Apparently she has something else up her sleeve. She forces Cassie to use her human body to hold Karen's ear up to hers, and she enters the girl again. Once Cassie has control of her arms again she tries to stop Aftran from enslaving Karen, but she can't reach fast enough. Once Aftran controls Karen again, she tells Cassie that she is willing to free Karen and live out her days in her natural form . . . only if Cassie herself is willing to trap herself into a life that is similarly devoid of opportunity. She wants Cassie to be a caterpillar and trap herself. Only then will she know Cassie is willing to put her money where her mouth is and give up what she's asking Aftran to give up. And Cassie does it. She morphs the caterpillar and resigns herself to living out her days as a bug. Jake takes over the narration at that point and describes Marco coming back with news that Cassie's a Controller and they have to hurry. They use their bird morphs and hurry toward the forest. Jake has a quick flashback about finding out Cassie was missing, tracking her scent to the river, and finding out she's not the only one missing--there's a search party out for Karen too. Marco had suggested Cassie didn't matter because she wasn't an Animorph, and Rachel made him sorry. On the way to try to help, they all discuss the issue, and they figure Cassie must have had a reason for what she did. Tobias says he can't blame her for not wanting to kill, and Jake, trying to understand his followers, says he hopes after they win there are still people as principled as Cassie is. They end up encountering the human-Controllers from the search party, who have been warned about their approach by Aftran, and they start shooting. Jake orders Tobias to head off to find Cassie. The rest of the group of morphed birds has to enter battle and avoid getting killed, and Rachel gets knocked out in bald eagle morph. Ax demorphs and rescues her while the others flee. Once they get away, they rejoin Tobias and find out what's happened. Cassie's trapped in caterpillar morph. Karen tries to explain herself but the group is frustrated and disbelieving. Then the leopard attacks one more time, and Marco saves her in gorilla morph. The group waits for Jake to make an order as to whether they're going to kill Karen (and Aftran), but Jake wants to know about the deal Cassie made. When Aftran explains, they realize that killing her anyway when Cassie sacrificed herself for peace would destroy the meaning of what she'd done. Aftran claims they're not all like Visser Three and that she believes Cassie did not hate. Aftran maintains that she intends to let Karen go free and never take another human host. Jake decides to believe Aftran, and even though Jake decides to let the other Animorphs all make their own choice, even Rachel decides she isn't going to let what Cassie believed in go to waste. Rachel has been keeping Cassie's chrysalis after she went into the pupa stage, and one day when all the Animorphs are in school, Tobias announces that Cassie is coming out. It's only been three days but they joke that she's always been the fastest morpher. No one's managed to figure out what they're going to tell Cassie's parents yet at that point, but they're still pleased to see her coming out as a butterfly and know that at least it's better than the caterpillar stage. Cassie herself is conscious and sort of sad but happy she can see and fly, and she goes off to do what a butterfly does best. However, Ax points out that a natural morph still counts as a new body and resets the morphing clock, and they have to scramble to tell her she can try morphing out of the butterfly form. And it works! Cassie has been more focused on color since that experience, so Rachel takes her shopping for colorful clothes and she runs into Karen at the mall. Karen says she's free now--Aftran kept her promise--and that she would have wanted Cassie to have escaped her fate because she was begging her to give up the deal at the end. Cassie thinks of Aftran blind in the Yeerk pool, unable to enjoy color or freedom, and resolves to enjoy it herself since she's got it. Narrator: Cassie, Jake New known controllers:
New morphs acquired:
Cassie: Caterpillar/Butterfly Marco: None Rachel: None Ax: None Tobias: None Notable: The very weird beginning of this book--in which Cassie says Jake will take over telling her story when she can't anymore--suggests that Cassie already knows she will soon be unable to tell her own story, which is odd considering to know that she'd have to be past the point where she could tell her own story. This is probably a fault of the vague nature of the storytelling. The books aren't a journal or diary (but sometimes they act like it), and they aren't told as if the characters know what happens in the end (except sometimes they do hint at knowing the ending before the book starts), and it's unclear what exactly these books are supposed to BE since the characters recording them appear to be aware that they have readers (from whom they must hide certain details lest these important bits of information fall into the hands of their enemies, though other important secrets like the fact that the Animorphs are not Andalites is revealed freely). The books have a confused level of awareness of future events which is often inconsistent, and if a reader thinks about it too much it makes the story less enjoyable. The Animorphs group members each having their own way of reacting to battle was summarized by Cassie in the beginning of the book. Jake is depressed after a battle; Rachel is energized; Marco makes strained jokes; Tobias is silent; and Cassie is remorseful. (She doesn't really explain Ax's perspective, except to say that he cleaned blood off his tail at the end.) Aftran tells Cassie that being a parasite is not morally inferior to being a predator because humans kill plenty of inferior creatures to live. She points out that at least Yeerks don't chop their hosts into pieces and consume them. However, being in a human host, don't they then have to engage in the predatory behavior that keeps the human host alive? They're both parasite AND predator if they do that. So it makes little sense for Aftran to try to argue the "morality" of being a parasite if being one requires directing the host to engage in predatory behavior. (Considering the Yeerks do not make any kind of mass conversion to vegetarianism.) It's odd that they don't drag Karen off to isolation for a couple more days so they can have the Yeerk close to Kandrona starvation before Cassie ends up putting herself in the insanely risky situations she did (by letting the Yeerk come inside her head). It seemed like Marco was threatening to kill Aftran (which meant killing the little girl) even though there was a much easier way to free her without murdering the human too. However, I guess Marco also thought Karen was a risk because of what she knew about the Animorphs, in case she ever ended up a Controller again. Aftran is able to use Cassie's host body to morph an osprey. Like a couple previous books, it's unclear whether a Yeerk with a morph-capable host body should really be able to morph into a creature with a skull smaller than a Yeerk. Yeerks are about two inches long. Ospreys' heads (including the beak) are only about three inches long. It doesn't seem like a Yeerk would be able to fit in a space that small. There's an error here--Cassie's narration as she sees Aftran's memories refers to Karen as Aftran's "human morph." Obviously Karen is not a morph; she's a host. A similar not-very-accurate phrase comes out when Jake refers to Ax being "halfway to Andalite morph." Since Andalite's not a morph for him, that's an inaccurate way to phrase it. Another possible error is that Cassie was a wolf when Aftran started crawling into her ear, not wanting Marco to risk coming near them. It's only a moment before Aftran is in control of her brain, but there is no mention that she morphed back to human. After rifling through her memories, Aftran morphs her body into a bird, so she must have been a human while Aftran was reading her mind. This isn't explained. An apparent error: a human-Controller is quoted as laughing and saying "I have you now!" (at which Jake wonders sarcastically whether this guy's the Joker), but the phrase is marked as thought-speak. The human-Controller can't be thought-speaking. Another error was that at one point Cassie's narration referred to Aftran with a male pronoun--mentioned that the Yeerk could "call his superiors." But everywhere else, including from Karen who shared Aftran's thoughts for the longest time, Aftran is referred to as "she." It's not really clear at this point whether Yeerks have gender or sex, or whether their gender concepts are simply male and female, but so far there hasn't been a mismatch between Yeerk and host in how they're referred to in gender, so it's possible the Yeerk becomes feminine in the way it thinks of itself if it has a female host, and so on. It seems a bit illogical that changing from a caterpillar to a butterfly would reset the morphing clock. It's not different DNA, and it's also not like Cassie only became a butterfly once she emerged. At what point did the clock start ticking? It seems like a very weak justification for letting her actually think she was making this sacrifice and then giving her a cheap cheat (though of course it's wonderful that she got to do it). It seems odd that a Yeerk was planted strategically in the daughter of a powerful banker in order to watch him, and then when Aftran defected and decided to "set the girl free," no one seemed to worry that she would be missed. Wouldn't they wonder why Aftran never reported on Karen's father's activities, or why the little girl never reported to the Yeerk pool anymore? Seems odd that Aftran could just go back to the Yeerk pool unnoticed, even for a short time. Best lines:
Marco: "You know, back when we started all this, it was me who didn't want to get involved. And you all acted like I was a big coward, or else selfish."
Cassie: "Rachel, we can still be--" Aftran: "Now I know you're an Andalite. Typical Andalite arrogance. The only race in the entire galaxy that makes war 'to help people.'" Jake: Marco said something he didn't really mean about Cassie not being an Animorph anymore, so she wasn't our problem. Rachel knocked him on his butt. Marco is my best friend, but there are times I admire Rachel's directness. Tobias: "There's always a choice. I can't get mad at someone not wanting to take a life. I can't get mad at someone for thinking life is sacred. I just can't." Jake: "If we win and someday it's all over, you'd better hope there are still plenty of Cassies in the world. You'd better hope that not everyone has decided it's okay to do whatever it takes to win." Jake: One thing a leader does is try to understand his people. Jake: "I guess sometimes you have to choose between smart, sane, ruthlessness, and totally stupid, insane hope. You can't just pick one and stick with it, either. Each time it comes up, you have to try and make your best decision. Most of the time, I guess I have to go with being smart and sane. But I don't want to live in a world where people don't try the stupid, crazy, hopeful thing sometimes." Rachel: "Cassie was my best friend. I'm not going to be the one to call her a fool."
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