The Pentangular Gate

spoilers for Rite of Passage.

1.Holidays. It takes a few years before she understands the facts about things like Santa, and the Easter Bunny, and Valentine cards. As she gets older she learns how to go through the motions-but she never really understands them. They’re not her holidays.

2.Vaccinations. More specifically the 10 years of shots she gets all in one sitting. If she’d been born here most of those needles would have happened when she was a baby.

3. When Nirti comes for her, because her DNA is advanced or something. Things like that don’t happen to Earth kids.

4.The Tooth Fairy. Daniel tries to explain the concept to her and she stays up all night with her hand over her mouth, refusing to sleep. It takes Janet (and then Sam, who then calls Jack, who drives Teal’c over too) all day to talk her down. They explain about fairy tales and mythical creatures and the things parents tell their kids. They say all kids have a tooth fairy who take their teeth and it‘s nothing to worry about. Maybe on Earth, Cassie thinks. Such creatures were feared on Hanta. They stole children on her world.

Incidently, Daniel is no longer allowed to tell her bedtime stories.

5. Every time Cassie has to lie about where she’s from. Some of the most important, most interesting HUGEST things in her life happened on Hanta. She can’t tell her friends, or her boyfriend, and some day she’ll have to lie to her kids.

1

Cassie sat on the examining table, leaning on Sam who was perched next to her. When the nurse brought out the needles, Cassie started to cry, reaching out and grabbing Janet’s hand.

“I don’t want to!” She looked up into Janet’s eyes. “Please?”

Janet had explained that the shots would keep her from getting sick. Cassie thought getting sick didn’t sound so bad, not when she’d been on Earth six months, and this was the fourth time they’d done this. The gave her the shots, and it made her arm hurt for days; after that, they took blood from the inside of her elbow, and sometimes they stuck her finger for even more.

When Janet just stroked her hand, trying to soothe her, Cassie turned to Sam.

Sam shook her head as she put her arm around Cassie’s shoulders. “I know it’s not fun, Cassandra, but everyone has to do this.”

“All the kids as school did this when they were babies!” She bit her lip as the nurse gave her the first injection. “They don’t remember.”

2

“Your mom is taking you to the zoo? The zoo?”

“Yeah, like she thinks I’m six years old or something. She’s bringing a bunch of her friends, too.”

To a thirteen-year-old from Earth, apparently, a day at the zoo with a bunch of adults was supposed to be torture. Cassie’s friends all agreed that it was a completely lame way to spend a Saturday, and she laughed and scoffed along with them, never letting on that she was actually excited.

As it turned out, Daniel was the only one who could come along with Cassie and her mom that day. And Daniel, apparently, knew everything about African animals. Cassie thought he might have known everything about all the animals, but with all the talking, they didn’t get past Africa.

After they’d seen the elephants, they detoured to a snack stand for ice cream, stopping to eat it beside the fence surrounding the camel rides.

Cassie stared at the little boys and girls, the ones riding on the camels and the ones waiting in line. They pointed and giggled, and she could see them talking really, really fast. “They look happy,” she said, and her mom rubbed her back, and Daniel smiled at her.

Then Daniel started to talk about camels, and Egypt, and caravans. Cassie didn’t really listen to what he was saying, because she figured she had to learn enough in school every day; but she liked having him there. Her mom had a boyfriend, a man that Cassie didn’t like very much, and she thought that she’d rather it were someone she knew, like Daniel or Jack. Someone who understood things.

She rested her chin on the fence and watched the children on the camels and tried not to think about the mother and father she’d lost back on Hanka, because today, she wanted to pretend this was the way it had always been.

3

“How could he think you’d say yes? You can’t even drink! I mean, not legally or anything.”

“Yeah,” Cassie said, rolling her eyes. Pinching the phone between her ear and shoulder, she swept pages and pages of organic chemistry homework into a pile. “Look, I’ve gotta go. I’ve got study group in half an hour. I’ll see you in class tomorrow, okay?”

After she hung up, Cassie sank down into her chair, dropping the phone to the table and burying her face in her hands. She tried not to play the afternoon over in her head, but she couldn’t stop herself.

Girls her age were supposed to turn down proposals of marriage because they weren’t ready to be married; because they had their future careers to consider, because they wanted to travel, because they wanted to belong to themselves first.

Deep inside, Cassie knew she felt those things, too, but they weren’t what had brought her mind to a screaming halt when he’d asked the question. How could she marry someone without first telling him who she really was? And how could she take the chance of telling anyone she’d known just a few months or even years?

And how had she never seen that before?