Pax

The third condition for Peter staying is that he help Vola with her marionettes. Peter asks why, and Vola says, “Another true piece of myself I recovered: I remembered that I’d made some marionettes for my little nieces when I was a teenager. I remembered how much I loved carving the wood” (144). He studies them “five were human—a king and a queen, a child, a pirate or a sailor, and a sorceress—the rest animals” (146). There’s also a huge bird.

Vola then speaks to Peter about war and says whatever lies they try to tell you “you’re there to kill people. Kill or be killed—that’s the contract in war” (148). Peter asks if she’s killed someone and Vola says she probably killed many people, but one in particular haunts her: “I was a medic, but I still expected him to be plastic, not real. The way they taught us to think about our enemy in training. But of course he was” (149). During this moment, she had a sudden realization that, even though the man was of a different ethnicity and nationality, she might have a lot in common with him.

Vola searched the man’s pockets and found The Seven Voyages of Sinbad from the Arabian Nights Series.