There was something wrong with the children.

The problem wasn't anything medical or chemical; the colony's fate hung upon their survival, and the doctors probed and prodded them daily searching for any signs of malady.

Nothing in the environment appeared to be doing them any harm, and with their strictly enforced diet and exercise, they were possibly the healthiest kids ever.

Their brains were functioning properly. There was no problem with their development, I was assured. Hell, I was laughed at. Their shared tendency to spend hours wide-eyed and awake, staring off into nothing, refusing to respond to everything from threat to bribery was no reason to worry.

"Children have never made sense to their parents," the other mothers chided me. "So they like to daydream? Who knows how we would have acted as children if we were raised on a great big planet."

They were quick to point out that the condition wasn't shared by the slightly older children who had been born during the last years on the ship. It was just some artifact of a different upbringing, they insisted. I wished that our psychologist was still alive.

The only one who took my concerns at all seriously was Father Thomas.

"People will always choose to believe that which gives them comfort, Mary," he told me. "If the doctors say that the children are in no danger, then they will accept that as the truth and delve no further into the matter."

"So, you agree that the behavior of the children is abnormal?" I pressed him.

The priest shrugged, looking uncomfortable. I suddenly feared that he, too, was only humoring me.

"I agree that they seem a bit off," he replied diplomatically. "And I will keep encouraging the medical team to attempt new forms of testing, but until the results reveal evidence of some kind of pathological condition, all that we can do is pray for their health and hope that we are wrong, that it is some sort of natural phase that they will all grow out of."

'That we are wrong.' I thanked him for that, at least.

My own Evan was a lovely boy, with his father's midnight black hair and my own ocean blue eyes. He was well behaved, but still full of boyish energy. Except when those strange staring spells came upon him and his face became still and somber, the gravity of his expression looking far too old for the body of the child it afflicted.

He was a gentle boy, always kind to the other children, and always quick to offer a comforting smile to any who needed it. He had a great love for animals, and they returned it. Especially the crows that flourished here; he would feed them bits of corn and they would perch for hours about his arms and shoulders. At times, he would speak to them and you would swear that they understood him, for they would fly off or return, however he commanded.

He was such a joy to my heart that I knew I could never bear to lose him, not so near to the passing of his father. So, I watched with growing dread as the doctors tried the new batteries of tests that Father Tom had promised, and still came up with nothing. All the while, Evan's staring spells grew longer and came with greater frequency.

Days passed and the drought came upon us. The children now spent long hours in a trance-like state, often while congregating together. They had become a close group, still speaking with the rest of us, but keeping their secrets to themselves. Even the other parents could no longer ignore that something was wrong.

Unfortunately, there was not time to investigate the matter, as we were all much too busy just trying to keep our little colony alive. The entirety of my time was spent prospecting for new sources of water and helping to dig wells. They always came up dry, and I returned home every evening feeling a bit more exhausted and dehydrated than I had the night before.

I began to despair and sought out Father Tom for guidance. I was not the only one; the father was a busy man during these dark days.

"Do not lose yourself to hopelessness," he told me. "We need only have faith and the Lord will provide for us."

"Your God is not with us here, can you not feel that He is lacking?"

Startled, the Father and I flinched in surprise. Evan had returned from playing with the other children, and we had not heard the door. Even his voice as he had spoken those words had sounded as if it came from someone else.

"Evan! How dare you?" I scolded. "You will not disrespect Father Thomas like that!"

Evan looked for a moment like he would make a protest in his defense, then he shrugged and apologized meekly. He then went upstairs to his room without another word. The priest seemed somewhat unnerved by the encounter, the momentum of our conversation had floundered, and he left soon after.

Within a few weeks our extinction seemed certain. Our carefully planned searches, based on reliable scientific calculations, encountered no new reservoirs of water and gave way to increasingly desperate sorties into regions less and less likely to hold any. By now we were thirsty all the time, and could do little work in a day, regardless. Our dire efforts to filter the toxins from the seawater provided no breakthroughs, and our meteorologists' computers stubbornly refused to predict the slimmest chance of rain.

A number of the younger men and women gave in to their anger and anguish, constantly complaining about the unfairness of their short lives. In contrast, the colony's youngest six children never shed a tear, but spent their time together in an eerie silence.

Evan was rarely at home in these last days and I awoke one night, from a fitful sleep, to find that he had already slipped outside. It was well before the dawn.

I found him, along with the other five, in the grassy open that stretched across the town center. They were seated cross-legged in a rough circle. A crow sat on each of Evan's shoulders and a silvery gray creature that looked like a wolf pup was nestled in his lap. The animals were unperturbed by his corpse-like stillness, but all three eyed me with suspicion as I approached.

I had long ago lost any conceit that I could somehow rouse my son from this state, so I simply lay down on my side amidst the grass opposite Evan. Something drove me to take care not to break the lines of their circle, a fact for which I felt foolish.

I may have dozed then, for the sun's first light seemed to break upon the horizon in an instant, and with it the children began to stir.

At some unspoken signal, Evan's wolf cub dropped from his lap and darted off into the woods that ringed the colony. The crows, with much disgruntled flapping, lifted into the air and pulled away in reluctantly broadening circles.

The children rose slowly to their feet, as if pained by old joints, but they made no complaint. It shook me to see them suffer so, no doubt from effects of dehydration, but they paid my presence no mind, and not even Evan deemed to look me in the eye.

Martin, Walter, and Shane, the other three boys, took turns approaching Evan. Each patted him on the shoulder and nodded to him wordlessly before turning and heading off towards home. Their silent, deliberate movements had the sense of a ritual and evoked in me a feeling of sadness. Carol, the younger girl, displayed more childlike emotion, running towards Evan to wrap him in an energetic hug, then sprinting away just as quickly. I thought I glimpsed tears falling as she ran.

Maris, who was the oldest and tallest of the children born upon the planet, stepped forward and kissed Evan on the lips. This act would have disturbed me, given all the time that the children had been spending alone together, except for the complete lack of sexuality to the kiss. She gave the impression of a mother comforting her child. My child.

"Evan, what's going on?" I asked, my voice shaking slightly.

Both turned and looked towards me then, as if noticing me for the first time.

Maris opened her mouth to speak, but Evan placed a hand upon her shoulder to stop her. She glanced at him for a moment, shut her mouth, and walked away. I could not interpret her expression.

"It's nothing, Mother," he said. "They are just saying goodbye. I wanted to be alone for a while."

Evan placed his hand in mine.

"Can we go home now?" he asked.

"Of course," I replied, kissing him on the forehead.

I took him back to bed and tucked his blanket up under his chin.

"I love you, Mom," he said and was instantly asleep.

By now, the house was too bright for me to return to sleep myself, so I spent the early morning hours cooking us an extra special breakfast.

When I went to check on him a few hours later, I found him dead.

Wailing with grief, I spun around and headed towards the door. I intended to search out the other children and demand answers from them, but I found them waiting for me outside.

"It is done then," said Carol sadly, after a single glance at my face.

I glared back at them and stabbed an accusing figure at Maris, who stood in their center.

"You knew!" I shouted. "Somehow you knew this would happen, and you did nothing to stop it!"

The five stood firm in the face of my anger.

"There was nothing that could be done," said Martin, the largest of the boys, sounding weary. His companions nodded grimly in agreement.

My vision blurred as my eyes filled with tears, and Maris had to tug on my sleeve to get my attention. She pulled me forward so that our faces nearly touched.

"This loss is not a meaningless one," she said. "His sacrifice will allow the colony to survive."

There was a peal of thunder, and I looked up to see black storm clouds sweeping in across the horizon.

Maris pushed past me into the house, the rest of the children followed in her wake. I found that my fury had abandoned me, nothing remained, I was empty. I lacked the strength to stop them.

They went to his room, and each knelt by his bed in turn, muttering their sentiments too softly for me to hear. I saw that, like me, Carol was crying, but the others were as quietly controlled as churchgoers.

Walter, a tiny boy, even smaller than Evan, was the last to pay his respects. As he straightened, I heard Maris say from behind me, "His time among humanity has ended." The children bowed to him as one, then began to file out of my home. My eyes followed them as they made their exit, I could not entirely fathom what had just happened here.

When I turned back to the bed, Evan's body was gone. His clothing still lay upon the mattress, crumpled and empty. How could this be?

I slumped down onto his sheets and wept in confusion. A heavy rain began to fall. It hammered the rooftop and blew hard against the side of the house.

"Don't be sad, Mother."

I started, leaping to my feet with a cry. The voice had unmistakenly been Evan's. I glanced around me wildly. There, by the window, the mist blowing in on the wind was solidifying into a small, smoky form.

"What? What is this?" I stammered, stumbling towards it, falling to my knees.

Its wispy shape grew thicker, and though it appeared to be no more than a small cloud, I could make out the hazy pattern of Evan's face in its furrows and depressions.

"I am dead, Mother," Evan said, and it was him. "But only in a sense. In another I will remain with you forever."

Tears filled my eyes again, but this time I felt joy.

"How is this possible?" I asked.

The ghostly shape of the mist shifted, I realized that my son was smiling.

"This planet was empty when we arrived," he said. "It had no life, so it had no gods.

"We who were first born here are bound to it. We will come to meet its needs."

I heard the sound of a storm crow calling from afar.

"I must go now, Mother, but I will come again whenever the sky fills with the clouds and the rain, and in between my love will always be with you."

I reached out to him, but the mist dissolved in the rising wind and left me holding nothing. By the time I had steadied myself and made my way outside, I was sure it had all been a dream.

The rain continued to fall, and everyone in the colony was out rolling in the mud, rejoicing in our salvation. I could not bring myself to selfishly tell them of my loss, so I simply smiled and waved as I passed. It was a long time before I managed to get Father Tom alone; people were exhibiting a rare inclination towards prayer that day.

When I finally told him my story, I found him less skeptical than I had feared.

"Who knows?" he said at length. "I must admit that Evan was right, I do not feel the pull of my Lord as strongly here.

"But it is clear that some force has intervened to save us all, miserable lot that we are, and it would please me to think that it was Evan."

My feeling of numbing emptiness was receding, but I had no idea what to feel. I was worried for my son. He was a god now, but at the cost of a full childhood and a full life. He would never have a woman love him, never raise a family of his own. What would that do to him? Was it foolish to cry for the fate of a god?

"I know one thing," said Father Tom, breaking into my silence.

"What's that?" I replied.

"It's time for me to start spoiling the children."

He was looking for a laugh, trying to cheer me up, but he didn't get one. My God! Who knew what the other five might become?