by Melissa Gunn
“I guess I’d much rather not have a tree in my room. Thanks. I’ll be able to work on the hole in the roof now. And yeah, I guess I have seen a few unusual... things in my life.”
Aisha punched the air, startling Freya into jumping backwards, where she bumped into the wall of the hall. At least she hadn’t fallen down the stairs.
“Yes! I knew it!” crowed Aisha. “I thought there was something different about you as soon as you joined our class. But you know, you can’t just blurt these things out, can you? So, what are you? Some sort of demi? Scandi, I’d guess, given your name. Am I right?”
Freya took a few seconds to absorb the shock of being recognised. Had she been that obviously different? She’d have to figure out what was giving her away. Aisha seemed friendly, but it wouldn’t do to be picked out so easily as a demi. Her mum had drilled that into both Tammy and Freya since they were tiny. To be recognised as different was to be perceived as a threat, and that was yet another thing that led to them having to leave.
“Er. Yes. Some, anyway. Er... what do you know about demis?” Freya managed to say.
“Oh, what don’t I know? Obviously, I’m one. And my family are too, of course. We trace our heritage to the original Bastet, as you probably guessed already. My Dad’s from a different family, with djinn roots, we think. Anyway, it’s my Mum who wears the pants in our family, so we mostly consider her heritage, not Dad’s - and it’s my Mum’s mum who you met in the cafe. Honestly, I don’t get to tell many people about it, because it’s mostly weres around here. They’re so insular, practically xenophobic. That’s why I was so surprised they took in your sister. Um. Sorry, I wasn’t going to talk about that. Anyway, my family settled here ages ago, so they’ve mostly gotten used to us, or avoid us, anyway. Some of Bastet’s little tricks help us out there. You should see what happens when I summon fleas to a were!” She giggled again. After a moment, Freya laughed, too. She couldn’t help it, imagining that thugly group of fox-boys scratching uncontrollably.
“That does sound like a handy trick. I wish I had anything that useful. You’re right that I do have some Norse in my family tree. Probably a few other things too. My sister was - is - really good with water deities, freshwater ones, anyway. But she’s always been pretty focused on the fertility aspects of our heritage. She taught me a bit, but there’s a few years between her and me. I think she would have been better waiting till I was older to show me some of that stuff. Anyway, lots of watery affinity for her, so we think there must be something wet in the family heritage that we haven’t been told about.”
“Isn’t that always the way? You’d think people would keep better records, given the effects of being a demi. What about your Mum then?”
“Mum mostly works with plants. I keep trying with plants, but you saw that tree - they’re more likely to kill me than grow for me. My Dad had Greek heritage though, and he was a wine salesman, before he left us. So, Dionysian background from him. All in all, we’re a real mix. But - how did you pick me out? We try so hard to act mundane. How did you know I wasn’t?”
“Oh, as to that, that’s easy,” said Aisha. “One of the things my family is good at is spotting demis. Something to do with catlike observational skills, maybe. My out-of-school training was in demi-spotting. That’s why we have the station cafe, so we can spot who comes and goes. We don’t want too many demis coming here, because of the weres. No-one benefits from outright warfare, and that’s what it would be if the weres thought they were being flooded with demis. Other demis, that is - even though weres don’t think they’re the same as the rest of us, they are really. Just descendants of a lupine god, or a fox one, or whatever other animal they shift into.”
“Really? I never heard that. We try to avoid them - or at least we did in the past.”
“I don’t know why they think they’re special. But they are touchy, so we - my family, that is - try to avoid a situation where they see too many other demis. We’re gatekeepers, that way. We don’t stop people coming in, but we do warn them, if they come through the station. Your family can’t have come through the station, though, because the first I knew of you was when you turned up at school.”
Freya was astonished by this flood of information. She'd hardly ever met other demis, and they were usually just as focused as her family were on staying undercover. Also, weres as demis? That was hard to accept. She’d been taught that they were a totally different branch of non-mundane. But Aisha’s take on them did seem to make sense. After a pause, she replied to Aisha.
“Oh, yes. We walked in. We didn’t have much to bring from our last town. So, we just headed out along the cliffs. It took us days. You have no idea how uncomfortable it is to sleep ‘under the stars’, especially when you don’t have enough blankets to go around, and no mattress, and it’s drizzling - of course.” She shuddered at the memory. It seemed as though life had been going downhill in one huge spiral, ever since her house fell off the cliff all those years ago. Then her Dad had left, drawn elsewhere by the promise of a better life, or a different wife, or something. A huge well of bitterness threatened to overwhelm her, and hurriedly she moved her thoughts along. There was no climbing out of that well, if she once succumbed to it. She still wondered sometimes if Dad had left because of something she or Tammy had done. Finally, they had come to this town, driven by the need for a job for her Mum, school for her, and a direction for Tammy - only to find herself assaulted and have Tammy leave the family circle mere weeks after they’d arrived. At least Mum still had her job. It was hard not to rage though. Some of her powerful emotions must have crossed her face, because Aisha put out a hand and patted her shoulder.
“Hey, Freya, it’s OK, you survived. And now you know me, you won’t have to rely on random strangers appearing to drive off weres. That is so weird, you know. Just as weird as your sister being accepted by the weres. She must have some mad good perfume.”
Freya laughed, shakily.
“Not that I ever noticed. But then, I’m more likely to notice colours, not smells. And I’d be happy to avoid any future confrontations with weres. Whatever their family history.”
“So, you didn’t come through the station, we didn’t have a chance to warn you, but here you are. With a now-treeless bedroom, and someone to call if you run into a pack of rabid weres again. Just think of them with fleas and call on Bastet. And hope I’m nearby, of course. I have no idea what calling on a goddess not your own would do. Probably nothing. Anyway, I should be going home now. I haven’t done any of that maths our hideous teacher set us before the storm, and he’s just the sort to get sarcastic. I hate sarcastic teachers, don’t you?”
Aisha seemed almost unbelievably cheerful to Freya - but then, it sounded like she’d had a settled life, notwithstanding living in a were-infested town. Freya walked down the stairs with Aisha and waved her off at the door.
“Thanks for getting rid of the tree. See you at school tomorrow.” She went into the kitchen and got herself a cup of hot chocolate, then sat down on the back doorstep to watch the sun setting over the hills.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
SCHOOL DAYS
“You have no idea how much better school is, now that I don’t have to huddle alone,” Freya told Aisha during a break between classes. She cast a surreptitious glance at Gareth, the red-headed were-fox. Despite the demeaning names he had slung at her before the storm, nobody seemed inclined to make fun of her afterwards - not even Gareth. Their midnight meeting seemed to have achieved that much.
“Happy to be of service,” said Aisha with a grin. “You’ll notice it works out well for me, too.”
“Or maybe everyone’s too busy comparing their family’s storm damage, and they don’t have the mental room to be mean,” suggested Freya ruefully.
“Or they’re too hungry to think up names,” said Aisha.
Freya nodded gloomily. Most people didn’t have the foraging skills her Mum had taught her, supermarket foraging being much more popular with anyone wh
o could afford it.
The storm had damaged several roofs, and more than a few farms and allotments had been destroyed in addition to the glasshouse damage, so food was in short supply. The proximity of the sea had previously meant that food could be imported relatively easily, but the pier had also been damaged, and the cliffs were more than usually unstable. Some of the big houses on the waterfront had been abandoned, and the pier repair was on hold until the construction materials could be imported over land.
“I heard some of the hotels near the sea are going to have to be abandoned,” said Aisha, chewing on a hank of her hair.
“Sucks for them,” replied Freya.
“I think most of them have city houses they can go to,” said Aisha. “The ones on the beach are just for summer visitors.”
Freya’s sympathy shrunk abruptly.
“I wish we’d had another house we could just go to if we lost one,” she said. “It doesn’t seem fair.”
“I agree. But Mum says we need the summer people’s money. And with the pier shut down, we won’t get so many tourists in. Mind you, anyone who does come will have to go through the station.” She smiled, reminding Freya of a cat who’d just had a satisfactory meal. “That means more traffic through the cafe, so it’s a win for us.”
“Isn’t the pier mostly for fishing and imports anyway?”
“Yeah, but now everyone has to go through the station. Of course, we can’t get stuff from Europe now. That sort of sucks. I prefer the European chocolate to the stuff we get here,” said Aisha.
“That sounds snobbish,” Freya said.
“Who are you calling a snob? I thought I was your friend,” Aisha rebuked.
“Sorry, no offence meant,” Freya hastily assured Aisha. She didn’t want to lose the only friend she had here.
“Good. Look, I’ll bring some of the good stuff tomorrow so you can taste the difference. I bet you just have the cheap chocolate, right?”
“There’s nothing wrong with cheap chocolate,” said Freya defensively. She enjoyed chocolate in any form.
“Not if you don’t know any better. Which, to be fair, most of the kids here don’t.” She gestured at the clusters of teens dotting the area. “If they’re lucky, they’ll just be buying in bulk from that factory inland. There’s practically no cocoa at all in those chocolate bars they make.”
“I would be thrilled in be able to buy chocolate in bulk, wherever it was from,” said Freya.
“Cheapskate. Or maybe I mean greedy-guts.”
“Guilty as charged, if it’s chocolate.”
Freya smiled a little as she saw Gareth edge around the playground, clearly trying to avoid getting too close to her.
Now that is an improvement.
The next day, Aisha brought in two small squares of chocolate, individually wrapped in foil, and gave one to Freya in the lunch break. The brand name was scrawled across the packaging in a flowing, illegible font.
“Must be fancy if you can’t read the name, right?” said Freya.
“You’re a chocolate connoisseur already, I can tell,” giggled Aisha. “This isn’t the best one, but it’s the best we have. Turns out we need the pier operational, too.”
Freya peeled off the wrapping and inhaled the rich aroma.
Mmm, chocolate. Even if this type turns out to taste terrible, it smells so good.
“You don’t sniff it, Freya, you eat it,” Aisha said, her voice full of suppressed laughter.
“I will, I’m just appreciating it properly first.”
“Carry on, then.”
Freya wasn’t sure she liked this expensive chocolate on the first bite. It was much stronger than the milky chocolate she was used to. But as she rolled the melting morsel around her mouth, trying to draw out the experience as long as possible (who knew when she’d get to try it again), she began to appreciate the depth of flavour. She took a second bite, and tried to make that last even longer. The third bite was the last. When it was gone, she sighed.
“You’ve gone and ruined regular chocolate for me, Aisha. Is that the action of a friend?”
Aisha laughed.
“Only the best. But that’s all I can get for now, Mum said there’s no more. I don’t know if she meant till the pier is fixed, or something else. I know there’s some sort of chocolate tree blight.”
“That’s the worst news I’ve had all day,” said Freya. “First you ruin the cheap stuff for me, and now you say that you don’t have more expensive stuff, and even worse, all chocolate is doomed? I don’t think life would be worth living without chocolate.”
“Hey, I didn’t say it was doomed. Just that we don’t have more!”
“And then you bring up some blight. Whole species have disappeared from blight, you know. My Mum taught me that.”
“OK, now I’m depressed too.”
The bell rang, summoning them all inside again.
“And that just tops it off. I hate my life being dominated by bells,” said Aisha.
“Me too,” agreed Freya.
“DID YOU HEAR, FREYA?” Aisha was leaning against the wall beside Freya at break-time the next day. They watched the huddles of people form and re-form. “The were-foxes have offered to rebuild the pier. Of course, they want a cut of any future trade that comes through.”
“You’re kidding!”
“Not even. They’re going for a power move. If they manage to take over the port, they’ll rival us at the station. At the moment we’re pretty much on an even keel. Well, almost. If they get the port, they’ll definitely have an edge.”
“Will that make much difference to you? Or to me?”
Aisha shrugged.
“Who knows? Hopefully it won’t happen, and we won’t have to find out. But maybe it has something to do with your sister. You know, now they have someone who can maybe deal with the water deities a bit better.”
Freya looked around. No-one was particularly near, but she was uneasy all the same.
“Are you sure we should be talking about this at school?”
“Probably not. But I thought you’d want to know, since it means your sister might be around a bit more.”
“Thanks. I think.”
“So, on a totally non-controversial topic, what do you think about these storms then?”
Freya blinked at the sudden change of topic, saw that Gareth was nearby, and shrugged.
“My whole life has been dominated by storms. It’s nothing new.”
“So, you don’t think they’re getting worse?”
“They probably are. My family tries not to live right on the shore these days, but the winds are just as bad inland.”
“Yeah, they are. My cousins lost their roof in the last one. And I don’t know how we’re supposed to keep trees alive to fight climate change, when they keep getting baked in summer, drowned by floods in winter, and get blown over in spring and autumn. They don’t seem to have much chance, do they?”
“You’re talking to the world’s worst gardener. You know those bean experiments they get five-year-olds to do? Mine never grew.”
“Wow. Okay, yeah, that’s pretty bad. So, we keep you away from growing trees, then?”
“Definitely. You know, my Mum’s got these super-green fingers. She can grow anything - that’s how she got the job that brought us here. And here’s me unable to even grow a bean. Some fertility goddess, huh?”
“Don’t worry, Freya. There’s plenty of people out there who can’t grow stuff. Most people our age don’t care about growing things, you know. I’m sure there’s something else you’ll be better at.”
“I sure hope so. I just wish I knew what that was.”
The other people at school were worried, too. Word was that storms like the last one would get more common, and stronger, too. How would the town withstand the repeated battering? Many of the students came from homes that had been damaged, and all of them knew someone who hadn’t yet managed to repair that damage. Before science class, Freya overheard some of he
r classmates openly discussing their safety options.
“My cousins in America have storm-cellars. We should make our basements into storm shelters.”
“That’s the best suggestion I’ve heard. But we don’t have a basement. We live in a bungalow.”
“Bad luck. Guess you’ll be blown away then.”
“Nah, we’ll open up the old bomb shelters. There’s bound to be some around here. We should find them.”
“Or caves in the cliffs. That could work.”
“Except that you’d have to get past the waves, idiot.”
“Oh, yeah.”
Freya smiled to herself. While her classmates were trying to find solutions, it didn’t sound like they were close to a good one yet. Her smile faded as she realised that she didn’t have a good solution either.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
ENCOUNTER WITH TAMMY
Freya hoped that she would hear word of Tammy at school, especially since many of the kids there had red, ginger, or copper-toned hair - indicators of belonging to The Family. But her hopes proved to be unsubstantiated. Her sister was not mentioned. Of course, she’d never spoken much to any of the kids at school except to defend herself, so not hearing gossip was pretty much normal.
One Friday after school, Freya made a detour on the way home, to buy food for Mr Fluffbum from the discount supermarket. She thought she might visit Aisha afterwards. It was a long walk. She was trying not to let the distance bother her, but the wounds on her calf were making her whole leg ache. She wished she’d managed to get Mum to make one of her herbal concoctions for it. But it had been weeks since she saw her Mum for more than a quick goodnight.
Aisha’s whole family lived near the station, so the station was an easy place to meet her, and also to feel safe from the attentions of weres. Freya had realised since meeting Aisha that the were-foxes tended to congregate around the shopping centre and the bus station - both of which were well separated from the train station. She did wonder how many other demis she’d been missing, since she hadn’t realised Aisha was one. Freya was on high alert as she strode along the street, eyes scanning for any sign of ginger hair - or indeed, any sign of demi-ship in the passers-by. She was fairly confident that she could now spot the were-fox clan reliably. She had daily practice in class, after all. But the town was not so small that she knew everyone yet. She was looking for unusual weapons, questionable fashion choices, and tell-tale odd-coloured irises. It was hard to do this while maintaining a normal walking pace. More than once, Freya had to apologise to someone because she’d bumped into them. The third time, she apologised to a lamp pole. After that, she decided that her approach wasn’t working, and was in fact more likely to get her in trouble than not. As she was dusting herself off from her lamp pole encounter, she caught a glimpse of a familiar profile. Tammy!