“The police?” Jeremy says.
I give him a look. “Hello, Officer,” I say sweetly. “Here’s this kid whose life force is being sucked out by the school principal. Could you go arrest the principal, please?”
“I get the point,” Jeremy says, sour-lemon yellow. “What about your dad?”
I want to look away. “I don’t know.” I swallow. “I…don’t think we can take Cris there.” And they’re both looking at me and I just can’t say anything else.
“Okay. We better figure something out.” Jeremy sighs. “If Mr. Teleomara is like your guardian or something in the real world, they’ll just give you right back to him.” He frowns, thinking hard. “My dad’s a lawyer, so I know how this kind of thing works. They don’t take a kid’s word for stuff over a grown-up’s. Cris, what about your family?”
“They were both First Borns.” He says it so softly that I can hardly hear him. “Zoroan got them.”
We’re all real quiet for a minute. It’s getting dark under the trees. An owl hoots dark green and suddenly flits down to land in the path in front of us. Its eyes glow with yellow light, and I never saw an owl like that before. It hoots softly green, and Cris says something to it in a language I don’t know. “Zoroan knows I escaped.” Cris leans on us like he’s about to fall down.
“We can go to my tree fort,” Jeremy says, kind of doubtfully. “I can sneak you in there and nobody’ll know we’re there. Maybe he’ll be afraid to do anything right in someone’s backyard. Man, will I get in trouble if I get caught.”
And I don’t think he really wants us to go there, but we can’t think of any other place. And maybe he’s right and Zoroan will be afraid to do anything so close to houses and people. I don’t think that’s going to matter to him, but like I say, we can’t think of anything better. So we go.
It’s kind of a weird walk. Some trees, mostly the really old ones, you can almost see this person inside. It’s like they’re made of see-through glass and someone is inside the trunk, only the glass isn’t really clear, so you can’t make out a face. And I’m pretty sure I see the little people I used to see with my mother…the Shy Folk, she called ’em. And Jeremy is seeing ’em, too; I can tell by the way he looks quick, then stares. I guess it’s because we’re with Cris.
I’m kind of sorry when we get to Jeremy’s house. It’s in one of those nice developments, all nice houses and neat yards with swing sets and flowers. Jeremy’s house is at the edge, and the backyard comes right to the woods. His fort is back here, kind of out of sight. I bet it embarrasses his mom because it’s a mess of plywood and stuff and he built it himself. We sit out there sometimes and talk about school and listen to CDs that his mom says are bad for us.
It sure doesn’t look real safe from Zoroan. But the owl with the glowing eyes flits down to settle on a limb of the old apple tree it’s built in, so maybe it’s better than nothing. We help Cris up into the fort and scramble up after, and I’m looking around everywhere for silver glitter, but I don’t see any.
I like it, inside. Clean plywood floor, even if it’s gray and weathered, shelves made out of old apple crates turned on their sides, full of CDs, books, and stuff like that. I like it better than some of the dumps we’ve rented. Cris kind of falls down on the old sofa cushions against the wall.
“You okay?” Jeremy asks.
“I guess so,” Cris says. “Just tired.”
“Look, I’d better get in the house.” Jeremy glances over his shoulder. “I’m gonna be in trouble for being late, even if the school didn’t call about me skipping out. I’ll see if I can sleep out here tonight. It’s a weeknight, but sometimes Mom lets me anyway. I’ll sneak you out some food and stuff.”
“Water, too, okay?” Soon as I say that, I’m dying of thirst. I bet Cris is, too.
“There’s some pop out here. I hid a couple of cans here last week so Mom wouldn’t know.” Jeremy rummages in the apple crates, brings out a can of Coke. “Here’s a flashlight, in case I can’t come back out right away. Don’t shine it out the window or Mom might see. I’ll be back as quick as I can.” And Jeremy jumps down from the fort and heads for the house.
It’s starting to get kind of cold. I open the Coke and sit down by Cris. I hand it to him and he drinks some and sits up. That warm Coke is the best thing I’ve ever tasted and we finish the can in about a minute. Birds are making night noises; soft pink and blue and green, little bursts of light, like the fireflies I remember from when we lived in Ohio once.
“How can you be a First Born and not know about magic?” Cris asks after a while.
I think about that for a while. “I never really knew it was magic, I guess.” I shrug. “That’s just how the world was…there were Shy Folk, and unicorns, and some animals talked to her and some didn’t.” I shrug.
“How did…how did Zoroan take her?”
I swallow. I still dream about it. Nightmares. “She…fell through a door that just opened up one day. We were walking in the woods. I was pretty little.” I shrug, although I can still see that door and the nothingness behind it, and the look on her face as she fell backward through it. “Dad said never ever talk about it. And I don’t. Until I met you,” I tell him. “And I don’t know…” I look down at the empty Coke can. “I guess I was starting to think that…you know…it maybe didn’t happen the way I remember.” No sign of Jeremy. His mom found out, probably, and he’s in real trouble. I wonder if he’ll rat on us. Maybe, if he’s in too much trouble. He didn’t really want us to come here. Will they call the police? Give Cris back to Mr. Teleomara, like Jeremy thinks? I watch for the muddy gray sound of a police car, and I watch for silver, and what does it matter if I see ’em? What are we gonna do about it? And I think of Cris screaming and it all of a sudden hits me that Zoroan did that to my mom, too. And then I realize Cris is crying, real soft, a dark gold sound that makes me even sadder.
And I put my arm around him because I know he’s thinking the same thing.
“Hey, you guys there?”
Jeremy’s whisper sounds so good. “Yeah, we’re here,” I say, and I want to hug him as he scrambles into the fort, lugging a backpack. “You didn’t tell.”
“What d’you mean? Did you really think I would? Thanks, Melanie. I don’t run out on my friends.” His words come out an ugly orange.
“I’m sorry.” And I mean it. “I guess…I never really had a real friend before. I kind of don’t know the rules. Did you get into trouble?”
“Oh, tons. Gimme that flashlight.” He sets the backpack down on the floor, clicks on the light. “I’m grounded forever for skipping school, and your dad called the police, I guess. When you didn’t come home. And somebody saw us leave together. I said you were really upset and I was just trying to counsel you and you wouldn’t talk to me, so then I figured as long as I was already outside, I might as well enjoy the skip. My mom liked the trying-to-counsel-you part, so I think she sort of believes me. Maybe. I brought you guys some water—filled up an empty milk jug—and I snuck some stuff out of the pantry in the garage. I didn’t dare go into the kitchen…I have to go right past Mom and Dad’s bedroom. They’re having a fight right now about whose fault I am.” He grins, but it’s kind of weak. “I think Mom’s winning and I’m Dad’s fault.”
The water tastes a little like sour milk, but I’m not complaining and neither is Cris. Jeremy brought peanut butter and a box of Saltines, too. “This is the best I could do.” He makes a face. “Everything else is in cans. So okay.” He digs a battered old table knife out of an apple crate and starts slathering peanut butter on crackers. “You want to tell me what’s going on, Cris? Before the police show up and we all get arrested or something?”
“Don’t worry about the police.” Cris starts stuffing crackers into his mouth and I think again about him maybe stuck in his chair, night and day, in those vines. “Worry about Zoroan,” Cris says, with his mouth full. “He wants all the First Born power.” He swallows, gulps more water. “It’s getting more con
centrated. The First Born power. Used to be a lot of First Born. But some people don’t have kids before they die, you know? So fewer and fewer share it. If he ever got it all…” Cris shrugs. “I think…our world would just go away or something. Or maybe Zoroan would turn it into something different or use the power to mess with you all. I just…don’t know. But he’s been secretly kidnapping the First Born for, oh…maybe a thousand years or so. People figured it out after a while, so we’re real careful. But he has so much of the power now that you can’t really fight him. It’s more a matter of staying out of his traps. Like the one I was in.” Cris looks away. “It takes him a while to empty all the First Born power out of one of us.”
I shiver and Jeremy’s looking real wide-eyed. “What happens when he…takes it all out of you?” he finally asks.
“I don’t know.” Cris looks down at the cracker in his hand. “I guess you just die. I mean…nobody has ever come back. There’s this prophecy…that he can be destroyed only by a First Born using a true-shape weapon. And I guessed…it was a trap.” He stares at the cracker, all squashed to crumbs in his hand. “I guess…I just hoped…I thought…What did I have to lose?” His voice is dull, like old metal now. “I thought…it might bring them back.”
I’d have tried it, too. If I thought maybe it would bring my mom back.
“Okay, okay, time-out here.” Jeremy starts waving his hands. “I now believe in magic. I am grounded for the rest of my life for skipping school. I am probably going to get arrested for kidnapping. For that, I want to hear what is going on in English please.” He glares at Cris. “What is all this First Born stuff. What did we see when we were coming over here…the weird trees and stuff? Where is your world?”
“Right here.” Cris shrugs. “I guess you maybe saw true-shapes because you were with me. It’s like this…what if you could only see red and blue and green, and anything yellow was invisible to you?”
“We’d bump into a lot of school buses.”
“But you couldn’t feel yellow things, either. You just wouldn’t know they were there. You’d walk right through yellow things.”
“World would sure look funny.” Jeremy’s frowning.
“No sun, just light. No sunflowers, no buttercups, no yellow M&Ms.” I’m thinking about those Shy Folk and the unicorns I used to see sometimes with my mom. “So we don’t know yellow is there?”
“Oh, that was just an example.” Cris shrugs. “Nah, it’s more like you can see yellow. Just not all the other colors.” He picks up the old knife that Jeremy was using to glop peanut butter on the crackers.
It turns into a cool dagger with blue jewels in the handle.
“Wow!” Jeremy’s eyes really do bug out. Well, it is pretty cool.
“How’d you do that?” Jeremy touches the knife, yelps, and sucks on his finger. “It’s just something I found out in the old dump, way out in the woods. I cleaned it up before I used it, honest.”
“I guess you guys can see true-shapes when you’re close to one of us.” Cris looks at the knife. “I don’t know what you saw…or didn’t see…on our way here, but that’s probably why. Because you’re with me.”
I’m thinking about Mr. Beasley with that jewel in his forehead. I wonder if he told Mr. Teleomara that I was in Mrs. Banks’s class? Cris is looking at me. “I still don’t get it why you can’t see everything, Melanie. You’re a First Born.”
“Uh…” They’re both looking at me. “I guess it’s because…my dad’s not magic.” And doesn’t ever ever want to talk about it.
Cris looks shocked. “That’s not supposed to happen.”
“Well, I’m here. And what’s so wrong about it?” I’m glaring.
“So hey…how come this fort isn’t a castle or something?” Jeremy breaks in. “How come it looks like always?”
“It’s made out of dead trees.” Cris’s lip kind of curls. “This is its true-shape.”
“Okay.” Jeremy’s frowning. “But how come I could skin my elbows sliding down that rock wall and then, when we all climbed over, I look back and yeah, it’s the old haunted house, same as I thought it was?”
“Because I wasn’t there anymore and neither was Zoroan.” Cris frowns. “I don’t know why you saw it in the first place, Melanie. If you can’t see the true-world?”
I shrug, still a little mad at him. Actually, I saw the apple tree first, I remember now. And then I noticed the wall. Which is kind of weird, because the tree is leaning on the wall. I remember that I went for a walk in the woods that day, feeling pretty sorry for myself. The In Crowd again. And I was walking along and thinking about my mother and the fun stuff that had happened when she took me for walks in the woods, and how I wished my dad would talk about her. And I saw the apple tree and wanted to pick some of the blossoms on it. And I was still thinking about her when I noticed the wall and climbed it and…well, you know the rest.
And you know…I wonder if maybe…maybe the world hasn’t changed. Maybe it’s me. That it isn’t that I can’t see the Shy Folk and the unicorns and the people in the trees that I remember. Maybe…I just don’t. I mean, you tell people about meeting a unicorn or one of the Shy Folk, they think you’re lying or crazy. I wonder if maybe I started, well…believing them? That I was crazy? Like deep down inside?
And that makes me sad, like I’m betraying my mom or something. And it’s not like Dad ever said that it wasn’t real. He just said not to talk about it. But maybe that made me listen too much. To the people who said it didn’t happen. Jeremy’s going on about magic and what Cris sees that he doesn’t, and I’m not really paying attention. I’m just feeling sad and looking out into the darkness of Jeremy’s yard.
Only…it’s not darkness.
Oh, crap.
“Look.” I grab Cris’s arm. “Look there. Can you see it? No…there!” Silver. Powdered razor blades. The owl we saw before suddenly darts down through the darkness, hooting urgent green, circling the tree.
“Look at what?” Jeremy blinks. “The bird?”
Cris looks blank, too.
“Mr. Teleomara…Zoroan.” All of a sudden I’m freezing, shivering. “Can’t you see that silvery stuff over there by the house? He’s out there.”
“Zoroan’s umbra?” Cris is staring at me, and I never noticed before that his eyes are green, and they glow like the owl’s eyes glowed. “I can sense him,” he says. “He’s close. You mean you can see it?”
“I don’t know. What’s an umbra? I can see when he talks. Like you talk gold and Jeremy talks yellow. Maybe we ought to get out of here?”
Too late. A river of silver, razor-dust fog snakes across the yard, circling the swing set and disappearing under the fort where I can’t see it. The owl drops like a stone. With a glittery flash, the silver strikes, wrapping the owl just like Mr. Beasley would. It lets out a single, high-pitched hoot, then pops like a bubble pops and just…disappears. Then…too fast to really see…the razor-fog is in the doorway, like a huge silver Mr. Beasley. Just like Mr. Beasley going after a mouse, it goes after Cris.
And I step in front of it.
It slaps into me like a hose turned on real hard. And it hurts. Like it is made out of razor blades, and I can’t help it, I yell, and I’m trying to grab on to it, but it’s like water, too, and my hands just kind of go through it. And it feels like it’s burning my skin off and I close my eyes and I can’t stand it any longer and…
…it stops. And Cris is standing in front of me with that gold dagger and a few wisps of mist are sort of trickling out of the fort.
“Yahoo, Cris, way to go!” Jeremy claps Cris on the back, and he staggers and it’s like the dagger is real heavy for him, like it weighs a ton.
“What happened?” I look at myself. I’m okay. No burns, not even like a sunburn. “That hurt.”
“He’s really strong.” Cris sits down on the floor all of a sudden. “Maybe from all the First Born power he’s taken. I…I don’t think I can stand up to him.”
And his words are k
ind of tinged with that dog-poop color again. I figure that is not good. He looks at me. “Melanie, it really helps that you can see it…his umbra. Tell me where it is. If I can cut through it, it doesn’t have any power anymore.”
“You’re a First Born, maybe you destroyed him when you stabbed it with that dagger, huh?” Jeremy sits down beside Cris. “I couldn’t see anything, but isn’t that what the prophecy said?”
“I have to stab his body with a true-shape weapon, not just stab his umbra.” Cris’s head droops. “He won’t let me get that close, and I don’t think I’m strong enough to fight through.” He looks at me. “That was really brave, Melanie. Trying to stop his umbra. It can kill you. You’re lucky,” he says. “As well as brave.”
Lucky, yes. Not brave. Just stupid. I rub my arms. Jeremy’s looking at me like he’s impressed. I make a face at him. “What do we do now, Cris?” My voice comes out shaky. “Is there any way to keep it out?”
“There’s nothing else I can use to stop it.” He looks around the fort. “If I had another First Born, we might be strong enough to keep him at bay. Maybe.”
Well, I can’t help it if my dad isn’t magic and I’m not magic.
“Come on, Cris.” Jeremy is kind of hopping up and down. “Melanie can see this umbra thing. You have the dagger. We gotta work together on this. You can’t just sit here and wait for him.”
While Jeremy’s going on, I’m looking out into the yard. It’s real late now, the empty, cold part of the night like when you wake up and you feel like you’re the only living thing in the world. And there he is. Walking into the yard just like he walked into class. And I can see him real easy, even though it’s dark and there isn’t even a moon. That silvery stuff kind of drifts around him, like he’s walking in his own fogbank.
Wizards: Magical Tales from the Masters of Modern Fantasy Page 10