by Nina Berry
“Thanks,” I said, still swimming in a tide of uncertainty. “How did I make everything go wrong so fast?”
“Arnaldo’s father’s the one who did that, not you,” Caleb said. “You’re not the kind of person who can stand by while people are getting hurt. That’s a good thing.”
“Is it?” I turned my head to look at him. “What if I try to do the right thing and end up making things worse?”
“At least you didn’t try to strangle your own brother.” He stood up, as if the thought of Lazar had pushed him from his seat. He took a few steps to stare out at the forest.
“You wouldn’t have gone through with it,” I said.
“Maybe I should have.” He said it very low, as if to himself.
Instinctively, I drew back. “You don’t mean that.”
“What if I did?” He turned to look at me, one eyebrow cocked. “What would you think of me then?” When I hesitated, he nodded. “You’d hate me. Then you should hate me now, because part of me wishes I’d put an end to him when I had the chance.”
“I could never hate you,” I said. “We all do stupid things. . . .”
“Would it be so stupid?” He ran one hand through his unruly dark hair. “He killed my mother and God knows how many others. Maybe it’s not so wrong to just kill Lazar and Ximon, and everyone else like them. The world would be a better place without them.”
“So you’re going to personally kill off everyone you think is bad?” I asked. “If we going around killing people we hate, how are we any better than the Tribunal?”
“Lazar deserves to die!” Caleb moved into me, black eyes sparking with gold in sudden fury. “He and Ximon will do anything to wipe us out, go to any extreme. And if we want to defeat them, we need to be willing to do the same.”
My heart was sinking lower and lower as he spoke. “I won’t become like them.” I made myself meet his eyes without flinching. “I can’t and still be me.”
“What, so your precious integrity’s more important than your life?” He was staring at me in disbelief.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But if I become what I hate, what’s the point of anything?”
He was frowning at me, his gaze flicking back and forth between my eyes, as if he’d find an answer in one or the other. Then he relaxed a little. “I just can’t lose you,” he said.
I smiled, and my heart stopped sinking, though it still felt heavy. “You won’t.”
Then I was in his arms. He swooped in and picked me up so that my feet left the floor, wrapping his arms around me to bury his face in my neck. “When you’re away it’s like a part of me is gone too,” he said softly, his lips moving against my skin.
There it was, that feeling I’d been missing. I could breathe again. In his arms I was home.
“I’m always with you,” I said. “Even when I’m away.”
He inhaled sharply, and then he kissed me with warm, soft lips. I kissed him back, my arms around his neck, fingers tangling in his unruly hair. I could feel the hard line of his body pressed against me, and I pushed myself even closer to him, never close enough. Closer, please . . .
Something soft tickled the small of my back. I giggled, wiggling in Caleb’s arms, then realized that unless he had three hands, it couldn’t be him.
“Whoa!” Caleb pulled his head back, eyes wide and staring behind me.
I turned to see an elk calf, all liquid brown eyes, winged ears, and knobby knees, removing its wet black nose from my skin. I blinked as it snuffled up at me, abbreviated tail wagging. Somehow it had scrambled up the grassy side of the building to join us on the patio.
“Oh, hi,” I said, my heart still racing from kissing Caleb. “Where’s your mom?”
The calf made a short, high-pitched mewing sound, almost like a bird’s chirp.
“We should get inside before Mom finds us,” Caleb said. “Elk are—holy shit.”
Too late. The mother elk was walking up the side of the hill toward us. She stood five feet tall at the shoulder, with no antlers, just thick brown fur that grew almost into a dark mane around her neck, and legs two miles long that ended in delicate, but substantial hooves.
I began to back away, but Caleb made me stop. “Don’t move if you can help it,” he said in his quiet voice. “If you startle them, they can knock into you.”
So I stood there and breathed evenly as the mother elk walked right up to her fawn and nuzzled it. Then she leaned her long neck over and sniffed my face so that we stood nose to nose. Her eyes were huge, bright, and unafraid.
“Hey, beautiful,” I said quietly.
The calf bleated a reply. The mother looked down and made a low rumbling sound; then she turned and walked away with careful, unhurried steps. The calf trotted after her.
I let out a quiet laugh of relief and leaned backwards into Caleb. “What the hell was that?” I asked. “Does Mother Nature not want us to make out or something?”
He wrapped his arms around me, chuckling. “I think Mother Nature has a crush on you. Don’t you dare leave me for her.”
His joking words hit me, and I turned around to look at him. “I have been shorting out gadgets and machines at a record rate for the past few weeks,” I said. “And before we moved, the tomatoes outside my room literally broke through the window screen to get inside.”
Caleb looked over the top of my head at the elk as they paused to search for grass. “So you think this nature thing of yours is growing stronger? That would help explain what just happened. You’re like some Disney princess who has birds come land on her shoulder and make her dresses for the ball.”
“Yeah, if Disney princesses set fire to their cell phones,” I said.
“You set your phone on fire?” He pulled back to look at me.
“Not on purpose!”
He laughed. “Okay, now there was something else you wanted to talk to me about, right?”
“About my mom,” I said. “Something weird happened.”
So I told him about Mom channeling whatever-it-was at the lightning tree in the middle of a storm.
“She said I had to learn who I am,” I finished. “It wasn’t Mom’s voice, or Mom’s hands—or Mom. At least, I don’t think so.”
“Her hair looked red, you said?” Caleb was pacing, listening intently.
“It was like the time you channeled that . . . thing from Othersphere,” I said. “Something other than Mom was coming through.”
“But from where?” He stopped and looked at me. “You have to grill Morfael about this. Don’t stand for any of his usual evasive bullshit. Your mother’s life could depend upon it.”
But I didn’t find Morfael until everyone came together around noon in the gym for our first class in the new school.
The last time I’d seen him, he’d been lying in a hospital bed, recovering from being shot. His tall alien body was still all pointy angles and cold gray-white skin beneath his cape of black, but he turned as we approached and his opal eyes shone with life. His thin mouth curved into a genuine smile. “Welcome. I look forward to working with you all again.”
Morfael wasn’t the hugging type, so we smiled back and lined up on the cushy gym mat as he led us through a warm-up, then a vigorous review of martial arts, tapping his carved wooden staff in time with his commands. Amaris kept up with us pretty well, wisps of blond hair sticking to her sweaty forehead as she punched and kicked alongside me. She must’ve been practicing with Caleb during the past month.
Then a quick shower and shift for everyone except Amaris and Caleb. Shifting had become fairly easy for me, and for all of us, but for some reason I just couldn’t wait to shift. I slipped into the skin of my tiger form easier than falling into bed after a long day. It felt so good I nearly bolted out of the girls’ bathroom to go hunting, but November bravely got between me and the door and shook her finger at me, calling my name, and telling me not to get a new-moon grade the first day.
Morfael graded us in phases of the moon—and a new moon w
as the equivalent of an F. No way I could stand the teasing from the others if I ever let that happen, so I forced myself to shift back to human.
We both had to do the same with London, who actually growled at us in her wolf form, then howled before shifting back to human. November was the most easily lured back to her human form; all we had to do was threaten to steal her candy stash.
When we gathered for the after-lunch lesson, all bundled up outside, Arnaldo asked Morfael why shifting felt so different now. The boys must have felt the same thing.
Morfael listened, leaning on his wooden staff, unmoving. The carved animalistic figures on the staff did not seem to move, as they had before. The staff was too tall for me to see the “shadow walker” rune on top. I still didn’t know exactly what it meant about Morfael, though the term referred to legendary creatures who could actually travel between worlds. If Morfael was one of them, he certainly wasn’t telling. But then he never said a word more than necessary.
“Today’s lesson,” he said in response to Arnaldo, “is how to recognize places where the veil between the worlds is thin.”
He stopped speaking and looked around at all of us, not blinking.
“But . . .” November scrunched up her face in puzzlement. “What about how easy it is to shift?”
“And it was easier to shift to bear form than shift back to human,” said Siku. “Why?”
“In this place, we are very close to an area which lies perilously close to Othersphere,” said Morfael.
He paused, expressionless.
“Perilously?” said November in a small voice.
“Being a tiger felt more natural than being human,” I said slowly. “But what’s that got to do with . . . ?”
London’s eyes widened in realization. “Shifting is easier because we’re in a place that’s close to Othersphere!” she said.
Morfael’s thin lips twisted with pleasure as we all went “Oh!”
“That is one way to know where the veil is thin,” he said. “Your connection to your animal form will become particularly strong. You may feel an overwhelming desire to shift to it and not want to shift back.”
“Is it the nuclear testing?” said Caleb. He stood between me and Amaris, hands thrust into the pockets of his long black coat to stay warm.
We all turned to look at Caleb, Morfael included.
“My mother taught me that the veil between worlds becomes thin wherever a huge explosion of power took place,” he explained. “Things like volcanoes, earthquakes, meteor strikes, and nuclear bombs—they erode the fabric between this world and Othersphere. And this school isn’t far from the Nevada test site. They say they made over nine hundred tests of nuclear weapons in the area, but who knows how many they really set off?”
“They’re setting off nuclear bombs nearby?” November asked, her voice rising in alarm. “Great choice for a school location!”
“Don’t worry. They stopped testing in the nineties because of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty,” said Caleb. “I looked it up before we settled on this area for the school.”
“And it is indeed an excellent location for my school,” said Morfael.
“Because it’s close to where the veil is thin,” I said. “You want us to learn about that.”
He nodded, moonlight eyes glinting. “The thickness of the veil between worlds is not consistent. You may discover a spot where it is particularly thin during one of your hikes, or find a place where it thickens. This is something you will learn to detect—without shifting. You will find that the proximity of Othersphere has other, unexpected effects on you and the world around you.”
“I—” Amaris started to speak, then cut herself off, blushing.
We all turned to look at her, which made her duck her head, not speaking. Caleb gave her nudge with his elbow. “Go on . . .”
She lifted her chin, still flushed, but determined. “I feel stronger here than I did in Las Vegas, or anywhere else, really. I haven’t been able to heal anyone since . . .” She swallowed hard, but went on. “Since my father was injured. But the more time I spend here, the more I feel like maybe I could heal someone again. But, you know, maybe I’m wrong.”
“You are correct,” Morfael said, and Amaris let out her breath in relief. “As a healer, you draw your power directly from Othersphere, though we are still not sure exactly how. Anything that removes barriers between you and the other world will facilitate the use of your power. In a similar fashion, Caleb and I will find it easier to see the shadow forms of objects and people, and to draw them out.”
“Area 51!” I said, and then realized the words had popped out of me without thinking. “Oh, sorry. But that whole thing is probably because the veil here is thin too, right?”
The other kids exchanged puzzled looks, except Caleb, who was grinning at me.
“What’s Area 51?” said Arnaldo.
“It’s a military base not far from here,” I said, “and because of all the crazy sightings in this area of strange lights and weird aircraft, people who believe in UFOs think Area 51 is where the government keeps evidence of alien spaceships and alien bodies and stuff.”
“What, so the UFO’s aren’t alien ships, they’re . . . Othersphere ships?” Siku pursed his lips. “Why would they have spaceships in Othersphere?”
“Not ships, probably,” I said. “Lots of the things people see are government aircraft being tested. But since it’s also right near where the veil is thin, maybe they’re sometimes seeing . . . I don’t know, lights from Othersphere, or creatures, or something that doesn’t make sense in this world.”
“You can’t see through the veil,” said November in a scoffing tone. “I mean, callers like Caleb can sense shadow through it, but humdrums and shifters don’t see animals and mountains and buildings through the veil unless they’re called through. Everybody knows that.”
“Everybody’s wrong.” I said, vividly recalling the clash of thunder as lightning had stabbed up between my mother’s feet. “There’s an old oak tree in my neighborhood whose shadow form is a thunderstorm, and I’ve seen the lightning without any callers being around. My stepfather Richard saw it too.”
Morfael’s gaze became very pointed.
“I’ve been wanting to tell you, but this is the first time I’ve seen you!” I said. “But I’m not crazy, right? Light and things from Othersphere can appear in our world.”
Morfael’s eyes narrowed at Caleb, who startled a bit, as if pinched. “Well, your animal forms are manifestations of power from Othersphere,” Caleb said. “And for a limited time I can pull a swarm of bees or a forest out of there that feels and acts as real as we do. So seeing lights and shapes through the veil—that could be possible.” He turned to Morfael. “But wouldn’t they need someone drawing on the power to make them visible?”
“It is the thinness of the veil that makes these things possible,” said Morfael. “In normal space, a power source such as a caller or shifter is required to manifest the shadow form. But in thin-space, where great power has already been released, shadows may appear randomly, with no one calling them forth. Was there a power source when you saw this lightning?”
“Not that I saw,” I said. “The old oak tree is there, of course, and at the time, my mother and I were also there.” I saw again my normally tiny mother towering over me, her once brown hair like flames licking her suddenly unfamiliar face. “My mother spoke. But it wasn’t her voice.”
“Something came through your mother?” London asked. “But she’s a humdrum, right?”
“Yeah.” I might as well just spill it all. “And whatever it was had red hair like mine, and was taller, and had claws.”
Silence fell except for the brisk afternoon breeze rustling through the needles of the evergreens around us. Clouds blocked the sky, threatening snow. I shivered, and Caleb slipped his warm hand into mine. I caught his eye, and when he nodded, felt the courage to look up at Morfael. “Could it have been my biological mother?”
M
orfael’s eyes looked unfocused for a moment, as if he wasn’t quite there; then he blinked and nodded. “It is possible.”
I felt as if the breeze were blowing through me. Like my skin and flesh had dissolved to leave my bones rattling in the forest. “But how? From where?”
Morfael did not answer. His hollow face showed no emotion. How could he not care? He’d spent over a year searching for my biological parents after he’d found me in the Siberian forest, and then searching for any other tiger-shifters who might be willing to look after me. He’d found none. Or so he said. After all that effort, wasn’t he curious about where I’d come from, where tiger-shifters might still live?
“Could it be a trick?” said Amaris. “Someone pretending to be your real mother, someone trying to manipulate you somehow.”
“Oh, my God!” That hadn’t occurred to me. What I’d seen that night had felt so real, so sincere.
“That, too, is possible,” said Morfael.
“You’re thinking it’s the Tribunal?” Caleb asked Amaris. “Trying to throw Dez off her game or to use her for some purpose.”
“Could they do that?” November sounded like she couldn’t quite believe it. “I know objurers are basically just like callers with a bad attitude, but still.”
“Caleb changed into something else the night we raided Ximon’s compound,” I said. “Something from Othersphere. Maybe an objurer from the Tribunal somehow did that with my mom, from a distance or something.”
“They’d have to be very powerful to do it from far away,” said Caleb. “Even up close, it would be draining.”
“Yet another reason to find out what the hell the Tribunal wants with DNA from all of us,” said Arnaldo.
Snow began to fall. For an hour after that, we walked through the thick, unhurried flurries under Morfael’s instruction, focusing on our internal connection to Othersphere. Any change in it could be a signal that the thickness of the veil nearby had changed. This was very hard to do because always at the edge lay the temptation of slipping into animal form. For me, the power of my tiger self felt closer and more irresistible than ever.