by Nina Berry
A thud and Amaris saying “Oof!” brought us all together again. We found her getting to her feet, brushing snow off the front of her jacket. But her right hand left red streaks on the navy blue fabric. “I’m okay,” she said. “I didn’t see a log under the snow and boom.”
“Your hand!” London darted forward and took her right hand, holding the palm up. It oozed blood from abrasions. “Nothing deep or dangerous. Already it’s clotting, so you won’t need stitches. Maybe use some snow to numb it up until we go back inside.”
“No.” Morfael moved through the group of us, up to Amaris. “Heal yourself.”
Amaris’s eyes popped wide, her jaw dropping slightly open. “I . . . I don’t think I can.”
“You have done it before,” he said.
“Yeah, but not for a long time. I’m kind of . . .” She bit her lip. “I’m broken.”
Morfael’s face did not change. “Heal yourself.”
“Okay.” She blinked hard. “I’ll try.”
London released her hand. “Good luck.”
“Thanks.” Amaris gave her a weak smile.
“Don’t forget, Amar,” November said, pronouncing it like “ammer,” “the veil is thin here.”
Amaris nodded, held up her hands, palms facing her, and closed her eyes.
Caleb leaned into me, his voice low. “I’ve only seen her do it twice. It’s pretty amazing. She doesn’t have to hum or anything.”
Indeed, the look on Amaris’s face had become very placid, almost like she’d fallen asleep standing up. Only a tiny worried line hovered between her brows, and her shoulders were bunched with tension. Relax, I thought at her. You can do this.
But after about thirty seconds, her eyes flew open and she shook her head. Her hand was still bloody and scratched. “I can’t.” Her eyes were bright with tears. “I told you.”
“It is not I whom you told,” said Morfael. Then he turned to address us all, back in classroom mode. “Now, you will all continue trying to find spots where the veil is thin. Call out when you have found a perceptible change in space.”
We fanned out again, hands out, as if maybe we could feel a change tangibly. London scooped up some snow and put it on the scrape on Amaris’s hand. “Just put some antibiotic ointment on it when we get back. No big deal.”
“Thanks.” Amaris gave her a watery smile.
Morfael took me aside, his normally impassive face showing just the slightest twitch. I was immediately on high alert.
“The regional Council of Shifters wishes to speak to you first thing tomorrow morning,” Morfael said. “It is time for them to review whether or not they approve your presence here.”
I slumped. When I first came to Morfael’s school, I’d barely managed to get the Council’s approval. The vote had been three to two in favor of me staying, thanks to a last-minute switch by the bear-shifter representative. But I’d stirred up a lot of trouble since then, and the Council was as cautious as a feral cat when it came to the Tribunal. Some of them had wanted to have me killed back then. How much worse must they feel about me now?
“What if they don’t approve?” I asked. “Will you kick me out? How much authority do they have?”
“They can’t force me to get rid of you,” he said, his eyes sparkling with too many prisms of color to count. “But let’s not anticipate the worst.”
“Easy for you to say,” I said.
He regarded me with what might have been amusement. It was hard to tell with him. “You can use the dread you feel right now to tap into your connection to Othersphere,” he said. “That will help you find the places where the veil is thin.”
It took me a second to realize he was referring to the exercise again, trying to determine the thickness of the veil between worlds. To hell with that. I opened my mouth to ask him more about the Council, but he had already walked away to speak to Arnaldo.
So I did focus on the dread. Dark thoughts often fueled the black core of power inside me. After about ten minutes of walking around the forest, I realized that it would sometimes pulse and grow, not larger, but darker, more chaotic at times. It was like a crazy whirlpool threatening to suck me in. The next time it did that, I stopped and found a very large bristlecone pine tree in front of me.
I stopped walking. London bumped into me, with a quiet exclamation, and then drew back. I hadn’t realized she was following so close.
“There’s something here,” I said. “The veil is thinner. I think.”If only I could escape through it, so the Council could never find me.
“Is it the tree?” She looked at the collection of white-dusted cones nestled in the evergreen branches. “How can you tell?”
The others got closer, as I looked at the tree while at the same time focusing on the roiling power near my heart. “I don’t think it’s the tree. It’s coming from something smaller.”
“Wait,” said November. “I know what you mean. It smells like lemon-lime jelly beans around here somewhere.” As London rolled her eyes, she glared. “What?”
A small brown form flicked up the trunk of the tree, and I felt the shift in power inside me. “There!” I pointed at a tiny bird with a fluffy gray body and a striking black-and-white striped head perched on a branch. It cocked its black-capped head and fixed a tiny dark eye on me.
“A mountain chickadee,” said Morfael, moving soundlessly up to gaze at it. “A female. One of the most common creatures in the western United States, and yet, you are right, Desdemona.” He reached out one skeletal finger, not that different from the bird’s claws, and stroked its feathers once. The bird cheeped musically, but did not fly away. “She lies very close to the veil. All of you, focus on your connection to Othersphere as you look at her, and notice how she behaves. Caleb”—he motioned Caleb to move forward—“tell me what you see.”
Caleb came to stand next to me, and under his breath, he hummed something very quietly. We all gasped as the vibration from it, perhaps magnified by the proximity of Othersphere, thrummed through us.
The bird inclined its head, the black stripe over its eye aimed at Caleb. He pursed his lips, still humming. Then with a sharp exhale, he broke off and stepped back, eyes wide.
“Oh, wow. She’s a lot bigger in Othersphere. Like, dragon big. With shiny scales, and eyes like copper pots. Claws as long as my arm.” He shook his head and laughed at himself a little. “In Othersphere, this place is inside her cave, and when I looked at her . . . she looked right back at me. She knows we’re here. I just hope she isn’t hungry.”
November looked at Caleb uneasily. “Could something come through the veil here and . . . eat us?”
“Probably not,” Morfael said.
“Probably?” said London. She stood very close to me, as if using me as a shield between her and the chickadee.
“There is a lake in Scotland that lies close to Othersphere,” said Morfael. “People claim to have seen a large creature swimming in its waters that could only have come through the veil. But she has not eaten anyone.” He paused to think. “That we know of.”
We all exchanged looks. Thanks to the Tribunal’s prejudices and the shifter community’s fear of exposure, Amaris and the shifter kids had all led relatively sheltered lives, often not allowed access to TV or the Internet by their parents. Shifter parents like Arnaldo’s dad who didn’t want them “tainted” by humdrum culture were common. Of all of them, only November had a phone with Internet access, and even she had a minimal data plan. Still, all of them had heard of the Loch Ness Monster.
“So much for no one traveling between worlds. They say it’s impossible, but it sounds like it’s happening all the time,” said Arnaldo.
“They also say that shifters only have one animal form,” said London. “But we’ve seen Dez shift into two.”
“Could we do that?” Siku turned to Morfael.
Morfael did not reply, only faintly raised his nearly invisible eyebrows and smiled his creaky smile.
“The problem isn’t just t
raveling across worlds. With a power source, that’s possible. It’s got to be much tougher staying on the other side of the veil for more than a few minutes, especially without a power source to keep you there,” Caleb said, returning to the topic. I moved closer to him, and he smiled down at me.
“There are legendary people or things known as shadow walkers,” I said, not looking at Morfael. It was in researching the rune on the top of his staff that I’d come upon this information. “I read about them. They walk between worlds at will.”
“My mom used to tell me stories about the shadow walkers,” said Siku. “She said they move between all the many worlds, not just ours and Othersphere. They belong nowhere and go everywhere. She said they’d come across the veil and take me away if I was bad. But that’s just a story to frighten kids.”
“So are werewolves,” said Amaris. She threw a smile at London. “Right, London?”
I held my breath. London hated it when people called wolf-shifters werewolves. Those feral blood-crazed stereotypes made her stomp off to sulk.
But the look Amaris sent her was so merry, so knowing, that a smile broke out suddenly from under London’s habitual gloom, and she laughed.
“A-wooo!” She threw back her head and howled. The cry was eerie, a genuine wolf call, raising goose bumps on my arms. Then London grabbed my hand and twirled me around, singing the song she supposedly hated most: “Werewolves of London.”
I laughed and twirled her around in turn, kicking up snow. November grabbed a clueless-looking Amaris around the waist to dance with us. A second later, Amaris was howling with us, “Ah-woooo!”
General mayhem ensued as Siku swept up both November and Amaris in his arms at the same time, lost his balance, and all three fell into a snowdrift. Arnaldo sang the next verse, perfectly in key, and London pulled me down into the powder with the others. Caleb lobbed a snowball at the back of Arnaldo’s head, which put an abrupt stop to the singing and led to a mad scramble for cover and wet handfuls of snow. It quickly became boys versus girls, and with Amaris on our side, we rushed the boys and pounded them mercilessly till they threw their hands in front of their faces, laughing and crying uncle.
Siku rolled over and made the biggest snow angel I’d ever seen, and Amaris lay down next to him to make one that looked like it was holding his angel’s hand. We lined up then, creating a linked line of blurry winged shapes in the snow. I rolled onto Caleb as he finished his angel and kissed him with cold lips, clumps of snow falling from the back of my head onto his cheek to melt into tiny streams.
“Morfael just told me I have a meeting with the regional Council tomorrow morning,” I whispered, my heart beating fast against his chest. “Will you be there with me?”
“I’ll follow you anywhere,” he said, his arms tightening around me. “Don’t worry. Together we can make it through anything.”
I nodded and laid my head on his shoulder, knowing he meant what he said. Maybe everything would be okay between us. Maybe the Council would embrace me and Caleb would forgive Lazar. I opened my mouth to tell Caleb that I loved him, and that we’d work everything out. Then I remembered how he’d said he wanted Lazar dead, and no words would come.
CHAPTER 9
After dinner I tried to avoid the nauseating mix of guilt and anxiety threatening to boil my brain by going to the library to do some research. Morfael was standing there expectantly, as if he’d been waiting. He held out one pale hand. In it lay a plain leather scabbard attached to a wide silk belt with a tortoiseshell clasp.
“The Shadow Blade,” I said, and grasped the carved winged creature on the hilt to unsheathe the dagger. A bone-deep contentment washed over me as I held up the pitch-black knife. As before, its cutting edge was amorphous rather than sharp, as if trailing smoke.
“I have found a way to make it keep its form,” said Morfael. “Unless you wish me to reverse the process, it will now always remain a dagger, scabbard, and belt.”
“So we don’t have to tote my old back brace around everywhere for Caleb to call the blade forth.” I nodded. The Shadow Blade had been the shadow form of my back brace, its power sensed and brought forth by Caleb when we raided Ximon’s compound. After that, as long as I held it or wore it, it remained a blade. But once I took it off, it reverted to its humdrum form, the brace. Now that shifting had so magically cured my scoliosis and my spine was straight, I didn’t need to wear the brace anymore. Having it permanently in knife form would make it much easier to deal with.
As before, when I held the Blade, it felt exactly right, as if it had been made for me. The smoky edge of the dagger cut only through nonliving material. It may have been my imagination, but it seemed to me to hunger for metal or plastic to sink into. I looked around the room for something innocuous and not living to slice into, but the bookshelves were made of wood, the books of paper, the chairs upholstered in leather or wool. Morfael, too, appeared to be alive, though November might have quibbled with me on that. So I slid the blade back into its scabbard reluctantly.
“I want to use it on something,” I said. “It’s like an itch.”
Morfael nodded. “Remember what I said about the effects of thin-space. Many thoughts and feelings will be amplified where the veil is weak. Here.”
He drew forth from some pocket in his robes a thin, silver band. A ring. I didn’t wear any jewelry because it just popped off when I shifted, and I particularly avoided silver because I had a very rare allergy to it. But Morfael took my left hand and slid the ring onto my index finger.
Immediately, the skin there began to itch horribly. I jerked my hand away and rubbed the finger against my leg. “Why . . . ?”
“Use the Blade,” he said.
“Oh. Right.” I lifted the Blade in my right hand and lowered the smoky dark edge toward the ring. Even though I knew that the knife would only cut the metal and not my skin, it sure looked dangerous, and I had to force myself to press it down. The murky Blade sharpened to a razor’s edge as it sliced right through the silver like a cheese cutter through cheddar, only to stop when it hit my skin. It didn’t even scratch me, but felt cool, almost soft. And the itching stopped as if a spell had been cast.
“It doesn’t just cut through metal,” I said. “It’s like it also guards me against it.”
He took the ring back, nodding, and slipped it back into his pocket.
“How did you make the Blade stay a knife?” I asked. “I didn’t know you could make an object from Othersphere stay permanently in this world.”
“The knife is connected to you,” he said. “I used that bond to secure it in whatever world you are in.”
That made a kind of sense, but as usual with Morfael, it was a pretty vague explanation. “Why is something from Othersphere connected to me?” I asked. “Did my biological parents do it? It can’t just be some random thing.”
“There is no way to be certain,” he said.
Ambiguouser and ambiguouser.
“Do you think the Council knows about the Blade?” I asked. “Or any of the other weird stuff about me?” Even worse . . . I flashed on last night’s conversation with Lazar. Oh, God, if they find out about that, they’ll kill me for sure. Morfael was looking at me. I stuttered nervously. “I-it might make them more nervous if they knew I could also shift into a cat, you know. That kind of thing.”
“You’ve done very well for yourself so far,” Morfael said. “Trust that. Now, I require you to describe again exactly what happened to your mother at the lightning tree.”
So I swallowed down that set of anxieties and focused on others as I told him everything that had happened with Mom the other night. He listened with his usual watchful lack of expression. A little silence fall after I was done. I resisted the urge to ask questions and just told him the facts while his narrow lips pursed slightly, and his nearly lashless eyelids made slow, deliberate blinks.
“Has anything like this happened to your mother before?” he finally asked.
“No. I mean, wait, yes.
” Memory sparked an image of my mother rubbing her stomach just before her transformation, and of the discussion she, Richard, and I had had later. “Just before it happened, she said she felt like that sometimes in dreams. And later on, she said she’d had dreams where there was a whirlpool inside her that felt wrong, and a voice telling her it had a ‘message of importance.’ ” I shook my head. “I can’t believe I forgot about that.”
Morfael nodded once, then began pacing up and down alongside the library’s crammed bookshelves, tapping his cane lightly with every other step. I couldn’t remember seeing him pace before. He must be quite concerned. “What do you think this message of importance is?” he asked.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “But maybe it’s about who I really am? That seemed to be what whatever-it-was inside Mom was trying to tell me. But the storm all around her made it difficult.”
“Yet it was the storm that allowed it to get through in the first place,” he said. “The lightning tree is a very old, very powerful connection to Othersphere. The veil there is thin. I have never heard of a humdrum being used in this way, but the presence of the tree might make it possible. How is your mother now?”
“She seemed okay after some rest, and no other incidents since then.” Something in the set of Morfael’s mouth, and his half-lidded eyes, made me uneasy. “Why? Do you think she’s still in danger?”
His bony shoulders rose in a small shrug. “Now that she has been used as a conduit to Othersphere, some of that connection may remain. She may be vulnerable to other incidents, even away from the lightning tree. Please tell her that if she has another dream like those others, or if anything else strange occurs, she should come here. I may be able to help. Or I may not.”
“Okay, I’ll let her know, thanks,” I said. It was a relief to think there might be some help here for Mom if something happened again. Hopefully, it just won’t.
Morfael turned to go, heading toward the door, when I realized the other part of what he was saying. “Wait!”
He paused, his cloaked back to me, but did not turn around.