Othermoon

by Nina Berry

  His gaze brushed over me, unreadable. “We have to go in and stop them, even if Lazar is lying, even if it’s a trap.” His square jaw hardened. “You were right. About that at least.”

  Then he turned and left me as the flurries descended.

  CHAPTER 18

  I stood there alone for several minutes, staring out at the snowfall in the dying light of sunset. Perhaps it was the thinness of the veil, the knowledge of my deep connection to Othersphere, the pending full moon, or the coil of sadness twisting deep inside me, but I felt like I was going to jump out of my skin.

  Hoping the cold of the falling flakes would calm me, I wandered down the hill from the patio, palms and face lifted toward the sky to catch whatever touch of snow I could.

  A large white hare hopped in front of me about twenty feet away, and I froze. It wasn’t as unnaturally enormous as the rabbit in the snowy forest Caleb had drawn from shadow for me back in Vegas, but it was quite large and a startling pure white except for the sharply black tips of its long ears.

  Impulsively, I squatted down and held out my hand. The hare lifted its head, black eyes shining at me as its nose twitched inquisitively. I held my breath as it hopped toward me on back feet shaped like furry white kayaks. Then the ever-sniffing nose was touching my fingers.

  “Hello,” I said, keeping my voice very quiet.

  The hare hopped closer, coming to huddle between my knees, as if using me as shelter from the wind. Hesitantly, I reached down and stroked its back. The fur was soft, like liquid against my skin. The hare nosed my fingers, then began grooming itself, tiny pink tongue wetting its front paws before running them over its long, translucent ears.

  It had to be a dream. Had I fallen asleep and ventured back subconsciously to the time Caleb had cared enough for me to conjure an enchanted forest from shadow? I lifted my head and nearly fell over backwards as a huge red-brown elk sporting a chandelier of antlers trotted over the snow toward me, stopping just a few feet away. Its large brown eyes glinted as snowflakes decorated the rack above its head.

  I stood up slowly, which didn’t seem to disturb the hare, and extended my hand. The elk eyed me, decided to ignore my gesture, and then lowered its head to rip out a few pieces of drying grass still poking up through the snow.

  Something crunched in the snow behind me. Almost afraid of what I might see, I twisted at the waist to find a spotted cat with a stumpy tail peeking around the trunk of a pine tree at me. It was a bobcat, with powerful haunches and white spots on the back of its ears. It took a few steps toward me, then sat down, yellow eyes aglow in the twilight, till a flutter above drew its gaze.

  A chunky winged form whooshed overhead and came to rest in the branches of the tree nearest me. A great horned owl folded its wide gray wings, pointed ear tufts shaking in the breeze, and regarded me with perfectly round golden eyes.

  My whole body was aglow with wonder. A music just beyond the edge of hearing connected me to each of these creatures, just as they were bound to each other, and to the grass, the trees, and the falling snow.

  The rim of the sun dipped below the horizon, and the light in the sky swung from golden tangerine to fiery orange tipped with indigo and deepest purple. In a few hours, the moon would rise, and I felt deep in the roiling black center of my being that if I took one step in the right direction, I would part a curtain in the air and step into a forest greater and darker than this.

  I trembled on that brink, wanting to reach out, to widen the space inside me. I knew that if I did it, all the rest of my life would fall away. And I was sorely tempted to move beyond all the pain and conflict and judgment. Was this Othersphere—this enveloping union with everything?

  As night fell, a light in the window of the school flicked on, sending a white beam into the woods. The elk turned his head with weighty majesty in that direction, and the owl took flight with one silent beat of its wings. The bobcat disappeared behind a clutch of sagebrush with a flick of its abbreviated tail. Only the snowshoe hare calmly finished washing its ears before casting a beady glance up at me.

  “Not yet,” I said, though the thought wasn’t mine. Was I speaking for the hare, for myself, or for someone . . . something else?

  As if its job was done, the hare bounded off, leaving faint tracks in the snow before it vanished.

  I reentered the school in a daze, my cheeks and fingers wet with melted snow. I’d glimpsed that feeling before in tiger form, but never so strongly as a human.

  But you’re not human. Not even in “human” form.

  At first I barely heard, let alone paid attention to, the voices coming from the kitchen. Then I heard Siku mutter, in a more annoyed tone than I’d heard from him in ages, “I told you I’m not hungry. We don’t have a lot of time before we have to go do this crazy thing.”

  A plastic bag rattled, as if someone were digging into it. “I know, I just wanted to talk to you real quick,” said November. Her voice got low and intimate, and without my cat-shifter hearing, I never would have caught her next words. “It’s important.”

  I paused in my progress toward the stairs down to my room, not wanting to interrupt by walking past them as they talked. But if I stayed here, I’d be eavesdropping. I looked behind me. Should I go back outside for a few minutes?

  “Are you okay?” Siku asked, his annoyed tone vanishing to become something warmer and more intimate than I’d ever heard from him. “You’ve been weird lately. Distant.”

  I could hear fingers unwrapping something in plastic. “I know,” November said. “It’s because I don’t know how to act around you, exactly.”

  “What did I do?”

  I padded forward as silently as my training allowed. This was clearly a very personal conversation, and maybe I could sneak past them down the stairs.

  “It’s not what you did,” said November. There was a tiny clatter, like a marble rolling on a floor, and I envisioned her dropping a round hard candy on the kitchen counter to play with. “It’s what you haven’t done. What you won’t do.”

  “What do you mean?” Siku’s bass voice dropped even lower. “I’d do anything for you.”

  “You would?” November’s quiet delight gave me goose bumps. “I didn’t know that.”

  “You’re hard for me to read,” he said. “I can’t tell what you’re thinking.”

  “Mostly I’m thinking that you’re . . . you know, wonderful. The most wonderful guy in the world, really,” she said.

  “Yeah?” He took a heavy step. I imagined it was toward her.

  “Yeah.” Her voice was so small, so vulnerable. “I think I love you, Siku.”

  My heart swelled, and my eyes pricked with tears. She’d done it. Brave girl. And as happy as I was for her, I couldn’t help remembering when Caleb had said those words to me. It was the most amazing feeling in the world. I would never feel it again.

  There was a little silence, during which I forced myself not to inch forward to see what was happening, though I couldn’t help straining my ears for any clue.

  “Get over here,” Siku said, a sly smile in his voice.

  November let out a tiny, thrilled squeal, and then another kind of quiet descended. I heard clothes rustling and Siku whispering, “I love you too.”

  I stifled a delighted laugh and bounced gleefully on my toes. Okay, now that they were safely making out, maybe I could sneak past them. I padded as quietly as I could toward the stairs, and caught a glimpse of them in the darkened kitchen. Siku’s beefy arms rendered November’s tiny form nearly invisible, though I could just see her hand in his hair and one of her legs wrapped around his waist.

  A floorboard squeaked beneath me, but neither of them seemed to notice. I slipped down the stairs without breaking the mood.

  I found Morfael in the computer room, his long fingers poking at the keyboard with surprising speed. “Yes, Desdemona?” he said, not looking away from the monitor.

  “We’re going into the Tribunal compound tonight,” I said. “But you proba
bly already knew that.”

  He stopped typing and fixed his pale eyes on me. “Yes. You’ll be taking the Shadow Blade with you, I presume.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Of course.”

  “Good.” He eased back toward the monitor and started typing again as he spoke. “The collider is positioned very close to where the nuclear testing took place, so the veil will be even thinner there than it is here. The urge to shift and for Caleb to use his powers as a caller—these things will be magnified. You all may find yourselves more irritable, more violent, closer in personality to your animal forms than usual. You may also see things which disconcert you.”

  As if things won’t be difficult enough. “Great. Just great. I’m guessing that means my anti-technology aura will be worse than ever too.”

  He paused for a moment to turn his head, a faint smile creasing his thin lips. “Exactly.”

  Why does he always look so pleased when he says bad things? I wasn’t quite sure how to put my next question, so I just asked. “Will you come with us? We could use a shadow walker like you.”

  His spare eyebrows lifted gently, but he said nothing.

  “Did you know me over there, or my parents?” I asked. “Do you have any idea why I’m here?”

  His eyes glimmered under nearly translucent lids. “You are at my school to learn what I can teach you.”

  “Oh, come on!” I fought to keep myself from shouting. His evasiveness was unnerving. “We’re heading into an underground facility filled with objurers armed with silver. I might not come back. Don’t you think it’s time for me know who I am?”

  “You know who you are.” He resumed typing, fingers like bird beaks pecking at the keys. “I insist you come back. I’m not done with you.”

  “So that means ‘I won’t talk to you about this now, ’ and ‘I’m not coming with you.’ ” I heard myself sigh. “This isn’t going to be easy, Morfael.”

  “No,” he said. “It will test you to the utmost, but there is something else I must do.”

  “Now?” I didn’t want to whine, but I was getting close to it.

  “Yes. I must go.” He finished typing with a flourish, and then stood up, all bony angles and dusty black robes. Looking at him now, it was easy to believe he wasn’t from this world. “Raynard and I will take his truck and leave the SUV to all of you.”

  He pushed past me to the hallway. I turned, incredulous. “You’re blowing me off so you two can have a date night?”

  His opal irises slid over to me, and he tapped the floor with his carved staff irritably. “Your irreverence has its place,” he said. “This is not one of them.”

  “Sorry,” I muttered. “But something weird happened just now. I was outside, feeling pretty crappy, and all these animals came over to me. A hare, and an elk, a bobcat, and an owl,” I said. “I felt—different. Like I was connected to them, and to everything.”

  “The natural world here helps link you to that feeling,” he said.

  “But if I were in Othersphere, would I feel that way all the time?”

  He considered this. “Othersphere does not contain the blocks to the natural world that this world does, so that feeling would be more accessible to you there. But you can overcome the blocks on this side of the veil. That’s part of what you must learn here.”

  “If you walk between worlds but don’t come from any of them, where do you come from?” I asked, praying for once he wouldn’t evade me.

  He looked mildly amused. “Any other questions?”

  “A million!” I said, throwing up my hands. “But go do whatever you have to do. I’m sure it’s super important.”

  “I’m not abandoning you, Desdemona,” he said. “All your life I have worked to help you, and it gratifies me to see how worthy of that you are.”

  My throat tightened with emotion. “Thanks,” I said. “Keep being this nice and you’ll start to worry me.”

  “What you attempt tonight will be more difficult than you imagine, in ways you cannot foresee,” he said. “But there is little point in worrying.”

  I couldn’t help a small, sad laugh. “I should’ve let you go while I was ahead. Wish us luck.”

  He shook his head very slightly. “There is no luck. I wish you learning and love.”

  We were a little late getting on the road because at first we couldn’t find Siku and November. They finally emerged from the garage, rumpled, sweaty, and holding hands. Envy jabbed me. They’d found a couple of hours to be together alone there, the way Caleb and I had not, and now never would.

  The dopey, happy looks on their faces made even London, very tense before heading off into battle, grin widely. “So, finally, you two?” she said.

  “What do you mean, finally?” Siku asked.

  “Never mind,” I said. “Find whatever you need, fast. We have to get on the road.”

  Crammed into the SUV with Caleb driving, we drove for awhile listening to nothing but November crunching on caramel corn and sucking soda through a straw. The anxiety of knowing where we were headed didn’t seem to affect her, and it was oddly comforting to see her chowing down as usual. She was practically on Siku’s lap, seat belts be damned.

  Amaris and London sat together in the very back, heads together over London’s playlist, sharing earbuds and distracting each other with music talk in low tones. Arnaldo continued to pore over the plans to the complex, using a tiny flashlight. Our backpacks, with changes of clothes, binoculars, rope, lock picks, and more snacks, were jammed in the trunk.

  I’d automatically taken the shotgun seat. Then I realized that I was no longer Caleb’s girlfriend, with no automatic right to that seat, and no reason to sit next to him everywhere we went. I felt hyperaware of his every movement, keyed into the rhythm of his breath, trying to guess how he felt sitting next to me now. He seemed restless, tapping his fingers against the steering wheel and constantly looking in the rearview mirror to make sure no one was following us.

  I stared straight ahead as the road wound down out of the mountains, gripping the hilt of the Shadow Blade to calm myself. It worked. The same centering effect it had on me when dealing with technology spread outward from my core now, tamping down the tumult of sadness, anger, and pain competing for space inside me, and allowed me to focus on what lay ahead.

  The Blade. It came from Othersphere, just as I did. Had it belonged to my biological family over there? Maybe that was why it felt more like an extension of myself than a weapon. It couldn’t cut through skin or fur or flesh. It only harmed whatever did not come from the natural world. If it came to defending myself against an objurer, I’d have to rely on tiger strength and tiger claws. With my hand on the hilt of the Blade, I trusted that would be enough.

  The road met the desert, which lay spread out under the starry night sky like a bumpy brown blanket. No snow lay here, though the wind blew cold, and just over the horizon I could feel the moon lifting inexorably toward the horizon. Already the appetite for shifting gnawed at me. I’d shared what Morfael had told me about how the thinness of the veil here might affect us, and we were all on edge.

  “Okay, so do you guys think the space there could be so thin that we’ll, like, spontaneously shift or something like that?” November asked, digging near the bottom of her box of caramel corn for the last kernels.

  “I’m more worried your stomach might explode,” said London, her voice edgier than usual.

  “This is going to be a lot tougher to pull off than burning down the last Tribunal compound,” said Arnaldo. “The thinness of the veil might make us more powerful than usual in our animal forms, but it will also make it more difficult for us to return to human.”

  “According to Morfael, it could also make us grumpy,” said November. “Not that you could tell the difference with London.”

  “Also,” Arnaldo continued as if she hadn’t spoken, “we can really only enter the complex in force through the front door because the rest of it lies underground.”

  November leane
d over to look at the plans lying in Arnaldo’s lap. “What about that air shaft Lazar went in and out of?”

  “We can’t risk going in single file, one at a time,” I said. “The odds of someone spotting us are high, and if one of us is caught without the others able to help right away, that person could be captured.”

  “And used as a hostage to control the rest of us,” Siku said.

  “I bet you they wouldn’t notice a rat sneaking through the shaft,” November said. “I could go in that way and do reconnaissance and meet up with you inside.”

  “Lazar says they thought of that,” I said. “If you’d read all his notes, you’d see they were worried about rat-shifters infiltrating, so they built a series of heavy mesh screens into the air shaft. It takes Lazar half an hour to climb the shaft, removing and replacing each screen as he goes in or out. It’s something only a human or a monkey could do, and it would be very time consuming.”

  “November’s like a monkey in her human form,” said London.

  “No one’s going in alone!” Caleb’s voice, uncharacteristically snappish and loud, almost gave off sparks. “We can’t risk splitting up. So shut up with the alternate plans and get ready. We don’t have room for stupid errors.”

  Uneasy silence fell. Caleb had never barked at everyone like that before, and the power in his voice did actually shut everyone up for an awkward minute. It reminded me sharply that as a caller he had the potential to control us all with his words if he wanted, as did the objurers we would soon be facing.

  “Someone needs a tranquilizing dart,” November finally said under her breath.

  Caleb’s hands clenched the steering wheel. Was it the thinness of the veil, our breakup, the danger that lay ahead—or all three—making him so short-tempered? Could we all keep it under wraps long enough to do what we needed to do tonight?

  We passed the spare lights of Indian Springs and Creech Air Force Base. A few miles later, we saw the turnoff for the town of Mercury and signs pointing to Desert Rock Airstrip. Underneath the airstrip’s name, I could make out the words PRIVATE. FOR USE OF UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY ONLY.