Othermoon

by Nina Berry

  “I’m so sorry.”

  Behind me a petite young woman walked up, twisting her long black hair into a slippery bun. The rat from the Council. The only one who had voted in my favor in the last meeting. She gazed down sadly as November tried to huddle closer to Siku, stroking his hair.

  “Poor girl. I e-mailed her parents that she’s uninjured, but that’s not really true, is it?”

  “What . . .” I struggled against the tightness in my throat. “What are you doing here?”

  “Morfael told me you needed some help tonight. I told Jonata there. . . .” She pointed at the lynx. “And she gave the rest of the Council a stiff lecture. The wolves were no help, but Alejandro found out Arnaldo’s father wanted to help.” She indicated the hawk on Mr. Perez’s shoulder. “Add in the bear from the Council, a mountain lion, and an owl I haven’t yet been introduced to and you’ve got yourself a nice little army of shifters swooping in to save the day.”

  “Well.” She squinted hard down at Siku, as if that might keep her from crying. “Maybe saving isn’t quite the right word. But Morfael did help me learn to take on a second form. Did you know porcupines are rodents?”

  So she had been the huge porcupine I’d seen earlier. Even the adult otherkin were learning how to shift into more than one form. It was another piece of information to process through my numbness.

  “You did it, Dez,” Caleb said, walking over from the truck in his shirtsleeves. He didn’t look as if he felt the cold. Behind him came Lazar.

  Arnaldo looked up at me. “At least you brought some members of the shifter tribes together, Dez. I know it may not look like much, but my father . . .” He choked up as emotion overcame him. “My father came.”

  “This is unprecedented,” the lynx, Jonata, said. “It’s a tremendous beginning.”

  Mr. Perez cleared his throat. “It’s kind of a miracle,” he said. “And I just wanted to add my thanks, and to apologize.”

  I shook my head at him. Him apologize to me? I was the interfering one, the one who caused all the trouble, the one who got Siku killed. But Arnaldo gave his father an encouraging glance, and he took a step toward me.

  “I was wrong to say those awful things to you when you came to my house the other day,” he said. “I’ve been deeply mistaken about many things lately, and I have a lot of work to do. But I wanted you to know I’m sorry.” He bowed his head, shutting his long-lidded eyes almost in prayer.

  I dipped my head. “Thank you for coming.” I had no idea what else to say.

  “If there’s ever anything you need from me, just ask.” He turned to his son. “I should get back, Arnaldo. Lots to do still. But walk with me, and we’ll talk about your brothers?”

  “Sure, Papi,” Arnaldo said. “Let’s go.”

  He put his hand on his father’s shoulder. They walked away with similar strides. One day soon Arnaldo’s gawkiness would smooth out into something like his father’s angular grace.

  “Here.” Wiping her eyes, Amaris pulled my spare set of clothes out of her backpack. “Come back to the car and you can put these on.”

  I looked around at them all, standing in a circle around Siku. The intense light of the moon, now directly above us, hollowed out their eyes and cast their shadows in starkly outlined puddles at their feet.

  London pulled at November’s shoulder. “Come on, ’Ember. It’s time to take Siku home.”

  November, her face puffy and red, turned and clung to London, who pulled her gently away from Siku’s body and toward the stolen truck. The rest of us looked down at Siku, lying there alone.

  “Help us,” said Morfael to the bear.

  I turned away as the others moved in to lift Siku up. Amaris and I walked back to the truck. London was helping a blank November into her clothes. I threw on jeans, shoes, and a hoodie, then wrapped my arms around November. Somehow London and Amaris were there too, and we all huddled for a long time silently together.

  Lazar walked up, his eyes gentle on November. “They’re taking Siku back to his family. . . .” He pointed to a different truck. I could just see Caleb shutting the door. A woman, the black bear-shifter, was driving.

  “Take me!” November broke away and ran toward them.

  Caleb saw her coming and leaned in to speak to the driver.

  “ ’Ember, wait!” London grabbed November’s backpack full of candy and raced after her.

  Amaris’s eyes followed London, and I said, “Go with her.” And she was gone too.

  Lazar’s tip-tilted brown eyes furrowed with concern. I shook my head. Something too horrible to speak of welled up within me. Then he took a step forward and put his arms around me.

  Three or four great sobs wracked me. I failed them. He’s gone.

  Something brushed the top of my head, and through the tumult, I wondered if it was Lazar’s lips.

  I pushed him away, wiping my nose on my sleeve. “I need a minute,” I said. And he let me go.

  Then I started walking. I didn’t look where I was going. But I had to move. A terrible confusion jittered around inside me, and if I stayed still, it might shake me to death. I stumbled forward, unable to see anything but Siku, falling like a redwood to crush the man who had killed him.

  I bumped my toes and stumbled over the shallow pool near the entrance to the Tribunal’s compound. My hand brushed the surface of the black water, sending moonlight-tipped ripples down its length.

  A shadow moved behind me. Caleb was there, catching me by the elbow before I could fall in. He was so close. I had a vision of his arms wrapping around me, holding me to his heart, his lips close to my ear telling me it would be all right.

  Instead, he made sure I regained my balance, then took his hand away. He was wearing his long black coat again, and he stuffed his hands into his pockets. The space between us felt suddenly like a huge canyon, and he’d just cut down the bridge.

  “The rat-shifter’s going to take November back with Siku to his family,” he said. “The others are almost ready to go.”

  “What about Arnaldo?” I asked.

  His eyes were mostly black, except for a single golden spiral in each. “His dad has to go to rehab every day for the next three months, and if that goes okay and he stays in the program, he might get custody back. In the meantime, that hawk Council member thinks their lawyer will get Arnaldo declared guardian of his brothers. So he’ll go back with you to the school tonight, but probably head down to Arizona tomorrow.”

  “He’ll come back with us, you mean?” I cleared my throat. I didn’t want it to sound like an appeal. “You’re coming with us too, right?”

  He shook his head very slightly, eyes narrowed and veiled. “Lazar will take care of you,” he said. “And I have things I need to do.”

  My heart dropped. Caleb must have seen me in Lazar’s arms a few moments ago. “He was just being nice! Siku’s . . .” I choked. I couldn’t say it.

  He nodded, eyes cold. “He died saving November,” he said. “At least she’ll always remember his complete loyalty to her.”

  His words cut into my heart. “I was never disloyal to you!”

  He lifted one eyebrow skeptically, then tossed something at me that jangled. I caught it: the keys to the SUV we’d driven here. “I’m taking the pickup truck,” he said. “It’s the least Ximon owes me. Amaris knows I’ll be in touch with her.”

  With her. But not with me.

  I wanted to plead with him to stay. I wanted to smack him across his stony face. Pride kept me from doing either one.

  “Good-bye, Caleb,” I said.

  “Good-bye, Dez.”

  I turned away as he walked off. I willed myself not to cry, not to turn around, not to run after him, staring down at the reflection of the moon in the still water of the pool.

  I blinked. Something was different. The great white disk of the moon looked even bigger in the pool, and it looked . . . wrong.

  We’d studied the moon in Morfael’s classes, its influence on our ability to shift, ho
w its phases augmented the power of Othersphere. It had distinctive craters, and the same side always faced the earth so that we never saw the dark side. The near side had distinctive areas that were darker than others, called “seas” by early astronomers, but now known to be basaltic plains darker than the highlands thanks to their iron-rich content.

  The moon reflected in the pool had no gray seas. Instead, it had seams of darkness, branching out like veins full of black blood across the whiter, fleshlike surface. As I stared down, the water rippled, and the moon pulsed, like a shining heart.

  A current, like electricity, filled the air. The hair on the back of my neck stood up.

  I lifted my eyes to stare up at the real moon, not a reflection. It looked the same as always, silver with darker silver splotches, like giant freckles, not veins.

  Wait. It’s not supposed to be there.

  The reflection in the pool was in the wrong place. The normal moon was directly above us. But the reflected moon’s angle meant it mirrored something over . . . there.

  A chill took me. When I turned, a second moon hovered on the horizon, a different moon, bigger but darker, threaded with a thousand pulsing black capillaries.

  It was not our moon. The light shining on me came partly from the reflected light of our moon. The other part came from a different moon altogether.

  Have I crossed over?

  My skin prickled. The power here was triple what I had felt before. The ground I stood on was still familiar, but for how long?

  “Sarangarel.”

  The voice, low and husky, came from behind me.

  I turned back toward the pool. A slender woman even taller than I stood there in the center of the other moon’s reflection, water up to her knees.

  Her fiery orange hair, striped with black and white, wrapped around her in the breeze, revealing a pale face nearly the twin of mine. She wore a long dress, green and gold like her eyes, that looked like it was made out of interwoven leaves. The light from the pool flickered up around her with an unearthly glow.

  “It is time for you to come home,” she said.

  “Mother.” My voice was a whisper. “You’re not my mother.”

  The smile spread slowly across her face. “There’s nothing for you here anymore.”Her voice was throaty, a growl. “Come back. We need you. We love you still.”

  There’s nothing for you here. That was true. I’d failed everyone. Siku was dead, November devastated, Caleb gone.

  My biological mother held out her hand. “You have always wanted to know me. Throw away the artifact we gave you, which now resembles a blade. Forsake it, and you may cross over to be with your family again.”

  “The Shadow Blade?” I put my hand on its hilt, feeling the cool calm it emanated stealing over me. “You gave it to me?”

  She nodded. “To keep you safe, we decided to send you across the veil. Morfael agreed to take you. But we needed an item of power that would anchor you there until it was safe for you to return. It takes on whatever form you need, but you need it no longer. Morfael refuses to bring you back. Now is the time, daughter. Destroy or drop the blade and come with me. We are in danger. Our world may not survive. Only you can help us.”

  “Don’t believe her!” Lazar’s voice rolled out over the desert. He pounded up to halt at my side, breath coming fast. “You don’t know who that really is, Dez. You can’t trust her.”

  The woman in the pool laughed. “She knows me well. She called me here, where the veil is thin. And I have answered. She is more powerful than she knows.”

  I couldn’t help staring at her—so like me and yet so different. Could I ever look like that, sound like that��be like that? If I did, maybe I wouldn’t feel so small, so sad, such a terrible failure.

  Lazar grabbed my face with one hand and turned it, forcing me to look at him. “Dez, listen to me. You belong here. You’ve defeated Ximon. You’ve begun to unite the different shifter tribes! We need you.”

  “Fool,” said my biological mother. “You may need her, but my daughter doesn’t need you. She needs me. She needs her true family. Come, Sarangarel. You’ll find everything you need here with me.”

  Sarangarel. “Is that my name?” I asked. She was right. I needed to know who I was. “What’s your name?”

  “Dez!” Lazar took me by the shoulders and shook me. “You can’t leave. Think about your mother! Remember what this . . . thing did to her!”

  My mother.

  Something in me snapped awake, as if the light from the other moon had sent me into a dream.

  My mother had nearly died because of this woman. And now she stood there smiling, expecting me to leave everything behind, for her.

  Lazar’s brown eyes widened as he saw realization come to me. “That’s it. Remember?”

  “I remember.” I turned to my so-called mother. “You used my mother like some kind of puppet. You could have killed her.”

  “She is not your mother.” Her arched brows frowned dangerously. The faint veins beneath her pale skin darkened. “You are one of us. We are Amba, and we are at war. Will you doom your true family to extinction?”

  “I have family here,” I said. “This is my war. And I won’t let you endanger them again. Go back!” I waved my hand at her, pushing my mind against the dark current of Othersphere pressing in around me. “You don’t belong here.”

  Lazar hummed a deep, disturbing note. My biological mother winced, a ripple of fear crossing her face.

  The note alarmed me too. But I placed my hand on the Shadow Blade and leaned into the vibration. I found something resonant inside me. “Get out of here!” I shouted. “Begone! Go! I don’t want you here!”

  A cloud seemed to pass over the moon as the ambient light around us dimmed. The figure in the pool writhed. “Look for me!” she cried. “I will send for you.”

  Then she was gone.

  I collapsed. I would have fallen completely, but Lazar fell to his knees to catch me. “You’re here,” he said, his voice soft with happiness. “You stayed.”

  He cradled me in his arms and pressed soft lips against my forehead like a benediction. This time I didn’t pull away.

  BEYOND THE STORY

  THE TIGER

  It is better to have lived one day as a tiger than a thousand years as a sheep.

  —CHINESE PROVERB

  Imagine you’re a beautiful striped creature weighing 700 pounds and that you can move in silence, sprint up to 50 mph, kill a bear with your paws, and crush bones with your jaws. You live completely without fear and know how to hunt humans better than they can hunt you. After all, tigers have attacked helicopters; they’ve charged cars. They learn fast and will change tactics if the situation requires it. They know no master, and when challenged, will annihilate the threat if they can.

  Who wouldn’t want to know how it felt to be that?

  But for me the tiger’s allure is more about being a badass. You see, tigers are never insecure. Wearing a back brace during my teenage years was a recipe for squashing down my feelings, for worrying that people would think I was a freak. We all know how that feels in one way or another.

  But a tiger doesn’t care what you think of it. A tiger doesn’t have to follow rules or repress its feelings. It follows its instincts without apology. If it hides, it does so because hiding fits the tiger’s agenda, not because it is ashamed. Because of all this, the tiger was the perfect animal for the self-doubting character Dez to shift into. She and I have learned a lot from tigers.

  I came to care about these great cats even more when I learned they are critically endangered in the wild. The tiger may be evolution’s ultimate predator, but it is also terribly vulnerable to poachers and environmental changes. In an attempt to impart my awe and love for these animals, I’ve compiled a few facts to share with you.

  • The tiger is the largest species of cat. The Amur, aka Siberian, tiger (designated Panthera tigris altaica) is the largest of the five remaining tiger subspecies.

 
• In the 1940s the Amur tiger was on the brink of extinction, with no more than 40 tigers remaining in the wild. Thanks to vigorous anti-poaching and other conservation efforts by the Russians, with support from many partners, the Amur tiger population recovered to its current numbers, close to 400.

  • With poachers still able to make up to $30,000 for a tiger carcass, the Amur tiger and all other subspecies remain in grave danger of disappearing from the wild forever.

  • Tigers can weigh up to 720 pounds (363 kilograms), stretch up to 6 feet (2 meters) long, and have a 3-foot- (1-meter-)long tail.

  • The mystacial whiskers on the tiger’s muzzle are so sensitive that they can detect the slightest change of air pressure or help the tiger find the prey’s jugular vein.

  • Tigers see about as well as humans during the day, but at night their eyesight is six times better than a human’s.

  • Tigers hunt primarily at night.

  • Each tiger has its own distinct pattern of stripes, like fingerprints on a human.

  • The word tiger came from the Greek word tigris, which is derived from a Persian word that means “arrow.” This is probably a reference to the tiger’s speed and deadliness when attacking.

  • Fast as they are, tigers rely mostly on stealth to hunt. Their ability to vanish and travel unseen, despite their size, is notorious among the people who live near them.

  A tiger will see you a hundred times before you see him once.

  —A SAYING IN THE RUSSIAN TAIGA

  • Humans may be easy prey, but tigers do not consider them a normal source of food. Most man-eating tigers have been wounded by humans, or are old, infirm, or missing teeth, which renders them incapable of eating their normal prey.

  • In 1997, a male Amur tiger was wounded by a poacher named Vladimir Markov. The tiger then tracked Markov, found his cabin, destroyed everything containing his scent, laid in wait for days, and assassinated him.