by Nina Berry
“You can’t trust this woman,” Mom said. “She wants you to come to her, and this sounds like some kind of trap.”
“Maybe,” I said, weary through and through. “But we can’t just leave Amaris in another world in the hands of who knows what. Even if it’s the cleverest trap in the world, Caleb and Lazar would move the moon to get her back.”
“They could go without you,” Mom said. “You’re dating one brother and used to date the other. If you go with them, you’ll just come between the brothers even more, ruining any chance they might have for a relationship in the future.”
“No, I know,” I said. “I’ve thought about that a lot. But because I was born there, I might be able to do things other people can’t.”
“Until this thing that claims to be your birth father decides it’s time to eat you. Or something worse!”
“He’s busy right now on this side of the veil. It might be a good time for us to cross over.”
Mom was quiet a minute. “Do you think he was telling the truth?”
She didn’t have to say “the truth about being your birth father.” That was the main thing on her mind. And on mine.
“Morfael will know,” I said.
“Why doesn’t that man tell you these things in advance?” Mom punched the pillows behind her, fluffing them up with sharp, angry jabs. “Why do you always have to find things out the hard way? Morfael should go to Othersphere, not you. You’re the student, the child. He should be protecting you.”
“He saved me by bringing me to this world,” I said. Mom’s bitterness set me on edge. Normally, she had nothing but nice things to say about Morfael. “He made sure you were the one that found me, Mom. And to keep me here, he had to give up being able to go back there.”
“Yes, yes, I know.” Her pillow punching was escalating. “But all this mystery and risk gets very tiresome. I must be crazy to trust you to a creature that travels between worlds, a shadow walker. I mean, really! I know I’m a flaky nature-worshipper and all, but I’m starting to think I’ve graduated from flaky to neglectful.”
“You’ve trusted me and my judgment, Mom,” I said. “And you should, because I was raised by you.”
“Raised by a flake!” She tapped her finger against her own chest.
I heard my stepfather’s soft voice say, “Caroline . . .” He must be right off camera.
Mom looked up, shaking her head at him. “No, Richard! It’s about time I put a stop to all these life-threatening shenanigans my daughter gets herself into. It’s my own fault for not being stricter. I’m too hippy dippy to be a mother, really.”
“You’re a great mom . . .” I started to say.
“About to get greater,” she said. “Desdemona, I need you to come home, to our apartment. I’m pulling you out of that school. Today.”
“What?” Surprise pulled me to the edge of my seat.
“No more baby-eating birth fathers for you, I’m not sorry to say. Pack your bags and get Raynard to drive you to Vegas this afternoon. I’ll get your room ready.”
“No,” I said softly.
Mom frowned through the monitor. “What did you say?”
I was a good daughter. I never defied my mother. And she in turn had always trusted me. My gut was twisted into a sickening knot, but I couldn’t let her take me out of things now.
“I said no.”
Mom blinked rapidly. I hadn’t said no much to her since I was a toddler. Her face got very stern. “Desdemona Grey. You will come home today, or I’ll come up there and get you.”
“I still wouldn’t come.” I didn’t say, There’s no way you can make me. It sounded juvenile, and she knew it as well as I did.
“What have you become?” Mom’s eyes were red with anger and unshed tears. “Defiant, risk taking. Do you have some sort of death wish? I said, come home!”
“I need to know, Mom,” I said. “You’re my mother, and that will never change. But I need to know the people who gave birth to me, even if they’re awful. To see where I came from, even if it’s hell. I’m sorry if that threatens you or scares you. I’m sorry!” For the millionth time in the last couple days, tears were spilling down my cheeks.
“I am your parent!” she said. “My first job is to protect you. I order you to come home now!”
“I’m sorry,” I said again. “But that isn’t your choice anymore.”
I stared at her terrified, angry face. I almost told her then that I was coming home. Instead, I cut off the connection. The monitor went blank.
I was sitting on the patio, a light snowfall flickering down from the overcast morning sky when Morfael walked outside. He looked down at me, snowflakes dotting his bony white cheeks and forehead. They didn’t seem inclined to melt on his skin.
“How is your mother?” he asked.
“She ordered me to come home,” I said shortly. I wasn’t feeling very friendly to anyone right now, particularly Morfael. “She says I shouldn’t be taking so many risks. I told her I’m staying anyway, and she’s pretty mad. Orgoli is my birth father, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” said Morfael, his gaze flickering over my face. “He is my half-brother.”
“Which makes you my uncle.” It came out flat. I felt flat, too. All these revelations should have made me emotional or excited. Instead, I felt nothing. “All this time, we’ve been relatives.”
And you didn’t tell me.
I didn’t say it, but it hung in the air between us.
He regarded me for a long moment. “If I’d told you that the first night you came to this school? Would that have been better?”
I remembered that first night, how terrifying Morfael had seemed, how strange the other shifter kids and their ways. I’d had enough to digest learning how to be a tiger-shifter. “I guess being told I was a creature from another world rescued by her shadow-walker uncle from her stone-skinned demonic father would have been a bit much to take in,” I said. “Would you have told me?”
He shrugged his narrow shoulders. “Who knows what would have been? Whether you knew or did not know of our blood kinship, I would have looked after you and cared for you the same.”
I bowed my head, shame battling with anger. Morfael had saved my life and my friends many times now. He didn’t talk much, but he was there when it counted. I told my anger to be quiet, but it didn’t want to go away.
“So you and Orgoli share a mother,” I said. “She must have been a shadow walker.”
“As was my father,” Morfael said. “Orgoli’s father was one of the Amba, or what you might call the tiger spirits of Othersphere.”
“Are they alive? My grandparents?”
Morfael gave one shake of his head. “Orgoli killed them some time ago.”
I digested that for a moment. So it wasn’t just his children he liked to murder. “What exactly is an Amba?”
“They are similar to the tiger-shifters that used to exist in this world,” Morfael said, “but less human.”
“More tiger.”
He gave one short nod. “Your mother is Amba.”
“What’s her name?” How strange. To ask for your own mother’s name.
“Khutulun.” He pronounced the early consonants soft, the vowels like a song.
“Khutulun,” I repeated, less musically. It was just a bunch of sounds, and they didn’t make me feel anything.
Morfael considered me. “You are mostly as she, but one-quarter shadow walker. That made it easier for me to move you through the veil and easier for you to live here.”
“Orgoli said that he . . .” I swallowed. It was very weird to think this, let alone to say it. “He ate his other children, and he would have eaten me. Is that normal over there?”
“No.” Morfael’s opalescent eyes were clear and cold. “It has been recorded that an Amba king will sometimes eat the infant children of his rivals, especially if he wishes to mate with their mother. That is why many mothers keep their children hidden until they’re older. But I have also seen t
hem adopt the children of others and care for them as their own. Orgoli is twisted. As he gained more power, slaying other Amba to gain territory, he began to see even his own children as threats. They and their mothers paid the price.”
I nodded and didn’t speak for a moment. I wished Mom was there, or Caleb, or Lazar. Someone I could really talk to. But I’d managed things so badly that all three were now off limits, one way or another.
“That’s why you brought me here,” I said. “To save me from him. Why didn’t you send me back when Khu . . . when my biological mother asked you to?”
“She thought she had found a safe place for you in her world,” he said. “I disagreed. As you can see, Orgoli has found you even here. But you are better prepared now than you would have been fifteen years ago.”
“Why didn’t you raise me yourself?” I looked up at him, so alien in looks, but familiar to me now. He’s my uncle. I’m his niece. It didn’t feel real.
“I considered it.” He leaned on his wooden staff, inscribed with animal forms that seemed to writhe under his hand. He looked tired. “But Orgoli would have found you more easily through me. You were safest with someone who had no connection to otherkin or Othersphere. Someone kind and understanding.”
“Someone who wants to pull me out of your school.”
He nodded. “There are times when it’s useful to listen to fear. And times when it isn’t.”
I put my hands on my hips. “That is so not helpful. What does it even mean?”
His mouth curved upwards in his version of a smile. I wondered if I ever smiled like that. I didn’t think I looked like him, or Orgoli. I hoped not. “It means that when you feel fear, you must exercise your judgment. Good judgment will tell you whether the fear is wise.”
“Well, whether it’s good judgment or not, we have to go to Othersphere to get Amaris back.”
Morfael bowed his head at me, in acknowledgment or surrender, I couldn’t tell. He was still smiling when he said, “I will help you pierce the veil. We must go to the Lightning Tree.”
At breakfast, the others were twitchy and tense. Nobody was looking anybody in the eye. Raynard brought out a pile of scrambled eggs, and no one would pass it around. They just leaned over and around each other to scoop out their portion as if everyone else was an obstacle to get around.
Caleb’s concern for Amaris was enough to keep him there, but he sat like a black cloud at the very end of the table with his own pile of home fries, bacon, and half a grapefruit. Lazar sat at the opposite end, ripping the rind off a clementine with long, hard, angry pulls, as if it needed to pay for some wrong it had done. The rest of us scattered between these light and dark bookends, with at least one empty seat between us.
Only Arnaldo seemed mostly oblivious to the strain, eating with his laptop open in front of him, wiping his hands on a napkin tucked into the neck of his T-shirt before typing a flurry of commands. His two younger brothers, Luis and Cordero, sat next to him, tossing bits of egg at each other or saying “Quit it!” in low tones, but otherwise keeping their heads down. They’d had to deal with far worse tension in their own home, but I felt bad that they were here for this.
I cleared my throat and told everyone the message my mother had dreamed.
Caleb dropped his spoon onto his plate with a clatter. “When do we go?”
“Today,” said London. Her hands gripped the edge of the table hard. “Now.”
“What about this Orgoli creature?” Lazar asked. “Do we have to worry about encountering him while we’re there?”
“He’s definitely still alive,” I said. “I saw him crawling out from under the house as we drove away.”
“Let’s hope he’ll stay busy in this world,” London said.
“Do you . . .” I wasn’t quite sure how to put it. “Do you think Ximon’s still in there, somewhere?”
“Maybe,” Caleb said. He looked at Morfael, who was at the head of the table, calmly crunching into an apple
“There is no way to be sure,” Morfael said. “It depends on Ximon’s strength of mind. His willingness to remain.”
“He doesn’t matter,” Lazar said. “Amaris is what matters. I hope she’s okay.”
“Of course, she’s okay!” Caleb snapped.
Lazar turned on him, getting red, then shut his mouth abruptly and said nothing. The brothers were both on edge, each dealing with their sister’s absence in his own way.
Morfael swallowed another bite of apple. “I can help three or four of you through the veil if we drive down to the Lightning Tree.”
“That’s interesting.” Arnaldo lifted his head up from staring at his monitor. “I’ve been going through the files on Ximon’s computer, and it looks like whenever he was lucid, or free of influence from Othersphere, he was trying to figure out where “the creature,’ as he called it, came from, and how. The veil is thinnest near his particle accelerator, but his calculations placed the creature’s entrance in Burbank instead.”
“That must be where this Orgoli thing first came through the veil,” London said. “At the Lightning Tree.”
“How do we find Amaris once we go through?” Lazar asked. “Othersphere has to be as big a world as this one, but does it correspond, point to point, with our geography?”
“What the hell are you talking about?” November asked. “Speak like a normal person.”
Lazar’s mouth pursed in amusement. He never seemed to mind November’s rudeness. “I mean, if I went through the veil right here”—he tapped the table in front of him—“could I walk ten feet that way”—he pointed toward the kitchen—“and come out of the veil next to our fridge? Or would I pop back into this world a hundred yards, or a hundred miles away?”
“The distances are approximately the same.” Morfael said. “But doorways can be manipulated.”
“And what the hell does that mean?” November asked, her mouth full of egg.
Morfael let silence hang for a moment. He didn’t like her swearing at him. But she didn’t back down the way she usually did and just stared at him, chewing. Finally, he said, “When you create a portal, like the one Orgoli pushed Amaris through, the creator can decide to use it to move things over distance as well as between worlds.”
“Aha,” said Arnaldo. “So that stone balcony she landed on in Othersphere doesn’t necessarily correspond to where that lodge is on Kyle Canyon Road.”
“Which means she could be anywhere!” Caleb said. “Even if she’s still where he dropped her, and there’s no guarantee of that.”
“Orgoli’s dwelling is not far from the eternal storm which shadows the Lightning Tree,” Morfael said.
London was listening closely. “So his headquarters or whatever won’t be far if we go through the veil at the Lightning Tree.”
“How do we know which way to go once we’re through?” Caleb asked. “Can you draw us a map?”
“You or Lazar should be able to find Amaris if she is anywhere within a few hundred miles,” Arnaldo said. “From what I found in Ximon’s research on Dez after they captured her, creatures from Othersphere give off a very unique signature vibration when they’re here in our world. I bet you the reverse is also true.”
“So Amaris should give off a signal that’s easy to distinguish when she’s in Othersphere,” London said. “Got it.”
“So if Dez is from Othersphere, does everybody over there look like her?” London asked.
“There’s a great variety of creatures in that world, just as there is in this,” Morfael said. “And Dez’s appearance here in this world may be different from how she appears when she is there.”
“Really?” I looked at him, startled.
He simply nodded.
“So that’s a ‘no,’ ” November said. “If shadow walkers move between all the worlds, then where do they come from? Where are they born?”
“We are born wherever our mothers wish us to be born,” Morfael said. “In any of the infinite worlds that exist.”
I was one-quarter shadow walker. Did that mean I could visit more worlds than just Othersphere? I didn’t want to bring that up in front of the others yet, so instead I asked Morfael, “How many worlds have you been to?”
Morfael regarded me, deadpan. “A lot.”
Everyone laughed at the colloquial phrase coming out of him. He was usually so formal.
“So that means Caleb, Lazar, and I need to go,” London said. “Cool. Let’s pack up.”
“And Dez,” Lazar said quickly.
I felt a stab of gratitude to him. He was right, from a strategy standpoint. I should go. But I also really wanted to go, to find out whatever I could—about myself, about my biological parents. There was only one real fear that haunted me about going there.
What if I don’t want to come back?
“Why take Dez?” November arched a thin eyebrow at me. “She wasn’t much use the last time out.”
I gave her a helpless look. Her words cut deep.
“Neither were you,” Lazar shot back.
November leaned across the table at him. “That’s because I was too busy nearly dying.”
“Dez is from Othersphere,” Caleb said. His voice was more neutral than Lazar’s. “Her connection to that world will probably be useful while we’re there.”
“If it helps us get Amaris back, she’s coming,” London said. Then she turned to me, looking uncertain. “You’re not going to freeze up again, are you?”
“No,” I said, not trusting myself to say much. “I hope not.”
“How reassuring.” November popped a sausage into her mouth.
“I’ll stay here and do some research on that powerful laser Ximon said Orgoli was interested in,” Arnaldo said. “I found some encrypted files on his laptop labeled ‘laser’ that I haven’t been able to open yet.”
Arnaldo had obligations in this world—taking care of his brothers—which he couldn’t easily leave. Me, I had no obligations, really. Nothing to tie me here at all.