Nix looked over at Morgan. Her eyes were as blank as his probably were.
“The hunt,” Moth repeated, then shook his head. “It’s not something the scia like to advertise. The hunt is what we call —” He looked embarrassed. “It’s what we call mating.” He cleared his throat and restarted. “For reproductive purposes. Totally unsanctioned.”
Morgan and Nix must have continued to look confused because Moth stopped and stared. “Bleek’s been trying to capture a pet. So that she can have his offspring … or something like that. I’m trying to figure it out. It has to do with the change, the initial habitation.”
“Oh,” they said, almost in unison. There was a knowing tone to Morgan’s “oh,” but Nix’s was uncomprehending. He had no idea what Moth was talking about.
“He’ll need a ringer for that.”
“A ringer?” Something about the word sounded familiar.
Moth held up his hand. “He doesn’t want to leave the human world, obviously. He doesn’t want to give up his mortal body. The practice is forbidden,” he emphasized. “There’s no reason for it. In the old days, when the technology was worse and the exidis relied on natural events, random lightning, that kind of thing, the scia kept humans in bondage, used them to reproduce and then effected the inhabitation. That’s what a pet was: just genetic material for a new changeling.” His eyes darted to Morgan’s, and Nix thought he could detect the faintest blush. “We’re not strong enough to reproduce on our own … together.” His eyes fell. “Nor do we have time. The period between finding out and the exidis is short — a year or two at most. Anyway, now, with dust and with the Ring of Fire it’s different. A few pets are still kept, I know, and some are used by cutters to do their bidding —” He frowned. “But the practice makes me sick.
“They’re kept in horrible conditions.” He spoke earnestly. “Underground, in caves. In places … outside of the normal world. It doesn’t happen so much anymore — there are plenty of corpa around and inhabitation techniques have improved — but Bleek grew up like that, in the limina — the edge places between this world and the next.” Moth shook his head and looked at the ground. “Usually they just spend their lives in a kind of dark haze, but Bleek was special, intelligent and good at identifying potential changelings.”
He moved from Morgan to Nix. “That’s one of our tasks while we’re here, along with preparing for the exidis. We must … to increase our kind. We must give consciousness its chance. Humanity, it’s not strong enough. Look how we’ve messed everything up.”
Moth took a breath. “In any case, they let him out into the human world. He became part of my ring. Usually cutters cause trouble for a while and then die, which you do fairly quickly if you don’t go through the exidis…. Nix. You heard that part, right?”
Nix shook his head and Moth blanched.
“You can’t let your body die, Nix.” Moth spoke very slowly. “It’s absolutely forbidden. The worst thing that could happen to a changeling. What becomes of us — it’s more horrible than any human can imagine.”
“A particle of pain,” Morgan whispered sarcastically, “passed from one living being to the next, for eternity.”
Moth stared at her. “It isn’t funny. It isn’t even something we should talk about.” He turned back to Nix. “You will never, ever die. You will just keep hurting. Over and over and over again. And you will always be conscious of it. That is the burden of the fay. We need a living creature to inhabit while we’re in this transitional state. Only in Novala can we take our true form.”
Both were silent. Nix tried to look at Morgan but she was turned away.
“So the cutters. Their bodies die or they’re eliminated, by changelings who are trained to do that kind of thing. They’re usually easy to spot. They have the sign” — he showed his wrist again — “but they’re old. Much older than they should be. And they smell.” Morgan stifled a laugh and Moth again shot her a look. “If they’ve been given a pass by the scia —” The guide faltered a little here and Nix wondered what he was omitting. “They have a cross through their X. Wicklings. Weak, not evil. Bound for death. Fast. But Bleek is different. He’s a cutter through and through. He’s smart and powerful and wants to stick around. He knows the limina, and he’ll do anything to survive. Clearly he’s planning something. I just don’t know what it is. So Bleek tried with your friend Evelyn first.” Moth nodded to Nix curtly. “But she didn’t work out, so now he’s on to Neve Clowes. The pet needs to be out of it, pliable. Addicted, basically. To dust. He’ll take her somewhere —”
Moth turned and faced Nix. “The ring you’re seeing is some indication of her demise. Bleek won’t keep her alive long after he’s used her for what he needs.”
Nix felt his mouth go dry. The businesslike tone Moth slipped into when he mentioned Evelyn and Neve struck him. As did the easy way he spoke about the rings Nix saw; as if it were the most normal thing in the world to see light around people when they were about to die.
“The ring?”
“You’re a ringer. You monitor the mortality of the body at the beginning and at the end. During the change and during the exidis. Every ring needs you; without you it would be too dangerous. We’ve been waiting for you, Nix. Your ring has been waiting for you. You’re a seer. You’ve got the power of life and death. Your gift is … it’s a necessity.”
“And yours is important, too, Morgan.” Moth hurried to include the girl. “Have you had a sense of it?”
She shook her head — too quickly, Nix noted — but Moth didn’t seem to notice.
“You will. Soon. I’ll help you.” His eyes turned back to Nix. “The whole thing about being a cutter is that you’re addicted to this life. The human world. Even though it’s doomed.” A shadow passed in front of Moth’s eyes. “But I guess that’s why Bleek wants you. That’s why he’s been giving you dust. That’s why he lured you to him at the Ring of Fire. That’s why he didn’t kill you. If Ondine had been with you he would have eliminated her, surely. Both of you.” Moth nodded at Morgan and she took the news without blinking. “He needs a ringer for whatever he’s planning to do.”
Moth delivered the news as if he’d been reading the weather report. Nix let his mind unravel the tangled thread of what he was hearing. Pets he understood. Dust — yes. It was needed to effect a measure of control over the human body as it was inhabited and during the exidis to Novala. And the ringers — those made the most sense, since he’d been living with his visions his entire life. He even understood the importance of keeping his body alive. But the body he lived in, had spent almost eighteen years in … If Nix and Morgan and Ondine were inhabiting human bodies, if the bodies had been “inhabited” sometime during their childhood, then there was something — no, someone,a human being, an actual person, stuck in his body — or he was stuck in someone’s body, or —
Here is where he stopped. Where? Where did the real humans go?
“But, the human, me … where do I go? Where am I?”
Morgan spoke over him. “How long has this been happening?”
Though Nix couldn’t see her face — the orange hood obscured it — he felt she must be as confused as he felt. Moth chose to answer her.
“Since …” He looked up at the sky and shrugged. “Since I don’t know. Since whenever. Since forever. We’ve been here since humans developed consciousness. Since they learned to tell stories about things they didn’t understand. That’s what the legends said. Fairies, fay, pixies. All the same thing. Just not how they pictured it. No wings. No Tinker Bell. ‘Fay’ means spirit — energy — intelligence unbound from matter. A power, but fractured, manifold. But we need the human body, the human brain, to take shape, to organize ourselves for the higher spheres. Otherwise we would simply be diffuse energy, no more powerful, singular, or lasting than a puff of wind, a crackle of static. That mountain over there.” He pointed to Mt. Hood in the distance. “But changelings — us.” He locked his eyes to Nix’s, then Morgan’s. “We are a median s
tep to the next dimension. Our brains act as gatherers and conduits for the current that electrifies everything. That defines life itself. That’s why we’re called changelings. We change energy. We create focused spirit. We are the only hope universal consciousness has. Humans used to kill us, okay? Roast us, beat us. They knew we were different. Not like what we should be. They’d throw us in fires, boil us, keep us tied up. We died by the thousands, millions, who knows. Look.” Moth stared. “Nix. Morgan. You have a year or two, max, to learn what you need to. Then you get pulled in. The shortness of the changeling phase is so that the experience isn’t too hard on your body. This is a long-evolved process. The fay don’t want to hurt the humans. They need them. They need them to gather consciousness together. There isn’t enough heavy matter in Novala —”
He paused and waved his hand. “This is all in the lemma — the knowledge. You’ll learn it soon. But in answer to your question, Nix: Your body — the human you’re inhabiting — won’t remember any of this. That’s what the dust was for. Ondine — her parents will come back and she’ll resume her life. Morgan will go to Princeton or whatever. You’ll go back to Alaska if you want to. We’ve made this all so it isn’t hard on your body. That’s why it’s so important that we deal with this thing with Bleek immediately. After he uses you, he’ll eliminate you. Kill your corpus. Do you understand?” Nix nodded and Moth mumbled, “Fortunately, I don’t think he knows about Ondine yet —”
Morgan spoke. “He knows about Ondine.”
“What?” Moth faced the girl. “How do you know that?”
Her eyes were flat, but Nix saw the slightest tensing in her neck muscles. Right then he ceased to trust her.
“He told me.”
Moth tightened. “You saw Bleek.”
The girl blinked her assent. “He tried to corner me. In the forest. I fought him off.” She stared at Moth, and Nix could feel the barely concealed contempt in her eyes. Did every ring start off this badly? “No thanks to you. This little mountaintop picnic. It’s a little late, isn’t it, Moth? Considering what you think Bleek has planned?”
Moth’s silence made Nix feel that there were worse things than Tim Bleeker in this new world.
“Fortunately, I happen to know he’s wrapped up in another matter.” She gazed at the older boy calmly. “Yes, he’s after Neve. My brother’s girlfriend. The girl Nix so valiantly tried to save at the Ring of Fire. So I imagine he’s not going to have too much time to chase after Ondine.” She sighed and faced Nix for the first time since they’d started talking. “So let me get this straight. You see some kind of ring or something around Neve Clowes, which means that she’s going to …” She let the sentence hang there. Moth looked at the ground, speechless. Nix knew he’d have to fill in the pertinent information.
His voice was flat. “Die. Once I see the ring, people die.”
“Oh.” Morgan bit her lip but didn’t move her eyes.
How strange it was to finally talk about it. After so many years of keeping the biggest secret of his life, here Nix was, revealing it on a Portland hillside to two kids barely less screwed up than himself.
“So what are you going to do?” Morgan asked, her voice merely curious.
“What am I going to do? Well, I guess that’s why I came here this evening, to ask this asshole” — Nix flicked a finger at Moth, standing with his hands in his jacket pockets, still looking at the ground — “what the hell I’m supposed to be doing here. How I’m supposed to help. But if you haven’t noticed in our little conversation, gothic ambience aside, our quote unquote guide doesn’t have a clue about what to do next and how the hell we’re supposed to settle into this new identity of being changelings. Fairies, Morgan. In case the word ‘fay’ threw you. Flying fucking fairies —”
“I said we didn’t fly —” Moth started. Nix ignored him.
“Now” — he shook his finger again at Moth, who was squinting at the younger boy, leaning back but his feet still planted in quiet defiance — “there is a girl who all of us know, your supposed best friend, Morgan, who is in serious trouble. Not to mention Ondine. If you can’t help, Moth, then we need to talk to that lady — Viv or whatever her name is.”
Moth shook his head. “Scia can’t see what’s going on. They are not omnipotent. They’re changelings, like we are. Just more trained. Only the fay can hear all, see all —”
Nix started. “Then how the hell do you know —” But Morgan cut him off.
“Anyway, Neve can’t be my friend,” she said flatly, “because she’s a human. And,” she added, sneering at Nix, “you’re an asshole.”
Behind the defiant, unambiguous stare, he could feel Morgan’s real confusion, even a trace of fear. Out loud she was claiming this new identity because her other life — her human life — had little to offer. He could relate. Besides, he knew even less than she did. But still. Matterless creatures from another dimension who you couldn’t speak to, couldn’t communicate with, just had to believe in … ?
He peered at Moth. “I don’t believe you. I don’t believe anything you’re saying.”
Moth didn’t look surprised. “No. You wouldn’t.”
He grabbed Morgan by the shoulders just then, drawing her to him till she stood under his jutting chin. At the same time, he drew a knife out of his jacket pocket, which he immediately brought to the girl’s throat, just inside her parka. The tip of the blade, Nix could see, edged into her pale skin, drawing a wisp of bright blood. Instantly she started to burn, a thick yellow ring around her that was different from the ones he’d seen on other people. She looked to the side once, then straight ahead at Nix. Her eyes bore the raw fear of an animal that knows it’s about to be put down.
“How could you —”
“You’re sick,” Nix whispered. Moth only stared.
“So what explains it, Nix? Huh? A second ago Morgan wasn’t going to die. But right now, she will, even if I have to doom both of us. And you know it. You can see it. I know you can. I swear I’ll do it. You’re that important, Nix. You’re a ringer. You guarantee our making it through. Otherwise we’re stuck. Larva with brains, bound for the grave. That’s all we are.”
“Nix, please —”
Morgan was choking against the blade and slowly the fire around her lessened. Nix knew he was being convinced.
“We have the ability to plug into the godhead. That is fay. Each of us knows it. Morgan knows it — has known it since she was a child. You know it, Nix. You’ve been inhabited, endowed. You out of everyone. This is your burden and your responsibility. This world is not all there is —”
“No!” Nix cried. “I can’t —”
He turned on his heel to run when a beam of light hit his eyes, temporarily blinding him. He raised a hand to shield his face and heard a familiar, raspy voice blow toward him in the rising wind and rain.
“Nix? Is that you?”
He dropped his hand. He heard Morgan behind him, calling. Then she abruptly stopped.
“Jacob?”
“Nix … Nix!” An agitation moved toward him and there was Jacob Clowes’s raincoat-covered midriff, lit by the reflection of the flashlight, now skipping around, checking the faces of the people behind Nix.
“Morgan D’Amici?”
“Mr. Clowes —”
“Have you spoken to your brother? Is he home from camp?”
For a moment Nix was confused. Why was Jacob Clowes in the park? Why did he have a flashlight? Before he could think further, Morgan answered. Her voice was calm and polite, as if meeting in the park at dusk in the rain were the most normal thing in the world. As if Moth hadn’t just been holding a knife to her throat.
“Yes, Mr. Clowes …” Only a slight tremor betrayed her. “He’s home. He’s there now. I was just … we were just meeting here. We were going to the movies. We’re all going to the movies.”
Jacob obviously didn’t care about movies or anything else. His voice was high-pitched. “Do you know if he’s spoken to Neve?”
&n
bsp; “Not that I know of. Wait — yeah, I remember him saying he called her cell but it was off.”
“Oh my god.” Jacob’s voice broke. “Oh my god. Nix.” Jacob turned. “Have you seen her? Has she called you?”
“I haven’t seen her since … since this morning. With you. I — I thought everything was —”
“Neve is missing. She’s gone somewhere. We had an appointment. She said she was going to the Krak, to meet K.A. I called and she’s not there and I can’t — I can’t reach her. Her cell — oh, god.” Nix felt a desperate hand on his sleeve. “Please, you’ve got to help me. She left around noon. She said she’d be back in two hours. After we saw you. She … I don’t know. I took a nap and when I woke up she was gone. I called her cell but she never picked up, and she hasn’t come home. Nix.” Jacob was pulling on him now, shaking his arm. “You have to help me.”
He felt Morgan beside him, moving toward the older man.
“Mr. Clowes, I work at Krakatoa. I can ask the manager.”
“The police, they can’t do anything yet. I came up here thinking I’d find someone who knew her. This guy — Tim Bleeker. Do you know him?”
“I’ve seen him around,” Morgan answered.
“I thought some of her friends might know where to find him. Like K.A. K.A. knows where she goes —”
“Yes, yes. Of course he does.” Nix noticed Morgan’s pale white hand squeezing and smoothing Clowes’s arm. He himself couldn’t have reached out that way to the old man.
“Do you have any idea where she might have gone?”
When Jacob spoke his voice cracked. “No. I don’t. I just — I didn’t want to know about it — what was happening to her. I didn’t want to see it. Now —”
Morgan’s face bowed and Nix could see the girl willing him to believe. “It’s not too late, Mr. Clowes. It’s just been a few hours. We’ll find Neve. Go home. Nix and I will call K.A. and get started tracking her down. We’ll call you when we have a plan. In the meantime,” — she looked at Nix as if getting his confirmation, and then turned back — “you go home. Talk to your wife, call the police, and we’ll call you in an hour or so, when we have more information.”
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