by Nicole Maggi
When I got home that afternoon, Lidia’s car was gone. The sun stretched itself thin across the sky, waning toward evening. I dumped my backpack at the bottom of the stairs and stared at the grandfather clock in the corner of the living room. Each tick seemed to echo in my rib cage.
I paced the border of the braided rug in the center of the living room for so long my feet started to hurt. Outside, the light began to fade. My insides twisted. At twilight, Heath would demand an answer, and I didn’t have one.
Jenny, Carly, and Melissa had known me forever, but even they couldn’t help me. Even though Jenny said power was hard to pass up, she had no idea the kind of power I was dealing with. What would they say if they ever found out? They’d think I was a freak of nature. And they would be right. I ran my hand over my face. Would they still be friends with me?
But what if Jenny found out I was the reason the bridge had collapsed and had given up the chance to make amends for that tragedy? Wasn’t that just as bad? I didn’t want to be branded a coward.
I stopped in mid-pace and bent over, digging my elbows into my knees and my hands into my hair. I was only sixteen. It wasn’t fair to have this kind of responsibility thrust at me. I didn’t know how long it would take to regain control of the Waterfall, but it didn’t seem like it could be done in a week. What if it took years? How much of my life was I expected to give up?
My throat was tight and hot as I straightened. Time ticked away. I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes and rubbed hard. In the months since my dad had died, I had never wanted to talk to him so badly. If he were alive now, I’d go to him in the Cave and lean against the door. “What’s eating you?” he’d ask. If it was a big enough problem, he’d take me to our waterfall, and we would talk it out over doughnuts and a thermos of hot chocolate.
The Waterfall. It wasn’t just my dad’s special place anymore; it was one of the most powerful places in the world.
I whirled around and found the photo of my dad on the coffee table. His soft brown eyes gazed out at me. I knelt in front of the table as though it were an altar. “What should I do, Dad?” I whispered.
But he only stared back at me, silent and two-dimensional.
My vision blurred. I blinked to clear it, but the whole room was like a soft watercolor painting, its edges frayed. Deep down, I knew what my dad wanted me to do. He had loved this farm, this land, second only to my mom and me. He would want me to protect it.
The deepening blue light of dusk seeped in through the front window. I rose from the floor and walked straight through the back of the house, out the kitchen door, across the yard, and into the barn. Inside, Heath was putting the last of the goats in their pen for the night. I waited in the doorway until he was done.
He wiped a gloved hand across his forehead and turned to the door. “Jeez! Didn’t see you there,” he said, laughing at his jumpiness.
“Okay,” I said before my nerve failed. “I’ll do it.”
A slow smile spread across his face, lighting up his blue eyes like candles. “Welcome home,” he said, echoing the words he’d said to me on the bridge, and even though the balance of the world was still tipped against us, in that moment everything was perfectly aligned.
Chapter Ten
The Guide
Stretching under the covers the next morning, I saw everything with new eyes. I felt grounded and free at the same time, like an oak tree whose roots go down for miles beneath the earth while its branches dance in the wind. I finally had a place in the world.
I rolled onto my side and picked up my locket from the nightstand. It dangled from my fingers, the silver surface shiny in the morning sunlight. I clasped the locket around my neck, the chain cool against my skin, and climbed out of bed.
On Saturdays, Lidia often spent half the day at a farmers’ market in Bangor, selling our cheeses. I usually went to Joe’s for breakfast with the girls. It was our weekend ritual, dishing everything that had happened during the week over plates of pancakes and cheese-covered eggs. But as I neared the coffee shop, I realized that the biggest thing I had to dish, I couldn’t talk about.
Taking a deep breath, I opened the door. The place was packed, as it always was on the weekends. But I noticed it wasn’t as loud as usual, and there was a large glass jar on the counter with a handmade sign next to it: For the Victims of the Atterbury Bridge Collapse.
Jenny waved to me from our corner booth.
I dug into my pocket and dropped a ten-dollar bill into the glass jar on my way to the table. I would have given a hundred dollars if I had it.
There was already a steaming cup of coffee, black and unsweetened just as I liked it, waiting for me. I slid into the booth next to Melissa. “Hey.”
“You look weird.” Jenny set her cup down hard on its saucer, sloshing coffee onto the table. “What’s up?”
I touched my forehead. Did being a Benandante show on my face? “Nothing. I . . . didn’t sleep well last night.”
Jenny glanced across the diner at the counter with the glass jar. “I know what you mean,” she murmured. She gave me a little smile.
Steam from my coffee tickled my nose as I raised the cup to my mouth. Listening to Carly’s and Melissa’s chatter was comforting, and for a moment I forgot all the other weird stuff going on in my life.
“I’m giving up on Seth Campbell,” Carly said. “I’ve tried to get him to ask me out for eight months, and if he hasn’t gotten the hint by now . . .”
“Then he’s an idiot. Why give him the time of day?”
“Because he’s superhot,” Jenny interjected. “For a body like that, I think I’d put up with a little idiocy.”
I laughed, spraying coffee.
“Ew! Lessi!”
I coughed. “Sorry.”
Jenny flicked an imaginary drop of coffee off her shirt, but she winked at me.
I could always rely on her to bring me back to my life, the one filled with friends who loved me no matter what. No matter what. I hoped that included freaks who could turn into birds.
“Speaking of superhot.” Melissa elbowed my side.
I grimaced at her, then followed her gaze to the door.
The entire Wolfe family stood on the threshold, looking around for an empty table.
I got that fluttery feeling in my chest again and downed some more coffee.
“Jonah can squeeze in here,” Melissa said.
“Yeah, maybe you guys can pass more notes to each other,” Jenny added.
“Ha-ha,” I said, but I had to sit on my hand to keep from waving him over.
Mr. Wolfe led his family to a free table across the restaurant. A few people nodded to him, but most shot him suspicious glances and turned away when he passed.
I tried not to notice how Jonah’s dark green T-shirt brought out his eyes, not to mention his biceps.
As though she could sense me looking at her brother, Bree turned and smirked at me. She tucked her arm through the crook of Jonah’s elbow and whispered something in his ear, tossing her hair.
As they sat down, Mr. Salter walked by their table and shot Mr. Wolfe a scathing look that he didn’t catch.
I squinted at Mr. Salter as he left the coffee shop. “What was that all about?”
“What?” asked Carly, pouring more cream into her coffee.
“That look Mr. Salter gave Jonah’s dad. Like he just killed a puppy or something.”
“It’s probably about the power plant,” Jenny said.
“Hydroelectric power plant,” said Melissa.
“Whatever.” Jenny flagged down one of the waitresses, and we ordered.
“I heard my mom and dad talking about it,” Jenny continued after the waitress had left. “They’re trying to get a bunch of people in town to protest it. They think it’s going to ruin the environment.”
“I thought water power was good for the environment,” Carly said.
“Who knows?” Jenny dumped about a cup of sugar into her coffee. I curled my lip in disgust, an
d she grinned at me as she took a sip. “My parents are such hippies. They’ll protest anything. Anyway, Mr. Salter was over the other night talking to them about it. They were going on and on about how we can’t let corporate America take over Twin Willows.” She rolled her eyes. “They’re all planning to raise a bunch of questions after Mr. Wolfe gives his presentation on Monday.”
I looked at the Wolfes. Jonah and Bree sat on one side of the table, heads bent together, engaged in a conversation that seemed to block out the rest of the world. Their dad was oblivious, talking animatedly to their mom, who toyed with her silverware and stared off into space. I watched Bree doodle something on a napkin. She pushed the napkin to Jonah and handed him her pen. He added to the doodle and gave it back to her. I had once read an article about “twin speak,” the private language that twins have with each other, and I wondered what secret things Jonah and Bree talked about.
“Earth to Lessi.” Melissa snapped her fingers in front of my face, pulling my attention back to the girls. “Jeez, you really do have it bad, don’t you?”
“I don’t get it,” I said, unable to keep my gaze from wandering to Jonah and Bree. “With him, she’s like a real person. But with the rest of us, she’s a—”
“Yeah, yeah, she’s a bitch.” Jenny drowned her pancakes with maple syrup. “Last week’s news. Let’s move on.”
But I couldn’t. I kept glancing over to the Wolfes. Bree and Jonah never spoke to their parents for the entire meal, and Mrs. Wolfe never said a word while her husband talked at her. Maybe I really was sheltered, because it was the oddest family dynamic I had ever seen.
After breakfast, I usually went over to Jenny’s house, where her mom would try to get us to eat flaxseeds and mung bean sprouts. But I begged off, telling Jenny I had too much homework. It wasn’t exactly a lie; I did have homework. It just wasn’t for school.
I found Heath in the milking room adjacent to the barn, releasing the last goat from her harness. “There you are,” he said, giving the goat a pat on her rump as she bolted through the gate. “We have work to do.”
“Work?” I asked. “Don’t I even get like a welcome to the Benandanti celebration?”
Heath raised an eyebrow.
I sighed. “Sense of humor, Heath. Look into it.”
“I have a sense of humor,” he said defensively. “I just use it on special occasions.”
I laughed.
“I didn’t mean that to be funny.”
“So you have an accidental sense of humor,” I said, following him out of the milking room. I jogged to keep up with his long strides. “What are we doing today?”
Heath grabbed his backpack from the ground by the barn door. “We start with the basics. I have a lot to teach you before we can even think about going up against the Malandanti.”
We skirted along the edge of the pasture. The sun beat down, unusually strong for this time of year. At the edge of the forest we climbed over the fence and passed into the cool, quiet depths of the trees. A little ways in, we picked up an offshoot of the main trail that I knew ran well into the next county, because once when I was eleven I had followed it all the way there before the search party Lidia had sent out caught up with me.
I shoved a branch out of my way. “So, you’re like the Obi-Wan to my Luke.”
“What?”
“Please tell me you’ve seen Star Wars.”
Heath glanced back at me. “Of course I have. Oh. Well, yeah, I guess.”
We came to a small clearing in the woods. The path ran right through it, but Heath stopped and dropped his backpack to the ground. “Every new Benandante is given a Guide.”
“Who’s your Guide?”
Heath shook his head, his hair flopping onto his forehead. He pushed it away from his eyes. “I can’t tell you. See, within each Clan, the only other member whose identity you will know is your Guide’s. We keep it that way in case we’re captured by the Malandanti and forced into giving information. Because, you know, we’re easier to harm in our human form.”
The thought that I now had enemies who wanted to harm me made me shudder. I folded my arms over my chest and hugged myself. “So, I could be sitting next to a fellow Benandante in biology for all I know.” My insides chilled. “Or a Malandante. I could be sitting right next to a Malandante in Joe’s and not know it.”
Heath waggled a finger at me. “You gotta get over that. When I first joined the Benandanti, I thought that about everyone I met. It’ll drive you nuts, so just let it go. Besides, you can’t attack the Malandanti when you, or they, are in human form.”
“Why not? You just said they do.”
“Just because they do it doesn’t mean we have to stoop to their level. That’s what makes us good.” He walked to the center of the clearing. “We’re not here to talk about that. You need to learn to transform.”
“I know how to transform,” I said, planting a hand on my hip. “I did it the other night.”
“Okay. Transform. Right now.”
I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to summon up that feeling of being torn in two, of my soul breaking away from my body. After several minutes of trying to make it happen, I opened my eyes. “Why can’t I do it?”
A smug smile tugged at his mouth. “The other night on the bridge, you were Called by the Concilio Celeste, as is the tradition when a Benandante is Called for the first time. And when we were in the woods, I Called you.”
“Who are they?”
“The Concilio Celeste is a seven-member council that has power over all the Clans.” He waved his hand. “Can we get back to the lesson?”
“Hey, it’s just as important for me to learn about the hierarchy of the Benandanti, isn’t it?”
Heath glared at me, his jaw clenched.
I stuck my hands in my pockets and gave him an I’m-paying-attention face. “Sorry. Go on.”
“When you’re Called, you have no choice. You have to transform. But you can also transform at will, and that’s an important skill to know. If you’re attacked in your human form by a Malandante, you’ll need to transform in order to defend yourself.” Heath squatted and folded his hands under his chin. “Try focusing on something that ties you to your Benandante form—like how it feels to fly.”
I blew out a big sigh and closed my eyes again. I tried to remember how I had felt as a Falcon. Confused. Scared. Disbelieving. I shook my head. That wasn’t right. Those were human emotions. I dug a little deeper. That moment over the water, that thrill at being able to fly . . . A tingling, unnatural and startling, started at the base of my spine. My eyes flew open.
Heath pointed at me. “Something happened, right? What did you feel?”
“I wanted to fly.”
“Good. Concentrate on that.”
I thought again about what it was like to rise above the treetops and look down from that dizzying height to the ground below. For a moment the memory was so real that I was back in the air, my wings spread wide as I soared . . .
Something ripped through me, something sharp and piercing. I opened my mouth to scream, but instead a bird-cry came out. I looked down and found myself hovering in the air. Just below me lay my body, still and silent in the grass as Heath stood across from me.
The earth spun. This was not the way the world was supposed to be. Dizziness engulfed me, and the next thing I knew, I was lying faceup on the ground, staring at the cloudy afternoon sky.
Heath’s head blocked my view of the sky as he bent over me. “Are you okay?”
I tried to nod, but the motion made me want to vomit. “I think so,” I rasped.
“You had it.” Heath sat back on his haunches, looking a little like his wolf-self. “It was just for a second, but you did it.”
I struggled to prop myself up on my elbows. “Yeah,” I said weakly, “I guess I did.”
“Try again,” Heath urged.
I lay on the ground and closed my eyes. This time I let the image of the Waterfall creep into my mind, the way I had seen
it through my Falcon eyes. An ache spread through me, the need to protect my dad’s secret place as strong as a grip on my heart. With a sear of pain, I felt my soul leave my body.
When I opened my eyes, I was in the air above my inert form again, but I wasn’t confused now. In fact, the world seemed right this way.
An unearthly blue light filled the clearing below me. When it dimmed, the White Wolf sat next to Heath’s unmoving body.
You did it! Heath the Wolf jogged beneath me as I stretched my wings and flew a little distance away. It was still so odd to hear his thoughts in my head.
Is there a way to close off the thoughts of the other Benandanti? You know, in case I want some privacy? I sped up in the air, my wings beating wildly.
Just intend your mind to be closed off, and it will be. Heath raced to keep up with me, a flash of pale fur as I swerved through the trees that ringed the clearing. But you should always stay open when you’re with the other Benandanti. That’s the best way to hold your mind during a battle.
I circled the top of a pine tree, then swooped down so I was flying between the trees. So basically, if I’m thinking about French class right now, you won’t know.
Heath ran below me, his strides strong and loping. No, but you shouldn’t be thinking about French class. It’ll break your concentration.
The mention of French class brought the image of Jonah into my mind. I slowed, my wings suddenly heavy. There was no way he could like a freak like me . . .
I dropped in the air, the ground coming up fast. Letting out a screech, I wrenched my mind into the present and soared into the air. It was a relief when I was aloft again.
See?
Yeah, I see.
No matter what’s going on in your outside life, you have to keep your focus. You have to compartmentalize.
Easier said than done.
You’ll get the hang of it. Heath stopped. Let’s go back to the clearing. I want you to practice shifting in and out of your Benandanti form until it’s second nature.