The Shift of the Tide

by Jeffe Kennedy

  “Nearly four,” Marskal corrected.

  Too long. Much too long. And I’d eaten for days in that form. I shouldn’t have returned from that.

  They all stared at me, expressions stricken, except for Harlan who still worked his subtle massage, now on my other hand. I realized I’d spoken that last aloud.

  “You did return,” Marskal said, his sharp jaw set in a stubborn line. “And you’re fine.”

  Was I? “I feel very strange.”

  Dafne coughed out a laugh that was mostly a sob. “You look amazing for someone who was reduced to a pile of ash.”

  My head throbbed suddenly at the memory and I put a hand to my temple. Harlan followed the gesture, stroking finger pads into the spot that hurt, then over my jaw, behind my ears, and over my scalp to the back of my neck. Working. Spreading ease and surcease. So much gentleness in such a big man. No wonder Ursula loved him so.

  There is also being loved.

  Inexplicably, that made my throat tighten. I knew with deep certainty that Moranu had spoken those words to me. I’d come back for that. Had somehow scraped together enough of the shards of my body to shapeshift it into the body of a hummingbird.

  I shuddered and Harlan braced the back of my neck with one hand, the other against my forehead. It felt ridiculously good.

  “I don’t know much about shapeshifters,” Harlan continued, moving his hands to press thumbs into points at my collar bone, “but I understand human bodies, at least. You are like a warrior who’s been so badly wounded that she’s no longer a perfect fit in her skin.”

  For some reason that analogy made me smile. Which felt good, too. I liked to smile, and to laugh. That was part of me.

  “This will help,” he continued. “Then rest. Trust yourself to find the fit again.”

  We were quiet for a bit while he worked. Marskal leaned against a window frame, his back tense as he gazed out at the sea through the tacked-down curtains.

  “Why are the curtains drawn and tied down?”

  “We couldn’t risk having you fly out, lest we lose you forever,” Marskal explained, his voice oddly strained.

  That made sense. But I thought my skin might never fit again. I might have lost my self anyway.

  ~ 8 ~

  As recommended, I rested for a while, but I grew restless. Even after I’d persuaded Inoa’s ladies that I was no longer a flight risk and that I wanted the curtains removed, I couldn’t bear the trapped feeling. They’d all left me alone to sleep, so it was relatively easy to make my escape.

  I reached for a bird form, ready to fly out the window. Some time in the clear sky, stretching my wings, would help clear the muddiness in my mind. When I came back to human, my body would feel right to me again.

  I reached—and slammed into a wall headfirst. Pain radiated through every nerve, oozing out my pores in a cold, stinking sweat. I lay there, dazed, staring at the blue sky that mocked me through the open window. I’d never been unable to shift. Except in that nightmarish haze of black and red agony, when I’d tried over and over to find a form again and failed.

  It made my stomach turn to remember it, intensifying my need to flee.

  Deeply unsettled, I escaped the confines of the palace on foot to walk on the beach. I needed to make a plan, to come to terms with what had happened, but I had trouble concentrating. The flowers distracted me with their bright colors, and the sky beckoned. The worst of my fears hovered all around me—that I’d never shed the hummingbird brain.

  Though the weakness and clumsiness plagued me, I determinedly continued down the beach. The more I moved in this body—my body, I really needed to think of it that way—the more I’d settle into it. Then I’d be ready to shift again. It had just been too soon, for whatever reason. Contemplating anything else made me feel ill.

  “Should you be walking so far?”

  Marskal paced beside me, and I glanced at him, surprised to find myself grateful for his presence.

  “I can walk. There’s nothing wrong with me physically.”

  He nodded, clearly humoring me, not in agreement. He also kept walking with me, not seeming to mind his boots sinking into the soft sand while I waded ankle-deep in gentle, cooling waves. If I’d been myself, I would have shifted into a fish or a dolphin, to better enjoy the water, and to let my worries drift. But I didn’t dare try that again yet. Instead, I turned my feet and determinedly continued down the beach on foot.

  What if I’d lost the ability forever? Or what if I pushed past that astonishing pain and bungled it, a horrifying death. I’d seen a Tala woman suicide that way to avoid interrogation. Though she’d been an enemy and my animal selves hadn’t mourned her death a moment, the grim memory stuck with all of us who witnessed it. Especially the shapeshifters.

  I’d have to be able to shift again. Not only because that was who I was, but to take Final Form. Surely I’d know when I’d be ready to shift again. If only I could ask the Shaman. Or my brother Zyr, who taught the children, and had a talent for the difficult cases. I felt like that again, a youngling of few years—except that I’d never felt anything like that pain or terror in trying to shift.

  “I’ve never seen anyone manage to make a stroll on the beach feel like a forced march,” Marskal observed.

  Had I felt grateful for his presence? Now I only wanted to be left alone in my misery.

  “Why are you here?” I hadn’t meant the question to sound so harsh, but he didn’t seem to note it.

  Instead, he squinted at the sky, contemplating. “A question for the ages. Why are any of us here?”

  Great. Now he was a philosopher. I stopped and waded into the water again, though I couldn’t go far enough to escape him. The sea cooled and tempted me, my borrowed Nahanaun shift floating up to swirl around me. If only I could. Fish didn’t have conversations.

  “You know that’s not what I meant,” I finally said, when it became clear he wouldn’t respond further.

  “Do I?” He pursed his lips, then toed off his boots. “I’d think someone who just had a near-death experience would be interested in such questions.”

  I wasn’t discussing that. “Go back and tell Ursula I don’t need a thriced babysitter.”

  He chuckled, bending over to roll up the cuffs of his pants to the knee, revealing strong calves, lightly furred with brown hair. His bare feet were surprisingly long, even graceful. Keeping on his sword, he waded in. “Not to insult your considerable skills of intimidation, but I’m more afraid of Her Majesty than I am of you.”

  Once I would have shifted into a tiger and quickly changed his mind. Instead I dug my toes into the sand. My own feet looked pale in the water, like something that didn’t quite belong to me.

  “Zynda.”

  I glanced at Marskal, who had a strange expression on his face. He stood quite close, near enough to reach out and pick up a long strand of my hair, rubbing it between his fingers. It triggered a sense of nostalgia in me, that kind where you long for something you never had.

  “Zynda.” Marskal studied the hair, then my face, searching for something. “Are you all right?”

  He posed the question so seriously, with such a wealth of unspoken meaning behind it, that I couldn’t brush him off. I wanted to lean on him, have him tell me that everything would be fine, that I would be fine. But he was a mossback who could never understand. Still…

  “I don’t know,” I told him honestly, surprising myself. “I don’t feel all right.”

  He dipped his chin, acknowledging that as some kind of profound truth. “Maybe that’s not a bad thing.”

  Now he surprised me. “What do you mean?”

  He gazed back at me, intent, a world of thoughts behind his careful brown eyes. “You survived a terrible event. It’s not surprising that you’re having to adjust to it.” He tore his gaze from mine, instead winding the lock of my hair around his finger. “You’ve lost your tan, you know. You should be careful in the sun.”

  I resisted looking at my arm. That hadn’
t occurred to me, but I didn’t want him to know that. “I’m careful.”

  “You should give yourself time to recover.”

  My habitual response rose in my throat, to tell him I didn’t need time to recover. I’d never been seriously ill, never had an injury shapeshifting couldn’t heal. “I don’t think I know how to do that.”

  He studied me. “You don’t feel like yourself.”

  I didn’t know how he knew that, but I nodded, my throat too tight for words.

  He gave my hair a little tug, a sad cant to his mouth. “Want to hear a story?”

  “A story?”

  “Yes, come into the shade and I’ll tell you. It might help.”

  Bemused, I let him lead me out of the water and into the deep shade of a graceful tree with fernlike fronds that draped nearly to the sand, bright with slender green leaves and tiny white blossoms. It felt surprisingly good to sit, and it bothered me not to know that I’d needed to. Marskal stretched out his long legs, leaned back on his elbows, and gazed out at the water.

  “Long ago, before the Great War, before the twelve kingdoms found a common tongue, there lived a mighty warrior called Morvared. He lived a good life, but when war came to his kingdom, he went to battle and fought bravely.”

  “As all good warriors do,” I put in, and Marskal flicked a glance at me, amused but continuing with the thread of the story.

  “Of course. But on this day, Morvared took a blow from the enemy that knocked him from his horse. He lay, bleeding, amidst a pile of bodies while the fight moved on, certain that he’d met his death, that help would never come to him in time. He recalled leaving his body and seeing the battle as if from a high vantage. He knew he was dying, but he had family he longed for, a sweet wife who awaited his return and would be crushed by his death, and children—children who wouldn’t fare so well without his protection and care.

  “So he resolved to get back to his body, to live if he could manage it. He searched and found it, wedging himself back in, willing the wounded body to continue to live. He lay there for hours, but was eventually found, and nursed back to health.”

  I shifted, uncomfortable with the parallels and Marskal gave me a concerned look. “And then?” I prompted, uncomfortable, too, with that concern.

  “He returned to his wife and children, but they weren’t as he remembered them. They, in turn, found him terribly changed. Though he regained his strength enough to protect and care for his family, the love he’d once felt for them seemed to have died on that battlefield.”

  “Perhaps he didn’t truly love his wife. The Tala have such tales, too, of those who face life-changing events and discover the relationships before to be like those of the very young—formed on shallow things and no longer relevant to their changed selves.”

  Marskal considered that, his gaze searching my face for something. “That could be the case,” he agreed, “though that’s not how this legend goes. Morvared grew restless and unhappy, unable to shake the feeling that he missed his wife and children, worrying for them, though they were right in front of him. He took on riskier jobs, invested in business ventures, thinking that if he amassed enough wealth, the feeling that he’d failed them, that he couldn’t reach or protect them, would eventually ease.”

  An unsettled feeling grew in my heart. “And did it?”

  “One day, he rode in a part of the realm that seemed oddly familiar to him, though his men assured him he’d never been there. He passed a small estate, then turned back, driven by an urge to investigate. The place had fallen into disrepair, but it nevertheless seemed beautiful to him. It seemed that, everywhere he looked, he could see the potential for it to be so much more. It felt like coming home to a place he’d been seeking all this time. He rode with his men up to the house, and a young woman with two children came out. They were too thin, in ill health, and clearly afraid of the men. The boy, though, carried a sword he could barely lift, and stood before his sisters, bravely defending them.”

  “Tell me Morvared didn’t kill them.”

  Marskal chuckled. “You have a soft heart guarded by those fierce claws. No—the warrior recognized the sword. It was his own, the one he’d died holding on the battlefield.”

  It twisted my brain too much. Part of me, however, understood and trembled. “What does that mean?”

  “Morvared had been at that battle, fought in it, and died, just as he’d thought. But when he’d fought his way back to his body, he found someone else’s. Another warrior whose spirit had fled following a near-mortal wound. He’d taken over Morvared’s body and his life, but the man he’d been, his own body, had truly died in that battle. That body had long-since been buried, his sword sent home to his family.”

  “And so he hadn’t returned to his family at all,” I whispered. “He’d gone and saved someone else’s while his own…”

  “Fell apart, as he’d feared. His wife had died of heartbreak, and his oldest daughter had struggled to keep the estate going, with his young son laboring to learn to lift his dead father’s sword.”

  “Marskal. This is a terrible story!”

  He gave me a somber look, sitting up, then tucking a lock of hair behind my ear. “I didn’t mean to distress you.”

  Something of the tenderness in the gesture stopped my breath. “Tell me he saved them.”

  “He did. He purchased the estate and took the children into his household. The son grew up to be a great warrior in his own right, which is another tale.” He fell silent, tearing his gaze from mine and looking out at the sea again.

  “And Morvared?” I prompted.

  “What about him?”

  “Did he find happiness—did the feeling of seeking ease?”

  “Ah. Hmm.” Marskal rubbed a hand over his face.

  Figured. “Just tell me.”

  “After he ensured the children were all well, and his former estate restored to good working order, he killed himself.” Marskal spoke the words slowly, as if regretting having to say so.” Then he turned his head, staring at me intently, mouth firmed. “That’s not why I wanted to tell you this story. Morvared felt that his life had been a borrowed one, that he’d been meant to die on that battlefield. So he put both families in order, then went to the death he decided was overdue. But it doesn’t have to be that way for you. Though you might feel something of the same way, this is your body. You are you, however altered.”

  “I died up there,” I said, very quietly. It felt like confessing a shameful secret.

  “I know,” he said, equally quiet. “I was there.”

  “Don’t tell the others.”

  He hesitated, then nodded reluctantly. “I don’t see how it’s relevant strategically anyway. You’re safe now. I hope you learned what you needed to from the dragon.”

  “I didn’t,” I replied. “I have to go back.” Perhaps this would be enough, Kiraka’s final test. I’d died and managed to survive. She said she’d hoped I would, didn’t she? Dread at the thought of facing her again made me feel ill. But I’d made the choice. I’d come back to see my mission through. Moranu wouldn’t have helped me only to deny me shapeshifting. The ability would come back and I’d take Final Form as even the goddess intended.

  Marskal was staring at me, jaw so clenched the muscles there rippled and his throat worked with the words he fought. “You will not.”

  “You are not my keeper!” I fired back. Anger felt much better than terror. “I’m going and you can’t stop me.”

  “Understood.” He released a breath. “If that’s how it has to be, then that’s how it is. But I’m by your side for all of it. No debating or arguing.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me.”

  “I heard, but I must have missed the part where we were bargaining.”

  He cracked a slight smile. “That sounds more like your usual self. Let me lay out the terms then. You agree to cheerfully suffer my company and protection, and in return I won’t tell Her Majesty how tenuous your health
is.”

  “I never said that.”

  “Not in so many words, but you and I both know it’s true.”

  I regretted that lapse, confiding in him. Why had I? “I’ll deny it.”

  “You died, Zynda!” Marskal didn’t raise his voice, but the words came out with the force of an accusation, harsh with anguish. “I stood on the far side of that thrice-cursed meadow and watched, helpless, as that dragon burned you to ash. Don’t ask me to go through that again.”

  “I never asked you to go through any of it!” I flung back at him. “You weren’t even supposed to be there.”

  He set his lean jaw, stubborn. “Yes, I was. And if you insist on going, I won’t stay behind.”

  I threw up my hands. “If you’d been beside me, you would have died. And you can’t shapeshift to save yourself.”

  “Is that what it comes down to?”

  “What?” I’d lost the thread of the argument. Hummingbird brain.

  “I’m only a mossback. I’ve heard you say that, and I don’t miss your meaning—or the implicit condescension. Basically I’m a rock to you, so inert that plants grow on me. You don’t even see me as a man. I might as well be dirt.”

  I swallowed back asking “what?” again, though it perfectly fit my stunned confusion. I had no idea how we’d reached this point. Finally my feeble thought process grabbed onto one piece of that. “I don’t think you’re dirt, Marskal.”

  He stared at me, as if equally confounded. With a hoarse, unamused laugh, he scrubbed his hands over his face, then ran them over his scalp. “I’m exhausted and have no idea if I’ve won the argument or lost it.”

  He did look terrible. Haggard. Hummingbird memories nudged my brain, then flicked away again. Surely he hadn’t stayed awake, tending me all those days. Even Ursula wouldn’t command so much. But his ragged state tugged at my sympathy. I reached out and laid a hand on his cheek, thick with stubble. He stilled, like a mouse when I flew over in owl form.

  “I don’t even know what we’re arguing about, much less who’s won or lost,” I said, then smiled, not at all sure what was funny. “You need to rest.”