by Nina Hoffman
Columba poured three mugs of tea and set them on the table. Her flower-pixie shapes fluttered here and there as she did it, some of them lighting on the table or the teapot, some hovering, and some racing each other around Columba.
“So is this your signature?” Dr. Porta asked Columba.
Columba looked down through her triangled fingers and thumbs, sang a short song, and frowned. “Most of it. You’ve left off the shadow end.”
“Hmm. I need to tinker with the formula some more. But for now . . . Maya?” Dr. Porta offered her a spoonful of the jelly.
Here goes, Maya thought, and ate it before Rimi could comment or object. The flavor was sharp and sweet, lemon with overtones of strawberry, something else she didn’t recognize, and just a hint of pepper. Rimi slipped a thread of herself into Maya’s mouth before Maya swallowed. As Maya swallowed she felt Rimi withdraw and sensed that Rimi had tasted the stuff, too, but in a different way.
Interesting, Rimi thought. New kind of power in it. I want.
Rimi appeared, forced out of shadow into bright color, a solid blanket of blue, silver, gray, and green wrapping around Maya, leaving only her face bare, with spikes and waves rising up here and there, and parts of her lapping across the floor in thin rivulets.
“Kiri kara! ” Dr. Porta said. “So big and solid-looking! And spread out. Is she there like that all the time?”
Columba peered through triangle fingers, then lowered them, then lifted them to look again. “Yep, that’s what I just saw. Weird.”
“So big,” Dr. Porta repeated, staring at the floor, where Rimi rivers in blending shades of greens, grays, blues, and yellows snaked off in different directions. She leaned over and touched a rivulet near her foot. Her finger sank through it. “Hardly even a shiver,” she muttered, and leaned closer to look at the parts of Rimi draped over Maya’s back.
Maya hugged herself, feeling the snuggle of Rimi against her, as she almost always did. Then she spread her arms and looked down at herself, enveloped in layers of colorful Rimi. The visual representation gave Maya strange feelings. She had drawn pictures of how she imagined Rimi would look, and this Rimi was different, which made her wonder which Rimi was real. She closed her eyes, feeling the Rimi she always felt. It reassured her. She opened her eyes again and set her mind on memorize, but it was hard to memorize, the way Rimi kept shifting color and shape, and with so much of her behind Maya, or too close to see.
Dr. Porta pulled a digital camera from the satchel and shot picture after picture.
Maya stood and held her hands out, turned them up and down. Colors changed across Rimi’s prickly surface, and parts of her retracted and expanded, stretched and shrank. Violet flared, followed by orange and red, then different shades of green and blue and some brown. Rimi’s pseudopods reached out to the pale orchids in Columba’s living room and seemed to be sipping from them. Other extensions branched off to visit other flowers.
A slender Rimi tentacle slid across the table to the bowl containing Dr. Porta’s mixture, sneaking up to it on the side away from where Dr. Porta and Columba stood studying Maya and Rimi. Its tip slid up the side of the bowl and into the mixture. Maya felt Rimi tasting the mixture even more thoroughly than she had when it was in Maya’s mouth, sorting out individual ingredients and assigning them descriptors, code words that let her think about them in useful ways. Song stuff, Rimi thought. Can’t unassemble or rebuild that part. Forgot to record it when she was doing it. I wonder if we can get her to make more so we can catch that part. Could you sing it? I don’t know. Your singing doesn’t seem to work the way the Janus House people’s singing does.
Could you make this? Maya wondered.
Don’t know where some parts come from, Rimi thought, withdrawing from the bowl. Know their scentastes now, but not sure where to find them. Plus, song component is important.
Maya wondered what Rimi would do with the potion if she made more. She raised her arm and thought, Can you make a hand without being attached to me?
The forest-and-olive-green part of Rimi circling Maya’s arm stretched out and made a hand of its own, with eight fingers and a big thumb. The fingers wiggled. The thumb flexed. The hand made a fist, then opened and waved at Maya. Maya laughed. Can you pick stuff up with that?
Rimi reached out and picked up a sugar bowl from the kitchen counter beside Columba. “Whoa,” Columba said, while Dr. Porta kept shooting. Rimi brought the sugar bowl to the table and scooped a couple of spoonfuls of sugar into Maya’s tea.
“Whoa,” Columba said again. “That’s—”
“Wait a sec. She can lift things?” Dr. Porta said.
“Evidently,” said Columba.
“The equivalent of levitation. This means—” She shot a picture of the sugar bowl and Rimi’s spoon handling.
“Means what?” Columba asked.
“Means I have something to report,” said Dr. Porta.
Rimi set down the spoon, formed a second hand, and rubbed her hands together. Dr. Porta took a picture of that, too. Maya felt Rimi’s mental smile.
Did you always know you could do that? Maya asked, touching the abandoned spoon.
I knew I could pick things up. Dirty laundry and guinea pigs. Forks and pencils. I knew I could make a hand that was attached to you, but that was different. Making a hand out of the regular me, that’s new, Rimi thought.
The lights around Dr. Porta winked out. The dancing colored flowers surrounding Columba vanished. Rimi retracted all her extensions and used her arms to hug Maya just before the color faded from her and she went back to being a shadow.
“Good one, Sapphira,” Columba said. “Can I keep some of that for later?”
“Sure. Short shelf life on it, though. Use it in the next couple of weeks and then toss it. It turns into something dire after that.”
“How can I tell when?”
Dr. Porta looked at the jelly. “It goes a bit mossy, gray and green. Then you don’t want to feed it to anybody. Makes you break out in bug hives.”
“Ick.” Columba got a jar from a cupboard and ladled potion into it, then screwed the top on. “Refrigerate it?”
“Yeah, that helps,” said Dr. Porta.
Columba fished a pen out of a drawer and wrote on the jar, then stuck it into the refrigerator. “Fun at parties,” she said.
Dr. Porta laughed, then shook her head.
“What would happen if somebody normal ate that?” Maya asked.
“I’m not sure. Are you thinking of feeding it to the giri boy?”
“I wasn’t, but—”
“It wouldn’t hurt him,” Dr. Porta said. Then she looked at the ceiling and sucked on her lower lip. “Well . . . I’d want to be there just in case. Everyone has hidden depths. I wonder if it would show any of his?”
“Maya,” Columba said, “I’d like to talk to you seriously about a job.”
“A job?”
“Yes. You know I run security for Janus House, and I have several people who work with me and one apprentice. Sissimi partners are popular with security forces, for reasons that are becoming apparent to me. Istar Harper will be asking you about specializing in something soon, and I’d like to get my request in early. Please give it serious thought, okay?”
“But I—” Maya had had summer jobs weeding gardens, babysitting, walking dogs, watering plants, running errands for her parents, but she didn’t want to work work right now. School was her job, she figured. At least, that was what her parents told her.
Now she had two other families. She wondered if Benjamin and Gwenda and Rowan had jobs.
“Just think about it,” Columba said.
“Okay.”
A knock sounded on the apartment door.
“No, not yet,” muttered Dr. Porta. “I have other tests to run.”
Sarutha opened the door and peered in. “I’m finished with my other task,” she said. “Maya, are you ready to come with me?”
“I didn’t even start the homework you gave me,” Maya said.<
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“Oh, right,” said Columba. “I forgot to give it to you. Here.” She handed a manila envelope to Maya. Maya rose, tucked the envelope into her sketchpad, and put her possessions in her pack. She gulped her tea before she realized it wasn’t peppermint, but something that tasted like flowers. It was like drinking perfume with sugar in it. She set down the mug and rubbed her tongue against the roof of her mouth, trying to erase the taste. “You call that peppermint?” she asked Columba.
“Did I mislabel those?” Columba sipped her tea and grimaced. “Sorry. Oh, dear. This is tell-all tea.”
“You gave it to us on purpose, didn’t you?” Maya asked.
“Yes, I did.” Columba set her own mug down and glared at it. “Didn’t mean to say that.”
“What else have you done to us?” asked Maya.
“That’s all. Oh, the orchids, but I forgot I used those. They work on everyone.”
“What do the orchids do?”
I know, Rimi thought.
“They have a comfort scent,” Columba said. She glared at her mug, flicked one index finger across the other toward it. The tea in her mug sizzled and hissed into an upwelling of steam.
Is that what they do? Maya asked Rimi.
They are very friendly. They make you feel safe. They relax you. They taught me how to do that. I think it will be good for us.
Make me relax so much I forget to keep my own secrets? Maya thought.
Oh. Maybe. Rimi sent a slender tendril of self into the side of Maya’s mouth. I’ll turn the tea off.
Faint pressure on Maya’s tongue, as though a leaf lay there. A few tiny darts of sparkling pain in her mouth and throat. Maya took a deep breath and breathed out perfume.
Think I got it before it got too far into you, Rimi said. Ask her more questions.
“What are your other plans for us?” Maya asked.
“General watchfulness and caution,” Columba said, “and taking whatever openings you offer. Stop that!”
Dr. Porta poured the tea in her cup out into the sink. “Intriguing,” she said. “Col, fifteen years ago, did you try to steal Will from me?”
“Oh, yes,” Columba said. “Stop it!” Her hands closed into fists, with the thumb tips protruding between middle and ring fingers. She sang softly and whirled the fists in front of her in a complicated pattern. Maya could almost see what she was sketching in the air, but not quite. Columba drew in a ragged breath. “Get out!”
“How long does the tell-all part last?” Dr. Porta asked.
“An hour or two. I mean it! Get out of here!”
Dr. Porta flung her zippered pouches into her satchel, packed the camera a little more carefully, and grabbed the potion bowl. “You got it.” She brushed past Sarutha on her way out of the apartment.
“Columba, what have you been up to?” Sarutha asked, her soft, ancient face creased with frown.
“Security things,” said Columba.
“Have you been doing things to Maya?”
“Sure,” said Columba. “You knew I would. That’s why you sent her here. Only necessary things, though. Have you seen the Rimi friend, Sarutha?”
“Not directly.”
“Huge. Bigger than you imagine. And—later,” she said, with a shrug. “I don’t want to converse with anyone right now.”
Maya shouldered her backpack. She went to the kitchen threshold and studied the orchids in the front room. They looked innocent. Of course, they would.
“Damn,” said Columba. “I shouldn’t be chasing you off. I have to keep watch on you, and I need to find out more about you. It’s my job. Just don’t ask me any more questions, okay?”
“I’m not making any promises,” Maya said. Sarutha took her hand and led her toward the apartment door.
“Are you as diabolical as that makes you sound?” Columba asked, following them.
“Probably not,” said Maya.
“Is your name Turnip Khachaturian?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Why doesn’t the tell-all tea work on you?” Columba asked. “You drank more of it than I did.”
“I’d rather not say,” said Maya.
“Kiri alamaka,” Columba muttered. “Well,” she said. “I suppose you’re in safe hands for now, and I can stop watching you.”
EIGHTEEN
Maya followed Sarutha up two sets of stairs to the third floor. Another set of stairs led higher in the building. Maya had studied it from outside and was pretty sure the building had five above-ground stories, but she’d never been higher than Sarutha’s floor.
Sarutha’s apartment was very small, a studio: one room, with a kitchen corner that had a sink, a two-burner hot plate, and a tiny under-the-counter fridge with a piece of red counter above it. The walls were dark, a mosaic of different kinds of polished woods with knotholes like a design in them. For furniture, a round, wooden table stood near the kitchen corner with its own chairs. A big, comfortable couch that doubled as Sarutha’s bed sat on piled carpets in dark reds, blues, and browns. Black ironwork shelves around the room supported delicate sword-leafed plants with spidery baby plants dangling from them. There was a bookshelf with curlicues of iron, and several shiny bird cages that looked like the skeletons of dollhouses with the shapes of roofs and windows and multiple stories in them. The doors to the bird cages were always open. Sometimes birds went inside the cages, and sometimes there were no birds. Most of them were wild birds. Sarutha left seeds in the seed containers in the cages, and she tried to leave at least one window open, no matter what the weather. At times her apartment was loud with birdsong.
French doors led out onto a little balcony inset in the side of the building that held more plants, one more birdcage, and two chairs. Maya headed for the balcony; it was where they always studied together if they were in the apartment instead of in one of the classrooms, unless the outside weather was too fierce or cold.
Maya loved the view of her neighborhood from this height. Sarutha’s balcony faced toward Maya’s house. She could look down at her own roof, her own chimney, her own backyard, where Sully the golden retriever slept, or ran after squirrels, or played with Peter. The carport was on the far side of the house, so she couldn’t see whether Mom’s and Dad’s cars were parked there, but she could see lights in the windows of the living room, dining room, her room, and Peter’s room, if lights were on. She could see the greenway between the two halves of the block, too, with houses to either side. The greenway dead-ended at Janus House, which covered a third of the block and had a few associated structures with it. Maya liked this bird’s-eye view of life. She felt safe up here in Sarutha’s hidden place.
Sarutha leaned over by the fridge and came up with two cans of grapefruit soda. She brought them out to the balcony and set them on wooden coasters on the little wicker table. Then she sat down, with a fluffing of velvet skirts around her as she lowered herself into the chair.
“Columba wants me to work with her,” Maya said after they had opened their sodas and taken the first bubbly sip.
“Do you like her?” Sarutha asked.
“I think so.”
“You could do worse.”
“I thought you and I were working together.”
“Yes, my dear. Of course. I treasure you as a student. But you know you have many teachers here.”
It was true; Maya saw one person for language lessons on Monday, a different person for singing class on Wednesday, and yet another person for principles of magic class on Friday. Sarutha was her teacher for more nebulous subjects, like family trees, the history of portals, and the different species who used portals. She was gracious about answering Maya’s questions, and she made Maya feel safe.
“Your singing teacher says you don’t have musical gifts, Maya.”
“What?” Maya touched her throat. She loved to sing, and everybody complimented her voice at home.
“You are a wonderful singer, for a human,” Sarutha said. “You understand that we here are something di
fferent, yes?”
“Magic,” Maya said.
“We have been bred to host magic in our throats, in our bones, in our voices and our hands. We were not sure if the sissimi bond would grant you any of that magic. Sissimi are from another system. They don’t call what they do magic; to them it is science, or life, or just what they do. Portal users all have different ways they believe in the workings of portals, and belief is what makes the portals work. On Earth, we use song and magic. Your sissimi gives you many powers, but they are not like our powers; so it is time you focused on things you can excel at.”
“So my classes—I could tell what I was trying didn’t work,” Maya said in a small voice. She was there with all those five- and six-year-olds, trying to raise sparks, or change airflow, or wake a glyph written on a slate, and the Littles were getting things to work, but Maya never could manage to affect anything, even though her teacher said she was doing everything right.
“It is not that you lack skill,” Sarutha said. “It is that it is just not in you.”
It might be in me, Rimi thought. I will acquire all the powers I see and then we’ll be able to do everything they can.
Rimi, Maya thought, in the midst of despair. She had never even thought of making her own magic, not seriously—outside the stories Stephanie had made up about both of them being magical changelings whose abilities would manifest any day now—until she started taking the basic classes at Janus House. She had learned to watch Gwenda’s small motions, Benjamin’s hands, Rowan’s eyes, guessing which natural forces they might be pushing or shifting. They tried not to do any of it outside the house, but they practiced every day, and some slippage happened.
Really, Maya. I am that thing in which many worlds meet; so I know from Vati and Kita. In us, you and I meet, but maybe I can meet others long enough to acquire—
Maya rubbed her eyes, smiling, and thought, Having you is enough.
Rimi pressed her cheek gently. Well, all right, for now. I am always looking, though. I will find us powers.