by Nina Berry
“You’re stalling,” said November. “Come on. Let’s see the big bad kitty.”
You can’t go home until you get good at this. No more endangering myself or my family. I had to start somewhere. Seeing these two girls do it meant it had to be less impossible for me. “Okay. I’ll try.”
I closed my eyes. After falling into the stream I’d found a dark, burning place inside me that led me to shift. Maybe that was the link to Othersphere November talked about. Could I find it now, awake and with no danger looming?
I heard November sigh and shift her weight. So I took a deep breath and tried to remember how it had felt when I’d shifted in that stream. I’d been worried, panicked, desperate. Shifting had been my only way out. Before that, anger had triggered it—frustration with the brace, then fury at Lazar and his thugs.
So maybe dark emotions were the key, all the ones I didn’t like. But I don’t have any dark emotions. I was a good girl who didn’t worry her mom. I was so strong that the pain of the brace never bothered me. I was tough enough to take the isolation it kept me in. Everything was fine. Just fine.
But it’s not. Just take a look at your life. Being afraid is getting you nowhere. And it was exhausting. I’d never get home at this rate. I knew what I had to do.
I found that uneasiness again inside me and pushed my mind toward it. It lay first within my heart. Then it went deeper. The churning darkness lay there still, bringing the weight of dread with it.
I couldn’t breathe. I wanted to run. But instead of pulling back, I forced myself to move closer. The amorphous mass rolled toward me like an immense boulder. But rather than trying and failing to climb over it, I plunged in.
Hot shadows vibrated up my back and down my limbs. I would have called out, but my throat was gone, reformed into something mightier. I roared as I shook my head and the skin and fur around it realigned. My paws hit the ground.
All dread, all fear had fled. The world reoriented itself, and I wanted to smell, to taste, to listen to all of it. I opened my eyes to see November and London with their backs pressed against the lockers, mouths open in shock. A moment ago, that look would have made me cringe. But I was a tiger now, and it was right.
They looked not only sharper and more detailed to my tiger eyes, but they’d become a part of a larger whole. My whiskers detected the currents of air that swirled around them; my eyes analyzed the bounce of light off their skin and hair; I could hear their unique heartbeats. The smell of the room filtered through me, sweat and soap and a pile of candy November must have hidden in her locker. Faint noises came from beyond the room, a locker door slammed, and heavy footsteps exited the boys’ room next door. Arnaldo and Siku were done shifting.
“Holy shit!” said November, her voice scratchy. “You’re huge!”
I lashed my tail, thumping it against the bench. I’d eaten nothing since dinner last night, and inside me lay a deep hollow place that needed to be filled. An artery under the skin of November’s neck pulsed, and I flexed my claws, thinking how it would feel to sink my teeth into that tender flesh.
“Okay, you are looking at me, but not at me, and that’s not good,” said November. “Up here, Stripes. Look me in the eye.”
I heard her but couldn’t focus on her voice. One pounce and my hunger would be satisfied. I tensed the muscles in my legs, growing very still.
“Desdemona.” London said my name very clearly and deliberately. I looked at her. “Remember who you are, who we are. You’re Dez.” She turned to November. “What’s her last name?”
“Hell if I know,” said November. “But you better listen to London, Dez. Morfael will be royally ticked off if you eat me.”
London swallowed hard and took a tiny step toward me. “You have a family somewhere, don’t you? Do you remember them?”
My mother. I had a sudden vision of her, pointing the Tribunal’s gun at me, her hands shaking with terror. And here was November, with the same expression on her face. God, I’d really been thinking about eating her. Poor girl. First London, now me. I couldn’t say I was sorry, so I sat down and waved my tail around airily, twitching my ears to show I was no longer interested in anything involving blood and guts.
Both girls recognized my body language and relaxed. “Okay, so deciding not to eat your cabinmates is the first step to shifting back to your human form,” said November. “Which you will do chop-chop, right?”
I nodded. What I really wanted to do was wolf down some raw meat, go outside, smell the grass, hear the wind in the leaves, and stretch my legs while lying in a pool of sun. But I was a girl as well as a tiger, and the girl had breakfast waiting, if only she could find herself.
“Okay, so close your eyes,” said London, her voice sounding unusually firm.
I shut my eyes and pictured my human body. I imagined the brace and how it had caged me. I had long red hair that frizzed in the rain, green eyes, freckles, and fingers with nails that grew fast.
I opened my eyes and twitched my whiskers at November and London. It wasn’t working.
November sighed. “Cats are so lazy.”
“And rats are so helpful,” said London. “Dez, what are you picturing?”
I tried to frown, but the muscles in my tiger face curled my lip up into a snarl instead. London was squinting at me. “You’re imagining what you look like as a human, aren’t you?”
“I used to do that,” said November. “But it never worked.”
London said, “Don’t think about the outside of your body. Think about the inside. How does it feel? Try that.”
I didn’t quite get what she meant, but it couldn’t hurt to try. I shut my eyes again, trying to find that hot, black nucleus inside me. I found it faster this time. Maybe it was easier to locate in tiger form. It burned inside me, churning and pulling. I flashed on the heat that rose inside me when Caleb looked at me, how my skin thrilled to his touch, how it felt to press against him and have his mouth on mine.
Blackness flashed through me, and there I was, sitting on the floor of the girls’ locker room, naked and human once more.
I scrambled for my towel as November pretended to dust off her hands in satisfaction.
“That was good,” said London. “What did you think about?”
I felt myself blush and got busy putting on my clothes. “Um, just stuff that you can only do in human form. Tigers can’t do everything.”
November let out a laugh and ran a hand down her hip. “Girl bodies are great for lots of things. My former fiancé can attest to that.”
“You were engaged?” I found a pair of socks that were gray from many washings but smelled clean. The odors and sounds around me felt unusually magnified. As before, coming out of animal form changed my human senses for a while. “How old are you?”
“She’s seventeen. Shifters tend to get married young,” said London. She didn’t sound as if she approved.
November nodded. “The tribes want us to start having kids ASAP. Lord knows Roger tried hard to get me there.” She popped her eyebrows up and down.
“Plus, there’s nothing else to do.” London pulled her hair back so only her blond roots showed around her face. She looked young and pretty without the unnatural color spoiling things. “No going to college, no travel abroad, no jobs that take you away from the tribe.”
“That sucks,” I said. “I mean, sorry. It just sounds so limiting.”
“Don’t be sorry,” said London, shutting her locker hard. “It does suck.”
Arnaldo and Siku were waiting for us in the gym area, lounging silently on the equipment. November grabbed Siku’s beefy arm and pulled him toward the door into the main house. “Breakfast, breakfast!” she said, grinning.
He trotted to keep up with her, a slow smile breaking across his face. He looked almost cute when he wasn’t glowering.
A huge meal lay on the table. No sign of Morfael or the mysterious Raynard, but Caleb was there, pouring syrup on a stack of pancakes. He smelled clean, his black hair wet
and curling a bit as it dried. He watched me, chewing, as I sat between London and November. No one said anything as huge platters of scrambled eggs, sausages, bacon, toast, and fruit made the rounds. I piled eggs onto my toast, topped it with bacon and took a bite, closing my eyes in ecstasy.
“So, Caleb, what did you do while we were busy shifting?” November asked, looking a little too interested in his answer.
“Turned a teapot into a volcano,” said Caleb. I choked a little on my toast, and he smiled. “Well, not exactly, but I did get it to pour out lava instead of hot water.”
“What good is that?” said Arnaldo.
Caleb shrugged. “Could be handy if you wanted to burn something. But I think Morfael just wanted me to practice. It’s easy to find big shadows, like the ones in you guys. But small ones, like that teapot, are tough.”
“Does every person have a shadow?” I asked.
“No, only shifters,” he said. “And not every object has one either. That’s part of the challenge: to find things with shadows and then figure out a way to use that shadow to your advantage.”
“Are the shadows of people always animals?” I asked.
Morfael spoke as he entered from the kitchen. “In this world, yes.”
“But in Othersphere, maybe there are people with shadows of trees or teacups?” I said.
“Perhaps.” His eyelids half veiled his eyes. “Or perhaps in one of the many other worlds we cannot see.”
“Hey, Siku, what do you think about in order to shift into a bear?” I asked him. “November and London told me what they did, and it really helped.”
The good humor vanished from Siku’s face. “That’s a personal question.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” His shuttered expression made me draw back. “I figured you guys had all talked about this already.”
“Nobody ever asked before,” said November, sucking on a slice of pineapple. “Come on, Sik. I want to know too. What goes through your mind?”
Muffled through a bite of apple, Siku said, “Okay. Bees.”
“Bees?” said Arnaldo.
He nodded, wiping his mouth. “I hear bees buzzing, and I follow the buzzing because bees mean honey.”
November laughed. “Oh, my God, you’re Winnie the Pooh!”
“Could be worse,” said Caleb. “Could be picnic baskets.”
Laughter broke out as Siku shrugged and spooned more honey onto a pancake. Even Morfael had a thin smile on his face as he sat down at the head of the table and helped himself to a piece of toast.
“Your turn, Arnaldo,” I said.
Arnaldo was frowning. “Is that how it is for all of you?” he said. “You think of something you like and you follow it?”
November, London, and Siku nodded. I didn’t do anything since that’s not how it was for me. But I sure didn’t want to discuss what I went through to shift, especially what it took to get me back to human.
“But there’s no way to turn that info into an equation,” Arnaldo said.
Everyone but Arnaldo and Morfael laughed. After a second the shifter kids stopped, eyeing each other self-consciously. They’re not used to laughing together.
“Maybe it’s more like a sequence,” I said. “Like the countdown before you launch a spaceship.”
Arnaldo blinked at me as something lit up behind his eyes.
“Goody,” said November. “Someone else who speaks geek. Oh, hey.” She leaned over to catch Morfael’s eye. “Why does Dez still have bruises on her waist? Even after she shifted, they didn’t heal up.”
“November!” My face was turning red.
“Oh, please, we’ll all be seeing each other naked at some point,” she said. “Well—” She gave Caleb a sidelong glance. “Most of us anyway. And maybe there’s something wrong with you that Morfael can fix.”
“They’re just old bruises from my back brace,” I said as Morfael gazed at me, expressionless. “It’s no big deal.”
Siku shook his head. “Bruises should heal when you shift. Mine do.”
“The mind is powerful,” said Morfael. “It can cause wounds deeper than the shift can cure.”
“So . . .” November’s brows drew together. “She’s still got the bruises because she thinks she’s got them?”
Morfael just kept eating.
CHAPTER 17
After breakfast we got a break to check e-mail or make calls. Morfael had a landline in the library that Siku made a call on. The rest of us went to the computer corner in the cave.
I looked for Caleb, but Morfael drew him aside to speak in low tones. I logged onto my e-mail account and found six from Iris and one from a strange account I recognized as the new one my mother had set up just before Caleb and I fled my house. Tears sprang to my eyes as I clicked on it.
“My darling Desdemona,” it began. “Richard and I are safe. I’m not going to write you where we are, just to be cautious.”
I wiped my eyes a bit and looked around to make sure no one saw me crying. But the others stared at their monitors, engrossed. Morfael was pulling a cloth from what looked like an ancient motorcycle as Caleb crouched down to look at it.
Mom’s e-mail continued, “Richard woke up about two minutes after you left the house. The bodies of those men in gray helped me convince him that we had to get out of there fast and tell no one where we went.
“Richard was pretty angry about it all, understandably. He insisted on parking a few blocks away and sneaking back to watch our house. We saw a white van pull up to the house.
“More people in gray got out of it. One was a girl about your age with blond hair. The tallest of them, a man with white hair, seemed to be in charge. They brought out the bodies very quickly, and the girl started crying when she saw the one you called Lazar. Then something amazing happened. The girl knelt beside Lazar and put her hands on his face. I tell you, the Healing Mother must be strong in her, because a moment later that young man sat up, demanding to know what had happened.
“I dragged Richard away after that. It looked as if they were searching the house, probably for clues as to where you and Caleb had gone.
“I’ve had a lot of time to think about you these past couple of days. Now that I clearly see your special gift, I understand some things that happened when you were younger.
“I thank the Goddess that old man in the Moscow orphanage pointed me toward your room. It was destined, and more strange and wonderful adventures are fated to befall you. When I’m tired and worried, I wish you could lead a quiet, ordinary life. But that would mean wishing you were other than you are, and nothing could ever make me want that. I love you more than I can ever express in words, sweetie. Be good to yourself; trust yourself; don’t be afraid of yourself.”
I paused there a moment. What did she mean, afraid of myself?
“Richard sends his love,” she continued, “and says not to let that young man Caleb lead you around too much, no matter how nice he is. Richard was a young man once himself, so he knows what he’s talking about. Love and what the Goddess wills to you, Mom.”
Her words, so familiar, so very Mom, fell over me like a warm blanket on a cold night. I stifled my sniffles as I typed out a long reply.
Iris’s e-mails were a study in worry and dramatic speculation. They went from ramblings about the cute guy in English to hurt to stark worry when she stopped by and found no one home. If I didn’t get in touch soon she would call the police.
Feeling horrible for having worried her, I clicked reply and hesitated. The real story was impossible to tell. So, I guiltily typed that we’d had to leave town on a family emergency. I couldn’t be in touch much because we were out of the country.
Feeling better than I had since leaving home, I logged off. Mom and Richard were safe. That was the important thing. Somehow I was going to find a way to keep them that way.
I got up to join the others sitting on the floor in front of the motorcycle. Caleb was lining up a bunch of different tools on a piece of fabric on the floor.
Morfael tapped the rock floor with his staff. The creatures on it now looked only like clever carvings. Had I imagined them writhing before?
“Although he is not a shifter, Caleb will attend classes that are relevant to him. Occasionally, I will take him aside to teach things pertinent only to callers of shadow. In return for this short-term apprenticeship with me, he has agreed to teach you some things never taught here before. The Tribunal utilizes mechanical objects in the war against us. Most otherkin don’t have this knowledge, trusting only to their animal nature. That is about to change. Caleb has facility with these objects and will begin our lesson today.”
Caleb rubbed his hands, already spotted with motor oil, and grinned at us. “So, the internal combustion engine, hallmark of civilization and perhaps its downfall. Learn how it works and you’re halfway to understanding many mechanical devices. I’m going to take apart this old motorcycle engine and you’re going to help me put it back together. Get closer.”
Two hours later, the engine was still a mess, but we washed our hands and followed Morfael in some yogalike moves that ended in silent meditation. We were supposed to make our thoughts follow our breathing. But that lasted about three breaths for me. Images of Caleb with tousled hair and a smudge of dirt across his cheekbone as he bent over the motorcycle’s carburetor kept intruding.
On the way outside for a nature walk with Morfael, I made sure to be the last one out. As the door to the living room closed behind London, I darted over to the spiral staircase. I ascended a few steps and craned my neck, catching sight of a hallway and a thick wooden door. Morfael’s quarters, probably, and a spot where he might hide books or info containing the secrets I suspected he was keeping from me about how I could go home again.
I padded silently up the rest of the leaf-covered spiral staircase in the living room. A narrow hall led to a carved wooden door, which loomed taller than any normal door and was at least eight feet wide. A flash of light from the living room zipped across its surface, and the carved shapes on it moved.
Like Morfael’s staff. I leaned closer to the door, trying to distinguish the figures on it. Even with my excellent vision in the dark, I could barely make out what the shapes represented. At first they seemed to be animals; then I thought I saw a tree, and a cup, and a waterfall. Only one shape kept recurring, a black circle surrounded by wavering flame shapes, like a dark sun.