Otherborn (The Otherborn Series)

by Anna Silver

  Exactly how they were going to navigate the vehicle through the dense growth of the forest with no driving experience whatsoever was a bridge London decided was best crossed later. When they couldn’t ignore it anymore.

  Besides, London hadn’t seen the Luna Moth since Ernesto’s ambush, and she was willing to bet their guide wouldn’t be making another appearance until sundown. Without it, she had no clue which direction to travel through the dizzying trees. The most she could gather from before, was that it was leading them northwest.

  “Tell me again about this moth?” Zen asked as he bedded down among the needles and leaves, the rich rot of vegetation rising up to greet them.

  “I told you,” London sighed. “It’s Avery.”

  Rye rolled his eyes at Zen in a gesture that said, I told you she was crazy. But London ignored him.

  “I don’t mean it’s literally Avery, I mean it’s a sign. From her.”

  “But why this moth?” Zen questioned. “I don’t get it. How would we know that was Avery? Why would she expect us to know that?”

  “Because,” London yawned, fatigue overtaking her as she balled a wad of leaves and topsoil up under her head. “Avery’s Otherborn has wings.”

  “How do you know that?” Zen pressed, ignoring her telltale yawn. “We’ve never seen her.”

  London opened her drooping eyes for a moment longer and fixed them on Zen’s doubtful face. “I have.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  Grand Theft Auto

  Si’dah stood before the Circle. They were all together again. All but one. Avery was still missing.

  She narrowed her midnight gaze on each of them. Roanyk, whose Other was known as Rye. Atel, whose Other was called Kim. Geode, whose Other she knew to be Zen. And Hantu, who had lived briefly in the Other’s world as Degan.

  “Welcome,” Hantu greeted them. But the rest of the grove was silent. Empty. This time, there were no onlookers. No gathering. It was like her last visit, when she and Hantu had spoken alone.

  “You have not assembled the others,” Si’dah stated, but the question hung in her black eyes.

  “No,” he admitted. “I think we need a chance to speak together…privately. No audience.”

  “And no spies,” she finished for him.

  Hantu smiled. “Exactly.” He stood and paced between them. “You have informed the others, I presume? Of your mission. Helped them…remember?”

  “I have told them,” she admitted, looking from one to the other as they listened silently. “But the remembering does not come easy.”

  “No,” Hantu agreed. “Another miscalculation.”

  “Please,” Roanyk said. “Help us. I know myself…and yet, I don’t. I know each of you…and yet, I don’t. I am familiar with this place…and yet—”

  “You are not.” Hantu sighed. “This is our folly.” He explained, with great care, what he’d already told Si’dah. They were a collaboration of Dreamwalkers, shamans of the Astral realm, who’d given up their own existences to reincarnate into his world in an attempt to save it from itself.

  “What I don’t understand,” Si’dah said just as Hantu was finishing, “Is how. How did we expect to hold any sway in that place? How did we intend to save it?”

  “By bringing the dreaming back to my people,” Hantu told her. “By quickening the spirit in mankind. By kindling the creative. By ending the tyranny of Old. That’s how.”

  Si’dah considered something now, something she had not known when she had spoken with Hantu before. “There is another. Among us in your world. She has something called the Sight. She dreams and she knows. She has seen the Astral. They call her the Seer.”

  He paused and faced her. “You’re certain?”

  “Yes. I revealed myself to her. When I was last here. I did not realize then. I thought…I thought she was a vision of the Lowplane. A signal or a wanderer. A lost spirit. I understand now. I must have summoned her here somehow.”

  “This is extraordinary,” Hantu assured her.

  “But what does it mean?” Atel asked them, his voice a low croaking that seemed to come both from himself and a very great distance at once. Like a branch twisting in the wind.

  “It means the Astral is helping us.” Hantu straightened himself, swelling almost with hope. “You did not summon the girl, Si’dah. The Astral did.”

  “What?” she blinked her flinty eyes.

  “The girl of whom you speak. She is an aberration in her world. A blessed mutation. A hope where there should be none. A light in the dark.”

  “I don’t understand,” Atel whispered in ancient forest speak, his face hidden among the shifting twigs and branches that squatted over his body like a wild tortoise shell.

  “She is a Dreamwalker,” Hantu answered.

  “Like us?” Geode spoke up.

  Si’dah could not help but appreciate the soft, velvety hum of his voice—a kitten purring, a running brook in spring.

  Hantu smiled gently, his hazel eyes crinkling. “No. You must remember; you are not of her world. My world. Your world is another. You inserted yourselves into this world, like a virus riding in an unsuspecting host. You dream only because you were Dreamwalkers already. Your Others dream only because you do. But she is something altogether different. She has found the dreaming of her own accord…or it has found her.”

  “How does that explain the Astral’s role? You said it was helping us,” Si’dah reminded him.

  Degan touched Si’dah’s shoulder. “The Astral knows her, like a mother knows its own child. All dreaming is of the Astral, however simple or mundane. But those who can walk these planes with understanding, who can reach into this dimension and pull out what is needed, who can bring back from the dreaming something of use. We are Astral masters. We are its chosen. Its favored ones.

  “It is a gift. A calling to lead our people in the ways of the dreaming. It’s what separates Anya—who you were—from Si’dah—what you are. The girl, the Seer, is one of these chosen. She has this gift. And the Astral summoned her here, at your side, that you may teach her the ways of a Dreamwalker.”

  “Me?” she asked with exasperation.

  “Yes, Si’dah. You.”

  “But why?”

  “Because she can help you. And our world. Because the Astral wants to help.”

  Si’dah lowered her eyes; her square shoulders sagged just a little. Something in her Other was restless, displeased. Like a grain of sand trapped in the tender flesh of an oyster, this revelation rubbed London the wrong way. But Si’dah’s wisdom reminded her that, together, the grain of sand and the oyster could produce a pearl.

  “Master?” Geode raised a clawed finger in question to Hantu. “You mentioned that we, Dreamwalkers, can pull from the Astral what is useful. How does this work? Can we use our knowledge here to help us there, in your world?”

  “Very good question, Geode, but I am not your master. If your memory served, you would know the answer already. In time, you will not need to pose such questions to me. For now, I will demonstrate. Though, one among you has already accomplished this.”

  “Who?” Roanyk demanded. His powerful demeanor was nearly overwhelming to Si’dah, and she found she could not bring herself to meet his crystal eyes for long. It made her feel childish and giddy, which, in turn, left her uneasy. These were not feelings for a Traveler to have. But the Other, London, was part of her now. The yin to her yang and vice versa. Was it London’s love for Rye that now riddled Si’dah’s heart when she looked at Roanyk? Or was it a memory of what they’d shared here, before? Whatever it was, it could not be helped. She could not avoid the feelings any more than she could avoid returning to the Astral when it pulled at her being, like a child tugs on a balloon’s string and the balloon bounces along after it.

  “Avery, of course.”

  “The moth,” Geode whispered, so low it was barely audible.

  “Yes, the moth. But now, for another demonstration. You have a task to accomplish, do you not, when you
return to that world? A very difficult one.”

  “We do.” Si’dah recognized the task about which Hantu now spoke. She’d taken the keys for a reason. They would need to steal the gangster’s truck.

  The others nodded in agreement, mirroring her thoughts.

  “Tell me, why will this be so difficult?” Hantu asked them.

  “Because we have no cover,” Roanyk supplied. “We might be seen, or more likely, heard.” He was right. Even if they found the truck and slipped inside unnoticed, the engine would be loud and impossible to hide once started.

  “True,” Hantu agreed. “Perhaps you can think of something to help with that. Call it into being here and carry it back with you, if you can.”

  They were all silent for a time, considering what would give the cover they needed. What would hide them from the watchful eyes of those they were stealing from? And the ears?

  Si’dah looked up into the swirling mass of mist that separated their grove among the Midplane from that place of rest above, on the Highplane, where her mentor, the previous Si’dah, now waited. And it was as though her mentor could look down through the mists and implant the answer in Si’dah’s mind, because the moment of inspiration struck her with such force, she literally heard the thunder crack and saw the lightning bathe the grove in a flash of electric illumination.

  She looked down into the shocked faces of her partners with a triumphant smile, seeing Hantu’s face flush with pride, and closed her eyes.

  ~

  London’s eyes fluttered against the soft plops of water that were splashing her face. First one…then another…then another. They felt icy cold, as though they’d fallen from very high up in the atmosphere. She sat up, noticing that the drops were increasing with a momentum that was not unusual for Capital City this time of year, but unexpected. There’d been no sign of cloud cover when they lay down. It was an opportunity they could not afford to pass up.

  “Get up,” she said, shaking Rye next to her, then Zen and Kim and Tora.

  “What the—” Kim muttered drowsily as they all got to their feet and dusted off.

  “Rain,” London said, a peculiar smile lighting up her face. “That’s what.”

  ~

  They squatted behind a thicket of red-berried yaupon just off the Outroaders’ trail to the Ten, eyeing through the branches the row of scrapped white trucks, wet with rain, bumpers glinting. They were each jacked up on massive black tires with knuckle-deep tread. Some still showed patches of faded lettering from their pre-Crisis lives.

  “There’re so many. How do we know which one is his?” Rye whispered.

  London bit her bottom lip. “I don’t know.” The rain was falling hard and fast now, soaking her to the bone, and she shivered against its otherworldly cold.

  “Haven’t you seen it before?” Kim asked. “In the city, when you bought off him? He wasn’t always in the tunnels, was he?”

  “No,” London shrugged. “I never paid that much attention to it. I never thought I’d have to pick it out of a lineup.”

  They’d left Zen and Tora behind while they hijacked the truck, vowing to join up along the ambling concrete of the Ten. If the rain didn’t have the Outroaders and Tigerians taking cover, the lightning would. Tucked away inside the nylon fortress of the Outroader camp, the Tigerians wouldn’t notice one of their trucks was missing until London, Kim, and Rye were long gone.

  Kim had handed over his trusty rubber band and a handful of giant burr oak acorns to Tora, while Zen went along with her for protection. Rye, of course, had Ernesto’s gun, and he stuck with London and Kim so they could push the truck far enough away from camp to start it, hoping the bellowing thunder of the storm would cover the sound once they were out of close range.

  “Think, London,” Rye whispered. “Picture him in that truck.”

  London scowled. She didn’t want to picture Ernesto anywhere ever again, but she needed to come up with some identifying mark, so she tried hard to concentrate on the last time she’d caught up with her Tigerian contact in his truck, parked just off Kinney Street. It turned her stomach, but she could still see him there, leaning out the side counter, where some old man once passed ice cream to pre-Crisis schoolchildren, with that leering grin he always wore. She’d been after a new phone that time, the same one Principal Carmichael had confiscated last month. As always, Ernesto delivered.

  London went back over every detail of the transaction in her mind: ribbing Ernesto for a while about his black and yellow collared shirt, telling him he looked like a cross between a bumblebee and one of those sport refs they watched in old football reruns, passing him the aspirin rolled up in her fist, pulling her sleeve down when it caught on the little stainless steel counter, revealing the tidy hash marks of her scars, the telling arch of his brow as he eyed her arm suspiciously, sliding the slimy bobby pin he always chewed on from one side of his mouth to another.

  A shiver coursed along London’s spine, but this time it wasn’t the rain. That mouth, with its tunnel slang and right side gap. That mouth had been all over her. On her neck, her lips, her skin. Places she never wanted another mouth to touch except Rye’s. London pulled her arms up around her and squeezed her eyes tight.

  “I can’t,” she told them. “I can’t do this.”

  “Come on, London,” Rye put and hand on her shoulder. “You have to try—for Avery.”

  “I can’t,” she repeated. “I can’t think of him. It makes me sick.”

  Rye lowered his face just next to her ear, keeping his voice to a low, acid murmur. “I know it’s hard. Don’t you think every time I picture his face I want to bash it to a pulp with my bare hands? The only way I ever want to see him is dead, slit from neck to loins. I can’t imagine how you feel. But Avery needs this. Do it for her.”

  London sighed and tried to release the tension knotting in her neck and shoulders. “Okay, one more go.”

  She put herself back there on Kinney Street: the cracked walkways, broken and lifted in funhouse slants from overgrown tree roots, the Old Green at one end, its solitary lawn like an emerald set in the tarmac, the only real beauty Capital City could offer, turned cruel by the Tycoons’ ordered executions. The presidential compound at the other, a massive silver and white complex, fenced and shielded from prying eyes, the stench of the pits and reprocessing plants wafting over the streets and buildings radiating heat like an asphalt oven, the noise of countless feet shuffling through a hopeless existence day after boring day. And somewhere, just over the din, the sinister tinkle of Ernesto’s truck, ringing a decrepit tune for all to hear.

  And there he was, leaning out into the sunlight, grinning eagerly at his customers, laughing at the fear on people’s faces, knowing they couldn’t touch him because he was a Tigerian, the Tycoons’ twisted right hand, never letting the left—the presidential compound and its court of false government—know exactly what it was up to. Around his neck, a fat stack of bicycle chains. On his arm, a flashy tattoo, his mark of pride. In his mouth, a worn out old bobby pin. And on his truck…on his truck…

  On his truck, a black, faded S with a golden three-pointed crown painted over it, showing between sheets of riveted steel, relics of the truck’s former life. He used to point at it and say, “That stands for King of the Scrappers!” to anyone who would listen.

  It was so obvious. The big S curling like a black snake. Kingsnake. How could she have not realized before?

  “That bastard,” London gasped.

  “Who?” Rye asked her, looking sidelong at Kim.

  “It was him. Ernesto. God, I’m so stupid!”

  “What was him?” Kim moved to London’s side, grabbing her elbow.

  “He’s Kingsnake. He killed Degan. And Pauly. And he took Avery. I know it.” London was fuming. “And we left him alive.”

  Kim and Rye looked at each other. “I don’t mind finishing what we started,” Kim told her.

  “No time for revenge now,” Rye said. “We have to find the truck and get out of
here before they catch us. Do you know which one it is?” He waited for London to answer.

  “Yep. But we’ll have to get closer for me to find it. I can’t see it from here.”

  Kim grimaced silently, his wet hair sticking to his face like stripes of ink as he strained against the truck’s front end. He and Rye were forcing it back with everything they had. The ground was slick, which was helping, but soon it would become water-logged and flooded and they ran the risk of getting stuck. They still weren’t far enough that the rumble of an engine starting wouldn’t be heard. So the boys pushed the vehicle back down the narrow Outroader path toward the pit, while London steered somewhat clumsily, hoping to get as close to the Ten as possible before cranking her up.

  Rye had shown her how to slide the right key in the ignition, trying them both until one glided in easily, and turn it just enough to power the vehicle without starting the engine. Then, he grabbed the stick thrusting out of the steering column and slipped it to N, so the brakes would release their hold on the tires and allow the truck to roll as they pushed. But by the looks of it their strained faces in the rain, the boys still had their work cut out for them.

  When she balked at his skill, Rye chuckled. “My dad drives a route for the city bins, remember? Transport duty? He’s given me a few lessons in his truck. I think he’s hoping I’ll get a similar assignment when it’s my turn.” It was a lucky break that Rye’s dad was among the chosen few to drive a route for Capital City and Rye had picked up more than a thing or two from him. Otherwise, they would have been lost and their opportunity to use the rain as cover could have been lost.

  She craned over her shoulder to see, trying desperately to remember that whatever direction she turned the wheel while moving backwards was the opposite of how the front end would point. She’d already made a couple of mistakes, taking down several saplings and nearly ramming into a towering live oak. The truck was tough, all scrapped out in sheets of metal. It could plow a bunch of the smaller trees without so much as a scratch. Big ones were another story. Some had trunks that looked as thick as a city block. But she was getting the hang of it now. She could maneuver those.