by Garth Nix
That made a weird kind of sense. Her main Gift was the wind, and she might have a hint of her father’s lightning Gift, too. If she had been turned into air, a car engine might be just the kind of thing she would be drawn to. But what did that mean? And how was she going to get back? She couldn’t imagine what Alfred the Examiner was thinking.
If she’d had a hand, she would have smacked herself in the forehead. Of course. This was the Examination. He had put her into the wind somehow and now it was up to her to get out again.
She was being buffeted by fans and deafened by the rapid fire of pistons. Understanding was one thing. Doing something about it was something else entirely.
And what about Jack? she wondered. Was he undergoing a similar trial?
There was nothing she could do for him. She had to find a way back to herself before Mr. Holland drove out of town or the wind took her somewhere even more uncomfortable.
* * *
Jack squished out from under the giant’s heel like an orange pip squeezed between two fingers and shot off along a long, rectangular space. At the end of the rectangle, he bounced around a larger shape that reminded him of a large cushion, then down another long space that kinked in the middle, like someone holding up his hand to wave.
Exactly like that, he thought suddenly. Too exactly to be anything other than that.
He was in a person’s shadow.
No, he corrected himself. He knew what being in a shadow felt like. He could see things, for starters, and he could feel things, too. This was very different. Instead of him slipping into a shadow, this felt like a shadow had slipped into him and taken him over.
He was a shadow.
And if there was one thing he had learned in his months of being a shadow-walker, it was that even on the sunniest of days, all shadows were connected.
He didn’t know where exactly the person’s shadow led him. It could have been a tree, or a sign, or perhaps a traffic light, but he didn’t stay there long. He bounced off one edge of that shadow into another without any way of slowing himself down or controlling his movement. What if he kept bouncing and bounced far enough to leave the wards? Would he ever get back to his body?
Another concern struck him. Jaide had just disappeared. Maybe he had, too. Was this supposed to happen? Was this something Alfred the Examiner had planned to do to them the moment Grandma X and the others left the house?
No wonder Stefano seemed worried. He must have been through this before.
Thinking this made Jack both angry and slightly relieved. Stefano had known what would happen but hadn’t said anything. But he had survived, so why couldn’t Jack?
There had to be a way to get out of the shadow maze. All he had to do was find it.
* * *
Jaide was struggling to get anywhere at all. She might have become the wind, but it wasn’t doing anything she told it to. If anything, it did the opposite. When she told it to take her that way, it went in the other, and when she tried to go back, it only took her somewhere else. She was beginning to despair of ever getting out of the engine, let alone getting home again.
She wondered how long she had been trying. She wondered when Alfred the Examiner would bring her back, once it became clear that she had failed. She wondered what would happen if she became permanently lost and couldn’t ever find her way back. She wondered if “failing” the Examination was another euphemism for dying, just like “retiring” was.
But she wasn’t going to give up. She could control the wind when she was in her body, so why not now?
Perhaps Jack was doing better than her, she thought. She wished there was some way she could ask him. If he was, he might be able to help her … even if it was technically cheating.
* * *
Jack was experimenting with willing himself to bounce back the way he had come every time he hit an edge. He didn’t think it was going well. Normally when shadow-walking he was acutely aware of where his body was, and the farther he went, the more he was pulled back to it. With practice he had managed to go as far as school, although that still took a great deal of effort.
Now, he had no actual way of knowing, but he felt that he was only getting farther from where he wanted to be, not closer. Whatever he was doing, he was doing it completely wrong. The harder he tried to become the shadows he wanted to, the worse he did.
He needed help, and there was only one person that he would call, if he could just figure out how to do it. Grandma X did it. Aleksandr did it. Even The Evil did it. Why couldn’t he?
Barely had he formulated the plan when a faint voice called out to him from impossibly far away.
++Jack? … hear me?++
He recognized Jaide’s voice immediately, and right away part of him knew how to respond. It was like finding a muscle that had always been there but that he had never used before.
++Jaide, I’m here! Are you all right?++
++… very faint … hardly hear …++
He tried to shout, without really knowing how.
++I’M RIGHT HERE!!++
++Ouch,++ she said. ++No need to deafen me.++
* * *
Jaide felt rather than heard Jack laugh in relief.
++How are we doing this?++ she asked.
++I don’t know. Maybe it’s a twin thing.++
Either way, now that the connection was open, it seemed easy and natural. She felt better about it being there but that didn’t change the basic fact of their situation.
++I’m lost,++ she confessed.
++Me too.++
++But I feel like I know where you are.++
++Yeah, you’re … that way.++
This was something else hard to define. Jaide just knew that Jack was over there, wherever there was. In fact, now that she knew that, she could feel herself moving in that direction. As long as she didn’t try to push, it seemed the wind was happy to take her. The moment she hurried things along, she was tossed and tumbled again.
With a roar and a feeling of being blown out in a hot rush, Jaide emerged from the car. By the exhaust pipe, she assumed. Now she bobbed and swayed through a blurry field of light that could have been anywhere.
++This is some test,++ said Jack.
++It’s awful. I can see why Stefano would rather go to school.++
++Do you know where you are? I think I’m underground somewhere, hopefully not in the sewers again.++
Jaide confessed that she had no idea. ++How are we going to get home?++
++I don’t know. Let’s get ourselves together first, then we’ll try to think of a way.++
++What if we don’t?++
++Don’t think like that. We will.++
Jaide could tell that he was trying to be positive despite being as worried as she was. Some of his thoughts and feelings were leaking in, too, along with the words. She was grateful for his effort and resolved to do the same. Whatever happened to them, at least they had each other.
* * *
On the doorstep of the house on Watchward Lane, Ari was dreaming of mice. Big, fat mice dancing right in front of his nose. They smelled delicious, but their eyes were glowing white, and he knew what would happen if he ate them. The Evil made everything taste awful….
He jerked awake as a sudden eddy sprung up out of nowhere, swept him into the air, turned him over three times, and dropped him unceremoniously on his head. For once, the cattish ability to land on his feet utterly failed him.
That wasn’t the only strange thing. The shadows cast by the morning sun were swinging wildly from side to side.
“Kleo!” he yowled, righting himself indignantly. “Kleo, something’s happening!”
The gray cat and the Examiner hurried from the kitchen into the hallway behind him.
“Ah, yes,” said Alfred. “Now, the question is where …”
The earth rumbled. Kleo looked down at her feet as though the floor was affronting her.
“Is that supposed to happen?” she asked.
“Sometimes.”
The Examiner peered all around him, looking under the cabinets and in the cupboards. “Troubletwisters, as you know, are profoundly unpredictable.”
There was a heavy thud from behind them, and there was Jack, curled on his side on the floor as though he had dropped from the sky.
No, thought Kleo. Dropped from one shadowy corner of the ceiling, where the light was most dim.
Ari ran to him and poked him with a paw.
“Ow,” Jack said, rubbing his head. He would have a bump later, but it was good to have hands to know that, and even better to have a head that hurt at all.
A crackle and bang came from the living room, followed by a wild cry for help. Kleo was the first on the scene, where she found Jaide clinging to the chandelier, swinging helplessly from side to side.
“Get me down!” Her eyes were wild and her red hair was in disarray, but behind her desperation not to fall she felt only triumph. They had done it! They had made it home!
Alfred the Examiner moved a couch under the chandelier and Jaide dropped into it.
“Jack?” she called. “Jack?”
“I’m here,” he said, emerging from the hallway, looking as bedraggled as she felt. He tapped the side of his head. “I can’t hear you in here. Must be because we’re back to being ourselves again.”
They rarely hugged anymore, but she decided that this time was an exception. She pulled him to her and he didn’t resist. In fact, he held her briefly but tightly and was smiling when she let go.
“Congratulations,” said Alfred the Examiner, standing to one side with his arms folded. “You have passed.”
The twins beamed at each other, and basked in the admiration of the cats, who rubbed against their legs, purring loudly.
“Better late than never,” said Jack. “Where are Mom and Grandma? We must have missed lunch by ages.”
“Oh, no,” said Jaide. “The soccer tryouts!”
“What do you mean?” said Ari. “You’ve only been gone for a short nap.”
“One hour, forty-five minutes, and twenty-three seconds,” the Examiner proclaimed, with a wry glance at Ari.
“That’s short for me,” Ari said.
The twins looked at each other. Getting back to the house had seemed to take forever.
“Let’s put this couch back in its place,” said Alfred, “and then you can tell me how you did it.”
* * *
Over hot chocolate in the kitchen, Jack and Jaide on one side of the table, Alfred on the other, the cats sitting silently in a patch of yellow sunlight by the window, they recounted their story. With no bodies and no proper senses, there had been no way to tell how long it took to do anything. If they had to guess, the twins would have said that their bumbling journey to find each other had lasted several hours, and when they had done that, the real challenge lay ahead of them.
“It was hard just staying together,” said Jaide, frowning at the memory of the trials they had so recently endured. “Jack was in shadow and I was wafting around in the air. We couldn’t really see anything except for each other. How were we going to find a house?”
“Eventually it hit us,” said Jack. “A house was exactly the wrong thing to look for. I mean, we hadn’t gotten together that way — by looking for something that was a thing, if that makes sense. We had found each other.”
“So that’s what we decided to do,” said Jaide. “We decided to look for someone, not something.”
Alfred nodded. “Who?”
“Well,” said Jack, “first we tried Grandma, but we couldn’t find her. We guessed that was deliberate so it would be harder for us.”
Alfred nodded again. “Then you tried the cats.”
“We did,” said Jaide, “but we couldn’t find them, either.”
“For the same reason,” Alfred explained. “Ari here was asleep and Kleo was with me. However, I did not sense you looking for me. It must have been someone else.”
“Cornelia,” Jack said. “That’s who we followed. It took a while to find her, but when we did we followed her home.” He looked around. “Where is she? I haven’t seen her all morning.”
“In the blue room,” said Kleo. “She’s been acting weird again.”
“How weird?”
“Just … weird.”
Cornelia had come to live at Watchward Lane when her former owner, Old Master Rourke, had suddenly died. For several days she had been afraid of the twins, but eventually she had come to trust them. She had been friendly ever since, although sometimes it was hard to understand her. No one knew exactly how old she was, but her frequent use of pirate talk suggested that she was very old indeed. Jaide wondered if birds suffered from senility, then decided that was unkind. Cornelia was allowed to be a bit odd, as long as she wasn’t unhappy. She had just saved the twins from being lost forever, after all.
“How did we manage to talk to each other?” she asked Alfred. “Is it a twin thing?”
“It is,” he said. “And it is something that all troubletwisters learn, if they are compelled to.” His cool eyes regarded them both for a disconcertingly long time. “Your task now is to refine that ability, to enable you to communicate with others. Wardens are all twins, after all. That is how it works.”
They nodded, understanding instinctively that anything Alfred said wasn’t something they should lightly ignore.
“Tell me now about the rest of the test,” he said, folding his long, well-manicured hands on the table. “What did you experience?”
Jaide described how it had felt like she was the wind, and Jack followed with his experiences as shadow.
“Like the wind?” Alfred echoed back at them. “As shadow? There is no like or as in the Examination. You became what you became, and that is all there is to it.”
“I don’t understand,” ventured Jack somewhat nervously. He didn’t want to look foolish but at the same time he didn’t want to miss something important. “So I really was a shadow?”
“No. You became your Gift.”
“How?” asked Jaide, frowning. “Is that even possible?”
“It is, but it’s very difficult to explain. The short answer is that this is one of my Gifts,” Alfred said with a tight smile. “I predict that you found yourself unable to control your movements, in wind and shadow respectively, until you let your natures have their way. Is this correct?”
“It was exactly like that,” said Jack, remembering how he had bounced around until he had found Jaide, and then later when they had found Cornelia. “It was horrible.”
“You must remember this,” said Alfred, leaning forward over the table. “Your Gifts are not your friends. You think you control them, but you do not. They will fight you at every turn, unless you have … wooed them correctly. While you have made some important steps forward in this process, understand that it will never be complete, even if you pass all your Examinations. Your Gifts will be willful your entire lives. It is a constant battle.”
That was somewhat disheartening. Jaide had imagined that it was just a matter of practicing and practicing until everything worked perfectly.
“Why?” she asked. “Why is it like this?”
“That is one of the mysteries,” said Alfred, but unlike with Grandma X, Jaide didn’t sense that this was a stalling tactic.
“Is it like soccer?” said Jack. “Even the best players miss a kick sometimes.”
“Perhaps.” Alfred leaned back. “The other thing you must understand is that this was only your first Examination. There are four. The second will take place tomorrow evening. I will talk to your grandmother and she will ensure that you are ready.”
The twins nodded obediently, although all feelings of accomplishment had fled. Nothing could have prepared them for the first test. What was the second going to be like?
“What about Stefano?” asked Jack.
“He will be Examined, too. That is why he is here.”
“I thought it was to learn something special from Grandma,” said Jaide.
> Alfred inclined his head the tiniest fraction. “If that is what she said, I am sure it is so.”
In the living room, a clock chimed twelve. Jack’s stomach, immune to nerves, awoke at the merest suggestion of lunch. He got up and found the sandwiches and put them on the table. Ari pricked up his ears. His eyes followed every slight movement of the food.
“Would you like mine?” Jaide said to Alfred. There wasn’t one for him, and she wasn’t feeling especially hungry.
“Thank you for the offer,” he said. “Please don’t mind me. I will be leaving shortly.”
Jaide nodded but didn’t immediately open the wrapper. The thought of school and Stefano filled her with no small amount of dread, even if there was soccer to look forward to later. She had been practicing for weeks for this day. She wasn’t going to miss it for anything.
A small nudge at her hip indicated that Ari had noticed her hesitation and was giving her a hint.
“No,” she said. “Grandma told us not to.”
“And you always do what she says?”
“I try to.”
“And we should encourage that behavior, Aristotle,” said Kleo sternly.
“Aww, give a cat a break.” Ari rolled theatrically on his back, exposing his stomach. “I’ve been sitting here all day. Don’t I get a reward?”
Jack made a choking noise and pieces of sandwich sprayed across the table.
“It’s all very well for you to laugh at my predicament —” said Ari.
“No, look!” Jack pointed to the chair opposite him, where Alfred had been sitting. “He’s gone!”
Jaide whipped around and Kleo jumped up onto the table. Sure enough, the seat was empty.
“I was looking right at him,” Jack said. “His eyes were closed, and then he opened them, and then … whoosh!” There was no other word for it. “He went straight down.”
Ari touched the wooden floor under the seat with his nose, sniffed tentatively. “Warm. That’s how he did it.”
“He went through the floor?” exclaimed Jaide.
“Floorboards,” said Jack, smacking his palm into his forehead. “That’s what he meant earlier. But how can anyone travel that way? Surely he wouldn’t get very far.”