Kaylid Chronicles Bundled Set

by Mel Todd

  Sun streaking across his face pulled him out of sleep, or dream, or whatever that was. He couldn’t pinpoint when it ended or what he had been doing, or even if he felt himself being pulled out.

  He lay there and knew Jessi and Jamie were awake too, the memories, the knowledge seeping into their very beings. Charley swallowed hard, something between fear and excitement rippled through him. He wrapped an arm around both of them and they just lay there, not talking about it, not wanting to make it anymore real and scary than it already was.

  12

  Cooking with Movies

  Does learning in animal form change how the information is absorbed? That is the question researchers are focusing on. Some children are reportedly so in love with the animal form, adults are having a hard time convincing them to stay human. If they learn while in that form, is the absorption rate changed? Or do they learn it differently? Right now, a few shifter scientists are participating in this and the results haven't been released yet. New suggestions about teaching shifter children may result based on what is discovered. ~ TNN Science

  They lay there for a long time before Jamie stirred, stretching. He grumbled "I'm hungry," as he headed into the bathroom. The words seemed to trigger a reaction as Jessie's belly started to burble and his own agreed that food would be a good option. Jamie had disappeared into the hall bathroom and Jessi had pulled the covers up over her head, refusing to move, even if she wasn’t sleeping.

  Huh, I'll have to remember that needing to attack someone makes her a morning person.

  Charley's amused thought guided him as he headed to the bathroom attached to JD"s room. He did the necessary and took a shower, being clean made him feel much better. He stopped at the hall bathroom as Jamie had left and grabbed his toothbrush. Clean teeth always made him feel safe. He didn't want to examine why exactly.

  Jamie sat in the living room, light seeping through the curtains they had closed the day before, watching TV quietly.

  "I'm going to see what we can eat. You wanna get Jessi up?"

  Jamie looked at him with raised brows. "Are you crazy? I'm not getting her up. She's mean. When she smells food she'll emerge but until then she can stay in bed." He glanced at the kitchen and started to stand up. "You want some help?"

  Charley shrugged walking into the kitchen and looking around. While Jamie was almost a head taller than most of the kids in his grade, and that struck Charley as vaguely odd, he still wasn't tall enough to really reach things in the kitchen. Charley had another six inches on him, and he could just reach most things.

  "Nah. But if you want to get some plates for us? The dishwasher says it’s clean."

  Jamie nodded and pulled open the dishwasher. "What are we having?"

  Charley looked at the refrigerator chewing on his lip as he looked at what was there. There was lots of food but most of it required some level of cooking. He took a deep breath as he reached for eggs, sausage patties and biscuits.

  You can do this. You cooked sometimes.

  His mind helpfully pointed out that usually that was putting food in the microwave or boiling eggs. Or stirring stuff in a pan.

  He stood and read the instructions on the biscuits very carefully, made sure the oven was empty, and then followed the instructions exactly. With the biscuits on a pan, he then started to make the eggs, not going for anything fancy.

  An electric stove top let him see the rings get hot. He tried to pour some oil in the pan but poured way too much. With a sigh he took the pan over to the trash and poured all the extra oil into it. Frowning in concentration he carefully broke the eggs into the pan, then had to pick a shell fragment out, burning his finger a little. With his finger in his mouth, he kept scraping the eggs making sure they didn't burn. When they’d dried out enough for him to eat, he put them on a plate. He did that for the full dozen, frowning at the eggs refusal to blend or not stick to the pan. Shrugging he put the sausage in and then quickly covered it. That splatter stung. While he waited for the sausages to cook, the instructions said five minutes each side. He glanced at the clock and made a note.

  "So how are the eggs?" Charley asked Jamie who had grabbed a plate of them.

  Jamie spoke, his mouth full, "Eggs, boring?"

  Charley sighed. He couldn't remember his mom ever making eggs and he hadn't paid that much attention when McKenna made them. But everything McKenna cooked always tasted good. He pulled open the fridge and pulled out salsa, ketchup, and shredded cheese.

  "Here." He set them on the bar and Jamie reached for them, liberally covering his eggs with the cheese, salsa, and ketchup.

  "That's better. Thanks." Charley sighed a bit in relief, then hurried over to flip the sausages. He was never complaining to any adult about their cooking again. It was a lot harder than it looked but the sausages were done. Well, at least they'd cooked the right amount of time and he glanced at the clock then checked the oven.

  Yes, I made biscuits.

  Grinning he carefully got a pot holder and pulled the pan out of the oven and set it on the counter, then found the butter and jelly. He looked up to see Jessi climbing into another chair, yawning widely and looking like a wild woman. Her hair was a tangled mess and he itched to straighten it up. It made her look wrong.

  "You didn't even brush your hair," Jamie protested looking at her with disapproval in his eyes.

  Jessi glared at him, her browns drawing a dark line across her forehead. “I don’t have a brush and I’m hungry.”

  Jamie rolled his eyes as he grabbed a biscuit and began to make a mess of crumbs, jam, and butter. “I’m sure JD had combs around here, somewhere.”

  A sniff was her only answer as she looked at the eggs. After the first taste she wrinkled her nose and then liberally applied salsa, cheese, and pepper to hers.

  Charley bit back a sigh.

  Why couldn’t our dreams teach me how to cook? That I could use. I’m not big enough to use any of that info yet.

  He tried not to sulk as he ate a forkful of eggs. He looked at them mournfully then, with a sigh, covered his with cheese and salsa too. The sausage came out perfect, so he made himself a sausage biscuit.

  At least I can make sausage

  His thought half defiant, half annoyed. The twins copied his biscuit idea, though they both put jam on their sausage and he shuddered at the corruption. When they had all eaten he, looked at the disaster of the kitchen and wanted to cry. Being a grownup was hard. He swallowed and looked at the twins sighing.

  “Jessi, go get dressed and clean. Jamie can you get a chair that I can stand on and hand me dishes to put away?”

  With a shrug, Jamie climbed down, and Jessi looked like she was about to protest, but she glanced at the kitchen. He could all but see her thoughts as she decided that getting neat and combing her hair was better than helping with trying to clean the kitchen.

  He had to move the chair three times and Jessi finally emerged to help, but they got all the dishes put into the right cupboards. Then they put all their dishes, the pan and the tray in the dishwasher. Charley stared at the egg and jelly covered mess and the pan sitting in the dishwasher but couldn’t figure out what he should do. Finally, he just shut it and headed out to the living room, exhausted from trying to be a grown up.

  They found something to watch from the pile of movies JD had. It had the word Alien across the cover and he figured it would be about aliens, maybe the dragon ones like from his not-memories.

  Thirty minutes later their eyes were locked on the screen as they held onto each other with white knuckle grips. They were barely able to breathe, fear had them locked up so tight. When the movie finally ended, Jamie and Jessi both broke down into tears, and sniped at each other through their tears, angry and scared. Charley decided he was never watching another scary movie again. If it wasn’t cartoon, he wasn’t watching it.

  They didn’t watch TV for the rest of the day.

  Predictably it was Jessi who started climbing the walls, though it took until after seven for the
fright from that movie to wear off. Charley didn‘t know if that was a reason to watch another movie or not. He decided not. The battle not-dreams would be better than nightmares about that thing.

  They weren’t able to go outside, and none of them had felt like roughhousing, so she didn’t have much outlet for her energy. JD didn’t have video games at his house and his computer was locked with a password Charley didn’t know.

  “I’m bored.”

  Charley shrugged, not sure what to do. “I think all of us are, but we can’t go outside, and I don’t know what you want to do.”

  Jamie didn’t even look up from his book as he responded. “She gets like this. Mom ignores her or makes her go run laps.” His voice broke a bit and they all fell silent.

  They had eaten a quiet lunch of cold cuts, but there wasn’t much else he could do that didn’t require cooking. “Want to help me make dinner?”

  She gave him a dubious look but shrugged and flowed to her feet. Sitting still she didn’t do well, and Charley felt their time slipping away, he couldn’t do this. They needed adults. All of them.

  In the kitchen he pulled out the hamburger patties he’d seen and some cheese. He sent Jessi looking for buns. He dug in the freezer and found oven fries. Feeling a bit more confidant, he started up the oven and followed all the directions on the package. At least with this meal no one would blame him if it didn’t taste good. You were supposed to put stuff on hamburgers to make them taste yummy and JD had lots of stuff in his fridge.

  With the fries in the oven he realized he needed a pan. With a sigh he pulled out the one he’d used that morning, and carefully washed it off. He’d done lots of dishes. They didn’t normally have dishwashers, so this skill he had faith in. He dried it off with paper towels and then put the pan on the stove. There were four patties and it was a pretty big pan, so he put all of them in and turned it on.

  Jessi had found the buns and he went over to help her, getting cheese, mustard and all the other things they could think of to put on their burgers.

  “Charley? Is that supposed to be happening?” Jamie’s voice pulled him from the potato chip war he and Jessi were having and he looked up.

  “Is that supposed to be happening?”

  Jamie didn’t say anything, just standing and pointing behind Charley, at the stove.

  13

  Fire

  A new article in Parents talks about the challenges of having a shifter child as well as how to deal with envy when one child can shift and the other can't. While interesting, the summation of the article boils down to patience and finding skills the non-shifting child has that can be their place to shine. This blogger, and mother of twins, has found a good babysitter and a bottle of wine can make your ability to survive motherhood, with or without having shifter kids, much higher. ~ Popular Parenting blog.

  Charley whirled and felt his body lock down. The paper towels he’d dried the pan with were burning and they were nestled up next to the curtains over JD’s windows. Curtains they’d carefully closed.

  “I got it.” Jessi said and bounded forward, her hand lashing out and hitting the paper towels towards the trash.

  Charley watched it all move in slow motion, knowing he should do something to stop it but was unable to do anything except watch.

  As the flaming towels hit the overflowing trash a small fireball burst up as the oil from earlier burst into flames. With a speed he almost couldn’t believe, it spread as the kitchen began to fill with foul smelling smoke.

  “Out, out, now!” He yelled, even as they began to cough.

  “Our bags!” Jamie yelled as he turned and streaked to the bedroom.

  “Wait,” Charley tried to cry but he was too late. Instead he moved to pull a frozen Jessi who had locked down as she stared at the growing the fire, unable to look away. “Come on!” His hand clamped around her arm tight enough that normally she would have complained but she didn’t say anything as she watched the quickly spreading fire. He headed towards the front door, fumbling with the locks for long, heart-pounding seconds. Finally he got it to unlock, pulled it open, and pushed Jessi outside.

  Warm evening air rushed in and he heard a whoosh behind him. Without looking, he shoved her forward as a wave hit them bowling them over. Jessi didn’t have her shoes on, though he did, and she cried out as she tumbled over the cement walkway.

  His ears rang as he shook his head and looked around. The door filled with smoke and he could see the flames flickering behind the smoke. Around them doors began to open, and he heard shouts of alarm but they couldn’t take his eyes off the inferno growing in JD’s house.

  “Jamie?” Jessi’s voice cracked, coughing a bit on the smoke that flavored everything with a bitter taste.

  “Inside.” His voice flat. Charley closed his eyes and reached for the link, his heart leaping when he realized it was still active.

  ~Jamie?~

  ~Yeah. I’ve got our bags, but the way is blocked with flames and I can’t get the back door unlocked. The keys to that door aren’t in your bag~ His voice sounded calm and level, even as Charley felt Jessi digging her fingers into his arm.

  ~Are you okay? Jamie get out here!~ Her voice had an odd panicky quality in his mind that Charley had never heard with his ears and he looked at her. She stared up at him, face white as her hands cut off blood to his fingers.

  ~I’m fine. Coughing, smoke is awful. How do I get out?~ Again that calm logical question even as Jessi gripped harder.

  Not-memories, information he didn’t remember learning, trickled to the front of his mind as Charley heard sirens in the distance and adults touching him and talking to him. He ignored all of them as he focused on the not-memories.

  ~Go to the bathroom, get a towel, soak it in water and wrap it around your body and another one around your face. You can get through the smoke and fire, but you must move fast and stay low to the ground because smoke rises.~

  ~Hurry, Jamie,~ Jessi's voice echoed in his mind even as he heard her snarl in his ears. "Leave us alone."

  The hands grabbing him let go with vaguely affronted sounds. He concentrated on Jamie, wishing he could hear and see through his eyes like Jessi could.

  ~Jessi, look through him. Is he doing that?~ Her eyes snapped shut and her shoulders sagged.

  ~Yes. Almost done.~ Her voice had love, fear, worry, and pride mixed in with colors and tastes he just accepted.

  ~I am not crazy, I'll be out in a minute.~

  ~Okay.~ Charley didn't say any of the words in his mind and his heart. He just locked his eyes on the front door as the smoke, as well as the flames, starting to billow out.

  The sirens came to a halt behind them. He heard voices and yelling but neither he nor Jessi moved, just watching the door.

  ~Coming out now.~

  They rose from their sprawled positions, every part of their existence locked onto Jamie, and Charley felt part of him reaching towards Jamie.

  "Grab them! Don’t let them run back in! Is someone still in there?" He heard the voices and registered the hands grabbing them. He didn't fight. He just hung on, unable to do anything besides reach for Jamie with his mind. He had the sense Jessi did the same but he didn’t turn and look.

  A figured appeared at a dead run through the smoke, swaddled in dark blue colors. He tripped as he went through, the towel catching on something in the house and pulling him down into an ungraceful catapult. Jamie slammed down on the single step, the towel flapping behind him, the packs that he had grabbed going flying.

  ~Ow~ exploded into his mind and Jessi cried out, grabbing her arm as Jamie stopped rolling. Three backpacks tumbled away from him and his limp figure rolled twice, ending with Jamie laying on his back looking up at the sky.

  A scream arose from the onlookers and the hands relaxed on Charley.

  He started to wiggle to try and get free to get to Jamie, his mind listing out what to check and do with the injured Kaylid.

  Charley darted towards him, the hands unable to stop him as
every bit of strength went into getting to Jamie who was coughing and crying. As he looked at Jamie’s arm, he saw a white shard of bone sticking up out of his arm.

  Moving on instinct and learned lessons, Charley straighten him out and went to check the arm, when two strong hands grabbed him.

  "We'll take care of him. Let's get you two looked at." A large black man with the name Jones on his jacket moved Charley easily, even as someone else grabbed Jessi. Two EMT's knelt next to Jamie.

  "You two okay?" The man asked. He had a nice smile, but Charley's world had focused onto Jamie and the pain radiating through the mindscape and Jessi. She held barely leashed panic as she wriggled to try and get to her brother, even as she held her arm strangely.

  "I think they're in shock. Any idea who owns the house? Do we have any more people in there?"

  That much registered through his mind. "No. No one else in there."

  The man turned to look at him. "Where are your parents?"

  That caused both Charley and Jessi to freeze exchanging fast glances.

  ~You two need to leave. I can't. I can't shift like this, it’s broken bad. Grab the bags and run. Hide. They'll call someone to take you away. I'll distract them.~ Jamie's voice even wracked with pain held calm logic.

  ~No, I won't leave you!~ Jessi protested even as she started to try to get loose.

  "Child, it's okay. He'll be just fine. Looks like a broken arm," the person holding her said. She was an older woman without a fire jacket on. Instead she wore a uniform but it said Fire Marshal on it.

  New sirens started to sound and both kids froze again. These they recognized as the different sound of police as opposed to fire.

  ~You have to go now,~ Jamie insisted. ~I'll give them Carina's number. I'll be fine. Go.~ His voice had desperation in it but for them, not himself.