Shatterskin

by Beca Lewis

  Cahir and Zeid were friends that told me what I had wanted to know. Something I hadn’t realized I was wondering. Could I trust Zeid or not? Now I knew that I could, and that changed so many things for me.

  “Move out, we have a long way to go,” Niko said. Up ahead, Lady drummed as she scouted for a safe way for us to travel.

  Zeid fell into step beside me, and this time I saw Cahir on my left. With the two of them walking with me I felt better than I had in a long time.

  Twenty-Seven

  I could hear Niko and Ruta talking, but I couldn’t understand what they were saying. They had blocked their minds from me which meant I had to know.

  La knew what I wanted, so she flew up to Niko and arranged herself to look like a leaf that had fallen to his coat. The Priscillas’ abilities to camouflage themselves was going to come in handy. Even if my magical gifts never returned, I did have powerful friends. Now with Cahir by my side, I felt ready to take on whatever we were heading into.

  “They were wondering if you would be able to do anything once we reach the village,” La said when she returned.

  “What village, did they say?”

  “I already know where we are going,” La replied. “We are stopping at Beru’s village to pick up supplies. Didn’t she tell you?”

  Now that Cahir walked beside me, Beru often walked with Ruta. It was like watching a tree stump walking with a flower—if such a thing could happen.

  “No, she didn’t. How long until we get there?”

  “Keeping to this pace, we’ll be there before nightfall, but I doubt we’ll all go in at night. Likely they will send a few people up ahead to prepare for our return.”

  I was puzzled. Why wait? Maybe they had warm houses and soft beds that we could sleep in. The thought made me giddy with happiness.

  It was Cil that answered me. “Some people in the village may not like us being there.”

  When I motioned impatiently for her to go on, she added, “Some people think that Beru is a traitor.”

  “What! Why?”

  “Perhaps that is a tale for someone else to tell,” Zeid said breaking into the conversation. He and Cahir took turns walking with me. They also took turns disappearing into the woods. I assumed it was some sort of scouting thing, but neither of them let me in on what they were doing.

  “Who is going to tell it? You?”

  Our conversation was interrupted as I heard Lady’s call and looked up to see her coming toward us. It was an impressive sight. In the Earth dimension, I always thought that pileated woodpeckers looked like miniature dragons. Big birds, tiny dragons.

  Here in Erda, Lady had grown. Every time I saw her, she was bigger than the last time. Now, if Lady landed on my head the way she used to in Earth, I would be squashed. As she circled above us, she no longer looked like a miniature dragon. She looked like a dragon. Smaller than the huge ones I used to see pictures of in books, but at least the size of a car in Earth.

  Honestly, seeing her circle like that, she scared me. I wondered if she had been a dragon all along. A white and black one with flashes of red, but still a dragon. I also wondered if she breathed fire.

  “All that and more,” Zeid said.

  When I turned to look at him to ask more questions, he shook his head and pointed. “I think she has decided that you are ready to see this.”

  Puzzled, I turned back to see that Lady had landed on the ground beside Niko and Aki. As I watched, Lady disappeared, and Suzanne stood in her place. She looked over at me and smiled. Suzanne could have laughed at me instead because I was standing there with my mouth hanging open far enough for a small bird to fly into. I closed my eyes and opened them again. It was still Suzanne.

  She walked towards me and hugged me. I remember thinking that it was good she was hugging me as a woman and not a dragon. Her embrace was warm and comforting. I wasn’t sure what Lady’s would feel like.

  Suzanne took me by the hand and led me over to a nearby rock under the shade of a beautiful old oak. Some of its branches hung so low I could have easily climbed up into the tree. If a tree could listen, it felt as if it was getting ready to enjoy our conversation.

  “I thought you were ready to know about this,” Suzanne said. “Are you?”

  “I think so,” I whispered staring at her. She looked like the Erda Suzanne, the one with black leggings, red tunic, and spiked hair. She answered my unspoken question, “Yes, here in Erda I look more like myself. The bird you called Lady in Earth wasn’t me. I did use her though, with her permission. I flew with her to see you, but she wasn’t a dragon, you see, and I am. The Lady that you saw after you came through the portal with you was me.”

  “So, you’re a shapeshifter? I thought that was a myth.”

  “In the Earth dimension, shapeshifters have been relegated to myth. Just as what we call magic has been boxed into the phrase paranormal. Out of the normal way of being. Erda has never lost the sense of magic. It isn’t out of the normal. It is the normal.”

  Still trying to take in that Suzanne was also a bird-dragon, I asked, “Are there other shapeshifters in Erda?”

  Suzanne took both my hands in hers and said, “There are many things in Erda that you have yet to remember. Perhaps the question of other shapeshifters is something we can discuss at another time. Right now, do you accept that is what I am?”

  When I nodded, yes, she continued. “Good. Because we have work to do, and both Suzanne and Lady will be helping you. Tomorrow we’ll all be going into Kinvar.

  “As you heard, not everyone will be happy to see us, so you will need to be hyper alert. Cahir won’t be coming into the village with you. He’ll be patrolling the borders while you all are there.”

  Nodding at everyone, Suzanne stepped away from me and transformed back into a dragon called Lady. If I would have known, I am not sure I would have called her such a refined name. As a dragon, Lady was beautifully terrifying.

  “Love my name, Lady,” I heard Suzanne say. “Ladies sometimes must be beautifully terrifying to those who attempt to do evil. Something to aspire to, Hannah.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Be a beautifully terrifying woman. You’ll need to be,” Lady said as she headed away into the forest. I watched until I couldn’t see her anymore.

  “You are already beautiful, Hannah,” Zeid said.

  “But not yet terrifying,” Niko added.

  I smiled at Zeid and stared at Niko. No, I didn’t feel beautiful, but I did like hearing Zeid say that I was.

  However, I didn’t do anything to be beautiful, but I was willing to become terrifying. Perhaps there was a store where I could buy it.

  Everyone laughed. Well, at least people thought I was humorous. Maybe that was a start.

  Twenty-Eight

  As Cil and La predicted, we didn’t go into the village that night. As we sat around the campfire that Beru had brought into existence, I waited for someone to tell me what was going on. Just before I was ready to open my mouth and ask about the village and Beru, Pris pulled my hair and hissed, “Not now. Just wait.”

  It hurts when a fairy pulls your hair, so l shut up. Okay, I pouted and shut up. To take my mind off of talking, I settled into eating and staring at the fire. We always had food. Somehow. It was as if the food came to us, like the water. We never had leftovers, and everyone had what they liked, or needed to eat. I didn’t always know what I was eating, but it always tasted good.

  Yes. I knew I was spoiled. People took care of me all of the time. As we walked, Niko would have me practicing some of the moves that he had taught me back at the Castle.

  Aki gave me walking meditation exercises to do, and I thought that my awareness of what was around me was improving. Then one of them would sneak up on me, and I knew I was still failing.

  Beru told
me that I had to trust that my skills would return. As Princess Kara Beth I had been considered a powerful mage. Right.

  “Snap out of it, Hannah,” Pris hissed again. “If you keep on letting yourself fall into that poor-me point of view you are worse than useless. Besides, Beru is ready.”

  I looked up and saw that Beru was standing beside Ruta waiting for me to notice. Everyone was. My face turned bright red but I caught myself before I started falling into my mode of beating myself up. Actually, it was Pris looking right into my eyes that stopped me from descending into my pity party. Her little tiny wings were flapping furiously, and her face could have halted a wall of water.

  Once Beru saw that she had my attention she began. She told us that the village we had come to was the village where most of her family still lived and had lived for thousands of years. They had been content. Like most beings in Erda, they lived a long time after the age where they stopped growing. She reminded me that beings in Erda didn’t die from old age. They died if they were killed, an accident occurred, or they chose to move on.

  Beru had family that had lived for perhaps a thousand years. No one counted years in Erda as it wasn’t important. What was important was how well they lived in harmony with each other and with the land.

  That was true not just for her village but for all of the Erda dimension where Abbadon didn’t rule, which for a long time was most of the planet. However, Abbadon was never content. He always wanted more, so he began to extend his rule past his homeland.

  Rumors of Abbadon’s reign of destruction had come to the village, but no one took them seriously. Life was too good. The little magic they practiced provided for a happy life. However, hearing the rumors, Beru had grown discontent. She often wandered past the village grounds into the forest where she met Ruta. He too had become worried because of the rumors, even though his people also did not believe them. They often walked the woods together and discussed what they had heard about Abbadon.

  When they were in their youth, Beru and Ruta had heard about the Evil One who lived to the west. However, Abbadon was considered a fairy tale, a myth, not a reality. Not a threat.

  Ruta and Beru often walked for days to see what the rest of their world was like. No one worried when they were gone, because no one believed in an Evil One. Besides, Beru and Ruta were hundreds of years old and had much-accumulated wisdom between the two of them.

  One day they had walked so far they reached mountains far to the west of their home. After debating whether or not to climb the mountain, they decided to give it a try. After all, they reasoned, they would probably never come this way again.

  What they found when they reached the top was so terrifying they couldn’t take it in at first. Far into the distance, past the forest that spilled down the mountain and across the valley, Ruta and Beru saw emptiness. No trees. None as far as their eyes could see. Only a barren, brown, and broken landscape.

  A pair of Hawks had landed behind them in the trees and gave Ruta and Beru permission to see with their eyes. Using animals and birds to see something was a form of magic rarely practiced, and neither Ruta or Beru knew how to do it. But with the Hawks’ guidance, they mentally entered into the Hawks’ minds and saw the world as a Hawk sees it. What the Hawks showed them was more terrifying than words could describe.

  At this point in the story, Beru sat down, clearly still upset by what they found, and Ruta took over. His grumpiness was gone as he gave the account of what the birds had shown them.

  Not only was the land brown and barren, it was shattered. It was as if a giant hand had reached down and grabbed handfuls of the earth and flung it everywhere. Trees were blown apart, their roots waving in the air. Every rock was a tiny fragment. The wind swirled dust tornadoes. The dust was often so dense the Hawks often had to rise above it to find their way.

  When the view was clear, the Hawks had swooped down close to the ground and showed them green blobs moving between the shattered land and into the forest. They were making a shrieking sound that seemed to stun everything around them. There was a moment of panic when one of the Shrieks noticed them, and the Hawks rose quickly and returned to where Beru and Ruta stood at the top of the mountain.

  Once their eyes were released, the Hawks told them what the Shrieks did. Many birds had died, fallen from the sky before they realized that they could rise higher than the sound. The animals were not so lucky. The Shrieks would stun them, and Shatterskin would literally shatter the ground, and every living thing. It was always total destruction wherever they went, and they were moving East taking the land bit by bit.

  I realized that Ruta was telling the story for me. This team of people knew this story. But even though they knew it already and had probably witnessed the destruction first hand, I saw tears hanging in almost everyone’s eyes.

  “What happened then? Is this how you all came together?” I asked.

  “In time,” Niko answered. “Yes, there is more to this story. But the important part for today is that Beru and Ruta returned to their villages and told them what they had seen.

  “Sadly, not only were they not believed, they were shunned.”

  Twenty-Nine

  After that story, Niko and Aki headed down into the village to let them know that we were coming.

  Ruta and Beru left the fire and settled down onto their moss mats without saying another word. I couldn’t blame them. What more was there to tell that could have made it better? That meant it was only me, the Priscillas, and Zeid sitting by the fire. Cahir was in the woods, patrolling. I knew Lady was there too. I could hear her drumming leading Niko and Aki safely to the village.

  For once, I was speechless. Shunned? What would that feel like? The people that you love stop talking to you. You become invisible to them? All because Ruta and Beru were trying to bring them a warning about what was coming? It was a classic story though. Even in my Earth home, there were those warning about more than meets the eye and coming dangers. There was the fable about Plato’s cave and the story of Cassandra. They too were ignored and mistreated.

  I could understand that first reaction. I didn’t want to hear about Evil or its coming, either. But at least I knew that pretending it wasn’t there was never going to make it go away.

  I thought back through the Cain and Abel story that Aki had told me that day back in the Castle. I understood that Cain was Abbadon. However, she never told me who Abel was in Erda.

  “I wondered when you would get around to that, Hannah,” Zeid said.

  I gave Zeid one of the faces I had been practicing after watching Pris, the master of making faces. It didn’t appear to work. He laughed instead.

  “Okay. You win,” I said. “I didn’t think of asking before, and maybe I should have, but now I am. Who is the Abel in Erda?”

  “Well,” Zeid said, getting serious, “It’s an important question. And it really wasn’t your fault that you didn’t ask. Aki blocked you from thinking about it because she didn’t think you were ready to hear it.”

  “Ziffer, zut, zounds,” I said, “What is this with you all? I’m not ready? Here I am getting ready to fight Shrieks and Shatterskin, and I still don’t know everything? When will I be ready then? When Shatterskin blows us all apart, and as our pieces scatter over the planet, one of you says, ‘Oops, sorry, forgot to tell you.’”

  Zeid turned to me and took me by the shoulders and shook me. The Priscillas clung to my coat. Pris buried her head under the collar. I couldn’t blame her. Zeid’s face looked like thunder. A part of me tried to see how he made that face. It was very effective. The rest of me was a bit terrified.

  A moment later I realized why he was angry, and he had a right to be. They were working hard to save Erda in general, and me specifically, and I was acting like a brat once again.

  My awareness must have shown because he let me go and turned back to th
e fire.

  “You are going to have to trust us, Hannah. We’ve been here in Erda the whole time. You’ve been gone. You’ve lost most of your memory of Erda, and not recovered your magical talents. We didn’t know that would happen when we sent you away. We thought you’d remember and that it wouldn’t take time to return to yourself.

  “We learned that we were wrong about that when the people you call the Forest Circle returned. It took time. Except for Suzanne and her father, Earl. They had been continually traveling between dimensions, instead of living just in Earth, so they never forgot. But those that we sent away to live in Earth did forget because we wanted them to, not realizing that they wouldn’t remember when they came back. When they returned, it has taken them varying degrees of time to remember and to recover.

  “That’s why we have taken so much time to reintroduce you to Erda. But Shatterskin is still marching East, and we can’t wait any longer.”

  “Who else did you send away, Zeid?” I demanded. “The ones that forgot. And why them. And why me?”

  “You haven’t figured that out, Hannah?” Jake answered

  “Because I am Princess Kara Beth?”

  “And that means someday you might be what, Hannah?”

  “Queen? Queen of what?”

  Zeid waved his hand to take in our surroundings. “This, Hannah. All of this is your land. You are the daughter of the other brother. You will be Queen if he dies, or if he chooses to turn it all over to you. That is if we can save the planet from Abbadon. Otherwise, there will be no Kingdom left, and no beings of any kind for you to take care of.

  “You were sent away, which for us was a brief span of time. We didn’t know if Abbadon would target you first, so we did what we thought was best. Maybe we were wrong, given the outcome, but there is nothing we can do now.”