Shatterskin

by Beca Lewis

  The goal was to cover those green suits with paint. But at first, we covered each other, which scared the ziffer out of me. We would be killing ourselves while fighting the Shrieks.

  After an hour of mock fighting, we took a break. The Ginete changed suits and washed off the walls. They assured us that the trees weren’t hurt, the paint was vegetable based and would soak through the ground without harm to anyone.

  Each of us had a different color paint shooting from our shields. Not surprisingly, Niko’s red was rarely seen other than on a green suit, but my yellow was everywhere. I was more dangerous with my shield than the Shrieks.

  During the next hour, we all got a little better, so someone turned on some loud shrieking kind of music. After that, we all got worse again. And we didn’t improve much over that next hour.

  It was more than embarrassing to see yellow paint on everyone and everything except for on the green-suited Ginete.

  When we broke for lunch, I went to speak to Niko. “I can’t do this Niko. I’ll kill everyone. Give me something else to do.”

  “No.”

  “No? Aren’t you afraid of what I might do?” I asked.

  “Absolutely terrified, Hannah. But you have to lead your people. If you don’t, there won’t be a Kingdom to rule. It will divide into factions. Communities that have existed for thousands of years will crumble because their faith will have crumbled first.

  “So learn to control yourself first, and then your shield, because that’s the only way we will defeat Abbadon. The Shrieks are only his first line of attack. Get through them, and then there is Shatterskin.

  “And after that … well, let’s take one at a time shall we.”

  I hung my head in shame and terror. I would kill them all before Shatterskin even arrived.

  “Or not,” Pris said in my ear. Niko couldn’t hear her, but he saw something gather itself inside of me. That little fire I had found had not gone out, and Pris’s words made me think that I could build it and use it. After all, where did that bolt of lightning come from anyway?

  “Where did it come from, Hannah?” Niko asked. “Find the source. Let it direct you. Get rid of the ideas about yourself that you brought here. The past may teach you something, but that’s all its good for. It’s not a place to hide, or wallow.”

  I stared at Niko hoping that his words would stoke the fire, and as I turned to go, he said, “Hannah, I believe in you.”

  Everyone believed in me. If I couldn’t believe in myself, the least I could do was trust in the people that cared about me.

  I lifted my shield, switched it on, and shot the target on the wall, dead on. Switch on, switch off, shoot. A clean shot every time.

  After lunch with the room swarming with green-suited Ginete, and vibrating with the loudest noise I had ever heard, I managed to hit only green suits most of the time.

  Zeid put his arm around my shoulder and pulled me close. His purple paintballs had hit every target. Only one had missed. We both knew that one was one too many, but it was a thousand times better than when we had begun that morning.

  “Great job, Hannah Banana,” He said.

  “Hannah Banana?”

  “Teddy is not the only one who can make up interesting names,” Zeid laughed. Getting serious he said, “We both need more practice, but everyone else seems to be doing well.”

  “I think we are the only ones who aren’t one-hundred percent, Zeid. But I know you will be, and I will be too. Even if I can’t shoot fireballs out of my hands all the time, at least I can get good at aim, switch, shoot, switch.” I said.

  Zeid was almost at the tunnel leading to dinner when he turned, “Why can’t you Hannah? Why can’t you access the talents you already possess all the time? Lightning bolts are a small version of what you can do. What are you afraid of? And don’t tell me that it’s the Shrieks, Shatterskin, or Abbadon. This is something personal.

  “Maybe it’s time for you to visit the Oracle and get a little mental adjustment. Or maybe a big one.”

  “What Oracle? Will that help? Because if the answer is yes, can you take me there?”

  “I’ll clear it with Niko and Aki. If they say yes I’ll take you there myself after dinner.”

  Zeid waited for a beat and then said, “Come on you lazy butt. I’ll race you to dinner.”

  Without waiting for my consent, he started down the hall towards the dining room. No way was I going to let him beat me, even if he did have an unfair head start.

  Thirty-Nine

  Niko and Aki gave Zeid permission to take me to the Oracle, but only after I spent another hour shooting targets with the music at full blast, and with Zeid running around distracting me. If I could shoot accurately for fifteen minutes, I had the rest of the night off. What we did with the time was up to us.

  But I saw Niko’s face when Zeid asked him. I wondered if it wasn’t all a setup.

  Once again, the Priscillas went somewhere without telling me where they were going. They didn’t belong to me, but it worried me a bit that they were off doing who knows what and coming back looking bedraggled. It was one of those things that I couldn’t control though.

  It took me two hours of practice before I got fifteen minutes of entirely accurate shooting. I was exhausted. Everything ached. “Forget the Oracle,” I said. “I need sleep.”

  “Not going to happen, Hannah,” Zeid said. The appointment has been made. You are expected.”

  It was useless to argue. We stopped at the workroom to hang up our shields. Aki was waiting for us. She smiled at Zeid and said, “I’ll take it from here, Zeid.” When he didn’t immediately move, she added, “I promise, I’ll take good care of her.”

  “This was planned all along, wasn’t it?” I asked Aki as soon as Zeid was out of sight. “Like getting me so tired I can barely walk. Having Zeid set it up. All planned.”

  “Life is all planned, Hannah. What we do with it is what changes it.”

  “Multiple outcomes?”

  “All stories, Hannah. Which one do you choose to live?”

  “What am I in this one, Aki?”

  “Ah. That’s the question, isn’t it? Are you the poor maiden, or are you the princess who saves them all. Or maybe something in between.”

  “It can’t be that simple, Aki,” I said.

  “But that’s not all that simple, is it? If all of this is a story, how in depth is the story? Does it change within each dimension? Are you one thing here, and one thing there? If you make a wrong choice, does it ruin everything? These are very complicated questions,” Aki said.

  “If you want to know what choices you have made so far, look at your life. Life is a mirror. It reflects back to us what we believe, what we think we deserve, and how we feel about other creatures. Most people are afraid to look in that mirror. Perhaps they fear that their personal version of the Evil One will be staring back at them. But without looking, we are prisoners of our beliefs.”

  By then we had reached a door at the end of the tunnel. It reminded me of a hobbit door. Round at the top, small enough I would have to duck to get through. A knocker with the face of a wolf hung on the door. All of a sudden, I missed Cahir. I hoped he was doing well up top.

  “What am I going to learn here?” I asked Aki.

  The look she gave me was the answer. I would learn what I wanted to learn. As I knocked, I wondered what that was. One thing I knew for sure. I did not want to be the poor maiden in the story.

  *******

  The next morning I woke up again without my clothes on, a robe on the bed, and wondered if I had better find out who was undressing me.

  This time, instead of the Priscillas waiting for me to wake up, it was Aki. Normal people sleep in a bed or chair, right? Aki was sleeping in the air. I remembered how she would levitate into our yog
a classes back in the castle and wondered if this was the same or if I couldn’t see what was holding her up.

  As my hand reached to the star around my neck, Aki opened her eyes and stared at me. For a second I felt as if I was being stared at by a snake. The moment passed, but the feeling continued as she uncurled herself and sat up.

  “That star is not there for you just when you are curious, or bored. Use it cautiously. Practice getting there without touching it.” Aki slipped off of something and levitated to the bed. Yes, something was holding her up as she slept, and yes she could still levitate.

  “First thing in the morning you are lecturing me,” I teased, and then realized my mistake. Aki scowled and said, “Breakfast in twenty. Be clean.” And then she was gone.

  I knew that look. I grabbed the robe, the clean clothes on my chair, and rushed down the hall to the shower. It would have been lovely to stand under water that I could get as hot as I wanted for a long time, but I knew that Aki was serious. Being late was not an option.

  It wasn’t until I began to put on my clothes that I remembered. The door, the wolf knocker, ducking into a dark room…and then nothing. After that, I remembered nothing. At all. Not good.

  Once I had my tunic on, the Priscillas showed up and arranged themselves on my shoulder and fell asleep. They looked like pretty pins resting there. I resisted the temptation to pull Pris’s pigtails. Why were they so sleepy? Where were they going at night?

  All these thoughts were going through my head as I ran through the halls to get to breakfast on time. Everyone was there, waiting for me. And someone else, Earl. Earl was sitting at the head of the table. No one was talking. Everyone was staring at me.

  Earl. I hadn’t seen him since the castle, and then only a few times. He had met me there when we came out of the woods and had dinner with us. After that, he had stopped by once or twice, but he never stayed to have dinner. And never to wear the look on his face that he had on then.

  No one had food in front of them. I had a feeling that what Earl was going to say was going to kill my appetite too. I lowered myself in the one empty chair. The one directly opposite from Earl. Zounds, something was really wrong, and I prayed that it wasn’t because of something that I had done, or not done.

  It turned out that it was worse than I could have imagined. Our time was up. Our training was over. The Shrieks were only a day away. The Riff had come to us.

  Forty

  “What did you learn from the Oracle?” Zeid asked. Aki heard him ask and looked my way, so I answered them both.

  “I have no ziffing idea. I can’t remember a thing.”

  “Nothing?” Zeid asked, looking as puzzled as I felt. I wasn’t surprised to see that Aki smiled and looked away. I had a feeling she had something to do with my memory loss, and perhaps my continual waking up in bed without clothes.

  I was grateful for that part. Clean clothes every morning was a true luxury, and one that I didn’t expect again for some time.

  “Nothing.”

  “Well, do you feel different?” Zeid asked.

  It was the right question to ask because I did. It was hard to put my finger on it, but perhaps my intention of not being the poor maiden in the story turned the tide.

  “If you are asking if I feel any more magical than I did before, the answer is no. If you are asking if I feel better about myself, the answer is yes,” I said.

  We had packed our backpacks and were headed to the workroom to pick up our real shields. The shields that could kill the wrong people if not used correctly. The ones that the day before had terrified me. But not anymore. At least it wasn’t the same. The terror was still there, but instead of feeling like a lid pressing down on me, it felt like a match. If lit it could start a fire. I was ready for it.

  That was something I couldn’t or wouldn’t explain, so I answered Zeid with a grunt. He laughed and jogged over to where the rest of the team was waiting. Everyone was ready. Even the Priscillas looked more alert than they had the last few days. Perhaps the nap on my shoulder was enough for them.

  Standing on the little blue circles that glowed in the practice space and waiting to be lifted to the surface made me think of Star Trek. “Beam me up, Scotty,” I said, and everyone laughed.

  A second later they were all gone, including the Priscillas who had attached themselves to Aki instead of me. Didn’t occur to me how weird that was until that moment. I was still standing there by myself. “Sorry about that, Princess Kara Beth,” Teddy said, coming over to where I stood.

  “No nickname this time, Teddy?” I scoffed and then saw his face.

  “What is it?”

  “I had to give you this,” Teddy said, holding up a little circle as small as a button. He placed it on my skin under the neck of my shirt on the left-hand side. The side with the two bracelets. My shield side. The pin was so light I wouldn’t have known that it was there if he hadn’t told me what he was doing.

  “What is it?”

  “A safety button. If something happens and you are trapped, press it, and you will be rescued.”

  “What will happen then? And why not give it to everyone?”

  “Because it’s you that has to survive.”

  We stared at each other for what felt like an eternity. It was my choice what to do with what Teddy had just said. Was it a curse, or was it a blessing that I would live even if my friends died?

  Teddy pushed the answer to my question into my mind, where it would stay. “If you live, you have a chance to save them. If you die, they will die too.”

  “What will you do if I am trapped?”

  “Best you don’t know,” Teddy said.

  The next second I was above ground where the team was waiting for me. No one looked worried. Well, Zeid did. But everyone else was calm. Did they know what happened with Teddy and me, or was that just the way that they were?

  Above ground I hadn’t realized how much I had missed the sun, the air, the top part of the trees. It was glorious. I spun around, arms open, face to the sun. I wanted to remember how good this felt when we faced the Shrieks. They wanted to take away all this beauty from everyone.

  Well, they probably didn’t want anything. Shrieks were mindless robots doing the bidding of Abbadon. Someday, I didn’t know how, or when, I will stop Abbadon. Kill him if I have to, I vowed to myself,

  “That was different,” Zeid said coming up beside me.

  “What?”

  “That feeling. The depth of it. It was scary. Maybe the Oracle did something after all.”

  “Perhaps,” I acknowledged to Zeid. To myself it wasn’t a perhaps, it was a certainty. I was ready for whatever magic I had to show itself.

  “No matter what?” Link asked.

  I had forgotten about Professor Link and his open channel.

  “Have you been there all along?” I asked, a little pissed. No, a lot pissed. This was ridiculous. People always in my mind.

  “Then shut it off, Hannah. You have the power to do so. On the other hand, do you have the time to reopen it in an emergency?”

  I knew I didn’t, so I sighed, and pushed the thought back to him. “Be polite, please. Don’t snoop.”

  “As if! Never!” Link said, in a Valley girl voice.

  We both laughed.

  “What’s so funny?” Zeid asked.

  “Link, impersonating a Valley girl,” I answered.

  “Oh, yea. Link does that sometimes. Not just Valley girls, but characters throughout human history in Earth. Probably keeps his mind from freaking out with all that he has to do to keep us safe.”

  I nodded and pushed to Link, “Have I said thank you?”

  A picture of a sad little puppy floated by in my head. I laughed again.

  “Link?” Zeid asked.

  I didn�
��t have time to answer because Niko made a hand circle for all of us to gather close to him.

  “Are you ready? All of you?” He asked glancing around the circle.

  Zeid, Aki, Beru, Ruta, the five Ginete brothers, James and the four other men from Kinver all nodded grimly. The Priscillas had returned to me and tittered their answer of “yes.”

  Cahir was waiting in the woods. I could see him watching, wary. Suzanne had shapeshifted to Lady and was flying above us. A black, white, and red dragon. Guarding and protecting.

  Niko stopped and rested his gaze on me. I answered with as much assurance as I could muster, “Ready.”

  With one last glance around to take in our surroundings, we once again followed Ruta through the woods.

  “How far away is the Riff, Zeid?” I asked.

  Zeid inclined his head to Niko, so I turned my gaze to him.

  “It moves closer. A day or less.”

  “You know I never asked what the Riff looks like. How will I know that we are there?”

  “Besides the green blobs screaming with their entire bodies? On one side will be life, on the other side will be death. There will be no mistaking it.”

  Forty-One

  The morning walk was peaceful. Especially considering where we were going. Even though the practice time had been intense, a few days of a good night’s sleep, clean clothes and bodies, had lifted everyone’s spirits in spite of the danger that lay ahead.

  The Priscillas seemed to have recovered from their nightly excursions and were flitting ahead of us on the trail. It was unusual. Since the ceremony, they had spent most of their time in my coat pocket or riding on my shoulder. I was a little hurt that they didn’t appear to need me anymore. Yes, it was petty. Still, I sulked.

  So when Pris came back and rested on my shoulder, I decided to be direct and ask her what was going on. Why weren’t they riding with me? Where had they been every night?