Astral Tide (The Otherborn Series) (19 page)

Kim stared at it, shook the paper, stared some more, then said, “Blank, man.” He handed it off to Tora.

Like Kim, Tora agreed that she could see nothing. Even Elias looked over her shoulder and shook his head. He too could not read whatever Zen had written.

That left only one person: London.

Either Zen’s charm didn’t stick and the pencil was totally bunk, or that message was meant for her and her alone.

Tora held out the slip of yellowing paper to London. Its musty smell wafted over to her and with trembling fingers she reached out and took it. Before she ever even brought it in front of her face, she could already see the soft, gray scrawl waiting there, so like Zen’s shaded eyes.

She held the paper before her and took a deep breath, feeling herself flush crimson from head to toe. She knew, without a doubt, Zen’s charm had worked, because this message was for her and nobody else.

Across the paper she read,
I think I’m falling in love with you.

LONDON CRUMPLED THE paper up in one hand and swallowed the lump that had taken residence in her throat. “Got it,” she responded coolly.

“Got what?” Kim asked.

London scowled. “Zen’s message.”

Kim rolled his eyes. “I know, but what was it?”

London wanted to crawl under a rug. She glared at Kim. “Hello?
Private
, remember?”

Suddenly, she could see the wheels turning in Kim’s mind as realization spread across his face. “Ohhh…”

“Yeah.” London blushed again and looked at her hands.

Zen cleared his throat and rubbed the back of his neck. “Isn’t it someone else’s turn now?”

London shook out her hands. “Right. It’s mine.” She already knew what she wanted. With deft fingers, she reached into her own pocket and pulled out the half a geode Zen gave her. “I want to charm this.”

Zen looked shocked but Elias was thoughtful. “Yes, this will work. It has value to you and so it will be good for your first time. Now, take it in one hand.”

London did as he asked, but when Tora started her intonation, London held up a hand. “I can do it on my own. Thank you.”

Tora smiled. They needed to be able to drop into the Astral and drag back out whatever they wanted at the drop of a hat. It was good for London to have made such progress.

London closed her eyes and breathed deeply. She let that calm slide over her like a soft blanket, and she felt herself, and saw herself, wrapped up in the Astral. Like a swath of green fabric, the Midplane stretched all around her. London opened her hand and saw Zen’s tiny cave of crystals lying there. She opened her other hand and prepared to envision her intention.

But how did one visualize truth?

It came slowly, the visual image of her intention. First she saw a mouth, then an ear—her own. Then she saw the purest, clearest, most perfectly formed crystal materializing there. It hummed and vibrated, releasing a shrill sound that carried to her ears like a private wind. London waited a moment longer to be sure she had it right, then she brought her hands together and the images she’d seen in the one rippled and vanished as they made contact with the other. A blinding, brilliant light flashed with a crystalline ring, and the next thing London knew, she was opening her eyes.

London blinked and squeezed her hands around Zen’s stone.

“So?” Zen asked. “What was it? Whatever it was, it must have been good because that light nearly singed my retinas.”

London looked to Elias and he nodded proudly. “You did well. Your intention was the truest and that’s why the reaction was so dazzling.”

“Out with it,” Kim demanded, a little miffed to be outdone. “What was this mysteriously pure intention?”

London looked at her crystals and smiled. “I want to know when someone is telling the truth.”

Zen gave her a crooked smile.

London couldn’t help herself, she remembered his soft lips on her last night and how much she’d wanted them to stay there even longer, but he broke the kiss off early, leaving her yearning for more. She purposefully looked away.

“So how do we try it?” Kim asked.

London looked around. “Someone needs to tell me something false and then something true. I’ll hold the crystals in my hand and consciously try to detect which is which by forming a question in my mind; that will be my activation. I don’t want to hear this thing all the time, only when I’m truly trying to ferret out a lie. I should hear a high pitch note coming from the crystals when it’s true, like an alarm.”

“A truth alarm, huh? Pretty cool idea. Let me test it.” Kim sat forward and stared at London. “I used to have a crush on you.” He scrunched his eyes as though trying to transmit the message telepathically.

London waited, holding the crystals in her palm and the question in her mind,
Is he telling the truth?
There was nothing. Either Kim was lying, and she sincerely hoped he was, or her charm was useless. “You don’t have to try so hard, liar.”

Kim relaxed. “Okay, second statement. Sometimes you piss me off, but I’d trust you with my own life.”

London held both the geode and the question firmly in place again, and heard the signaling whine made only for her ears, but she didn’t need that to know Kim was being honest. It shone in his face. He cared about her, he believed in her, and he trusted her. “Thanks, Kim. That means a lot,” she said quietly.

He nodded once and cleared his throat. “Hey, we’re friends, aren’t we? Okay, lesson over. Can we nap now? Tonight’s kind of a big deal.”

SI’DAH PRESSED HER fingers to her face, where she could feel the softening of her features and the rounding of bones that had taken place since she’d last been fully herself, fully here. Only this time, there was a little less fear and a little less doubt. It was not her face entirely, and yet it was. London’s face was hers too, and this was somewhere in between.

She looked at Geode. He stood beside her, monstrously large. His muscles were fuller and his sharp-slitted feline eyes had softened, the pupils rounded. The hair was receding from his face, she could tell, but it was very subtle yet. His jaw had squared considerably.

Geode placed a hand to her chin, letting his thumb trace over her lips. “Beautiful…always.”

She smiled at him, grateful for the reassurance.

Atel stood to her other side, on her left. His back was straighter and he seemed younger somehow, as though even his leaves and branches had entered the springtime of youth. Beside him, Tora was herself, her fingers wrapped resolutely in his.

Hantu strode toward them across the Midplane, a wary look on his face. It could only be Elias’s presence that disturbed him. The Beekeeper had come as himself, saving his tiny, buzzing body for acts of espionage. Tonight he stood on the other side of Geode, tall and dark as a fall of molasses.

“You are not alone,” Hantu said when he was near enough. His hazel gaze shifted nervously to Elias. “You have acted apart from me.”

Si’dah tried to reach Hantu with the earnestness in her eyes. But their pure black surface was less expressive than London’s warm brown irises and she feared the emotion was lost on him. “We have acted in the best interest of the Otherborn and the Circle. We bring two new elects, and we ask you to return to the grove with us.”

Hantu stared at her. He was angry and she could understand why, but he would have to put personal issues aside for all their good. “Tora is welcome at our side. With my vote, which I give freely, and you are my witnesses, she is granted a seat in the stone circle. Together we make a majority. None can refuse her.”

He nodded to Tora and she smiled and squeezed Atel’s hand, which twisted through her own like fingers of bark and vine.

“But why should I accept an stranger in our midst?” He scowled at Elias, uncertain. “When we have so much to fear already?”

Si’dah stepped forward. “Hantu, please. Listen to reason. This man has known the Astral far longer than any of us can imagine. He travels the planes,
all
of them, with ease. He knows where to find the Astral tides and how to ride them. He can warp, and shift, and charm. He can help us. We need his knowledge to win…to stay alive.”

Hantu’s resolve seemed to soften a bit as he listened, but he still regarded Elias cautiously. “I need time with him. Time to trust before I can give you what you ask.”

Si’dah clucked her tongue. “There is no time! Already the Winged One and her consort bear down on us from unknown planes. Already they have nearly squeezed the life out of me here. Already we are cornered in our world,
your
world, with nowhere to go. Soon, they will catch up to us. Without all that he knows, we cannot be ready. Don’t condemn us.”

As she said it, Si’dah knew the words were true. Their time in the world of the Others was drawing to a close. Were their days an hourglass, they would now be down to the final grains. She wasn’t sure how she knew, but around her the Astral seemed to trill with her truth and the ring of her crystals sounded in her ears as they vibrated in her hand. They had very little time left. Soon, they would be caught.

Her face was menacing and even with the subtle changes in her appearance, she towered proud and strong. But intimidation would not win one such as Hantu. He was right. He needed to trust. How could they give that to him now?

Hantu sighed. “Where is your hesitation now that you need it most?” he asked her. “Where is all the caution that has carried you so far, Si’dah? You speak and act in haste.”

Si’dah fisted her hands. “Haste is all that is left to me…that is left to London. We have been stumbling through the Astral as though we were blind. There are infinite realms here, I have seen one of them, and yet we have only known three. And we have been fools to think ourselves powerful and in control in such a state.”

Hantu glared at her. “It was I who taught you how to ride the tides into my world, into the hosts that I chose so carefully for you. Do you think it an accident that you were each born so close in age? Just under the noses of our enemies, the Tycoons? I arranged all of that. I made it possible and now you turn on me for another.”

“Hantu, even you are at the limits of your wisdom and experience. Can you tell me you truly remember where to find the tides or how to catch one anymore? The Great Sacrifice has robbed us of so much. You have forgotten, as we have. And now you are trapped here. As we are there,” Si’dah implored him.

Geode stepped forward also and placed a hand on Si’dah’s arm. “What Si’dah is trying to say is that we are more ignorant than we ever imagined. More ignorant than this man, Elias. More ignorant than Avery. And now, more ignorant even than Rye-Roanyk. When we first encountered Tora in your world, you told us to trust. You said the Astral was helping us, that it had brought us together. Well, now it has happened again. And we are asking you to trust. We did not act apart from you, Hantu. The Astral did.”

Hantu’s shoulders slumped and he looked away from them both with a weary expression. Si’dah turned to Geode, hopeful. Was he breaking?

“I can help you,” Elias said. He had been silent until now, and Si’dah noticed that when he spoke here, in the Astral, his voice had that same resonating quality as though it were echoing to them through a thousand bees buzzing. “You don’t have to be trapped here.”

Hantu looked into Elias’s eyes. “How?”

“I can lead you to where the tides rise and fall. I can teach you to catch one again. The Astral tides can carry you anywhere, even to the portals of other worlds…even into the slumbering body of a new host.”

“I don’t want a new host.” Hantu sighed. “I seek the rest of the Highplane when this is over, and that is all.”

Elias’s eyes lifted to the swirl of mist and clouds above them. “Even this can be open to you,” he said.

Hantu’s eyes narrowed. “Why would you do that for me?” he asked.

“Because I have been where you are and I wish someone had been able to guide me. Because if you don’t find a way to a plane of rest or take another host, you will, after countless years wandering, drift into the edge planes and be lost…forever.”

Hantu’s face clouded with fear. “And you can prevent this?”

Elias nodded. “I have done so for myself already. I can do so for you, too.”

Hantu turned away from Elias and moved to stand in front of Tora. “Tell me Seer, do you trust him? Has your sight failed you at last?”

Tora stared back, unmoved. “My sight is strong as ever. I trust. When I look at him, I see him for what he really is…who he was. And I trust.”

Si’dah shivered. She preferred Elias’s human form to whatever he must have been before and she wondered that Tora hadn’t said anything about what she saw, but she was secretly grateful.

Hantu opened his arms and addressed them all. “I find I have no choice but to accept your decision, whatever my misgivings. Perhaps the pupils have finally exceeded the teacher,” he said with a tone of surrender.

“Shouldn’t that be cause for celebration?” Atel asked. “Yet you hang your head.”

Hantu put his hand out to Atel and patted a gnarly shoulder. “I am glad for you, old friend. And afraid for you at the same time. If even I am so sorely fitted to the task we face, I doubt that we should have ever taken it on at all.”

THE GROVE SAT empty. It was a chilling, haunting reminder of all they’d lost. There were no witnesses anymore, nor could there be. Four stone seats were vacant. Hantu made the call to their additional three members while Elias checked and rechecked the perimeter, reinforcing the barrier that would protect them from Avery and Rye, now outcast.

Si’dah laid a hand on the stone that had once been Roanyk’s seat. It was cold, callous against her tender fingers and even more tender heart. She was broken without him, yet still she could not believe fully in what she’d seen and heard. She felt a hand at her back and turned. Geode stood behind her.

“The seats are empty no longer,” he stated.

“No,” Si’dah agreed, withdrawing her touch, embarrassed to be caught in her moment of grief.