“It is. He’s Pia and Kia. Depending on his mood,” Ella said, brushing her frizzy hair out of her eyes.
“You mean he’s a she?” Aubrey said, looking back at the boy.
“No. It’s a bit complicated,” Ella said. “She’s transgender sometimes. Not others.”
“And what, he just changed his decision to become a she? Just like that? Just so he can play football?” I said.
“Oh, he does it all the time. One second it’s Kia. The next it’s Pia,” Ella said with a wave of her hand, as if changing sex was no big deal.
“Are you guys saying that that boy is a girl?” Aubrey said, pointing at Pia. He’d just tackled Prestige and was dribbling the ball down the pitch.
“Only sometimes,” Ella said.
“But how?” I said. “The second law of Shifting. You can’t undo a Shift.”
“Frankie said it’s because it’s such a huge choice with so much uncertainty involved, there are lots of chances to change it. Plus, the choice was sort of made for him, where he grew up, his parents thought it would be the best way for him to make money. It was Frankie who explained that it was up to Pia now to decide. One day, he’ll have to settle on one or the other. But I think he likes the freedom of it now.”
“I’d like to meet her,” Aubrey said.
“You will,” Ella said. “Kia will be back any minute.”
“Yes, but I won’t remember that she was a he, will I?” Aubrey said.
“I suppose not,” Ella said.
“But you can?” I asked Ella. “You can remember the old reality?”
She paused before answering, as if she wasn’t sure she was supposed to say anything. “Yes,” she said softly.
“Oh,” Aubrey said, looking from me to Ella and back again. “Guess you’re not the only one then after all, Scott.”
I stared at the girl in shock. I’d never met someone else like me. Before I had a chance to say anything more, Pia came running over.
“Do you want to join us?” he said, holding out the ball to me.
“Oh, no. I’m fine thanks. The last time I played football I nearly broke my nose.”
He smiled and turned to Aubrey. “How about you?”
She looked at Ella and me, then back to Pia. “Sure, why not?” she said, taking the ball. She threw it up into the air, headed it perfectly back onto the pitch and ran after it. Pia smiled in delight and followed on.
“Frankie told me I wasn’t to tell anyone,” Ella said a few minutes later. She and I were sitting on a bench watching what had now turned into a football match the likes of which I’d never seen.
Hamid and Hazid had joined in. Originally, the twins had been put on opposing teams, but they kept cheating by Shifting each other’s decisions, making them miss the ball. They had to be separated three times before they were put on the same team. The little girl we’d seen earlier, the one who answered the door, had also joined in. Although she didn’t do much kicking. She just ran after the ball like a small dog, baying with laughter, her doll trailing on the ground behind her.
Aubrey had gone in goal. She was amazing – mostly because she Shifted so effortlessly that she hardly missed a ball – and I loved watching her laugh. I think she’d only joined the game to give Ella and me some time alone.
“Why weren’t you supposed to tell anyone?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I think Frankie thought it would…” She hunted around for the correct word. “Unsettle people. That other Shifters wouldn’t like it if I could remember the decisions they’d undone. The bad choices they’d made.”
That made sense. Aubrey was the only person who knew about my ability – unless you counted Benjo and Sir Richard, and I was trying not to think about them – and I knew it weirded her out. Maybe she’d become so used to erasing her mistakes that the idea of someone who wouldn’t forget them was scary.
Perhaps this was why I thought I recognised Ella. That the nagging feeling I knew her was really just me sensing we shared this same ability. Although if that was the case, wouldn’t I have felt some sort of connection between us? A kinship? Whereas the exact opposite was true. Even though she was sitting just a few feet away from me I felt completely cut off from her. She was distant and untouchable.
“It’s not easy, is it?” she said, looking down at her hands, which were folded neatly in her lap. “Remembering.”
A flash of memories hit me. The crash with my sister. The knife in the chest. The President’s bubbling face. All realities I couldn’t let go of. “No. Not always.”
I heard a high-pitched scream and looked back to the pitch. Aubrey was carrying Kushi, swooping her around like she was flying, while the rest of the kids laughed and whooped. Even Prestige, the stern soldier, was close to smiling, the simple act restoring his youth to him. “Looks like Kushi scored,” I said.
Only Ella wasn’t sitting next to me anymore.
“Come on, now!” she shouted to the group. “Time for dinner.”
They ignored her and continued with the game. The sun was slowly disappearing behind the turrets and chimneys of the house, casting long, snake-like shadows across the grass. The kids raced in and out of them, moving from dark to shade as they chased the football.
“I won’t tell you again,” she said, not shouting now, but in a voice that seemed to carry across the grass and made all the kids stop and turn. Pia pulled the football out of Hamid and Hazid’s hands, who were fighting over it again, tucked it under his arm and walked back towards the house.
Aubrey put Kushi back on the ground. The little girl took Aubrey’s hand and looked up at her, an enormous grin on her face.
“I see you have a new friend,” I said to Aubrey as she walked over. Only it was Kushi who answered.
“I’m going to show her my dolls.”
Aubrey was dragged away before she had a chance to protest.
I fell back a bit watching them all head towards the house. Children from all over the world who had found themselves a home here. It was pretty amazing, what Frankie had done for them. She’d given them the chance to change their lives.
I looked up at the sky. The first few stars peeked out from behind a scattering of clouds.
“Beautiful, isn’t she?”
I jumped when I heard the voice behind me and turned to see Frankie gazing up at the sky as well.
“I’m sorry?”
“Venus, the Goddess of Love,” she said pointing at a pinpoint of light nearest the moon. “There’s something special about knowing she’s the first light to greet us each night.”
I couldn’t take my eyes off Frankie. Her tanned skin seemed to glow in the moonlight. “I guess.”
“Did you know you can perform the Double-Slit Experiment using the gravitational lensing of fourteen billion-year old starlight around intervening galaxies?”
“Huh?”
“Don’t tell me they’re not teaching the Double-Slit Experiment at ARES these days?”
“No… I mean, yes, they are. But with lasers. Not starlight.”
I’d been taught all about the quantum physics experiment that shows how light acts as both wave and particle. But where it got really weird, and why they taught it in ARES basic training, is because the behaviour of light alters purely through the act of it being observed. Just like how our decisions could change when we focused on them.
Frankie looked up again at the night sky. “It’s the same experiment. Only instead of slots, you determine which direction light bends around planets. Amazing, isn’t it? To think that you can decide whether a photon was emitted as a particle or a wave fourteen billion years ago. And its application to Shifting is staggering. Just how far back can our influence go?”
“But we can only change our own decisions. Which means we can only influence things within our own lifetime. Right?”
“Perhaps,” Frankie said, looking at me now with the same curious gaze she’d turned on the planet. “But what if we could learn how to amplify our power, beyond our own petty concerns and choices, and influence great events? Why, the potential could be limitless.”
“Do you think that’s even possible?”
“I’ve seen enough to know there are special Shifters, for whom the normal rules don’t apply. Those with a certain strength of character that enables them to lead where others follow.”
She knew. I didn’t know how. But it was clear from her expression – eyebrow raised, a half-smile hitching up the corner of her mouth – that she knew about what I’d done at Greyfield’s. But what did it matter anyway? After facing Sir Richard’s gun it was clear the power had gone and wasn’t coming back.
“Yeah, well, maybe those special Shifters are just freaks.”
“If by freak you mean extraordinary, then I would agree with you.”
“But what if their power only works in extraordinary circumstances, like when mothers can lift cars off children caught in a crash or when…” I was about to say “when people are about to die”. But I’d already given too much away. “Or whenever. What good is it to anyone?”
“You read too many comics, Scott. The potential for greatness lies within us all.” She took a step closer to me. “In some, more than others.”
She tapped my chest with a strong finger. It felt like a shock of electricity passing into me. “See those trees over there,” she removed her finger and pointed to two dark shapes on the lawn.
I could only just about make them out in the moonlight.
“The ones that looks like spirals?” I said.
The kids had used them earlier as goal posts and I’d wondered about their weird shape. All the other trees and bushes in the grounds were left to go wild. But these had been pruned into perfect geometric swirls.
“Yes. I had them planted last year and I hate them. The gardener insisted. He said they would give structure to the garden and I didn’t think it was important enough to argue.”
“What about them?” I said.
“I want you to Shift them for me.”
“What? But… but I can’t Shift your choice,” I said, stumbling over my words.
“Try. I had a choice between those arrogant symbols of man’s mastery over nature or two simple silver birches. And now I think on it, I’d rather go with the birch.”
“So, why don’t you just Shift?”
“Because I want you to do it for me.” She laid her hand on my chest again and I was very aware of the beating of my heart under it. “Imagine the birches. Think about their slender trunk and frail, paper-like bark. Imagine them right there.” She raised her hand to my chin and turned me to face the spirals in the dark. “Focus, Scott. Will them to change.”
“But I ca–”
She cut me off with a finger to my lips. “I know you can do it,” she whispered into my ear, her soft breath tickling the hair on the back of my neck. “I believe in you.”
Those words sank into my brain like a coal through butter. If she believed in me, then maybe, maybe I could do it after all.
I turned and faced the trees. Black spirals punched out of the dark.
I blinked and when I opened my eyes again the spirals were gone. Instead, there stood two tall trees, their silver bark catching the moonlight.
Frankie made a soft humming noise, as if she’d taken a bite out of something delicious. She leant in and kissed my cheek. “Well done. Now you’d better get inside or all the food will be gone.”
I nodded dumbly and stumbled forward.
“Oh and Scott,” Frankie said as I started to walk away. “Best you don’t tell anyone about this. Best you just forget all about it.”
“Sure,” I said, and the buzzing confusion in my head slipped away and was replaced with a warm glow.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The dining room echoed with shouts and screams as all the kids tucked in to whatever Maria loaded up on their plates. From what I could tell, some of them were eating their puddings before their mains, but no one was stopping them.
Ella led Aubrey and me to a table with Prestige, Pia, Kushi, and Hamid and Hazid. It was a little like being back at ARES, with all the freshers. Only even more chaotic. Frankie had been right when she said the children here could do whatever they liked.
I watched the kids, while picking on a bread roll, and wondered just what they’d all been through. The boy from the Congo looked the most damaged. But all of the children had hollow looks in their eyes if you looked deep enough. Even little Kushi who was now chatting away with Aubrey while feeding her doll crisps would sometimes pause and stare into the distance before snapping back and continuing to babble.
“Enjoying dinner?” Frankie said, walking down the stairs. She wasn’t in bare feet anymore. In fact she was in high heels and a long black dress that clung to her hips. I had to work hard to swallow my bread.
The children nodded their approval, their cheeks bulging with food.
Ella, who’d been just picking at a salad stood up. “Are you going already? I’ll have to go get changed.”
“Sorry, Ella,” Frankie said, rubbing the girl’s thin arm. “But I told Pia I’d take him with me tonight.”
Pia jumped up out of his seat. “Do I need to change?” He tugged at his grass-stained football shirt.
Frankie considered the boy. “Yes, I think so. Something smart. Something striking.”
Pia smiled and raced off out of the room. Ella was still standing up, her small chin bobbing up and down.
“Come now, Ella. I need you to stay here and take care of everyone. You’re the eldest after all.” Frankie leant over and placed a kiss on Ella’s forehead.
Ella looked like she didn’t understand at all. She spun around and stormed out of the hall.
Frankie looked as if she was about to follow Ella, then shook her head slightly. “I want you all to behave for our guests,” she said to the children. “Make them feel at home, OK?”
“Yes, Frankie,” the kids sang in unison.
“Good. I’ll be back before midnight and I want you all in bed by then.”
I craned my neck to watch Frankie walk back out of the room. I could just see her heels reflected in one of the large mirrors in the next room. Shortly, they were joined by a two brown shoes poking out from under a pair of grey trouser legs. Pia had changed in super quick time. As I watched, the brown shoes vanished and were replaced by a pair of purple heels. It looked as if Frankie was going to be taking Kia instead.