CHAPTER 17
After breakfast we got a break to check e-mail or make calls. Morfael had a landline in the library that Siku made a call on. The rest of us went to the computer corner in the cave.
I looked for Caleb, but Morfael drew him aside to speak in low tones. I logged onto my e-mail account and found six from Iris and one from a strange account I recognized as the new one my mother had set up just before Caleb and I fled my house. Tears sprang to my eyes as I clicked on it.
“My darling Desdemona,” it began. “Richard and I are safe. I’m not going to write you where we are, just to be cautious.”
I wiped my eyes a bit and looked around to make sure no one saw me crying. But the others stared at their monitors, engrossed. Morfael was pulling a cloth from what looked like an ancient motorcycle as Caleb crouched down to look at it.
Mom’s e-mail continued, “Richard woke up about two minutes after you left the house. The bodies of those men in gray helped me convince him that we had to get out of there fast and tell no one where we went.
“Richard was pretty angry about it all, understandably. He insisted on parking a few blocks away and sneaking back to watch our house. We saw a white van pull up to the house.
“More people in gray got out of it. One was a girl about your age with blond hair. The tallest of them, a man with white hair, seemed to be in charge. They brought out the bodies very quickly, and the girl started crying when she saw the one you called Lazar. Then something amazing happened. The girl knelt beside Lazar and put her hands on his face. I tell you, the Healing Mother must be strong in her, because a moment later that young man sat up, demanding to know what had happened.
“I dragged Richard away after that. It looked as if they were searching the house, probably for clues as to where you and Caleb had gone.
“I’ve had a lot of time to think about you these past couple of days. Now that I clearly see your special gift, I understand some things that happened when you were younger.
“I thank the Goddess that old man in the Moscow orphanage pointed me toward your room. It was destined, and more strange and wonderful adventures are fated to befall you. When I’m tired and worried, I wish you could lead a quiet, ordinary life. But that would mean wishing you were other than you are, and nothing could ever make me want that. I love you more than I can ever express in words, sweetie. Be good to yourself; trust yourself; don’t be afraid of yourself.”
I paused there a moment. What did she mean,
afraid of myself?
“Richard sends his love,” she continued, “and says not to let that young man Caleb lead you around too much, no matter how nice he is. Richard was a young man once himself, so he knows what he’s talking about. Love and what the Goddess wills to you, Mom.”
Her words, so familiar, so very
Mom,
fell over me like a warm blanket on a cold night. I stifled my sniffles as I typed out a long reply.
Iris’s e-mails were a study in worry and dramatic speculation. They went from ramblings about the cute guy in English to hurt to stark worry when she stopped by and found no one home. If I didn’t get in touch soon she would call the police.
Feeling horrible for having worried her, I clicked reply and hesitated. The real story was impossible to tell. So, I guiltily typed that we’d had to leave town on a family emergency. I couldn’t be in touch much because we were out of the country.
Feeling better than I had since leaving home, I logged off. Mom and Richard were safe. That was the important thing. Somehow I was going to find a way to keep them that way.
I got up to join the others sitting on the floor in front of the motorcycle. Caleb was lining up a bunch of different tools on a piece of fabric on the floor.
Morfael tapped the rock floor with his staff. The creatures on it now looked only like clever carvings. Had I imagined them writhing before?
“Although he is not a shifter, Caleb will attend classes that are relevant to him. Occasionally, I will take him aside to teach things pertinent only to callers of shadow. In return for this short-term apprenticeship with me, he has agreed to teach you some things never taught here before. The Tribunal utilizes mechanical objects in the war against us. Most otherkin don’t have this knowledge, trusting only to their animal nature. That is about to change. Caleb has facility with these objects and will begin our lesson today.”
Caleb rubbed his hands, already spotted with motor oil, and grinned at us. “So, the internal combustion engine, hallmark of civilization and perhaps its downfall. Learn how it works and you’re halfway to understanding many mechanical devices. I’m going to take apart this old motorcycle engine and you’re going to help me put it back together. Get closer.”
Two hours later, the engine was still a mess, but we washed our hands and followed Morfael in some yogalike moves that ended in silent meditation. We were supposed to make our thoughts follow our breathing. But that lasted about three breaths for me. Images of Caleb with tousled hair and a smudge of dirt across his cheekbone as he bent over the motorcycle’s carburetor kept intruding.
On the way outside for a nature walk with Morfael, I made sure to be the last one out. As the door to the living room closed behind London, I darted over to the spiral staircase. I ascended a few steps and craned my neck, catching sight of a hallway and a thick wooden door. Morfael’s quarters, probably, and a spot where he might hide books or info containing the secrets I suspected he was keeping from me about how I could go home again.
I padded silently up the rest of the leaf-covered spiral staircase in the living room. A narrow hall led to a carved wooden door, which loomed taller than any normal door and was at least eight feet wide. A flash of light from the living room zipped across its surface, and the carved shapes on it moved.
Like Morfael’s staff.
I leaned closer to the door, trying to distinguish the figures on it. Even with my excellent vision in the dark, I could barely make out what the shapes represented. At first they seemed to be animals; then I thought I saw a tree, and a cup, and a waterfall. Only one shape kept recurring, a black circle surrounded by wavering flame shapes, like a dark sun.
No matter how hard I looked, I couldn’t find a doorknob or handle. Maybe the door didn’t open at all. Or maybe whatever lay behind it was dangerous. As the shapes writhed before my eyes, the door seemed to grow taller and more shadowy, vibrating with dark. Cold panic took hold of me. I breathed deep, forced myself to memorize that recurring dark sun symbol, then bolted down the stairs.
On the nature walk, I kept thinking about the shifting dark sun rune. Morfael recited the names of local plants I already knew as we walked. But I had no idea St. John’s wort could deter the ability to shift or that hawthorn trees grew near places of power. After an hour, we made our way back to the school and I headed for the kitchen, starving.
“We’ve got to shift before lunch,” said November. “Come on.”
Again?
I followed her into the girls’ locker room and shifted into a tiger for the second time that day. It was still terrifying, though now at least I knew I probably wouldn’t stay a tiger forever. Probably.
This time we didn’t shift right back to human, but emerged in animal form, and Morfael led us outside. I had trouble tearing my eyes from Siku, nearly as big as a minivan in grizzly form. His brown fur was tipped with blond, his massive legs slightly bowed as he walked, the big black nails of his claws digging furrows in the earth. He looked awkward until Morfael ordered him to climb a huge tree. Siku’s massive form broke into an easy gallop, fast as a horse, and he sprang with surprising grace as high as he could up the sturdy trunk of the tree. The climbing wasn’t easy for him, though, and he scrabbled and grunted, biting onto limbs and sending a shower of shredded bark onto the ground below.
Morfael ordered me to do the same up a different tree. I spiraled up the trunk, amazed at how all four of my legs worked independently to find a hold, smoothly pushing me upward as my tail swayed, providing balance. I’d felt like this as a kid, scrambling fearlessly up the old oak tree, never thinking I’d fall. It was still marvelous, my muscles working in concert, my fur shrugging off the scratches of random limbs and rough bark.
Then Morfael shouted for me to stop. I stood aloft, fifty feet above the mottled tapestry of the school compound. A clot of earth coming from a burrow showed where November was completing her assignment to dig herself a hiding place. Arnaldo’s brown wings dipped and rose as he slanted and sliced between trees, where his ten-foot wingspan could get him in trouble. London’s silver wolf was running back and forth across the top of a fallen log, like a rough balance beam. Every now and then her paws slipped and she’d scramble to keep herself from falling as Morfael urged her faster.
Not far off, I glimpsed a hunk of white metal that had to be Lazar’s stolen BMW. A tall form in a long dark coat stood by it, holding something to his ear: Caleb, and he was on his phone. I could just see his head nod and perhaps his lips move, but at this distance I couldn’t hear what he was saying.
Who could he possibly be talking to?
A spark of anger and confusion ignited in me, and I dug my claws deeper into the wood, whiskers bristling.
“Very good, Desdemona and Siku,” Morfael was saying. Siku’s bulky form swayed the strong branches of the tree near me, about twenty feet off the ground. “Now come down.”
This was the real challenge for me. Siku hadn’t climbed far, so all he had to do was hang from a limb and drop. His huge form rolled with the fall, and he got up uninjured, shaking the dirt off his fur.
I was too high for that, and my claws curved the wrong way for me to go down head first. So I went down butt first. The cat in me didn’t like it at all. I stalled, eyeing the branches. But the girl in me had climbed a million trees before she got the brace. If I could do it without claws and a tail, then I sure as heck could do it now with them.
Gripping a branch with my front claws, I let my back legs dangle until they found a grip on a lower branch. Front paws then let go and grabbed the lower branch. Repeat. It went fine for about twenty-five feet. Then my back legs missed their branch. My tail end swung out into the air as my front paws scrabbled at the tree limb. They slipped, and I fell.
Even as panic flooded me, my head twisted until my eyes found the ground. My body followed my head, turning in midair, paws splayed wide, legs bent as I hit the earth right side up. The impact sent a shock along my legs and spine, but it dissipated in a heartbeat, leaving me shaken but unhurt.
“Your first fall as a cat,” said Morfael, walking up to me. “Well done.”
Praise from Morfael! I should have felt exhilarated. But the thought of Caleb on the phone kept intruding. Back in human form, I joined the others in the library for a history lesson. Caleb was there, his face shuttered. I sat as far from him as I could. He was keeping something from me, something big. The thought made my throat ache.
Morfael began talking about something he called the Schism, when the Tribunal had split from the Catholic Church in the sixteen hundreds and went completely underground. At first my mind wandered, distracted by worries about my mother and Richard and how we could ever lead a normal life again.
Then I realized what Morfael was saying. Witch hunts in America and Europe took on a whole new meaning when you realized that the women accused of being able to turn into cats and birds were shifters. Even Dracula had a basis in truth, since the original Vlad Tepes had actually been a bat-shifter.
Our homework was to pick a famous person and prove whether they were a shifter or not. I was so intrigued I almost didn’t mind the work.
The afternoon passed in a haze of martial arts exercises and drills on getting dressed and undressed fast in groups segregated by gender and with Caleb excused. We had lessons on how to start a fire without a lighter and how to keep warm in the woods if you were stuck in human form, and pointers on recognizing locations of power.
Another shift was required before dinner. I whipped off my clothes as fast as I could for practice, then hunkered down and closed my eyes. Might as well try to find my connection to Othersphere while I was here. I directed my thoughts to that dark place and found it. It felt exactly as full of dread and anxiety as it had before.
As I plunged through that frightening black window, a by-now familiar surge of power raced through me, and in seconds I stood once again in tiger form. I looked down at my paws and flexed the claws to make sure I wasn’t dreaming.
“You’re getting good,” said November. “Stop it, or I’ll lose my crown as best shifter at school.”
I butted my head against her shoulder. She shoved me away with a nervous giggle. I shifted back to human a moment later and got dressed for dinner.
Caleb looked at me a couple of times as we ate. We hadn’t talked all day, which felt wrong after all we’d been through. Our legs were really close under the table. I could’ve rubbed my foot against his calf. But I didn’t. I wasn’t going to give him the chance to push me away again.
During cleanup, I could feel how near he was in the tight space of the kitchen. As we finished and began filing out, he put a gentle hand on my elbow and tugged me back.