Out of This World (12 page)

“Don't be such a baby,” she says.

“It's not being a baby when—”

“Look,” she breaks in. “We might have stood a chance against one of them. But two? Not as much. And three …”

“What three?”

“There's another one across the street.”

I hold on tight and lean over to have a look, trying to ignore the vertigo fluttering in my stomach. Sure enough, there's a third dog crossing the street. By the time I get settled again, all three are at the base of the palm.

“If they're cousins,” I say, “can't they just shift into human shape and climb up?”

She nods. “But here, we have the advantage. We can knock them down before they ever get close.”

“What do they want with us?”

“I don't know. And as long as we're stuck up here, we're not going to find out, either.”

I sigh. “So now what do we do?”

Donalita pulls a phone out of her pocket.

“Now, dude,” she says with a smile. “We call for help.”

“My pardon, sir,” the rabbit man says, standing stock-still with his partner. “We meant no offence.”

I smell their fright. They're about to take off. It's like coming suddenly upon an animal. First they freeze, then they bolt.

“What are you talking about?” I say. “You didn't offend me.”

“If you say so, sir. We just came for a picnic. We didn't know you'd already claimed this place for your own. If we had, we would never have intruded on your privacy.”

“You can stop calling me ‘sir.' I'm probably half your age.”

“Yes, sir. But you're Mountain Lion Clan, though, pardon me, I don't know which one.”

“So?”

He looks at the ground, to the side, anywhere but at me.

Then the woman nudges him. “It's
him
,” she whispers. Her voice is soft as a breath, but I hear her clearly with the mountain lion's ears.

The man raises his gaze to my face. He doesn't seem as scared or even nervous anymore. He looks at me with awe.

“It is,” he murmurs as though I'm not standing right there in front of him.

Then he catches himself.

He lets go of his companion's hand and sets his bag on the ground before giving me a formal bow. The woman bows as well. Then he stands ramrod straight and meets my gaze with steady eyes.

“Young lord,” he says, “I am Manuel de Padilla of the Long Mountain Hare Clan and this is my mate, Lara.”

I'm not sure what to do, so I say, “And I'm, um, Josh Saunders from Southern California.”

“You do us a great honour in allowing us to speak with you.”

I shake my head. “Guys, you've got me confused with someone else.”

Manuel smiles. “I don't think so. Might I ask with which Mountain Lion Clan you are affiliated?”

“I'm not part of any clan.”

He gives me a puzzled look.

“I'm not like you,” I explain. “I wasn't born into a, you know, clan or anything. One day I just got a mountain lion living under my skin.”

Lara lays a hand upon her breast. “A miracle.”

“I guess that's one way to look at it.”

“It isn't my intention to instruct you,” Manuel says, “but you do know that you and the mountain lion are one and the same? There is no end to one and beginning to the other.”

I nod. “Yeah, I know that. Intellectually. I just find it helps me cope to think of him as a spirit living under my skin.”

They look at me without comprehension.

“Forget it,” I say. “So how do you know about me?”

“Every cousin has heard the story by now,” Manuel says.

“How the Thunders sent the seed of the animal clans into a
group of five-fingered kits and one of them grew into the spirit of one of the old clans.”

“And do the stories say why this happened?” I ask.

Manuel smiles. “We are only small cousins. Why would the Thunders explain themselves to such as us?”

“But it means something,” Lara says. “It whispers in our hearts.”

This kind of throws me. “What does your heart say?” I ask. She exchanges a glance with Manuel and something passes between them. It's like when Marina and Des and I are in the zone, and we can communicate without speaking: an abrupt shift into another song during practice, all of us hitting the mark on the same beat. A look across the hall at school that tells a story nobody else can read. Riding our boards, the three of us turning sharp the way a flock of starlings do, all at the exact same time.

“That something's going to change,” Lara answers, “and when it does, it'll be better for everyone.”

I'm not sure what that means.

“And you think I'm a part of this?” I ask.

Another glance at her mate.

“We
know
you are,” she says.

I don't believe her any more than I do anybody else who's tried to tell me what my destiny is, but I don't tell her that. There's something so earnest about her, as though she thinks some big prophecy is coming true.

I guess they read the disbelief in my face.

“If we've offended you …” Manuel begins.

I wave that off. “It's not that,” I tell him. “I just wish
I
knew what's going on with as much conviction.”

He nods. “Destiny is a knife with two blades and no handle. There's no easy way to hold it. Some might say it's better not to try to pick it up at all. But destiny doesn't care what you think or believe. It will carve out your life for you regardless.”

There's a pleasant thought. But I don't let it change the good feeling I get from these two.

“Why don't you stay and talk for a bit?” I ask. “You could go ahead with your picnic.”

“We would be honoured to visit with you, sir, but we will wait until later to eat—unless you care to share our food?”

I sigh. “No thanks. Any chance you could dial the ‘sirs' down a little? I mean, I'm grateful for your respect and everything, but it's nothing I earned. I'm just a kid with a big lion under his skin who's trying to figure out what it all means.”

Lara puts a hand to her lips. I can't tell if she's shocked or hiding a smile.

“We can try,” Manuel tells me, but he can't hide the reverence in his eyes.

I lead them over to our camp area. They stare at the two beds, two backpacks. Their noses are working, reading the scent trails in the air.

“We
have
intruded,” Manuel says.

“No, it's cool. Really. My friend and I are trying to wake up this map thing in my head, but he's off taking a break.”

I give a vague wave around the campsite. “Grab yourselves a seat,” I say.

As the dog man lifts his horn again, I know I can't let him send a warning to his friends. I don't even think before I act. I just sweep my length of pipe in an arc and whack him across the back of the leg. I don't have the room to put any real power behind the blow, but it's enough to make his knee buckle. The horn drops as he goes down. Still on automatic, I give him a hard tap on the top of his head and he collapses.

Time seems to stop as I look at him lying there. Blood trickles from the gash on his head and he's not moving at all.

I think I might have killed him.

I feel sick.

The raggedy man doesn't share my concern. I turn to find him holding a big chunk of rock. When I realize that he plans to bash it on the dog man's head, I get between them.

“What are you
doing
?” I ask.

“He's still breathing.”

“Well, thank God for that.”

He gives me a puzzled look, but at least he lowers the rock.

“You know he wouldn't give you the same mercy,” he says.

“I don't know any such thing. I just know that if we start
bashing in their heads when they're already unconscious and

can't hurt us … well, we'll be no better than them.”

“But we'll be alive.”

“We're alive right now,” I tell him.

“For the moment.”

I refuse to move. His strange eyes study me for a long beat.

“Fine,” he says finally and puts the rock aside. Then he nods.

“You're probably right. If we've only hurt him, they'll be angry and looking for settlement of the wrong, but they won't make it their life's work. If we finish him off, they'll never stop until they've hunted us down and killed us.”

“Thanks,” I say.

I dust myself off and pick up the pipe again. I might not want to kill anybody, but I'm not stupid.

“I need to go back,” I start to say, but the hunting horns sound again.

“It's too dangerous at the moment,” he says. “Right now we need to find a better place to hide.”

I think about the mark I scratched on the road where I arrived. I think I can still find it, but if I follow him now, will I get too turned around?

The horns sound once more. Closer.

The raggedy man sets off at a quick jog. I have no choice but to fall into step behind him.

It's another hour of winding through the streets of this ruined city before the raggedy man deems it's safe enough for us to rest. He leads me up to the third floor of some kind of old warehouse building, most of which is still standing, although the whole
north wall is missing. It's a huge cavernous place. We sit near the missing wall, which gives us a good view of the city. There's dirt here—three floors up—with weeds growing out of it. Vines trail down the sides of the building where the missing wall would have connected to it.

A cool breeze blows in, fresh and clean compared to the closer air in the streets below. This So-Cal girl isn't used to the humidity.

When I look out over the view, I can't believe how huge this place is—as big as New York City, I'm sure. The ruins seem to go on forever. The buildings are taller here than they were where I first arrived, but nature's also reclaimed them. We haven't seen anybody. Just birds and animals. We haven't heard the horns for the past half hour. The last time we did, they were faint and distant.

The raggedy man pulls something wrapped in cloth from his pocket. It proves to be flatbread and cheese. He breaks each in two and offers me half.

“Are you sure?” I ask.

He smiles. “Go ahead.”

I was just being polite. Truth is, I'm starving. I can't remember the last time I ate. The raggedy man also shares water from a metal flask. I can see it's supposed to have a screw-on top, but I guess he lost it because he's using a chunk of wood as a cork instead.

“Now, aren't you interesting,” he says when we've finished.

Me? Has he never looked in a mirror?

“Why do you say that?” I ask.

He shrugs. “You feel like a cousin in here.” He touches a fingertip to his temple, by which I suppose he's referring to his
own version of the
ping
that I get in my head whenever I'm near a Wildling or cousin.

“But you seem to be newly born,” he goes on. “As though you're only months old, rather than years. So, who are you?”

“Just a displaced girl who wants to go home. Who are you?” He brushes the question off with a wave of his hand, but I can't help but be curious. What he really reminds me of is one of the dwarves from those Lord of the Rings movies that Des and Josh have made me watch way too many times.

“Okay,” I say. “Can you at least tell me where we are?”

He gets a puzzled look. “You should know. I saw you arrive.

No one brought you.”

“I didn't come here on purpose.”

“There's that,” he agrees. “No one comes here on purpose.” He scratches his beard, then adds, “It's called Dainnan—the city, I mean.”

He says it grudgingly, as though he detests the word. I decide to push my luck.

“I'm Marina,” I tell him. “What's your name?”

Those bright blues of his fill with sadness before he looks away.

“People call me Thorn,” he says, “and I've been in this miserable place for far too long.”