Authors: Anne C. Petty
The constriction in Ned’s chest was easing, and he dragged himself, shaking, to the spot where he’d leaned against the oak. The giant snake looked real, but he was damned if he was going to reach out and touch it to make sure.
“It hasss to go back,” she hissed, swaying much too close to his face. Ned saw bright dots in front of his eyes and felt the ground tilting underneath him. He clutched at the tree roots, thinking if he could just hold on, things might snap back to normal in a minute or two. But the ground continued to ripple like the waves of an earthquake, and the glittering eyes of the taipan held him breathless.
“Back where?” He could barely get the words out.
“Sacred place, Dingo clan cave,” said the Ancestor.
Tears of frustration pricked at the corners of Ned’s eyes. “Why fucking me?”
“Got to be you,” said the taipan, “unless you bin want to father yourself a child and pass the job onto it.”
“W-what?” Ned buried his head in his arms to escape those dreadful slitted eyes.
“Shhhh,” said the snake, flowing in a liquid motion over his leg and up his body to his shoulders, then around until her head came up behind him and rested in the nest of his hair. “Take up your drawing tool,” she said. “Big boss Wandjina says I’m to show you.”
Trembling in bone and sinew, Ned picked up the pad and pencil, and began to draw, slowly at first, and then more rapidly as the familiar channeled energy took over his muscles and tendons. Quickly, he sketched a high bluff with a cleft in its side, partially hidden by windswept crooked trees. A distinctive rock formation marked the base of the split in the cliff, and water flowed past it, although the source of that water was hidden.
Then he folded the page back and began a new drawing. A woman’s face took shape, small-featured and comely with long hair whipping in the wind. Behind her appeared palm trees and the façade of a building with decorative tiles in Moorish, Egyptian, and Italianate design. As before, Ned’s hand then went limp, and the pencil fell to the ground.
The Ancestor retreated, leaving Ned completely alone in the sand and roots of the giant oak, with mosquitoes feasting on his face and arms. The sun was slipping low over the trees, the light fading into gathering gloom under the oak canopy. Ned stared at the woman’s face. He would have to go in search of her, he knew that much. But where she was, and what he would do when he found her, he had absolutely no clue.
Chapter 14
July 24, Sunday—Present Day
Margaret settled into the computer chair and logged onto the Internet, surfing quickly to her favorite forum. She still had a couple of hours before they were supposed to leave for camp, and she wanted to post her gone-for-awhile notice in the Absences thread just in case she ended up being Internet-deprived for over a month.
For the duration of science camp, she would be living with three other girls in a dormitory on the university campus, in a “quad suite” consisting of two bedrooms, a communal bathroom, and a kitchenette. She was friends with two of the girls assigned to her group, but the fourth was from out of town. Margaret hoped she was cool and would fit in. If not, well, they would deal.
She slipped her favorite anime soundtrack into the computer’s CD player, put on her headphones, and typed GOKU into the user-name field and then typed her password, shikigami. Margaret sighed. She wished she had a real shiki of her own to command. It would be the bomb to be a genuine onmyouji, a Japanese sorcerer, who could conjure up the magical dragon servant just by folding a piece of paper and chanting sutras over it.
She looked to see who was online. The usual suspects were logged on: Ryoga, a board moderator, plus Inu-luvver, Hellboy2, Muraki’s Lair, NekoMania, and Kinigar.
Margaret grinned. She’d gotten pretty friendly with most of them and had been a member of the forum long enough now to have posted over five hundred messages, which gave her non-noob status and a couple of stars by her handle. Although she posted in half a dozen Internet forums, she had a comfortable sense of belonging in this particular one. It was hard to say why; it was the typical mix of pop-culture-addicted teens and twenty-somethings, with a smaller sprinkling of older weird-but-cool members, if you were to believe their profiles, which one always took with a grain of salt. But there was a slightly more intellectual, slightly less confrontational tone to this board that Margaret liked. Overfiend, the forum’s founder, enforced the rules with a twisted but supportive vibe, and the members followed his lead.
First, she scanned the threads where she had last posted, checking for responses. There were new posts to a topic called “Have You Ever,” started by Kinigar. It was one of those “what’s the strangest thing you’ve ever done” type of thread, and she’d written that she’d once had a Dreamtime monster called a Quinkan living in her closet. Nobody took her seriously, of course, although most of them wanted to know what she’d been sniffing.
Her experience with the creature wasn’t exactly like calling up a shikigami, but it was pretty freaking close. Sometimes when she thought back, it seemed like just an eyelid movie and not something she’d actually seen in real life. Other times it still creeped her out.
She checked her PM box and saw the icon blinking. Kinigar had sent her a message. The subject line simply read “Heya.” She’d gleaned that Kinigar was a male from numerous other posts he’d made—statements like, “I’m the only guy in my class who reads slash fanfics.” He posted a lot (“Postwhore” was the tagline under his avatar) and was fairly popular on the board.
She clicked open the message and read, “Sooo, u met any shapeshifters lately? Seriousleh. Did u really? XD, Kini.”
Margaret chewed her finger, and reread the message. Epic WIN. A guy she sort of admired had taken her post at face value. She read his message again, trying to decide if there was any sarcasm or hidden agenda she wasn’t seeing. It seemed straightforward, and he’d signed it XD, an emoticon for a big grin, so she hit REPLY and typed: “No I have not seen any lately. Once was enough, ya know? *shudders* Have u? heh heh, Goku.”
After hitting SEND, she clicked on Kinigar’s profile, more curious about him now that he’d PM’d her. His profile page opened, displaying his avatar pic, a wildcat’s face in full white-fanged snarl. Reading his stats, she saw that he was sixteen if his birth date could be trusted, and that he was into “skating, swimming, Scandinavian Goth music, manga and anime, sci-fi, horror, cosplay, animals (especially cats), and computers,” which sounded pretty compatible with herself. She smiled and read on. He listed his personal e-mail address and Instant Messenger ID, and his location. Margaret stopped reading. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. His location was listed as Bondi Beach, Australia. Kinigar was an Ozzie.
She immediately hit PM again and typed a new message to him: “Kini, where in Oz is Bondi Beach? How long have u lived there? What do u know about the Dreamtime? Were u hinting about something? Wanna share? *glomps and hugs you* Goku”
Margaret’s chest was thudding. She wondered what he would make of all those questions and if he would be put off. She wasn’t stalking him, after all, it was just that she was so shocked to find somebody from Australia actually responding to her shape-shifter post. She really, really hoped he wouldn’t just blow her off and not answer. With a click she returned to the regular forum thread and looked to see if he was still logged on. Disappointed, she didn’t see his name in the list. Now she really needed a reason to get back on the Internet tomorrow or the next day, to see if he’d answered. Camp could interfere with that because she didn’t have a laptop, and she knew Judy and Lissa didn’t either. Maybe the other girl in the quad would come through.
* * *
“Hey, Margrits!”
Judy and Lissa came through the doorway of one of the bedrooms in their quad suite. Judy gave her a bear hug. “You’re late, so we went ahead and took this room. You and the other girl can have the front one, hope that’s okay.”
Margaret shrugged. “No problem. I’m late ‘cause Mom and Nik are still trying to find a place to park. They let me off at the dorm front door.” She looked around. So this was what college dorm life was like.
During the university’s summer break, Science Camp took over two floors of a co-ed dorm, housing boys on the third floor and girls on the second. The quad suites accommodated two pairs of roommates, who would share a bathroom (shower, no tub) and a tiny kitchenette that held a pantry, half-fridge, sink, and microwave oven. The main access doors for each suite (she’d counted eleven before finding the one assigned to her) opened onto a hallway that ran the length of the dorm.
Margaret went into the front bedroom and took a look around. If you split the small room down the middle, the halves were mirror images except that one wall had the door to the short hallway inside the suite and the opposing wall held a window to the outside world. Otherwise, both sides of the room had a single bed on a heavy wooden frame pushed into a corner, a small student desk with two drawers at the foot of the bed, and bookshelves bolted to the wall over the bed and desk. A computer desk with Internet hookup took up the space against the wall between the two beds. Two floor-to-ceiling locker-type wardrobes filled in the wall opposite the computer desk. The room was spare and utilitarian, but Margaret had to admit it was a pretty efficient use of a small space intended to accommodate two people and all their belongings.
Nik poked his head in. “Is this your room?” He put Margaret’s suitcase and a cardboard box of books down in the middle of the floor. Alice squeezed past him and put her arm around Margaret’s shoulders.
“Hi girls, how’s everybody? Getting settled in?”
“Yeah, it’s all good.” Margaret allowed herself to be hugged in front of her friends. She was feeling jittery and nervous, but excited. This was different from the other camps she’d attended. It was like being in college for five weeks.
Alice kissed her on the cheek. “Have fun, then. I’ve got the dorm phone number, so I’ll check on you in a few days and see if you want anything. Call us if you need to.”
“Bye, Mom. Thanks, Nik.” She was mentally nudging them out the door.
As soon as they were gone, Margaret joined Judy and Lissa on the floor and pulled out the quad assignment info sheet.
“Wonder where our other quad-mate is,” Judy said, looking the page over.
“What’s her name?” Margaret asked.
“You’re gonna love this: Thomasina Redfern, from Orlando.”
“No way anybody has a name like that. You made it up, right?” They were all laughing.
“Sounds like Thumbelina. I bet she’s some stuck-up rich kid.” Lissa made a face.
“Epic FAIL!” said Judy. They started cracking up.
Margaret was twitching. “I hope not. I gotta live with her for five weeks.”
“She’s the oldest, too,” Judy said, looking at the info page. “She’s fifteen. Me and Lissa are fourteen, and Margrits is the baby.” Sixteen was the age cutoff for Science Camp participants, with the youngest being twelve; most of the college-student counselors were nineteen and older. Margaret noted that the one assigned to their quad was a Biology major named Melissa.
“Who’s a baby? I’ll be fourteen in two weeks,” she protested.
Lissa popped the top of an orange soda and passed it around. “Maybe we should go up to the boy’s floor and have a look around.”
Margaret giggled and poked her. Then she noticed someone standing in the doorway.
“Hi guys, Tom here,” said a husky voice.
Margaret did a double-take. The girl leaning against the doorframe was tall and thin, with jet-black hair cropped short around her neck but slightly longer in front and fringed bangs that fell over her eyebrows. Her pale face was made up with heavy black eyeliner and dark purple lipstick. Both ears displayed a row of silver studs, graduating in size. There was a matching stud in one nostril. She was dressed in a skimpy black camisole top, hip-hugging jean that showed off her belly button, black platform flipflops, and silver toe ring. But the coolest thing of all, the thing that Margaret couldn’t stop staring at, was a black widow spider tattooed just under her left collarbone. She had an iPod bud in one ear, with the cord running down to an armband pouch holding her Nano, which probably held thousands of death-metal songs Margaret wasn’t allowed to listen to. She was, in fact, the flesh and blood manifestation of all their Goth-princess fantasies.
“So, which one of you guys is my roomie?” she said, removing the bud from her ear and tucking it into the armband. She bent down and dragged a heavy Army-surplus duffle bag into the room.
Margaret raised her hand. “Me.”
“Cool. Who’re you?” Tom was looking at her, sizing her up, or so it felt.
“Margaret.”
“Got a nickname or do they call you the whole thing?”
“Margrits!” the other two chorused.
Margaret flushed to the roots of her hair. She twitched miserably, a red-faced, red-haired flame of teenaged embarrassment.
Tom nodded. “I like. So, Margrits, which bed d’you want?”
“Um, it doesn’t matter, I guess.” Margaret wished her voice didn’t sound so squeaky.
“Right.” Tom pushed the duffle bag under the nearest bed with her foot. Then she turned to the group. “Now, let’s get this baby up and running.”
It was only then that Margaret noticed the briefcase-shaped black bag hanging by a wide strap over Tom’s thin shoulder. Her heart skipped a beat.
Tom put the bag down on the bed and unzipped it, lifting out the sleek laptop. She set it down with care on the computer table, pulled a power strip out of the bag’s side pocket, and got down on her hands and knees, looking around underneath the desk.
Margaret looked at the other two in silent glee as Tom found the power outlet and plugged in.
Standing up, Tom powered on and typed in her password. “If you guys ever want to, like, check your e-mail or something, just let me know.”