Cursed Hearts (A Crossroads Novel) (42 page)

Shawn
was not a sucker for a pretty face. But apparently, he was a sucker for Aria. “Damn
it,” he sighed. “You owe me.”

“So
much,” she grinned, pressing her palms together and stepping away from him with
a smile. “Thank you.” Ariahna continued thumbing through the files, closing the
drawer and opening the next one down. It was by drawer number three that she
finally reached the R’s. Christian’s file was a slim, unassuming folder. It was
nothing compared to the monstrosity located between the M’s and the O’s.

“Oh
god,” she whispered, pulling the folder out to get a look at the name. “This is
Rome’s.” It had to be at least three times as thick as everyone else’s. She
could barely lift it out of the drawer. Shawn made a disbelieving sound at her
back.

“Is that what you’re doing? Background checks on your
boyfriends?” he asked, shaking
his head when he saw Christian’s name on the other file. “I can’t believe I’m
helping you do this.”

“That’s
not what I’m doing,” she said firmly.

The
sound of the key turning in the door interrupted their discussion.
Ariahna snatched the files off the floor and
grabbed Shawn’s hand,
effectively surprising him. She clenched her eyes
shut, and when she opened them again, they were still standing in the Dean’s
office.

“It
didn’t work,” she breathed. “I can’t blink.”

“He
has a charm on his office,” Shawn whispered. He pushed her around the large,
ornate desk, herding her under the table and scooting the chair in just as the
Dean stepped through the door.

“Mr.
Ericson,” he said in surprise. “May I help you?”

“I
had something I wanted to talk to you about,” he said, thinking quickly. He
stepped towards the Dean, stopping him before he could
approach
his desk. “I let myself in, I hope you don’t mind.”

“Of
course not,” he smiled. “What did you want to talk about?”

“It’s
more of a concern I had, really. You know, it would be better if I showed you.
Would you follow me for a moment?”

Ariahna waited until she heard the door clicking quietly
shut. As soon
as she
was certain they were gone, she crawled out from underneath the Dean’s desk,
peeking into the lounge. Shawn already had him halfway up the stairs to the
roof. There was no one else in sight. Aria slipped out, clutching the fluttering
papers under her arm as she ran all the way back to her dorm.

Two
identical files sat open on her desk. The first had all the usual things you’d
expect: grades, remarks from teachers, a few instances of delinquent behavior.
The second was a veritable cornucopia of disaster and disorderly conduct. It
read a little like a crime novel, with each page more shocking and gritty than
the last. A knock at her door pulled her away from the neat font. “Shawn,” she
greeted, offering him a reserved smile. “How did you know where to find me?”

“I
have a student directory,” he said, pushing into her room. She closed the door
as he turned to face her. “I covered for you. I don’t know why, but I did. And
now you’re going to tell me what you wanted with those, why you had me help you
steal
private documents on two other students.”

“I
had their permission… if that matters.”

“It
helps.”

Ariahna
sighed. “I’m not sure how to explain without telling you something I’m not sure
I should…”

“You can either tell me what’s going on, or I’m going to
the Dean and
turning
us both in. I shouldn’t have done it in the first place, whether I was coerced
or not.”

“Okay,”
she said. “Christian just wanted me to find out about his parents for him.” She
pressed her lips together as Shawn’s frown turned into an unpleasant scowl.
“He’s an orphan,” she explained, “and no one’s ever let him look at his birth
certificate before. We have a little theory going and we just wanted to know if
we were right.”

“And
what does Rome have to do with it?”

“…That’s part of our theory,” she mumbled. “Why don’t we
just look
at the
birth certificates? We’ll know in a second.”

Shawn’s
desire to find out was stronger than his aggravation at this moment. “Okay,” he
said slowly. “At least if I’m risking getting in trouble, I might as well help
solve the mystery.”

They
walked back over to her desk together, and Aria made herself stop leafing
through Rome’s colorful, extensive file. She located the copies of both birth
certificates, and set them side by side on top of the stacks, scanning down the
pages for the listed parents. Unsurprisingly, Donna Navarro was featured on
both. Just as Rome had predicted, Henry was recorded as his father. And
Christian’s father was…

“Joseph Grant,” she said, scribbling the name down on a
piece of
paper.

Shawn
frowned at her curiously.

“That’s your ‘aha’? I would have thought the fact that
they shared the
same
mother was what you were looking for,” he said.

Ariahna
smiled back at him sheepishly.

“I
kind of already knew that part.”

He
sighed. “So what’s so important about knowing who his dad is? Is he trying to
contact him?”

“…Yes,”
she lied, closing the files. “Thanks for your help.”

“Sure,
I guess. Though next time you ask me for a favor, I’m going to be ready,” he
grinned. “Here, if you give me those I can put them back.”

She
handed him the files and they said their goodbyes. In his
absence,
a hundred unanswerable questions arose
to keep her company.

Chapter 35

“Beast
or Being,” Mr. Jones said, “is a little game we’ll be playing often in this
class. I like to make my lessons entertaining as well as informative, and so as
soon as you step through that door each day, I want you to be prepared to
answer this question.” He pointed at the board, tapping his finger over the
words:
Is it a beast, or is it a being?

“We’ll
be covering both magical and mythical creatures, beings of both known and
unconfirmed origins. Some of these critters are real, some only imagined, and some
linger somewhere in between fact and fiction. To make it interesting, every
time you answer correctly, you’ll collect a point. The person with the most
points at the end of the trimester gets to pick a prize
out of the prize box.” He rapped his knuckles against the small wooden
object sitting on his desk. “Now, I know it doesn’t look like much, but trust
me when I say, there are some worthwhile trinkets in there. Alright, why don’t
you all start off by writing your answers on a piece of paper? And please do
not forget to write your name,” he stressed. “If I don’t know who it belongs
to, I can’t award any points.”

Rome squinted at the word scribbled underneath the neatly
written question.
Nahuals
. Why did that sound familiar? He scratched his
temple with the tip of his pencil, trying to remember if he’d read something
about them. Christian sat beside him, writing his guess carefully and folding
his paper in
half.
Rome hadn’t been able to see what he’d written. “Funny, don’t you think?” he
commented casually. “We both signed up for Beasts and Beings. Did you request
this class before or after you knew?”

“Before,”
he answered. “I submitted my elective requests the same day classes started. I
heard the teacher was cool.”

Rome hesitated for a moment, pencil poised over his paper
as Mr. Jones went around collecting their answers in an old baseball cap. He recalled
where
he’d heard the name then. It had been in History class, his very first
day
. He scratched his answer onto the paper, balling it up and tossing it
into the hat.

“Two
points,” Christian laughed. “Hey, maybe we should go out to the court and play
sometime?” he said suddenly.

“Yeah,”
Rome said. “But in the gym, not across town again.”

Christian
shrugged in agreeance.

“Alright,” Mr. Jones said, “on to the answer to our
million-dollar question. Are nahuals beasts, or are they beings? Open your
books to page three hundred and thirty three and follow along as we outline
what, exactly, a nahual is.”

Rome flipped open his textbook, blinking down at the
diminutive section on nahuals. It was maybe the tiniest chapter he’d seen in
any of the gifted classes so far. There’d been a chapter on how to identify the
base elements in your own body that had been longer than this. Somehow, he was
expecting more from something mentioned on page three of their History text. A
dated drawing took up a third of the first page. It depicted an animal with a
shadow in the shape of a human. It was an interesting portrayal, to say the
least.

“Nahuals,”
Mr. Jones said, turning to the chalkboard and writing a few key phrases in his
handsome cursive, “are a curious study to be sure. They are classified as
shapeshifters, but what sets them apart is that no one is quite certain which
is their true form, the man or the animal. Nahuals come in a variety of forms.
Some are birds, some are mammals, some are amphibians or fish, some are reptiles,
and some even take on the shape of insects. The most common variety, if you can
call a nahual common, would be large land mammals. They often appear as bears,
wild cats and dogs, elk, deer, horses, and so forth. There have been sightings
going back hundreds of years; stories and legends of men observing these unique
creatures that one moment could be walking upright, and the next, disappearing
down a stream or soaring up to meet the sky. They’re fanciful tales, to be
sure, but what they also are, is true.

“Nahuals,
as defined by The Witches Collective, are witches who have somehow acquired the
ability to transform themselves into an animal form. Interestingly enough, the
word nahual can be translated quite literally as, ‘transforming witch’. Now, I’m
sure that to some of you, human transmutation is no foreign subject. But if
you’re acquainted with the study, you should also know that transmuting into a
living, breathing creature is much more difficult to achieve than simply
turning one object into another. And it’s also much more dangerous. Nahuals
take it even a step further by seamlessly changing between their two forms. Not
only can they sustain their transmutation for prolonged periods, if not
indefinitely, but they can call on it at will and maintain their alternate forms
without any noticeable negative impacts to either health or magic.

“It
is unknown whether any witch would be able to cultivate such a skill, or if it
is a trait that one must be born with. It is apparent, however, that in either
case, it takes much time, dedication, and practice to perfect such a skill. The
Witches Collective has, in the last few decades, deemed practitioners of nahualism
to be unstable, and thus hazardous to the rest of society. The art has since
been banned, and is seen as quite dangerous. Because although nahuals retained
their own thoughts and motivations while as animals, they also shared in the
instincts and desires of their beasts, which occasionally would shine through
in their actions as witches. It is believed that aside from being able to
practice magic while shapeshifting, they may also have been able to tap into
the senses and abilities of their animal counterparts.”

Rome
was staring down at his textbook with a grin. This class was turning out to be
a real eye-opener. The amusing thing was, half of what Mr. Jones was teaching
them wasn’t even in the textbook. He knew what Ariahna was now. Without a
doubt, he knew. Rome scribbled her name on a piece of paper and slid it across
the desk towards Christian. He spoke up suddenly, interrupting the teacher’s lecture.

“How
would you be able to tell a nahual from any other shapeshifter if you saw one? For
that matter, how would you be able to tell a nahual that transformed into a
wolf from a plain old werewolf?”

“Both
good questions,” Mr. Jones replied. “A nahual, one
that took its
shape as a wolf at least, would be slightly smaller
and much weaker than a werewolf. Another way to tell the two apart would be to
look up at the sky. Werewolves can generally only transform on a full moon.
Tonight’s a full moon, for instance,” he commented with a smile. “As good a
reason as any to stay inside.”

Rome
smirked.

A
boy in the back row raised his hand and Mr. Jones gestured for him to speak. “So
a nahual could just come and attack us at any time?” he said.

“Not
quite,” Mr. Jones laughed. “As I said, the magic has been forbidden for some
time, and there hasn’t been a reported case of nahualism in many, many years.
Not since before you were born, I’d say. The Witches Collective takes such
offenses quite seriously, and the punishment for a practicing nahual can be
severe.”

“How
severe?” Christian asked.

“Well,
it would all depend on the individual, I suppose. Who they were, as well as
what they were, would all play a crucial role in determining sentence. It might
be something as simple as having the offender monitored for several months. Though
more commonly, The Collective would sentence them to life in jail. There is not
much optimism from our governing party that such a rogue practitioner has the
ability to reform. In one severe case I heard about, the man in question was
sentenced to death.”

“That’s
not severe, that’s extreme,” Rome said.

“I
couldn’t agree with you more. Coming back to the topic of our debate, are nahuals
beasts or beings, and if we stumbled upon one today, how should they be
handled? The way the law is written makes it apparent that The Witches Collective
views nahuals as rogue witches practicing an outlawed art. However, some would
argue that it’s a natural born trait, something that cannot be surrendered at
will. Others still believe nahuals are nothing more than sophisticated magical
creatures, able to pass as witches within our society. Who decides? How should
we truly categorize them, and where do we draw the line? Can they be captured
and studied? Or are they given the same rights, and thus subject to the same
rules, as any other individual? It’s been a matter of debate for years, and the
lack of urgency to solve the issue has led to a near standstill on properly
addressing the matter.

“If
you ask me, though,” Mr. Jones continued, “I think nahuals are still out there,
even to this day – whether practicing or just existing in the way they were
made to. They are still living among us in this world, and they deserve a
voice.”

A
girl raised her hand and he called on her to speak.

“Couldn’t
supporting that we question The Collective get you in trouble? I can’t imagine
they want you teaching us to doubt their decisions.”

Mr.
Jones smiled warmly at her. “I’m not trying to create little radicals in the
making. I want to encourage you all to question the world
around you, to question everything in life. Don’t
doubt their decisions,
but ask
yourselves if you think those decisions are just. Brainstorm on how you could
make them better, how you could make society
better. We all have to be
brave sometimes, to speak our minds – especially
if our opinion is an unpopular one. But if you stay quiet, if you sacrifice
what you believe in out of fear, you risk compromising who you are. And that is
a much more frightening thing.”

“Alright,
let’s revisit our little game,” Mr. Jones said, picking up the baseball cap and
perching on the edge of his desk. He picked up a few of the answers, dropping
them playfully back into the hat before selecting one from the top. “Bridget,”
he said happily. “At the beginning of class you declared that you thought nahuals
to be beasts. Do you stick by that answer?”

“Yes,”
she said. “Just because someone’s a witch doesn’t mean they can’t be a monster.
Anyone who practices such a dangerous art is no better than a savage.”

“Alright, let’s see if we can’t find someone who
disagrees.”
Mr.
Jones shuffled through the papers before specifically snagging the crinkled up
ball from the bottom of the bunch. He hummed in thought as he read the answer.

“Rome,”
he said. “You wrote that you thought nahuals were both. What made you think
that, and do you still maintain that belief?”

Rome started turning his ring around on his finger
distractedly. He’d
never been so happy to be called out in class. Bridget
was about to get an
earful.

“Yes,
I do still believe that. The world isn’t black and white. People, as well as
animals, are complex. They have systems of hierarchy, instincts, beliefs,
fears. Just because something is a predator doesn’t make it a monster, or a
savage for that matter. And it doesn’t make you its prey. I also think your
opinion is based on fear,” Rome said, staring over at Bridget. “Anything can
seem scary if you don’t understand it. What if your best friend turned out to
be a nahual? Someone you liked, someone you trusted and respected. Would your
view of them change suddenly because you found out they could turn themselves
into a mountain lion, or whatever? There’s a quote, and I can’t remember for
the life of me who it’s by, but it states: ‘
Many a man curses the rain that
falls upon his head, and knows not that it brings abundance to drive away the
hunger.
’”

“Saint
Basil said that,” Mr. Jones smiled.

Rome
nodded. “Right. My point is that everything has a purpose, whether you can
understand it or not.”

“Very
interesting perspective,” Mr. Jones said. “And some rather insightful words, I
might add. I’ll admit, our subject of the day was a bit of a trick question, so
I’d planned on awarding everyone a point anyways. However, I think we can all
agree that Rome deserves an extra point, for that very compelling argument and
his rather accurate answer. I’d have to say for now, when faced with the
question of beast or being in regards to nahuals, we should all have to reply:
Both
.”