Othermoon (9 page)

“Arnaldo’s father’s the one who did that, not you,” Caleb said. “You’re not the kind
of person who can stand by while people are getting hurt. That’s a good thing.”

“Is it?” I turned my head to look at him. “What if I try to do the right thing and
end up making things worse?”

“At least you didn’t try to strangle your own brother.” He stood up, as if the thought
of Lazar had pushed him from his seat. He took a few steps to stare out at the forest.

“You wouldn’t have gone through with it,” I said.

“Maybe I should have.” He said it very low, as if to himself.

Instinctively, I drew back. “You don’t mean that.”

“What if I did?” He turned to look at me, one eyebrow cocked. “What would you think
of me then?” When I hesitated, he nodded. “You’d hate me. Then you should hate me
now, because part of me wishes I’d put an end to him when I had the chance.”

“I could never hate you,” I said. “We all do stupid things. . . .”

“Would it be so stupid?” He ran one hand through his unruly dark hair. “He killed
my mother and God knows how many others. Maybe it’s not so wrong to just kill Lazar
and Ximon, and everyone else like them. The world would be a better place without
them.”

“So you’re going to personally kill off everyone you think is bad?” I asked. “If we
going around killing people we hate, how are we any better than the Tribunal?”

“Lazar deserves to die!” Caleb moved into me, black eyes sparking with gold in sudden
fury. “He and Ximon will do anything to wipe us out, go to any extreme. And if we
want to defeat them, we need to be willing to do the same.”

My heart was sinking lower and lower as he spoke. “I won’t become like them.” I made
myself meet his eyes without flinching. “I can’t and still be me.”

“What, so your precious integrity’s more important than your life?” He was staring
at me in disbelief.

“I don’t know,” I said. “But if I become what I hate, what’s the point of anything?”

He was frowning at me, his gaze flicking back and forth between my eyes, as if he’d
find an answer in one or the other. Then he relaxed a little. “I just can’t lose you,”
he said.

I smiled, and my heart stopped sinking, though it still felt heavy. “You won’t.”

Then I was in his arms. He swooped in and picked me up so that my feet left the floor,
wrapping his arms around me to bury his face in my neck. “When you’re away it’s like
a part of me is gone too,” he said softly, his lips moving against my skin.

There it was, that feeling I’d been missing. I could breathe again. In his arms I
was home.

“I’m always with you,” I said. “Even when I’m away.”

He inhaled sharply, and then he kissed me with warm, soft lips. I kissed him back,
my arms around his neck, fingers tangling in his unruly hair. I could feel the hard
line of his body pressed against me, and I pushed myself even closer to him, never
close enough.
Closer, please . . .

Something soft tickled the small of my back. I giggled, wiggling in Caleb’s arms,
then realized that unless he had three hands, it couldn’t be him.

“Whoa!” Caleb pulled his head back, eyes wide and staring behind me.

I turned to see an elk calf, all liquid brown eyes, winged ears, and knobby knees,
removing its wet black nose from my skin. I blinked as it snuffled up at me, abbreviated
tail wagging. Somehow it had scrambled up the grassy side of the building to join
us on the patio.

“Oh, hi,” I said, my heart still racing from kissing Caleb. “Where’s your mom?”

The calf made a short, high-pitched mewing sound, almost like a bird’s chirp.

“We should get inside before Mom finds us,” Caleb said. “Elk are—holy shit.”

Too late. The mother elk was walking up the side of the hill toward us. She stood
five feet tall at the shoulder, with no antlers, just thick brown fur that grew almost
into a dark mane around her neck, and legs two miles long that ended in delicate,
but substantial hooves.

I began to back away, but Caleb made me stop. “Don’t move if you can help it,” he
said in his quiet voice. “If you startle them, they can knock into you.”

So I stood there and breathed evenly as the mother elk walked right up to her fawn
and nuzzled it. Then she leaned her long neck over and sniffed my face so that we
stood nose to nose. Her eyes were huge, bright, and unafraid.

“Hey, beautiful,” I said quietly.

The calf bleated a reply. The mother looked down and made a low rumbling sound; then
she turned and walked away with careful, unhurried steps. The calf trotted after her.

I let out a quiet laugh of relief and leaned backwards into Caleb. “What the hell
was
that
?” I asked. “Does Mother Nature not want us to make out or something?”

He wrapped his arms around me, chuckling. “I think Mother Nature has a crush on you.
Don’t you dare leave me for her.”

His joking words hit me, and I turned around to look at him. “I have been shorting
out gadgets and machines at a record rate for the past few weeks,” I said. “And before
we moved, the tomatoes outside my room literally broke through the window screen to
get inside.”

Caleb looked over the top of my head at the elk as they paused to search for grass.
“So you think this nature thing of yours is growing stronger? That would help explain
what just happened. You’re like some Disney princess who has birds come land on her
shoulder and make her dresses for the ball.”

“Yeah, if Disney princesses set fire to their cell phones,” I said.

“You set your phone on fire?” He pulled back to look at me.

“Not on purpose!”

He laughed. “Okay, now there was something else you wanted to talk to me about, right?”

“About my mom,” I said. “Something weird happened.”

So I told him about Mom channeling whatever-it-was at the lightning tree in the middle
of a storm.

“She said I had to learn who I am,” I finished. “It wasn’t Mom’s voice, or Mom’s hands—or
Mom. At least, I don’t think so.”

“Her hair looked red, you said?” Caleb was pacing, listening intently.

“It was like the time you channeled that . . . thing from Othersphere,” I said. “Something
other than Mom was coming through.”

“But from where?” He stopped and looked at me. “You have to
grill
Morfael about this. Don’t stand for any of his usual evasive bullshit. Your mother’s
life could depend upon it.”

 

But I didn’t find Morfael until everyone came together around noon in the gym for
our first class in the new school.

The last time I’d seen him, he’d been lying in a hospital bed, recovering from being
shot. His tall alien body was still all pointy angles and cold gray-white skin beneath
his cape of black, but he turned as we approached and his opal eyes shone with life.
His thin mouth curved into a genuine smile. “Welcome. I look forward to working with
you all again.”

Morfael wasn’t the hugging type, so we smiled back and lined up on the cushy gym mat
as he led us through a warm-up, then a vigorous review of martial arts, tapping his
carved wooden staff in time with his commands. Amaris kept up with us pretty well,
wisps of blond hair sticking to her sweaty forehead as she punched and kicked alongside
me. She must’ve been practicing with Caleb during the past month.

Then a quick shower and shift for everyone except Amaris and Caleb. Shifting had become
fairly easy for me, and for all of us, but for some reason I just couldn’t wait to
shift. I slipped into the skin of my tiger form easier than falling into bed after
a long day. It felt so good I nearly bolted out of the girls’ bathroom to go hunting,
but November bravely got between me and the door and shook her finger at me, calling
my name, and telling me not to get a new-moon grade the first day.

Morfael graded us in phases of the moon—and a new moon was the equivalent of an F.
No way I could stand the teasing from the others if I ever let that happen, so I forced
myself to shift back to human.

We both had to do the same with London, who actually growled at us in her wolf form,
then howled before shifting back to human. November was the most easily lured back
to her human form; all we had to do was threaten to steal her candy stash.

When we gathered for the after-lunch lesson, all bundled up outside, Arnaldo asked
Morfael why shifting felt so different now. The boys must have felt the same thing.

Morfael listened, leaning on his wooden staff, unmoving. The carved animalistic figures
on the staff did not seem to move, as they had before. The staff was too tall for
me to see the “shadow walker” rune on top. I still didn’t know exactly what it meant
about Morfael, though the term referred to legendary creatures who could actually
travel between worlds. If Morfael was one of them, he certainly wasn’t telling. But
then he never said a word more than necessary.

“Today’s lesson,” he said in response to Arnaldo, “is how to recognize places where
the veil between the worlds is thin.”

He stopped speaking and looked around at all of us, not blinking.

“But . . .” November scrunched up her face in puzzlement. “What about how easy it
is to shift?”

“And it was easier to shift to bear form than shift back to human,” said Siku. “Why?”

“In this place, we are very close to an area which lies perilously close to Othersphere,”
said Morfael.

He paused, expressionless.

“Perilously?” said November in a small voice.

“Being a tiger felt more natural than being human,” I said slowly. “But what’s that
got to do with . . . ?”

London’s eyes widened in realization. “Shifting is easier because we’re in a place
that’s close to Othersphere!” she said.

Morfael’s thin lips twisted with pleasure as we all went “Oh!”

“That is one way to know where the veil is thin,” he said. “Your connection to your
animal form will become particularly strong. You may feel an overwhelming desire to
shift to it and not want to shift back.”

“Is it the nuclear testing?” said Caleb. He stood between me and Amaris, hands thrust
into the pockets of his long black coat to stay warm.

We all turned to look at Caleb, Morfael included.

“My mother taught me that the veil between worlds becomes thin wherever a huge explosion
of power took place,” he explained. “Things like volcanoes, earthquakes, meteor strikes,
and nuclear bombs—they erode the fabric between this world and Othersphere. And this
school isn’t far from the Nevada test site. They say they made over nine hundred tests
of nuclear weapons in the area, but who knows how many they really set off?”

“They’re setting off nuclear bombs nearby?” November asked, her voice rising in alarm.
“Great choice for a school location!”

“Don’t worry. They stopped testing in the nineties because of the Nuclear Test Ban
Treaty,” said Caleb. “I looked it up before we settled on this area for the school.”

“And it is indeed an excellent location for my school,” said Morfael.

“Because it’s close to where the veil is thin,” I said. “You want us to learn about
that.”

He nodded, moonlight eyes glinting. “The thickness of the veil between worlds is not
consistent. You may discover a spot where it is particularly thin during one of your
hikes, or find a place where it thickens. This is something you will learn to detect—without
shifting. You will find that the proximity of Othersphere has other, unexpected effects
on you and the world around you.”

“I—” Amaris started to speak, then cut herself off, blushing.

We all turned to look at her, which made her duck her head, not speaking. Caleb gave
her nudge with his elbow. “Go on . . .”

She lifted her chin, still flushed, but determined. “I feel stronger here than I did
in Las Vegas, or anywhere else, really. I haven’t been able to heal anyone since .
. .” She swallowed hard, but went on. “Since my father was injured. But the more time
I spend here, the more I feel like maybe I could heal someone again. But, you know,
maybe I’m wrong.”

“You are correct,” Morfael said, and Amaris let out her breath in relief. “As a healer,
you draw your power directly from Othersphere, though we are still not sure exactly
how. Anything that removes barriers between you and the other world will facilitate
the use of your power. In a similar fashion, Caleb and I will find it easier to see
the shadow forms of objects and people, and to draw them out.”

“Area 51!” I said, and then realized the words had popped out of me without thinking.
“Oh, sorry. But that whole thing is probably because the veil here is thin too, right?”

The other kids exchanged puzzled looks, except Caleb, who was grinning at me.

“What’s Area 51?” said Arnaldo.

“It’s a military base not far from here,” I said, “and because of all the crazy sightings
in this area of strange lights and weird aircraft, people who believe in UFOs think
Area 51 is where the government keeps evidence of alien spaceships and alien bodies
and stuff.”

“What, so the UFO’s aren’t alien ships, they’re . . . Othersphere ships?” Siku pursed
his lips. “Why would they have spaceships in Othersphere?”

“Not ships, probably,” I said. “Lots of the things people see are government aircraft
being tested. But since it’s also right near where the veil is thin, maybe they’re
sometimes seeing . . . I don’t know, lights from Othersphere, or creatures, or something
that doesn’t make sense in this world.”

“You can’t
see
through the veil,” said November in a scoffing tone. “I mean, callers like Caleb
can
sense
shadow through it, but humdrums and shifters don’t see animals and mountains and
buildings through the veil unless they’re called through. Everybody knows that.”