The Night Shifters (18 page)

“Now I’m ready,”
she said.

Ready for what
? I
wondered, but a sound made me look around before I could
ask.

The Manna-Man was
climbing in through our broken window. I grabbed her by the
shoulders and pulled her under a rack of clothes. I didn’t need to
tell her why, she had seen him too. We crouched there, shivering,
until inky feet walked slowly past us. I got the sudden, horrible
feeling that his feet may have been able to see as well as his
face. But after a long moment he walked away.

We scuttled
silently to another rack of clothes, one closer to the window.

“Where is he?” she
whispered. I dared to poke my head up and look around. I caught a
glimpse of him in one of the mirrors. He was heading into the
dressing room. When he had disappeared, I whispered, “Now. Let’s
go.”

She dashed to the
window, me right behind her. We were almost there when she bumped a
table full of toiletries, ever so slightly– but it started to
totter. On my way past I tried to steady it, but some glass jars
fell off and smashed on the tile floor, making an astonishing
amount of noise. We scrambled out the window and hit the pavement,
our feet pumping in the way that only healthy eleven-year-old feet
can manage. But I couldn’t resist glancing over my shoulder at the
store.

The
Manna-Man
flowed
out the window.
He reformed and turned his head until he spotted us. Then he began
to run, picking up speed so quickly I almost fell in surprise. I
wanted to scream when I saw that, but I had to save my breath. He
was running fast, probably faster than us.

“This way!” the
girl called, and she ran straight into a park full of trees with
fat trunks and silver-leaved boughs. I followed without question.
Maybe we could lose him in there – I was so frightened, I didn’t
care about anything else. She ran from tree to tree, looking up
into the branches of one before she darted to the next one.

“What are you
looking for?” I panted. She ignored me.

We found ourselves
inside a dense grove, choked with bushes and clinging vines. The
trees seemed to be bigger and older here, and odd lights floated
among the branches. The girl ran to one of the largest and peered
up, then shrank back and gave a little cry. I thought it sounded
rather theatrical.

“What is it?” I
peered up.

One and Two sat in
the lower branches, smiling down at us.

“Help us!” the girl
cried plaintively, casting a terrified glance over her
shoulder.

“Well,” said One,
“two pretty girls in trouble. What do you think, Two? Shall we give
them a hand?”

“Let’s give them
four hands,” said Two, and he and One reached down. Before I could
move, the girl had thrust herself in my way and reached up to them.
They lifted her to safety. The three of them looked down at me.

I glanced
over my shoulder. I couldn’t see the Manna-Man, but I could
feel
him coming. I reached with my own
hands.

But they just
looked at me.

“Please,” I said.
“The Manna-Man’s coming!”

One gave me a cool
smile. “You ruined my performance, you know. The newspapers wrote
humiliating things about me the next day.”

“That wasn’t my
fault! Damn it, One, I was set up!”

“That’s true. Let
me think about it.” He put his arm around the girl and stroked his
chin, mockingly. She clung to him, regarding me as if she had never
met me before.

“Oh, don’t be so
mean.” Two clasped my hands. He managed to pull me about halfway
up. “Oof! You’re heavier than you look! Give me a hand, One.”

“I’m still thinking
about it.”

“One, please!,” I
begged, “I wasn’t the one who played the trick on you. It was
Camilla and Nostradamus!”

“Shhh,” he scolded.
“She may hear you.”

“Oh, One, she’s not
even here,” said Two. “Help me get this lovely creature to safety.
After all, I helped you.”

The girl gasped and
pointed. I wrenched my head around and saw the Manna-Man, reaching
for me. His hands barely closed around the small of my back and my
nerves erupted. It wasn’t pain, exactly. It was much more intense
than that. To me, it seemed like the way pure fear would feel if it
could be conveyed through touch. I screamed.

Two pairs of strong
hands pulled me away from the Manna-Man and into the safety of the
branches. I cried and trembled while Two held me and whispered
assurances to me. “There, there, sweetheart. You’re safe now. Poor
little girl.”

One looked down at
the Manna-Man. “You know you can’t come up here. Shoo.” And he
threw some powder on it. The Manna-Man dissolved back into liquid
and flowed away.

Two winked at me.
“Camilla has developed an antidote.”

I shuddered
as the memory of its touch began to fade from my muscles.
“What
is
it, anyway?”

“
Camilla says
it’s what Night is
before
it becomes
Night.”

“Huh?”

“Mindless,” he
purred. “Hungry. It kills possibility instead of creating it.”

“Why?”

“Perhaps because it
doesn’t pass through the black tornado on its way here.”

“But where does it
come from?”

“Outside,” he
whispered, then smiled as I shuddered again.

“Don’t be such a
chicken,” laughed the girl. “He’s just teasing you!”

“Yes, of course,”
said One, without much conviction. “Now let’s get off this dull
branch.” One and Two lifted us higher into the tree. But the four
of us seemed to be alone this time, and I didn’t see any
tree-houses. “Camilla’s not here,” Two told me. “And while the
cat’s away, the other cats will play.”

“You really hurt
her feelings, you know,” One said. “You’re just a cold-hearted
girl.”

“I am not.”

Two laughed, his
clever hands tickling my neck. “Who’s your lovely friend?”

“Um – “ I hadn’t
thought to ask her name. Usually the Night inspired me to make one
up, but with this girl I just drew a blank.

She lifted her chin
and gave him a haughty look. “Call me Heavenly Blue.”

“I think I’ll call
you Heaven for short.”

She laughed. “All
of you can call me Heaven.”

“
I’m
not
going to call you Heaven,” I said. “How about
if I call you Blue?”

She thought
about that while One stroked her hair and cast cold looks in my
direction. I was beginning to feel excluded, unwanted. Even Two
seemed to be more interested in
her
.

“Blue is all
right,” she decided. “Like in The Blues.”

No
, I thought to
myself,
more like
I Had A Dog And His Name Was.

“You’ve been a busy
girl,” One said. “Running around with masked men, challenging
tornados, wrecking performances.”

“One, I didn’t plan
that! I got hi-jacked! I tried to tell you I wasn’t a ballerina,
but you made me go on. You wouldn’t listen.”

He shrugged. “Well,
it’s all over and done with now, isn’t it.” His eyes glinted, and I
wondered if my bad performance had wrecked his career. Or maybe
Camilla had made it seem that way.

“You know Camilla
wants me for a partner,” I ventured. “And she’s not very forgiving
when she doesn’t get what she wants.”

“Do tell,” he said,
dryly.

“
So if she
orchestrated that drama, why aren’t you mad at
her
?”

He laughed. “Mad at
my queen, my Camilla? Never, Hazel. Not for you, not for all the
Celestial Lovers in the universe. What I feel for her is beyond
love – mere love never moved me. I was a dancer, remember? That was
my passion, my life. No lover could have lured me away from it.
Only Camilla could do that.”

“Oh,” I said,
lamely.

I glanced at Blue.
I thought she would be laughing at me – but instead she looked
troubled, miffed, even. What had he said to get under her skin? All
that stuff about Camilla? Something about me?”

Not for you, not
for all the Celestial Lovers in the universe...

“
What do you
mean by
Celes
– “ I
began.

“Look!” Two pointed
through the branches, at a scene that unfolded somewhere far from
our grove. The Wild Hunt rode down an asphalt road, past houses and
fields, their long hair streaming behind them and their arm bands
glinting in the moonlight. I leaned forward to catch a glimpse of
the lead rider. Was that a mask? No, his face was bare. He had
tilted, blue eyes, high cheekbones, and bronze hair. Maybe that’s
what the Masked Man looked like without his mask, but I knew it
wasn’t him. It was the younger, blond biker I could never name.

They rode past a
school yard. The monkey bars, swings, and sand boxes all rang some
chord in my memory. “That place looks familiar.” I leaned over a
little farther.

“Why don’t you take
a closer look?” Two shoved me off the branch. Leaves stung my face
as I fell, bringing angry tears to my eyes. “It’s for your own
good,” Two called after me, and I heard the cruel laughter of the
girl.

* * * * *

I jammed my eyes
shut and held my breath in expectation of the almighty WHAM at the
end of the ride.

And held it.

And held it.

And finally
had to take a breath, and
still
no
WHAM.

It didn’t seem to
me that we had climbed up all that high, but my last fall out of
Camilla’s tree had been quite substantial, too. Where would I end
up this time? I ought to open my eyes and find out.

Only I didn’t quite
have the guts. Because this fall had gone on so long, I was
beginning to suspect I wasn’t headed for a comfortable landing.
After all, the first time I had leaped by choice, I had one
particular destination in mind.

This time I
got pushed by someone who probably didn’t have my best interests at
heart, despite his claim to the contrary. Two may not have been as
mad at me as One was, he might not have been mad at all, but he
seemed to enjoy pushing me a lot more than a friend would. If his
intention was simply to push, not to get me somewhere I wanted to
be, then God only knew where I would end up. It might be like
trying to beam down from the starship
Enterprise
without Scotty or Mr. Spock to set the coordinates. I might
be falling into the Grand Canyon, or some other dreadful
abyss.

Stop picturing that!
I
commanded myself. I didn’t really know that the City of Night would
conjure up my worst fears if I pictured them too well, but even the
possibility made me cast about madly for more comfortable thoughts,
not to mention alternative destinations.

Sir John’s Den
, I
prayed.
Nice cozy
fire, nice fat chair in front of the nice cozy fire, nice Sir John
to talk to – unless he’s busy, because I can just prop my feet up
and entertain myself, catch my breath, yes-sirree, nice fat chair,
nice comfortable landing, that’s where I’m headed, right there,
right NOW.

I pried my eyes
open. No cozy fireplace gladdened my heart and no soft chair warmed
my bottom, because I was still falling. I could see straight up,
through branches of Camilla’s tree, into the starry night. I tried
to look around toward the ground, but I couldn’t turn my head far
enough, couldn’t make my body shift position at all.

Okay, this SUCKS!
I
decided. But it was still better than the Grand Canyon. I looked
for One and Two (and Blue) in the tree, but if they were there,
they were very well hidden. “Hey, guys?” I called. “This isn’t
funny.”

My voice sounded
weak; it probably couldn’t even travel to the nearest branch, as if
the wind were snatching away each word as soon as I uttered it. But
I didn’t feel like I was falling that fast – in fact, it seemed
like more of a float than a fall, as if the gravity here were only
a fraction of normal gravity. I hoped that meant the WHAM wouldn’t
be as hard, either.

Not that I expected
to hit ground anytime soon. Or anytime at all, because this was
beginning to feel rather like the trip I had taken through Nowhere,
on the road that never ended. Two had trapped me – some friend he
turned out to be!

Okay, he never
actually claimed to be my friend, but Camilla still seemed to be
chasing me pretty enthusiastically, and he was supposed to be
working for her. Wouldn’t she consider this a betrayal? Or at least
a thwarting. (Thwartment?)

On the other hand,
maybe he had simply put me on ice so she could come get me at her
leisure. That thought made me struggle harder than ever to twist
myself around, and when that failed I tried to grab a passing
branch – but all of them were well out of reach. The whole thing
reminded me of something.

Alice In
Wonderland.

Not the book,
the Disney movie. I’ve never been able to make myself read either
of the Lewis Carroll books about Alice.
Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland,
charming story though it may be, is
reputedly full of math metaphors, which is more than enough to
scare me away from any book. But I could remember a few scenes from
the movie, like the one where Alice falls down the rabbit hole,
like I was falling now. And it seemed to me that the branches of
this endless tree were a perfect habitat for the Cheshire Cat. In
fact, the entire City of Night might be his kinda place.

The only other
thing I remembered about the movie was the scene with the giant
caterpillar smoking a hookah and singing a song about vowels.
Carroll might be obsessed with math, but Disney seemed to lean more
toward the language arts.