Shadows Page 31

  We were on the road for hours—hours and hours—but I was still so tired I slept through most of it, tangled up with Takahiro (and quite a few gruuaa and my algebra book), while Jill and Caz curled up from the other end of the luxuriously long back seat of Super-Mammoth, and the three grown-ups sat in front. Since we left the window to the rear open, there were critter heads sticking through and looking for opportunities most of the time, but there wasn’t really space even for Majid at his most spaghetti-like between Casimir’s back and Taks’ long legs. So I’m not sure how I got squashed in with Mongo too, but I did. It’s very hard to do submission well when you’ve wedged yourself in like a doorstop under a door, but when I opened my eyes long enough to discover Mongo jammed up under my chin and against my chest, he tried. I couldn’t laugh either, my ribs didn’t have room, but Hix patted my face as if she got the joke.

  But Taks and I were mostly out, like hibernating bears, and the critters must have behaved themselves because no one woke me up to be Critter Master. We stopped at a highway service area at least twice. I remember Mom trying to get me to eat something. But all I wanted was sleep—and to know that Takahiro was still there. I could hardly bear to be away from him long enough to go to the ladies’ to have a pee. Sure, I was a seventeen-year-old girl in love, but last night had been a little too epic.

  It was dark again by the time we got to Haven. I recognized the smell of the pine trees in my sleep and for a moment I was four years old again and coming here for the first time, and frightened, and wishing I was at home in my own bed . . . the fear was too familiar, and for a moment, as I struggled back toward wakefulness, I remembered Dad intensely—remembered him more clearly than I had in years, his face, his laugh, his hazel eyes (that Mom said were my hazel eyes), his favorite tie, or the one he claimed was his favorite, because I’d given it to him, which had (surprise) dogs and cats all over it. He had been wearing it the night he died.

  I was still tired, tired almost to death, and too much had happened in the last twenty-four hours, the last forty-eight hours. I was someone else than I had been two days ago—before the cobey in the park, before I tried to cradle a timber wolf in my lap, before my algebra book started following me around, before I knew what the sound of bullets fired at you sound like—before I’d kissed Takahiro. Before Mom took her magic back so she could protect us. Before . . .

  For a moment I couldn’t bear it—couldn’t bear any of it. Couldn’t bear that Dad had died, couldn’t bear that he wasn’t seeing Ran and me grow up, couldn’t bear that he never met Takahiro—or Mongo . . .

  But there was so much, recently, that was unbearable. Like that the world was nothing like I’d thought it was. That I wasn’t what I thought I was. And that what I was might matter in this suddenly strange world.

  For a moment it hurt. It hurt a lot, like it had right after Dad had died, when the world that Mom and Ran and I lived in shattered into millions of sharp little pieces, and we were walking around on the slivers, so every step cut into us, and all we saw around us was empty and broken. When we found out that people die when they shouldn’t. That stuff happens, and sometimes it happens to you.

  That the world was nothing like I’d thought it was.

  It hurt like bullets ripping into my chest, or like being head-onned by some bugsucking assface at eighty miles an hour. For a moment it hurt so much I thought it would kill me. But—maybe because of the last two days, maybe because I was tired almost to death—I couldn’t refuse to let it in either, like I’d been refusing for almost eight years.

  At first I held on, held on hard, like the hurt and the grief and the fear were a piece of paper I was trying to fold, like I had to fold them up to make the cobey that was trying to eat me go away. But I couldn’t fold them up, any more than I could fold gruuaa. I realized, hanging in my half-sleep and half-despair, that Hix was patting my face and humming again, and her sweet smell was stronger, like she was blowing it over me, like your mom tucks an extra blanket around you if it turns chilly. Mongo shifted fractionally (fractionally was all that was possible) and I had a familiar cold wet nose buried in the too-small gap between my neck and the curve of my collarbone. Taks, still asleep, let his arm slip down a little farther when Mongo moved, and tucked his hand between my belt and the waistband of my jeans, like making sure I couldn’t escape without his noticing.

  Now. This was what now was.

  Mongo was snoring.

  Slowly, painfully, I let go. It was like prying my own fingers off the edge of the cliff. And that hurt too—particularly the falling part, and not being sure what was at the bottom.

  But I did know. Now was what was at the bottom. I was already there. With Mom and Ran and Mongo. And Jill and Takahiro. And cobeys, and the fact that the world(s) were so much different than I thought.

  There are so many of us.

  Arnie. And Casimir.

  Hix. All the gruuaa.

  And Val.

  I woke up taking the deepest breath I’d maybe taken in eight years (in spite of Mongo). The car had stopped, and the front doors were opening. Jill murmured something, and then her door opened. I felt around for a door latch and just about managed not to fall out when I found it and our door opened too. Even Mongo looked a little stiff as he poured himself out onto the ground. I reached down for my algebra book: it was nearly full up with pages again. I patted it, but I patted it clumsily, and managed to get my hand caught between the top cover and the first page . . . and had the really odd feeling that it briefly held my hand, like some dogs will do, gently, with their mouths, as a way of saying hi. I stuffed it under my arm and slid out of the car. Takahiro followed me, yawning and stumbling like any sleepy boy, not like a hero or a werewolf. He put an arm around me and I leaned against him. The algebra book, of course, was in the way.

  I finished waking up faster than I might’ve when my brother hit me like one of his own racing cars. Ran and I hadn’t hugged each other in years—he wouldn’t even let Mom hug him—but we hugged each other now till I think we left bruises, and then he let me go and stood there a moment like he wasn’t sure what to do next. Eventually he said, “Hey, there’s coffee and food indoors. Hey,” he added to Taks, seemingly no more than mildly surprised at Taks’ arm having replaced itself around me. And then left at a trot like he was leaving the scene of a crime.

  The front door of Haven was open, just like it had been when I was four, and Mom had had to hold me up because I was too sleepy and too frightened to stand on my own. I thought I remembered that the light had spilled down the steps to the driveway like a golden river that long-ago night too, but this time it looked warm and welcoming, and I was standing on my own feet and (more or less) awake. I slid my hand under Taks’ arm—he’d grabbed my algebra book with his other hand when Ran had thudded into me. Gwenda was coming down the steps at a very undignified speed, and hugged me almost as hard as Ran had. “My amazing niece,” she said. “I knew your mom was wrong about you.” There were two more figures on the steps up to the house. One of them was Rhonwyn. I was guessing the other was Blanchefleur: I was going to meet her at last.

  Gwenda went on holding my hand for a moment when she let go of me, and there was a little buzzy sensation against my palm, like when Mom had kissed me before she let us go after Val. Like the human version of Hix tickling my neck. I was still thinking about this when Gwenda moved away from Taks and me to address all of us, like we were a jury she wanted to sway in an unpopular direction. “We are so glad you are here. We have an enormous amount to talk about—and then to do. Our world is changing—has already changed—whether any of us likes it or not—whether those who decide Newworld policy like it or not, whether General Kleinzweig likes it or not. For now you are safe here. For now. And we will make it safe for you in this new future that has begun.” She held out her hands in a gesture that might have been threatening or it might have peacemaking or it might have been both, and I saw Gwenda,
the courtroom crocodile, shine through my aunt in a way that was both scary and comforting.

  “But we also need your help. We need your help urgently!” She laughed a little, and it was a real laugh, but it was also determined and impatient.

  Rhonwyn and Blanchefleur, if it was Blanchefleur, had come down the steps as Gwenda was talking and Rhonwyn came up beside Gwenda and put an arm around her shoulders, but less like a hug and more like grabbing your over-enthusiastic dog before he scares off your visitors. “Gwen,” she said. “Let them come in and sit down. They’ve had a long day.”

  I realized Jill was standing beside me, and Casimir looking uncertain on her other side. I took her hand with my free hand. She smiled at me and then reached out and grabbed Casimir’s hand and drew him to stand next to her. He glanced across the other three of us and smiled—shyly, his dimple barely showing. “Welcome to Newworld,” I said, mostly to him, but really to the four of us. The grown-ups would have their ideas, but we’d have ours too. “Welcome to the new Newworld. It’s going to be . . .” and I paused. None of the words I could think of really fitted, and “insane” would probably be bad for morale. Mongo was sitting on my feet, Hix was humming in my ear, and I could see gruuaa wrapped around both Taks and Jill and—there was one or three scampering up the golden river toward Haven’s open door. If my knowledge of ordinary critter body language was anything to go by, they were happy and excited. I looked up, and found Blanchefleur looking at me. She had to be Blanchefleur, she looked so much like the other three sisters. She smiled. I smiled back.

  I looked around for Mom—and Val. They were standing with their arms around each other (of course). I smiled at them too. Mom’s smile was one of the things I loved best in the whole world. My eyes moved to Val. There was, I thought, some irony in his smile—but maybe I couldn’t see him clearly where they were standing at the edge of the light. Not seeing clearly was a good thing with that shirt. Although jail, escape over the barrens, and a night sleeping on the ground had subdued it somewhat. I’m your apprentice now, you know, I thought at him. In the new Newworld.

  “Interesting,” said Takahiro. “It’s going to be interesting.”