AMANI: Reveal (20 page)

              That was enough to bring back the creature who’d stopped screaming and who was now fluttering five feet above the ground, her black claws curved like a hook for us to grab. We didn’t have a choice; it was either trust her or face her wrath. As soon as she felt we were all holding her claws tightly, she took off as if we weighed less than a pound each.
              If I hadn’t enjoyed the boat ride in Blue, this was far,
far
worse! We were flying. We were literally above the ground with no security belt or anything that could save us were we to accidentally let go of the bird. And she wasn’t making things easy for us, either. She kept turning left and right, to and fro, like a dizzying roller coaster. 
              At some point, we came so close to the stones below, I thought my legs would break at the impact, but then she flew back up and I decided to close my eyes until we were safely on the ground—if we made it that far.
              “We will plays a game,” the bird finally shouted. “I asks four questions and you is allowed four guesses. If you has good answers to all four questions, you is free. If you fails a question, you is mine.”
              None of us replied and I couldn’t even force my eyes open to see my companion’s reaction.
              “First question: I is the most powerful of all, for I can either saves you or destroys you. I takes dwelling in every living thing but don’t tries to cage me in, for I will slips through your fingers. Who is I?”
              “This is a charade, not a question!” Sam exclaimed indignantly.
              “Shhhh!” Xander snapped. “Are you trying to get us killed? Don’t upset her.”
              The woman had started whistling a tune I had never heard before. It was both beautiful and spooky.
              “Save or destroy us?” Karl pondered. “I would think of God, but does she even know about—no, that’s not possible. Why would someone try to imprison Him?”
              “Maybe she’s referring to herself,” I suggested. “Maybe she thinks she’s all powerful and no one should try to put her in a cage even though she’s a bird.”
              “I is not a bird,” the woman replied calmly, before she chirped loudly. “You has two more guesses.”
              “But we’re in
discussion
! We haven’t answered yet!” Sam yelled.
              “I SAYS YOU HAS FOUR GUESSES! You uses two guesses,
alors
YOU HAS TWO LEFT!”
              The bird-woman flapped her wings angrily, making my hands slip off her claw.
              And I fell.

Amya Priam

For an instant, I thought I was going to die. It was inevitable; a fall from this high would kill me instantly. My eyes darted open just in time to see Xander’s hand fasten around mine.
              “SAM! Won’t you just shut up?” he said, gritting his teeth together. His eyes were fixed on me. “Hold on, I’m not letting you go.”
              I was now twisting my body to reach his arm with my other hand, but even as I succeeded, I knew I would not have the strength to reach the bird’s claw again, so I remained under Xander, grateful he was stronger than he’d ever been as a human. I trusted he would not let go of my hand under any circumstance.
              “Sorry,” Sam said. “Amya, are you okay?”
              I was too scared to answer. Now that my eyes were open, and since we were flying higher than ever above the Crags, I could discern the forests brimming with blue, pink, orange, and purple trees. The big, puffy, white tents seemed so far away, with little black shapes moving around them on the ground or in the air. I could even see the waterfall we’d drunk from, which displayed an everlasting rainbow—
              “Water,” I murmured to myself, as if the answer was now so obvious, it was almost ridiculous I hadn’t thought of it before. “We need water to live, but a storm or a tsunami will destroy anything in its path. And every living thing contains water, though it’s difficult to hold it.
Slips through your fingers
… That makes sense! Water!” I said louder. “The answer has to be water.”
              The bird chipped frantically. “You has the right answer. Next question: What is the most powerful emotion?”
              “Fear!” Samera cried. “It’s fear!”
              The bird let out a sharp cry and made an abrupt left turn. “No, no, no,
ma petite fille
. You is not right.”
              The wind was now blowing the hair off my face and I wondered why the woman had changed direction so suddenly.
              “Well right now it’s all I could think of,” Sam muttered to herself.
              “Love,” Xander and Mr. Jensen said at the same time. There was a brief silence before Karl repeated, “Love!” a little louder.
              “AAARRRG! You is right!” the bird cried out. “You should not knows about love. Why does you know about love?” she squeaked, turning right.
              “Because we’re not from this Dimension,” Xander answered, grinning. “Now, you asked your third question, which means you only have one left.”
              “NO! I is not asking! I is wondering! Not asking intruders!”
              “These are your rules, not ours,” Xander added firmly.
              He was right; the bird had asked its third question. She’d inquired why we knew about love and Xander had answered accurately. But even if she knew he was correct, it only made her angrier as she kept thrashing her wings up and down furiously.
              “I is not outwitted at my own game! I is not losing!” she repeated. For a moment, she circled an area where there were fewer stones, but, to my surprise, she did not drop us. “
D’accord
! I finds my last question. What happens to children like you who wanders among my stones?”
              That was unfair. She knew very well we did not have the slightest idea. I closed my eyes, tried to ignore the fact that we were flying dozens of feet above the ground, and focused on our last question.
              All right, the bird had said earlier that she carried the children to Eury—who was Eury?—but what else? How did they disappear? In Red, the bemoths would eat our Red-selves when they died, but we would have heard such creature among the Crags.
              “You kill them—no! Eury kills them!” Samera burst out.
              “No and NO!” the woman cried. “Two more guesses! Two guesses before you is mine!” She sounded delighted, flying a little more to the left. “Mine, mine, MINE!” Her last word echoed in my head.
              If she did not eat children, maybe Eury did. Maybe Eury was another bird just like her… But no. According to her, Eury did not kill them either.
              “Do you burry them under the rocks?” Karl asked, breaking the silence.
              “Oh, no! Not necessary, burying children!” the bird shouted, followed by a disturbing laugh. “No, no! ONE GUESSES!” And she started singing again, taking us further to the left.
              Samera grunted, frustrated. “For Pete’s sake, how are we supposed to know the answer? Unless someone’s seen it with their own eyes, which none of us has, it’s impossible to guess! Dad, why don’t you just shoot the thing?” she whispered.
              “So we can fall with her to our own deaths?” Xander said, frowning. “Always such good insights on situations, Sam. Thanks for sharing.”
              “At least I’m trying to think of something! What have you done so far, eh?”
              “I haven’t tried to kill us all, that’s for sure.”
              “Oh, you two! Would you please?” I interrupted rather sharply. “I’m trying to concentrate.”
              Samera’s words resonated in my mind.
Unless someone’s seen it with their own eyes…
Had the bird seen what happened to the children? If I Sojourned into her head, would she be thinking about it just now?
              I had to give it a try.
              Without a sound, I articulated the word “Sojourn” to Xander. When he understood, he squeezed my hand even more tightly, knowing I would not be able hold onto him while my soul was away from my body. Then I closed my eyes and tried to focus on the bird-woman. I visualized how it would feel to have wings, and people hanging on my claws. The view she had from up there. The freedom she experienced, her wings cutting through the wind… Was she excited? Frightened? Nervous?
              Nervous. That was it. I could feel it now. And soon enough, I discerned the purple stain growing in front of my closed eyes, until my soul left me…
                The problem was that she wasn’t thinking in English, and Samera wasn’t there to translate so, although I could hear her thoughts, there was no way to understand them. Moments later, though, she started picturing the five of us down among the Crags.

***

The night has fallen and a rash wind can be heard ricocheting against the rocks like a musical instrument. The four intruders are following me and I feel so excited. I anticipate a reward for bringing so many children to Eury. It will grow her collection. It will make her proud.
              I halt in front of a stone that is much larger than the others. Much larger, and it is shaped in a different way: shorter and curvy.
              There is a sudden cracking sound and a face carves into the stone. The face of a beautiful woman with long, sinuous hair.
              The four intruders jump backwards in surprise, but then they stare at Eury. They stare at her beauty until they grow taller and grey. In a few seconds, the four of them have morphed into stones, just like the others before them.
              All I have to do now is to carry the stones to their rightful place and wait for more children to enter my Crags.

***

“Eury turns them into stones!” I yelled. “You take kids to her, she turns them into stones, and then you carry and place them among the Crags. Oh goodness, the Crags are children! This is awful!”
              The bird halted at once. “How does you… HOW DOES YOU KNOW? You CHEATS! You—” The rest of her sentence was transformed into a high-pitched, shrilling cry that lasted longer than any human could have sustained.
              “Are you serious?” Karl mouthed, disgusted.
              I simply nodded, shielding my right ear as much as I could with my shoulder.
              After an agonizingly long moment, the bird’s screams ceased as she increased her pace, flapping harder and muttering in French.
              “What have you done?” Samera shouted over the wind whistling in my ears.
              “I don’t know,” I genuinely replied.
              From our current location, it was possible to see the line of rocks bordering the Crags from the rest of Yellow, and at this pace, we would cross past it any moment now. Surprisingly, the bird descended toward the ground a moment before we stood above the frontier. Then it all happened so fast. One second, she was pulling her legs closer to herself—I feared we would be thrown backward—and the next, she extended her claws so as to thrust us forward. We half flew, half rolled out of the Crags, onto solid ground.
              And a very solid ground it was.
              I lay there, the blue sky blurring and turning considerably out of focus. My entire body hurt. I could hear Samera moan and mutter something that resembled “What a bitch.”
              Xander was the first on his feet, as he’d probably already healed as far as a tiny scratch on his skin. He helped me up, looking worried. Once balanced, I moved on to Sam, and Xander pulled Karl to a standing position. The latter looked the worst. His head was bleeding dangerously, though he didn’t seem to care.
              “Samy, let me take a look at your ankle,” he urged the second he saw that his daughter couldn’t stand on her left leg.
              “Hasn’t healed properly, that’s all.” She winced, stretching her foot upward. “It’ll get better. Right now, we need to go as far away from here as possible.”
              After making sure no one would witness us appear from thin air, and to the displeasure of Mr. Jensen, we Traveled back to Amani. There was a grocery store called Provigo to our right, which meant we were on Queen Street: not so far from the school, but still a long way for people who might as well have just been thrown out of a flying car. I felt lucky, though, as the only injuries I could complain about were a few bruises and scratches and a painful shoulder.
              Xander supported Samera’s weight all the way down College Street, even though Karl kept saying he could do it. From the look on his face and the fact that his eyes squinted continuously, he needed medical attention. But he was far too stubborn to admit it.
              “We cannot attract too much attention on ourselves. If we go to the hospital, the Protectors might be able to find us. It’ll pass; don’t you worry,” he kept telling his daughter, smiling every time she glanced in his direction.
              We used the elevator to get to the second floor in the Molson building, and Hibiscus answered on the first knock.
              “I’d started to wonder if you’d decided against coming back to see me! I’ve got a big announcement to make. As of today, I’m officially engaged!” She put her left hand on display for us to see the golden ring glittering with small diamonds. Then her eyes fell on Samera and Xander, and then on Karl, and she gasped. “Blimey! What happened to you? Get inside, come on.”
              Samera and Karl sat on the couch. They both closed their eyes for a second or two before they thanked our host for her hospitality.
              “We came across a certain—um—problem coming down here today,” Xander explained. “Congratulations, by the way!”
              We wished her the best with her future husband. She was beaming at us, clearly the happiest we’d seen her, though she kept touching her braids with the tips of her fingers as if trying not to succumb to the temptation to untangle her locks.
              “Thank you very much. I must be the happiest woman alive today! Ha! But let me help you with your injuries.” She moved forward. “It will only take a second—”
              “No!” I interrupted. “Mary told me of the side effects. I won’t let you absorb our pain. I should have never let you heal my shoulder.”
              Hibiscus looked startled. “She told you, did she? Very well. As for your shoulder, I barely noticed the difference—”
              “You absorb people’s pain?” Sam said, her eyebrows almost reaching the red line of her hair. “I thought you could just rid them of it.”
              “It’s a little more complex than that, I’m afraid. However, your ankle wouldn’t give me much, really. I believe it is a simple sprain. As for you, Mr. Jensen, your concussion would merely leave me with a mild headache.”
              “It is very nice of you to offer,” Karl said firmly, “but my daughter and I will be just fine.”
              The professor shrugged, though before I could say another word, she had rolled over to the couch, grabbed both Sam’s and her father’s arms, and closed her eyes. Stunned, it took Karl and Samera half a second to realize what was happening, and when they finally did react, jerking away from Hibiscus, she’d already worked her magic. The wound on Mr. Jensen’s forehead had shrunk to a minuscule scar, barely visible through the blood surrounding it, and Samera’s left leg relaxed.
              “We said we did not need your help,” Karl declared as he brought his fingers to his head, his wide eyes abashed.
              “A simple ‘thank you’ would suffice, really. How have you hurt yourself, may I ask? I doubt someone on campus attacked you, although it would not be as improbable as you might think. I don’t know if you heard of the murder on Deacon Street yesterday…”
              We all exchanged a quick glance at each other before Karl spoke. “We did indeed. My daughter and her friends found the body.”
              Hibiscus gasped, raising her hand to her mouth. “Horrible, horrible story.”
              “Yes, and that is why we came here via another Dimension. We have reason to believe that the murderer might be after Amya. We encountered some difficulties in Yellow…”
              “Yellow? Ha! I wish I could cross over Dimensions. Are you allowed to take civilians?”
              Samera straightened her back. “Not really. But, um, since you’ve helped us, I could show you. Just a glimpse though… And you can’t write a book about what you see out there.”
              Hibiscus laughed. “Oh, I wouldn’t, of course. I wrote about Rascals to warn the world. It was never taken seriously, until quite recently, I realize.”
              “But why did you mention Seraphs?” I asked as I remembered that Gareth had learned about Seraphs because he had read her book.
              “Oh, that. Yes, I did refer to us, but only because I wanted my readers to know that there are people out there who’ve got special abilities but who are not necessarily dangerous. Although all Rascals aren’t a threat, most of them become vile and hungry for power when they transform. A friend of mine who died quite recently helped me write the book. He was a Seraph as well. He could Sojourn just like you and Patrick.”
              She meant to elaborate before her cell phone rang. “Ha! Already. You will have to excuse me, I have a class in thirty minutes. You got here later than I had expected and I’ve got a family dinner with my aunt this afternoon”—she gestured us out of her office—“so we will have to come together another time, I’m afraid. Tomorrow, maybe?—Excuse me, young man,” she said as she nudged Xander out of the door frame so she could lock her office. “Amya, you can join the Seraph meeting at noon. They told me they very much appreciate your company.”
              “I might.” I glanced at Karl. “If I can.”
              Without as much as a single test on Xander, Hibiscus left for a quick meeting with a student before her class. The four of us, however, were hungry after this tremendous morning, and Samera suggested that we eat in Red.
              “Rascals don’t Travel, Dad,” she argued when her father started shaking his head. “Not since we developed the Special Protection Program for Protectors in Europe last month. I think we’d be much safer there than in Amani. Come on!”
              “It is too crowded. And there is no SPPP in Canada. Maybe Rascals found a way to Travel from other countries. Maybe that’s where they’ve been hiding all along.”
              “They were in Oxford,” Sam said stubbornly. “You know they were. And that’s very far from here.”
              “But after what happened yesterday, they might be here and—” Karl started to say, then paused. Samera’s puppy eyes had finally made their effect. “You may take a quick look in Red, but—”
              “—if there are too many people around, we can’t go. I get it.” Sam opened the curtains and poked her head through the parallel realm. She looked left and right, and ultimately released the curtains with a sharp sigh. “Oh, never mind.”
              We ate at Tim Horton’s after all, though Karl kept glancing around and frowning at everyone who slowed their pace, staring at Samera. It was a common mistake many guys made around her, but she never really cared. She kept eating, unbothered.
              Xander seemed unusually thoughtful and kept glancing at his left arm and frowning.
              “Is everything all right?” I asked between two mouthfuls of soup.
              The creases between his eyebrows deepened. “I—I don’t know.” He extended his left arm and twisted his body, giving me and Sam a good peek at his elbow.
              I gasped.
              “Holy moly—crap! What happened to you?”
              Samera contorted our friend’s arm further for her father to see the tiny scarlet blotches covering Xander’s elbow. Mr. Jensen was as dumbfounded.
              “Do you feel anything?” Karl asked, poking his finger onto the blotch.
              “Ouch! Yeah—kind of feels like a burn—you can stop touching it now. Thanks. The pain started just before we left the Molson building.”
              “Any idea what triggered it?”
              “Not really.”
              “Maybe it’s part of becoming a Rascal?” Sam suggested. “Some sort of mark that appears once you’ve fully transformed.”
              “More than a month after the bite? I believe I became a Rascal the minute I woke up attached to a chair in Bath, Wyatt smirking proudly at me.”
              Xander had never divulged to either Samera or me what the Rascals had done to him in England. Wyatt had told me they had tortured him, but we’d never known how. Plus, Xander had refused to say what his transformation consisted of. He’d merely muttered that he had eventually passed out from the pain before changed the subject. I knew that even if I brought it up now, he wouldn’t want to talk about it.
              Samera and Karl speculated on the smudge until we finished lunch, but none of their ideas made much sense. We would simply have to ask Hibiscus tomorrow.
              Around noon, the three of them accompanied me to the second floor in the library, where I was going to meet the Seraphs. I’d convinced Karl that none of them wanted to drain away my youth, though I suspected Vivian wouldn’t mind if I were to disappear forever. Xander and Mr. Jensen promised they would stay out of the seminar room unless there was real danger around. And then I went in, feeling excited and relived at the prospect of clearing my head from all sorts of theories and conspiracy.
              Until I opened the door and saw Vivian’s face red as a tomato, a contrast with her hands, which were larger than usual and appeared to be made of solid gold.