Nightshade (25 page)

Darry pushed at the leg and tried to rise only to have the panther scoot forward on her belly and bite. Darry cursed as her hair was caught in the panther’s teeth, forcing her to be still. The panther dragged her tongue once more along Darry’s skin.

“Let me
up
, Hinsa,” Darry mumbled, pushing at her face.

The cat tumbled onto her side and freed her, her long tail slapping the ground.

Darry sat up and scratched the panther’s neck. She laughed and looked to Jessa.

Jessa’s knees gave out and she reached back, catching herself as her backside hit the ground.

Darry’s brow went up. “Jess? Come and meet my Hinsa.”

Jessa shook her head.

“She won’t hurt you, I promise.” Darry smiled happily and then tumbled forward, laying her upper body across the panther and pushing her face into the golden fur.

The cat stretched beneath Darry, and Jessa stared into the animal’s eyes as it returned her scrutiny, ignoring Darry’s antics completely.
Very much as if I were your dinner.

“Jess, you can move now.”

Jessa
was powerless to comply. Darry used the panther’s body to push to her knees as she pulled at the fur beneath her hands. The cat shifted smoothly and vaulted to her feet. They walked forward and Jessa gasped as Darry moved as sleekly as the cat that prowled beside her. The animal stood mid-thigh to Darry, so much power in her long body that Jessa thought the ground was shaking as she moved. They stopped a few feet away and Darry knelt. The panther sat beside her in a rather polite manner as Darry’s hand found the scruff of her neck.

“This is Hinsa, Jessa,” Darry said. “Hinsa?” The cat’s whiskers quivered as if she understood. “This is Jessa.”

Jessa sat forward slowly, her fear evaporating as they both faced her. The knowledge of what they were quaked through her and stole her breath. Their eyes were the same, only opposite. Darry bore green upon the right and blue upon her left, while the panther’s eyes were blue upon the right and green upon the left. “You are
Cha-Diah
!”

“Hinsa is my majik,” Darry said, unable to keep the happiness from her voice. The panther began to purr once again, her eyes narrowing in pleasure as Darry scratched her ear. Darry leaned over and kissed Hinsa on the side of the face. “Go and say hello, biscuit.”

Jessa gave a start as Hinsa pushed forward, extending her powerful neck. Jessa lifted her hand, her fingers trembling as she met the advance halfway and offered her palm. Hinsa let out a snuff of air, taking in Jessa’s scent and sprinkling her skin with moisture.

The cat stepped closer and Jessa caught her breath, lifting her arms as the massive cat leaned against her, pushing her face within Jessa’s braids. Jessa laughed, tears slipping free as she set her hands within Hinsa’s fur.

“She likes you.” Darry sat in the grass and crossed her legs. “But then how could she not?”

“Hello, Hinsa.” Whiskers brushed across Jessa’s lips. “
Salla shimbra ahbwalla…Vhaelin antua essa
.”

Hinsa made a deep rumble of sound in her throat and stepped gracefully over Jessa’s legs, rubbing against her. Thick golden fur passed beneath Jessa’s hands as the panther’s tail wrapped over her shoulders and slid along her neck. Hinsa turned about before sitting in the grass a few feet away, then flopped onto her side and stretched in contentment.

Jessa wiped at her flushed cheeks and smiled, looking up shyly. “How?” she asked. “How is she here?”

“There’s a gateway in the hedge,” Darry answered. “Or perhaps not so much of a gate.” She frowned a little. “Maybe a window? I’m not sure what I should call it. She passes through it from where she lives in the Green Hills. She can feel me when I enter the maze and so she comes to me. Sometimes it takes awhile, and sometimes she’s waiting for me. But she always appears. I can call her too, if I like, or she calls me.”

“There is a portal here?” Jessa asked, shocked yet again.

“Yes, but only Hinsa knows where it is. It changes, you see? Like the rest of the maze. She always knows where it is, though.”

“Have you ever gone through it?”

“Once.”

“What happened?”

“I woke up in the Green Hills, in one of the deepest parts of the Menath. I was twelve and I wanted…” Darry’s voice trailed off, her eyes catching with emotion as she stared at the ground between them.

“What did you want, Darry?”

“I wanted to go with Hinsa and live with her. She took me but when I went through the gate, well, I’m not sure what happened.” Darry shrugged. “I was there, though, and would’ve stayed with her forever if she hadn’t made me come back.”

“Made you?” Jessa eyed the panther.

“She can be very persuasive.”

“I can imagine. Blood majik is an extremely ancient thing, Darry, or spirit majik as you say. How is it that you, I mean, how did this happen?”

“When I was five years old I came looking for the maze. My mother had brought me here several times and the place called to me. My brothers had been teasing me that I wasn’t smart enough or old enough to find the heart of it on my own. I became angry, of course, and when my mother’s attention was elsewhere I ran off. I found the maze easy enough for it was all that I was wishing for, but I became lost almost at once. As the day wore on and I could not find my way out, much less the heart of the maze, I began to cry. I wasn’t very brave, I suppose.”

“You were but a child.”

“Yes, but I wanted to be like my brothers,” Darry said. “Anyway, at some point I lay down and took a nap. Being lost can be very tiring, I assure you. When I woke the sun was going down and I started to cry again. It was then that Hinsa came to me. At first I didn’t realize what I was looking at. She seemed like a very large version of the cats I knew from the kitchens, always stealing cream and underfoot. I was thinking that she must’ve eaten a lot of cream to have grown so big.”

Jessa laughed softly, glancing again at Hinsa. The cat gazed back at her with Darry’s eyes in a rather pleasant exchange.

“I ran over to her and smashed
right
into her.” Darry laughed. “I think she was more startled than I was. She fell over and I climbed on top of her. She was very big even then and I was tired of being alone.” Darry closed her eyes. “I remember…I remember pushing my face into her fur and telling her that I was lost, and could she please take me to my mother. She hissed and showed her fangs, all the while with me sitting on her ribs as if she were some sort of tiny pony. I punched her in the shoulder and told her to stop scaring me.”

“And she did?”

Darry laughed. “Sort of. She grabbed me by the arm with her teeth and pulled me over as if I were a cloth doll.” Darry loosened her left sleeve and pulled the material back, holding out her arm. The five distinctive scars on her skin were freckles of tissue thick and white with age.

Curious, Jessa touched them gently.

“I didn’t cry, though it burned my skin and I was bleeding,” Darry went on, her heart giving a pleasing flutter as Jessa’s hand caressed her forearm. “She had trapped me beneath her leg and held me to the ground. I recall looking into her eyes, which were the most brilliant green. I wasn’t scared, really, even though my arm hurt. She began to purr and it rattled my bones, but it felt good too. She ripped my shirt and began to clean the wounds.

“I felt very strange and dizzy as she did this and I tried to get closer. The earth beneath me was moving and Hinsa was very solid and safe. I fell asleep again. When I woke up next, my mother was holding me in the gardens by the fountain of the marble lady, and she was crushing me so tight I couldn’t breathe. She was crying terribly, which of course made me cry too.”

“What happened?”

“My mother says she found me all tangled and trapped beneath Hinsa’s legs, bloody and not moving except to breathe. She was terrified but wouldn’t leave me to go fetch my father or the guard, afraid that if she did the cat would either eat me or carry me away into the maze. After a few hours and a bath while I slept, Hinsa picked me up by the back of my shirt and dropped me a few feet from my mother.

“She grabbed me up and ran from the maze, which opened before her. I slept through the entire thing. Only when she reached the safety of the fountain did she stop and try to wake me.”

“You are
Cha-Diah
, Darry. Do you know what that means?” Jessa asked. “It is a most rare thing. It’s…Darry, it’s
unheard
of. It is an old majik that has faded from the world.”

“You don’t need to explain what I am.” Darry turned her eyes to the panther. “Since that day we’ve been connected, though I don’t know how. I’ve not been just myself since I looked into her eyes.”

“This was the fever then,” Jessa said. “It was Hinsa.”

Darry nodded. “If I fight it when her blood is high within mine, my body doesn’t react well. It’s not always easy to be both things. I’m not as strong as a panther. No one knows of this, though, no one but Bentley.”

“The
dogs
!” Jessa exclaimed.

“Yes. I didn’t realize the true depth of our connection until that day. When I was attacked I felt all of Hinsa’s power in my blood, though it only made things worse. I was a wild animal to them, not a girl who only wanted to play. I was the quarry they’d been trained to hunt.”

“But how can no one know?” Jessa asked. “Your eyes…”

“I became very ill shortly after that day. When I woke from my sickness my eyes were as you see them. The healer told my mother that it was rare but that it happened sometimes with such a high fever. They used to be blue, like my brother Wyatt’s.”

“Is what you see different than what I see?” Jessa asked
.

Darry considered the question. “When my blood is high, definitely. And in the dark? The night is not so hidden for me.”

“Why would you not share such a gift with those that love you? Why do you hide such an amazing thing from them?”
Though more importantly, why would you share it with me? Why do you gift me with such an honor, Akasha?

“After what happened, after my illness, my brothers would tease me and call me the Golden Panther. It was a joke at first but it stuck. I would get angry that they mocked me. Even then I knew I was no longer just Darry, that in some way I was Hinsa as well. I thought no one would believe me, and even if they did, they would take her away from me. And the dogs taught me that Hinsa wasn’t welcome in my world. I don’t know, Jess, I was very young and I only knew that I must protect her. My mother was filled with fear by what had happened. After a while the name they called me was no longer in jest.” Darry’s expression was troubled as she tried to find the words. “I was afraid.”

Jessa waited, seeing in the fading light how pale Darry still was.

“I was afraid that my father…he doesn’t hear me sometimes. And she was something that was just my own,” Darry whispered, and Hinsa moved suddenly beside them. The huge cat stepped close and rubbed against Darry’s shoulder. Hinsa pushed her substantial weight into Darry, making her tumble over.

Jessa laughed as the cat lay on top of Darry, pressing her to the ground.

Darry let out a grunt and tried to free her arms. “
Hinsa
,” she said in a strained voice. “Please, I don’t feel well.”

Jessa rose onto her knees and, without thinking, shoved hard at Hinsa’s shoulder. “Get off, Hinsa!” she snapped. The panther hissed and Jessa flared in sudden challenge. “Let her up.”

Hinsa’s mouth curled and she hissed again, flashing her teeth as her ears lay back in warning. She shifted her weight to protect Darry more thoroughly.

“
Hinsa
,” Darry said in a labored breath.

Jessa stared into the panther’s eyes and did not back down, her temper high and fierce. She felt the Vhaelin move in her blood and called upon their strength. She slid her hand along Hinsa’s neck as Hinsa’s fangs seemed to grow in proportion to her annoyance. Jessa took hold of the fur and pushed, feeling the resistance and the coiled strength. “You should move now, my pretty.”

Hinsa tried to twist her head away from the touch, and Jessa tightened her fingers in response. Hinsa slid her belly along Darry’s ribs as she rose and stepped away. Then Jessa released her as Darry groaned and rolled onto her back.

“Are you all right?” Jessa asked.

“She’s very heavy.”

“It’s getting dark,” Jessa said. “And though I’m having the time of my life, Darry, I think you should be in bed now.”

“When I wanted to tell someone, in the end, I decided on Wyatt and Emma,” Darry whispered. “I wanted to share her like you said…but it was too late.”

“Why too late?”

“I’d become a riddle that no one knew how to solve. Like the maze itself,” she said. “Do you see?”

Yes, I see you, Darry. I see you so very clearly.
“Let us go,” Jessa said kindly. “Get me out of this
treesha
that your clever King Boris made just for you, I am thinking, and we shall ask Radha to make you a soup that will soothe your stomach.”

“Will she tell me a story?” Darry asked, a touch of mischief in her grin.

“She’ll probably hit you on the head if you ask her.”

Darry rolled onto her side and pushed from the ground with less strength than Jessa liked to see. “Splendid.”