Shadows (41 page)

“But you saw that something was,” said Jill. “The rest of us were all, oh, it’s a cobey, it’s several cobeys, who cares about deep lines, that’s what the army is for—and you got all your money out of the bank and bought a first-aid kit and two emergency blankets and some chocolate and peanuts and a water bottle with a safe-water thingy and matches and kindling starter.

“So we all had blankets last night, you know?” she said to me, and the Casimir smile came and went on her face, and I was counting: the blanket from the car, that’s one, and I was guessing Arnie and Val would have shared one, which left one for Casimir and Jill. “And this morning he was up before any of the rest of us and got the fire started, and then left it with Val while he went foraging.”

“That was only sensible,” said Casimir. “No one is searching for me.”

“And by the time he got back—the second time, with the dog food—your mom had done her security-lockdown trick and . . . here we are.”

I lied. When I thought none of the others was looking I gave Mongo half my last slice of bacon. Taks got through his first plateful in approximately one gulp, and his second almost that fast . . . his third . . . I began to lose count. “Maybe you should finish off the dog food,” I said.

“Ha ha ha,” he said.

Jill said, “She’ll be here soon.”

I think we all heard a car turning out of the general traffic noise and coming toward us, and then stopping. Nobody else moved as Val got up and went toward the sound of the hand brake going on. I had a chance to think, What in all the worlds is she
driving
? as I tucked my hand through Takahiro’s arm—he was eating another apple with his other hand—and then there was a
bang
like a storm-drain cover being dropped, which was maybe the driver’s door closing.

They came back pretty quickly, and Mom could have been a little flushed from the general circumstances, although they had their arms around each other’s waists. I got up and ran to her, and I would have managed not to cry—I think—except that she started crying, and then I had to cry too to keep her company.

She was driving the biggest double pickup van thing you have ever seen in your life: the kind of truck that really wanted to be a stretch limo except it’s on these like bulldozer wheels, and it had two seats like an ordinary four-door car and then an ordinary pickup cap over about two-thirds of the gigantic rear, like trying to put double-bed sheets on a king-sized bed. We were all going ooh and aah in a stunned kind of way—a lot had happened in the last twenty-four hours but the Super-Plus Mammothmobile was still startling—and Mom said, “It belongs to one of Gwenda’s clients, of course. We didn’t know how many of you there were but I remembered what you looked like leaving last night” —and her voice got all wobbly and she gave a gigantic sniff before she went on—“and Gwenda got on the phone to some construction boss whose daughter she’d defended, and this, this
thing,
” she said, gesturing at it, “was delivered to our door about an hour later. It’s like driving a
house
but we’d asked for large.

“Arnie,” she said, “I’ve talked to Danielle”—Jill’s mom—“and she’s going to meet us at Haven. And the same construction boss sent his daughter and another driver down to Goat Creek to pick up the car Jill was driving last night. The army seemed to think it belonged to an escaped detainee and had impounded it, but the daughter convinced them that it was one of her dad’s fleet of vehicles and is bringing it back. She said to tell you it wasn’t a big deal, that the division at Goat Creek is still pretty confused.”

“There are so many of us,” said Arnie.

Casimir laughed.

There were quite a few of us to fit in even Mom’s Super-Mammoth . . . especially when it turned out, to Val’s horror, to include an ugly, raggedy sheep, which had somehow climbed through that hole in the Goat Creek fence and Mom’s safety net. Mom, who was maybe feeling a little light-headed, laughed and laughed. “I am sorry,” said Val about three dozen times. “I used a spell I only imperfectly remembered—”

“—and that
worked,
” Jill said, “under pretty ghastly circumstances. Shut up, Val—I mean, sorry, Mr. Crudon, but shut
up.
We’re all here, we’re all alive, we’re all
great.
”

So because Mom said and Val very reluctantly agreed that if the spell was that strong it might injure the sheep to break it by leaving it behind, Arnie and Casimir blocked off a little of Super-Mammoth’s gigantic rear so if any of the other animals noticed that one of their number was
prey
we’d have enough warning to stop and sort things out. The sheep, I guess demented with love, didn’t object to this at all. Casimir somehow found time to pull up some grass for it, and it lay down and munched its grass and then chewed its cud like hanging out with dogs (and a small swirly-striped tiger, who, to my enormous amazement and relief, jumped into the Super-Mammoth with the rest of the livestock) was something it always did. Maybe it thought other sheep were boring and that it had finally found its spiritual home.

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.