Strange Land (The Young Ancients Book 15) (27 page)

There weren't a lot of sounds, but she became aware of a deep and rhythmic thumping that was suddenly very loud. It wasn't her heart, though she heard that too, as the intensity of the change happening to her increased. No, she was hearing the low, very deep, sound of Timon hurrying back with food. The smell of it was incredible, though hunger might have been part of that too.

The boy, who wasn't one at all anymore, settled beside her and cutely enough tried to feed her bits of food at a time, tearing pieces off for her.

Sara smiled up at him and then sat.

"
That
, isn't going to be half fast enough. I need to cram food into my face I think, for a while. I'm beyond starved. Please tell me that isn't going to be permanent?"

Handing her a large slab of bread with three kinds of melted cheese on the top, as well as garlic butter under that, he shook his head.

"Not at all. This change is just different than what the others had. I... Used a new method to make you immortal, so that the nano devices I used won't recognize you as one of us. You get all the same perks, and possibly more, but can also travel to Earth. I should have thought of it before. It was right there, waiting for me to notice it. How are things so far?"

"Tingly? Like I hit the back of my elbow, nearly. I think that's starting to let up a bit. So... Am I going to look like a fish when this is done or what? The world seems a lot clearer, sharper, and I can see and hear more. Feel it too, I think. Other than that I feel like... Me. Is that right?"

There was more food passed to her, and a warm hand on her arm, trying to reassure her. Because clearly, he wasn't totally certain that what he'd done was going to work. It seemed to be so far, but any massive change like that had to be risky, didn't it? Especially new ones. Get one thing wrong and the person being changed would die. Their heart would stop beating, or their lungs shut down for any of a thousand different reasons. For a moment her mind started to go over all of them, one by one.

Then she made herself stop it. If she were going to die, it would have probably already happened.

Tim shook his head a little, still touching her.

"No, you won't look like a fish. Really, I tried to be a bit more refined on that one than I have been with some of the others. You'll pretty much look like you. Smoother skin, and with hair, since that's growing in nicely, but no real changes that way, from the outside. Immortal, naturally, since it's the real point. Smarter than most people, and a lot faster and stronger than any of us. Except maybe Alice Orange or Kolb. About the same range as them. Better endurance, too. Eventually you
might
be able to learn how to shape shift, since I reworked your pattern based on something I picked up from a Remy once. Honestly, you can probably do it as soon as the healing is done. Eat now though. You're doing a lot of work here."

The man next to her seemed awfully pleased with himself, over what he'd done. It sounded all right, on the surface, and even the shape shifting part might be neat, if she could master it. For the time being though, he was right. She needed to eat. A lot.

That didn't end for a while, with Tim making several trips to get her more food, but an hour and a half later she was able to get up, and stretch. It felt... Good. Almost sensuous, like rubbing her entire body against silk. Not like how stretching was supposed to feel though.

Leaning over she tried to touch her toes, only to find that she was able to fold in half easily, her body against her legs, all the way down. Her spine didn't even creak when she did it. Then, making a face that was only a bit baffled, she sat on the floor and ran through all the exercises she knew that way. Including a few that she'd never managed herself, even after years of practice. Like placing both legs behind her head.

With effort she'd managed one before, but this wasn't even making it hard to breathe.

"Well,
that's
different. Can
you
do this?" She looked down, seeing her distorted body under the loose silk clothing she'd worn to bed. It was a light cream colored outfit, made of magic and too regular for it to be anything else.

"Nope. Not even half that." He looked at her, his gaze fond, and then glanced between her legs. She smiled at him, getting the idea.

"Why don't we see what else I can do?"

It probably wasn't the best use of time ever, but she had to agree when it was done, that it had been fun. Interesting too.

Chapter eight

The changes to her body weren't obvious on the outside really, she decided, standing in front of a full length mirror that she'd caused to appear on the wall. She looked about the same as always. Except that even though she had hair on her head, including eyelashes and brows again, as well as a complete complement of mostly straight golden locks on top, she was bare everywhere else.

It looked a bit funny, but would make shaving her legs a lot easier, so she didn't mention it. Under her arms too.

Her skin was blemish free, which helped a bit, but just its normal tan coloration. Her eyes were the same ones that had always looked back out of the mirror at her. So, she looked good, but not like she wasn't herself with a good bit of makeup on. Not eye liner or lip coloring, but a good foundation, for the rest to go onto.

Timon was sitting on the bed behind her, clothed already, observing her watching herself. She could nearly feel his regard, which scanned her body a lot more completely than most men would have done from where he was. They'd done enough that she decided not to feel awkward about it, simply spinning in place perfectly on the ball of one foot. Going around three times before stopping and never losing her balance.

Then, just because she wondered how strong she really was, she bunched her legs, and thrust into the floor at hard as she could.

"No!" Was all Tim got out before she smacked into the overhead, twelve feet up. It didn't really hurt, thankfully, and somehow, with a bit of scrambling in the air, she managed to land on her feet well enough.

"That's better than I thought! Nothing really hurts either, so far. I wonder why that is? Do I just not feel pain?"

Tim stood up and jogged over to her, taking Sara into his arms.

"No, I think it's just that your new form is simply that hard to hurt. Let's do the first test, before doing anything else? If I botched that..."

It turned out that what he needed to do would take about an hour. She didn't mind waiting, but there was almost nothing to do on the ship, she realized. They hadn't brought hobbies or entertainments with them, other than each other.

For a young man who admitted to having some problems in bed, he'd done very well. Almost as if he'd been tutored in the subject. Since Trice was his wife, that had probably happened, after a fashion. She was good in bed too. They'd had the same instructors in bedroom play at school after all.

Not all the Lairdgren School kids had those courses, but all the special school kids did. True, half of those lessons had been about how to entice a person into bed, and most of the other half about how to bear whatever was being done to you while seeming like you were happy about it. Tim had some of that in his actions. Sara could see the signs of it. Oh, he also seemed to genuinely want to be there and like he'd had pleasure from it, but there were things inside him that crept out while they'd played that showed just how much damage had been done to him by Nora Allan and that Larval Assassin.

For a person as controlled as Timon Baker to let anything like that be seen, it had to have been horrible. She didn't know how bad, and really didn't want to, now that she thought about it. There would be no way to understand it, without experiencing it yourself. She could do without that kind of thing, really. Everyone probably could.

So she put on clothing, being a proper woman like she was, and went to make sure their heading was correct. It was a minor thing, but she made a tiny course correction which would take them to where the Earth would be, more or less, knowing that the space stations were all in an evenly matched high orbit. There were three of them so far, and while they were hard to miss if you bothered to look for them, they also were impossible to tell apart. From this far out, at any rate.

She sat and watched the Earth from above, seeing it slowly grow as they neared it. That was a thing she would have missed before, she knew. That level of change was too small for a regular person to see. The whole world seemed different to her now. Brighter, all the time, and louder, but also more filled with life and activity. For instance, she was able to find a single insect on the ship, which was too big to have survived on its own. Not without something to eat. It was nearly the size of her little finger in length, and looked like a grasshopper from Noram. That it was in the food prep room, with the magical box, got her to smile.

"Have you been feeding this little guy?" Sara held it up, not knowing if the yellow and pink box could see at all. It answered anyway.

"Yes. It wanted food, so I made some for it, and managed to push it on to the ground. It's your pet?"

Sara started to deny it, but a single grasshopper probably wasn't a threat to the health and safety of the crew.

"Nope, he's a stowaway. I suppose we should feed him though. Or her. I have no idea how to check. Can I get a tiny dish of food for it? Water too? I don't know that they drink, but just in case?"

That took about half a minute, and Sara set up a tiny raised platform for her new little friend to sit on while he ate. Yes, she was bored, but there was also a bit of charm to the idea of having a pet, even if it was going to die in a few days.

Before she left she made a little cage for it, one that was shaped like a minute palace, or rather got the box to do it. Then she met Tim in the hallway, since he was looking for her, and there were only so many places to go. Reaching out he stopped her and smiled. He had a really nice smile, she noticed. Even and with very white teeth.

"Here we go. Let's see..." Tapping a sigil, the device in his hand on a piece of focus stone, started a sudden cascade of brilliant red over his body that lasted for about half a minute. Reaching out however, Sara noticed that it was
only
around him. His shield didn't seem to trigger because of it.

"There we go. It recognizes me as an Ancient, but not you. That's the basic pattern of the device on Earth that's keeping the rest of us away. So you'll be safe. In more ways than one. I was a bit worried about sending you off to investigate this like you were. Now you have an edge that no one can take away, and that they don't know about."

She leaned in and kissed him, since they had that kind of relationship now. It was cozy already, since they'd known each other, more or less, for years.

"You only care because you love me." It was teasing, and she expected him to blush, or even deny it.

He didn't, exactly.

"I love you more than I've ever loved anyone, Sara. I just don't know if that's the same thing that everyone else feels. Actually, I know it isn't. I'm a builder. I can tell. It isn't like what you feel for Tor, or even what he feels for you. I wish it was." There was a slight hint of pain on his face, but only for a second, then he shrugged. "The state of how lacking I am aside, we should make some plans."

For a moment she thought he meant relationship wise, but then understood the change of topic. It had made him uneasy, admitting what he had to her, and it was probably true as well. Whatever had made him who and what he was had left him not feeling a lot of things as keenly as others got to. Like that guilt he'd mentioned Tor putting into him. That his brother had managed that, but hadn't thought to add love seemed like a major oversight.

She kissed him on the lips, warmly, distracting him a bit with her body.

"What do you want to do?"

There was a moment of clear longing, then Timon smiled.

"You need to get with King Richard first, and make sure we're right about him, then check the rebellion, and Austra to eliminate those possibilities. After that? I don't know yet. Going from land to land is a bit broad, if we're looking for something in particular. That gives us a place to start, and possibly some help in looking. You'll need some amulets. I can see to that part."

It was about what she'd been thinking of doing, and in a similar order. In hers King Richard came last, but that had mainly been about fear. Now, she realized, that was gone. Focusing on how she felt, she realized that the
rest
was there still. Love, compassion, and joy. When she tried to think of things that scared her, she felt nothing.

Rather than mention it, she just looked at her friend and then moved in, holding him.

"All right. We need to get to the Farming Complex first. That should be in about five and a half days, I think. So, I should learn to make those copies?"

That seemed to be a good plan to Tim too, so he set her up with a template, which was just a magical device constructed to be very simple to make a copy from.

"It really isn't that hard to do. Anyone that can turn an amulet on should be able to do it really. The trick is that you need to be able to direct where the field goes by focusing on the correct target. The more strongly you hold your attention on what you are doing, the faster it will happen. Honestly, it's more of a test of how badly you want to do it than anything else. If you try hard enough, long enough, it
will
make a copy."

Handing it over, he passed five small focus stone rectangles at the same time, they all had arrows on them, pointing in a single direction.

"These will be cutters when you finish them. I figure it will take you about two hours this first time. When you have those done, and tested, come get me and I'll show you how to do it without a template. That's only a bit harder. I know, everyone always acts like it's some huge thing, but that's because most people really don't want to bother doing the work. You already know how to focus, and that's the hard part."