The House (51 page)

It felt like a
hundred people greeted us at the door to the House. I realised that
it was more than just the normal full moon gathering. There were
plenty of people there that had their own space to run in. Old
friends, even an old family member or two of Marie’s, were here. I
knew all of their faces at least, even if their names escaped
me.

The feel of so
many people gathered to say goodbye to Marie wrenched at my heart.
It made her loss feel so much bigger than my own little world. The
world that I had been clinging to by a fragile thread for a week.
I’d thought it before but nothing had really brought it home like
seeing the House full of grieving people. I wasn’t the only one to
have lost Marie.

We continued
straight out into the garden. It wasn’t terribly cold for December
and for once it looked like the rain clouds would hold off. In
fact, the sky was the beautiful, clear pale blue of late winter
skies – just before spring arrives but after the really cold
weather has past. I used to sit outside with Marie on days like
that; I used to run with Marie under those skies. I wondered if
running would ever be the same again.

We walked out
to the tree line. It was most people’s favourite part of the
grounds. Marie was a jaguar and I could almost see her graceful
black form playing in the treetops. It doesn’t matter how old
shifters get, we never seem to lose that playful edge. Or maybe
that’s true of pretty much everyone if they allow it.

I turned and
put the box on the floor, ever so carefully pulling out Marie’s
remains. All that was left of her.

“Marie was my
mother,” I began. Somehow it felt like I needed to speak, to
entwine my pain with theirs. “She was my guide and my shelter; she
was always there with a helping hand and a kind word. Even a harsh
word when it was needed. She never turned anyone away.” I looked
around at all the people around me. There were quite a few I
realised I hadn’t seen in years. People who had spent time at the
House, people Marie had helped, even saved. “Her loss sits with me
and I can hardly breathe through it. I know that many of you will
feel the same and I know that it’s the full moon tomorrow night but
tonight...tonight, I want us to mourn her. As much as we are
able.”

I handed Marie
to Hercules who stood next to me. We had formed a circle several
layers deep. I knew that we would all speak then, that we would
mourn her together. It was something I had missed that past week; I
had felt so very alone. We couldn’t afford to mourn so publicly
before, but that night it didn’t matter. I could share my grief, my
burden, and although it didn’t lighten it, it helped.

“I think that
I can go so far as to say that Marie was my saviour,” Hercules
said. “I will miss her with all my heart.” He passed her on then. I
heard a choked sob escape him as he did so. He would say more,
eventually, but they would be private words between the closest of
us. This was to acknowledge her loss and start our mourning. We
would finish it in private, with those we counted as family,
together.

James spoke of
her open heart and love. Stripes of her devotion to helping people
in whatever they did or wanted. A dozen others echoed their
sentiments in various ways. Some spoke at length of their time with
her, anecdotes from before I was born. Others spoke only of her
achievements. Old friends spoke of a younger Marie, but most of us
knew her as I had known her.

We had all
loved Marie in some way and it was nice to stand with so many who
all remembered her so well. I let my mind slip between the
memories, old and new. For a moment she felt alive to me. I felt
tears spill down my cheeks as the last person spoke.

We wouldn’t
spread her ashes; we would wait for the others to visit her. Her
father for one would need to be brought down if he could make it.
There would probably be several months of people coming to say
their respects. People from all walks of life, she had made such an
impact. It wouldn’t just be the shifters who would want to say
goodbye.

I took her
remains back inside, still out of the protective box. I put them on
a lowish, but out of the way shelf in the formal living room. That
way, people could pray over her if they wished without risking the
urn and its precious cargo. I stood there a moment with her. I had
never wanted to believe in an afterlife so much as I did in that
moment. That maybe, somewhere, Marie was watching us, waiting for
us. It was a surprisingly cathartic thought, that I would one day
meet her again after my own death.

Hannah
remained out of the way through most of our makeshift ceremony. For
the most part I was glad; I didn’t want a teenager intruding on
such a private moment.

She found me
later in my room. I was sitting with Eddie, something that had
become quite routine for me in the evenings. She glanced in just as
I looked up. I could feel her at the door and I gave Eddie a hug
and a smile. He got the idea and started out. I had come to enjoy
my chats with him. At least I was getting through to one of our new
initiates. I actually held a great hope that Eddie would come to be
part of our family sooner rather than later.

“You can go
in,” he told Hannah as he left. I was sad to see the back of him
out the door. I was relying on him far too much but he was the only
person who wasn’t neck-deep in grief except, of course, for Hannah.
Who had her own problems to deal with.

“How are you?”
I asked. She had pink stains on her clothes from painting her room
still. I was about to tell her to change when she sat on my bed.
She shuffled over straight away to sit closer to me, as was her
custom. I thought she’d learnt that one from Hercules. Luckily the
paint was dry enough not to leave stains on my bed covers, or me
where her clothing brushed against mine.

“I’m ok,” she
said. “I’m worried about tomorrow.” She looked at me as she said it
and I could see the terror written across her face. I was having to
work very hard to keep that terror separate from myself. The sheer
difference between her thoughts and mine helped me to keep them
apart.

“You’ll be
alright.” I smiled at her and lifted the edge of my covers so that
she could get in with me. It seemed weird to most people but we had
all found that the best comfort came with cuddles, and I was all
she had in the absence of her own parents.

“What’s it
like?” she asked as she snuggled down further into the covers. I
didn’t pull her closer like I might have with some of the others.
She didn’t know me well enough for me to force comfort on her. I
would wait for her to ask for it, no matter how much it pained me
to see her looking so lost. It was a thought reminiscent of Marie;
she could never stand to see any of us in pain.

I thought
about the question for a moment. I didn’t really have an answer. It
just wasn’t possible for me to describe shifting to someone who’d
never experienced it, not completely. It would be like explaining
colour to the blind. She looked at me expectantly as I debated with
myself over what to tell her. I settled on the truth.

“I’m not sure
I can explain it...” I told her. She didn’t look crestfallen like
I’d thought she would. However, I still felt the need to explain,
to justify my incomplete answer. “It’s different for everyone,” I
went on, checking to make sure she was listening properly before I
continued. “For me, maybe because I’m true-born, it’s the most
natural thing in the world, it always has been. For most that’s how
it becomes. It’s a part of you.” She nodded at that at least.

“And to start
with?” she asked. It clearly hadn’t escaped her notice that I was
talking in very general terms. I sighed.

“I don’t know,
Hannah. I was never new. I’ve been shifting since before I was
born.” That sparked her interest.

“You were
shifting in the womb!?” I think she thought I was going to tell her
it was just a figure of speech; it certainly wasn’t one I’d heard
before.

“Yes,
true-born shifters can shift in the womb, especially towards the
end of pregnancy. It’s what causes a lot of the miscarriages.” I
glanced at her face to make sure that slip of the tongue hadn’t
freaked her too much. I didn’t want to go into her fertility
problems yet. She was too young to need to worry about such things.
It would be years before she even thought about having children of
her own. Maybe she never would, not everyone wanted kids.

“Wow. That’s really cool. I wish I’d been born a shifter
instead of having to go through the change and not knowing what’s
going to happen and everything.” I took it as a positive that she
still wanted to be a shifter after everything she’d gone through.
We may not change children.
Ever
. But we never abandoned anyone
once they were changed. She needed to accept herself as a shifter
if she was going to cope. I didn’t want her to end up like Eddie.
We were lucky Eddie had come to us. A lot of shifters go crazy in
his situation and have to be taken out.

The
conversation drifted into more trivial things. She seemed to have
taken my statement that I didn’t know what would happen as fact. In
truth, I did have some ideas about it, but I just didn’t want to
scare her. We would all be there and I would have my telepathy,
however scary it was, to help her through. I started to think more
about Eddie as we chatted about nonsense. Light-hearted girl talk
that told me she was adapting well to her new situation.

“What were you
before all this?” I asked her. We had been talking about jobs and
the future but I wanted to bring things back a little, to get to
know her better. “You don’t have to tell me anything...” I
reiterated, “...but I’d like to know about you.” It was a good, if
sneaky, ploy. Hannah hadn’t had anyone ask about her and her life
in a long time, with the exception of Talon, and I could see in the
way her face moved that she missed it. In general, people love to
talk about themselves.

“I lived on
the streets for six months,” Hannah said. She wasn’t looking at me
anymore, rather, she was staring at the opposite wall. I’d found
that one for myself; it was much easier to talk about painful
things if you didn’t have to look someone in the eye at the same
time. “It was...it wasn’t terrible, but I don’t want to go back to
living like that if I can help it. I did odd jobs for people for
money. Sometimes I had a place to stay. Mostly I could just about
afford to eat. I couldn’t stay at home. I thought about going back
a couple of times when things were really bad, but I just
couldn’t.”

I got the idea
of a deep-seated fear associated with her notion of home before I
caught myself. I would let her tell her story without prying. I
certainly didn’t want her to think that I was intruding on
something she thought was private, something we all would consider
private.

Well, that and
with my telepathy seeming to be growing more and more, and with
each day it becoming slightly harder for me to control, I didn’t
want to advance it any more. Maybe if I used it less the power
would wane, it hadn’t been acting normally yet so maybe it would
work that way.

Or perhaps in
this it would abide by what we had always thought of as unshakable
rules of magic - as you reached your peak you gained more control.
For some, this appeared as though their power was increasing as
they learnt to use more of it at once. I certainly didn’t seem to
have that problem; I’d simply never heard of anyone who could not
control their own abilities.

“Do you want
to talk about home yet?” I asked. She nodded briefly, sending a
wave of relief through me. It was something we needed to discuss
and as much as I didn’t want to use my telepathy I couldn’t ignore
the flash of fear I had caught from her. We also needed to know if
her own family would be looking for her; it would make things more
difficult for us.

“I’ve had a
lot of time to think about it recently. I want to try to make a new
life here. Hercules was saying that’s what people come here to
do...to start again.” She looked up at me then as if to ask if he
was right. If she could start again. It was such an innocent look I
found myself moving to hug her before I could control myself. I had
to wait until she was ready; she would come to us when she needed
comfort. Right then she only needed my assurances.

“Yes, people
do come here to start again. But it’s more about healing and
finding a family and support that they didn’t have before,” I told
her, smiling gently. I never seemed to know how to arrange my face
to talk about sensitive or important issues. I had always been far
too impulsive for that.

She nodded
again and continued. “Yes, I’d like that. I did have a family. For
a while it was good, sometimes at least. I know when I was really
little life was good. We had money and friends and everything but I
don’t actually remember. All I have to prove it happened are photos
and stories.

“My mum left
when I was little. I don’t know when exactly. I’ve haven’t seen her
since. Dad didn’t seem to care. I guess they’d been arguing a long
time but I was too young to notice. Thing is, most of the friends
and family, they were from my mum. I always wondered why she never
took me with her when she left, but she had some big busy job.
Maybe she thought I would be better off with my dad.

“Anyway, dad
lost his job. I remember that, I must have been four or five. I
remember him crying and drinking. I don’t think he ever stopped
drinking. He had a couple of girlfriends to start with who tried to
help. Some of them were nice; I was small and cute and they wanted
to look after me, to mother me. They always got bored of it though.
I needed almost constant care because I was so young.