The Madness Project (The Madness Method) (43 page)

“Hayli?” he asks.

I contemplate the name.  “Hayli,” I say.

“Blimey!” the little boy shouts, eyes round as eggs. 
“Blimey, that bird talks!”

“Hayli,” I say again, proud of myself.

“That’s not Hayli!  Hayli’s not a bird, Derrin!”

“Hayli, can you Shift back?” Derrin asks.  “Are you all
right?”

Shift.  He wants to get rid of me.  Perhaps he is afraid
of me.  Hayli clamors to be free, but I cannot let her out.  Not yet.  I have something
to tell Derrin.  I have spoken once.  I can speak this.  I must.

I ponder the word again.  Shondenhaim.  I must say it
now.

I tilt my head to look at Derrin, blinking as I
concentrate.  Then I say, “Shondenhaim.”

His brow crinkles; he is confused.  I repeat the word,
mimicking the voice of the devil-eyed man and bobbing my head to make him see
how important it is.

“Shondenhaim?” Derrin echoes.

“Shondenhaim!  Hayli!”

I leave my perch, and close my eyes.  I don’t want to
go.  I don’t want to be forgotten again.  But this is in Hayli’s hands now.

I came to myself kneeling in the enclosure, dizzy, head
pounding.  Derrin and Bugs were standing over me, staring at me wide-eyed like
I’d done something far stranger than Shift.

“Hayli,” Derrin said, crouching down in front of me.  “Are
you all right?”

I met his gaze, my thoughts reeling.  All through my mind
swirled memories of the crow’s last few hours, a hazy patchwork of gleaming
color and perception.  I’d always wanted to know what the crow saw, but with it
all crashing over me like a flood, I felt only a vague vertigo and an emptiness
I’d never have imagined.

“I’m jake,” I said, shaking my head once, slowly.  “What’s
wrong with you two?”

“Hayli!” Bugs shouted.  “You were…you were a great big
grobbing crow!  How’d you do that?”

“It’s my gift,” I said, quietly.  “I’m a mage like Shade,
Bugs.  I just div’n tell anyone.”

“Blimey,” Bugs breathed.  “I shoulda guessed.”

“Hayli, did you know the crow could talk?” Derrin asked.

“Talk, you mean like, caw?” I asked, making my best
impression of a crow call.

“No, it said your name.  And something else.”

“She did?  She said my name?”  I pressed my hands against my
temples.  “What was the other thing?”

“I didn’t understand it.  It didn’t sound like Cavnish.  It
said,
shondenhaim
.”

My eyes widened.  With that word came a whole rush of
images—the devil-eyed man from the white room arguing with a bald man, a brick
building with a chain-link fence.  Aeroplanes.  A motorcar that wasn’t
Tarik’s.  A flock that wasn’t my own. 
Her
own.

I shuddered and shook my head back and forth, slowly.

“I have to see Rivano,” I said.  “I think I know where I got
taken.”

I staggered to my feet, arms flailing like wings, trying to
steady me.  And for a moment—just for a moment—I remembered being pushed back. 
The crow had refused to Shift, and had even flown so high up in the sky that I
would have died if I’d have Shifted then.  A cold little prickle washed over
me.  She’d pushed me back as if…as if I were someone else.  But here I was,
thinking about her like she was someone else.  But we were the same.

We had to be the same.

“Hayli, what’s wrong?” Derrin asked, tipping his head to
study me.

“Maybe it was better when I couldn’t remember my crow life,”
I said, quietly.  “She frightens me a bit.  Maybe it was my mind’s way of
protecting me.”

I glanced from him to Bugs, but they couldn’t understand. 
They stared at me…they stared at me the way the other crows watched
her
. 
Maybe she looked just like them, but they knew she was something…different.  Would
it always be that way? 

I sighed and turned to go.

Derrin called after me, “Shade was looking for you earlier.”

“Where is he now?”

He shrugged.  “Not sure, probably out.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “He’s always out.”

I hesitated a moment there, torn between hunting down
Shade—apparently my favorite hobby these days—and searching for Rivano, which
would risk me running into the mages who kept the riffraff from pestering the
Clan Master.  I shivered.  I knew that if I ever did get in with the Clan, I
would have to get used to the other mages, but they all seemed so…otherly. 
Human, but not quite.  So powerful.  It wasn’t even the kind of powerful like
Tarik was, or the King himself…it was a stranger and more wondrous and deeper
kind of powerful, and it scared the blazes out of me.

No.  I’d wait to talk to Rivano.  If Shade was looking for
me…

“Derrin,” I said, backing up.  “If you see Rivano, can you
tell him I’m looking for him?”

Derrin gave me a stern look that didn’t quite mask the smile
in his eyes.  “What, am I everyone’s errand boy now?”

“Seems that way,” I said, grinning, and headed out to hunt
for Shade.

I could go faster and see all the streets from above,
I thought—or no, I didn’t think it, but a voice in my head told me.  Blimey,
the crow was talking to me in my thoughts.

Shh
, I told her. 
I know you could, but hush a
while so I can think.

I stood on the street gazing left and right, debating.

Go right.  To the railyard,
the crow said.

Why?

Because I saw him walking that way when I flew back to
the Hole.

I shuddered.  Stars, maybe Rivano was wrong, and it wasn’t
just Aces who ended up cracked.  I felt like a loony already, talking to a
voice in my head like it was someone who knew something I didn’t…though
technically I supposed that was true.  I smacked my forehead and tried to get
myself sorted.

By the time I got to the railyard, the crow had stopped
muttering at me, and I’d gone off on a dafty hunt for a name for her, because
it seemed kind of rude to just go about calling her the crow.  I even tried asking
her what her name was but she must have been cross with me, because for once
she didn’t come back with a snappy answer.

Or maybe she didn’t answer because she was just me and I was
being cracked about the whole business.

I wasn’t the only one who was cracked, though.  I spotted
Shade immediately once I reached the Station, because he was sitting on top of
the blithering Station, perched at the corner in his black trousers and black
waistcoat which made him look rather like a crow himself.

I can reach him
, the crow said.

I stared up at Shade, wondering if he’d spotted me yet.  If
he could identify me from that high up.

How did he even get up there?
I asked, but the crow
didn’t answer. 
A’right.  Fly.

I shot a fitsy glance around, but nobody was watching one
lone street rat cowering at the corner of the railyard.  So I flexed my fingers
and gave myself a nod, and watched the world drift away.

I fly to the rooftop, startling Shade as he crouches on
the lip of the roof.  He watches me settle onto the bricks beside him, puzzled.

“Hayli?” he asks.

I am not Hayli.  I am, but I am not.  Why can’t he
understand that?  She is begging me to let her talk to him, but I want to talk
to him, too.

“Hayli,” I say, and cock my head to study him.

He doesn’t seem surprised.  Instead he smiles and wraps
his arms around his knees.

“That’s pretty good,” he says.  “Can you say my name?”

I blink at him.  “Shade.”

He laughs and holds out his hand.  I hop back, coy, and
peck at his fingers.  I can feel Hayli’s heart beating.  I can feel her
sadness.  But she isn’t jealous.  She pushes me forward.  And after a moment I
take a few steps toward him, then jump up onto his knee.  He holds out his
hand, hesitating, waiting to see if I will fly away.  But I have defeated him
already, and I know he will not attack me.  His finger brushes over my
feathers, and a sad, thoughtful look fills his eyes.

I shout once, which makes him smile again.

“How’d you find me?” he murmurs, but I don’t think he
expects me to answer him.

I watch him a bit, then hop down and attack the shining
buckles on his boots.  His fingers trace down my back.

“Why is everything so complicated?” he asks.

You should talk to him
, I tell the girl in my thoughts. 
He
wants to talk to you.

No
, she whispers. 
Please don’t Shift.  Please
don’t.  Not yet.

Why not?
I ask her.

Because as soon as it’s me, he will pull away, and close
down.  He would never…

Her voice dies as Shade reaches and coaxes me onto his
hand, drawing me close to his chest.  I tilt my head to study his face.  His eyes
shine, a knot of pain tightens his brow.  His other hand rests on my back.  I
know he has me pinned now, but somehow the thought doesn’t frighten me.  I peck
at the buttons on his waistcoat, pulling the chain of his shiny pocket watch. 
But I know I must go, even if Hayli will hate me for it.

I slip free of his hands and fly a few feet away, and
call Hayli from her shell.

“Hayli!  Careful!”

I sat down right where I was, muddle-headed from Shifting
and terrified of going too close to the edge of the roof, too close to Shade. 
The world blurred, taking a tick too long to catch up as my gaze roved over the
rooftop.  Shade had a hand hovering between us, like he’d meant to reach out to
me but thought better of it.  The fear in his eyes startled me, because Shade
never seemed too keen on showing the world any of what he was feeling. 

“Stars, Shade!” I cried, planting my hands on the smooth
stone.  “How’d you get up here?”

“I climbed,” he said, shrugging.  “Did I ever tell you I’m
afraid of heights?”

“Then what’re you doing up here, you great dafty?” 

I inched my way closer to the edge, my stomach doing little
somersaults on me, though I couldn’t tell if it was from the roof’s height or
from the way Shade was watching me.

“Thinking,” he said, his gaze still on my face.

“Derrin said you were looking for me.”

His eyes widened.  “Oh.  He did?”

“Weren’t you?” I asked, wondering at his surprise.

He shifted about to face the city, his arms wrapped around
his knees.  I caught myself staring at his hands, with their long careful
fingers and raggedy nails, remembering…

Shut up, Hayli…

“I was just…”  He let out his breath.  “You were practicing
your Shifting?  I liked hearing you talk.”

“Canny, aye?  She picked that up today.” 

He got a funny sort of look on his face, and I even thought
I saw a bit of red creep over his cheeks.  “So…” he said, and snapped his gaze
away.  “So you’re starting to remember what happens when you’re the crow?”

I stared at him, at his deepening blush, and had to fight
back a little laugh.  Shade was
terrified
.  Terrified that I would
remember what he’d just done.  How he’d held me.  And the funny thing was, I
did
remember.  If I thought about it hard enough, I could imagine I felt his hand
on my back again.  The memory chased a flutter all through me, from the pit of
my stomach to the tips of my fingers.

“Some bits,” I said, to spare him his embarrassment.  “I
can’t always sort what she sees though.”

“Mm,” he said, and didn’t look at me.

I finally managed to get all the way to the edge of the roof,
scooting forward inch by inch until I could let my legs dangle over the side. 
In the back of my mind I knew I should be trying to follow Kantian’s advice and
learn as much as I could about Shade, but it felt so wrong.  If Shade wanted to
trust me with something, he’d tell me.  I didn’t want to trick it out of him.

“Shade,” I said.  “Does…does your gift ever make you feel
like you’re two different people?”

His head snapped up and he fixed me with a baffled stare,
grey eyes all in a storm.  For a few seconds—far too long for comfort—he just
measured me in silence, then he gave a little silent laugh and nodded.

“Yes.”

“I dan’ mean just when you’re using your gift.”

“I know,” he said.  “I didn’t mean that either.”

“It’s like you’ve got two people warring inside your head.”

“And both of them want to be you.”

I nodded.  “Sounds a bit cracked, dan’ you think?”

“Well,” he said, smiling.  “We’re both a bit cracked, aren’t
we?”

I grinned and pulled up my knees, feeling silly at those
words, and I hardly knew why. 
We’re cracked
, he’d said. 
We
.  Me
and him.  He understood, even if no one else did.

“So, the crow kept me from Shifting earlier,” I said.  “And
sometimes…sometimes I think she’s talking to me.”

He thought that over for a bit, chewing on the least raggedy
of his nails, I suppose to make it match the others.  But he didn’t seem to be
just trying to find a thing to say, not with that little line on his forehead
making him seem a bit nervous.

“Think about it this way,” he said finally, twisting about
so he faced me, which brought his body so close to the edge of the roof that my
stomach lurched.  “It’d be like if I tried to be another person…you know, not
just putting on a mask for a few minutes, but to actually live like someone
else for a bit.  It wouldn’t be just a face and hair and a body, but all the
way he would speak and act and even think.  After a while I think I’d start
getting both him and me yammering in my head, you know?  Because they’re both
me, but they see the world in two different ways.  It’s kind of like you and
the crow.  You’re both you, but different.  And you both need each other.”

“Suppose that’s right,” I said, and kicked my feet against
the bricks.