by Jen Crane
The suspended wood cabin lay hidden deep in the forest among ancient trees. The tree that served as the foundation for Layla’s home was the largest I’d ever seen. As we approached, it loomed bigger and bigger, its massive branches extending into the surrounding canopy and disappearing altogether.
The house itself was composed of smaller, rough logs, but featured modern windows and architecture. I spotted solar panels atop the slanted metal roof. What I didn’t see was a logical way to the front door.
“How do we get in?” I asked Layla.
“By invitation only,” she smirked.
“What does that mean?” Timbra’s head tilted in question before it was jerked back by the force of motion. There was only a moment to consider what had caused her sudden jolt before I, too, began moving. And not of my own will.
When tracing, the sensation is akin to being exposed to a dark room full of dry ice. This was similar, but not the same. We were pulled through a cold, windy corridor, and I could do nothing to stop it. I tried to fight the forceful pull, first physically and then mentally, but I was powerless against it. Layla’s dim words drifted toward me, “Don’t freak. It’s my mom. Just go with it.”
Right.
In the end, I might as well have just gone with it, because there was no stopping Valdete Avenatio. We were vacuumed from the forest floor right into the family room of the tree house, where a woman with deep black hair stood with her hands on her hips.
Layla ran and caught her up in a tight hug. “Mom, hi, I’ve missed you,” she gushed and placed a soft kiss high up on her mother’s cheek. Layla was maybe the least-affectionate friend I’d made since coming to Thayer, so the sweet gestures took me by surprise. Layla often said she “wasn’t cut out to deal with people,” and generally lived up to the self-assessment. But to her mom she was adorably affectionate. “These are my friends from The Root, Stella Stonewall and Timbra Redfern.”
“Ms. Redfern.” Mrs. Avenatio’s coiled hair bounced along her shoulders as she acknowledged Timbra. “I know your father from council meetings, of course,” she said.
Her face crinkled in a somewhat remorseful look. “I’m sorry about the rough landing. Only way in or out of this place, though—by my invitation.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Timbra said. “No problem. I’m pleased to meet you, and thank you for welcoming us into your lovely home.”
“Oh, don’t ma’am me, for goodness sake. Call me Val. Please.”
“Yes, ma’am—Val,” said Timbra.
Val cut her eyes in my direction and the nearly-black orbs searched my face as her head tilted from side to side. It was a very avian thing to do.
“You I don’t know, though. Who are your parents, girl?”
“Ah, well, that’s why we’re here, Mom. Stella was raised on the other side—America, actually. Her mother is missing and her father until recently was unknown. Now she’s learned that her father was an omni named Gabrio Shaw.”
“Gabrio Shaw, you said?” Val’s face was inscrutable.
“Yes,” I cut in. “Do you—did you know him?”
“I did meet him, yes. A long time ago. A fine man. Brave, strong. A bit foolhardy, but he was young. We all were. Who’s your mother, then?”
“Elena Stonewall. She raised me alone. After my father was killed, I suppose.”
“I don’t know that name.” She focused her beady eyes on me like a robin sighting a grub worm. “What can I help you with?”
Right to the point. Okay. “Well, you may have put together that if my father was Gabrio Shaw, then my uncle, of course, is Gaspare Shaw. I’m here because I don’t know him, and I’ve suffered some fairly tough betrayals recently. I don’t know who to trust or what to do. Is Gaspare a nice guy or some evil dictator from whom I should stay far away? Layla said you’re a powerful clairvoyant. I want you to see my future. Specifically I want you to tell me if I should trust Gaspare Shaw.”
“And what about Brandubh?” Val asked.
“What about Brandubh?” I asked, blinking in confusion.
“I know you’re the girl that fought him. That somehow lived to tell about it. But I also know he’s still out there. Don’t you want to know if he’ll seek you out again? Surely he came after you because of your lineage as an omni. You think he’ll give up so easily if he has reason to want you?” She shook her head dubiously. “I don’t.”
She had assumed that Brandubh was after the heritage my father left me, rather than my mother. Fine by me.
“Oh, I know he’ll be back,” I said. “I have no doubt. And I want to be ready when he comes. But I could use some help. I know nothing about being an omni and they’re apparently hard to come by. That’s why I want to know if I can trust Gaspare. I want to know if going to him for help is a mistake.”
“I see,” Val said somberly. “Layla oversimplified my talents when she told you I was a clairvoyant. I’m an augur. Do you know what that means?”
I shook my head and looked to Timbra for help. She bunched her shoulders.
Val went on, “An augur divines the future by interpreting the flight patterns and the songs of birds. We are evolved of birds, the Avenatios, thus the connection.”
My mouth formed an ‘o,’ but I didn’t make a sound.
* * *
Val led the three of us away from her house along an old trail through the trees. As we traveled I was keenly aware of the ever-increasing volume of birds overhead. Val didn’t appear to be calling them in any way, but they had progressively gathered and followed us.
“Your mother gave you a strong name,” Val said, pulling me from my observation.
“What? Oh. Yes. I never minded the name Stella.”
“Do you know what it means?” she asked.
“I do. It means “star” in Latin. Which is kinda awesome because I’ve always been drawn to the stars. I love astronomy.”
“Names have power, Stella Stonewall. Remember that as you find your own way in this world.”
“O-kay. Yes, ma’am, I will.” Whatever that meant.
“Now, the birds divine what they will,” she said as we stopped just inside the edge of the forest. Beyond lay a beautiful green meadow, its tall, thick grass rippling with the breeze. “I may ask them what we wish to know, but ornithomancy isn’t an exact science. It’s divination. It’s open to the will of the powers that be. It’s open to interpretation. And that’s the beauty of it, really. We may not always know the right questions to ask, but the spirits always know the right answers.”
I hadn’t considered until that very moment that a clairvoyant—an augur—might be able to see more than what I asked for.
My palms broke out in a cold sweat. I swallowed convulsively, and my face and hands became clammy as I realized the possible repercussions. What if Val saw who my mother was, what she’d done? What if she saw my connection to Bay and the other Drakontos. Oh, no, no, no, I thought.
Surviving meant keeping my secrets.
The sound of the accumulated birds neared deafening, and I looked up to find the flock stirring. They were agitated. Ready for flight. Val squinted at me, suspicious of my reaction to her statement.
As she held my uneasy gaze, she flicked her hand and the birds took flight at once. The whole flock—hundreds of them—vaulted into the air. Their song wasn’t sweet, and it wasn’t pleasant. The birds screeched, cried, and dove roughly through tree limbs before exploding into the open meadow.
I took the opportunity to run.
My strategy was getting out of there before the birds showed Val who and what I was. Maybe some distance between from the flock would neutralize the effect.
But before I took two strides Val’s firm grip was a vice around my upper arm. She clasped it so tightly I couldn’t break free despite jerking with all my strength. She was stronger than she looked.
I tried to trace away, but she’d somehow prevented me from escaping.
“Still, girl,” she said, though her thoughts were somewhere else entire
ly.
I wasn’t going anywhere. My chin hit my chest as I hung my head in dread.
Val Avenatio watched intently as the birds ascended and swooped through the air, their wings extending and bracing against the airstreams to glide in a graceful dance with the wind. When the birds began calling she closed her eyes, concentrated on their song. I attempted to imagine what she might be interpreting from her avian cousins, but all I saw was a flock of squawking birds.
Timbra, who was prone to nervous energy already, was nearing over-stimulation. Her prone ears twitched furiously, instinct overriding her capacity for control. Timbra’s eyes were wild, frantic, but she found the focus to shoot me a questioning look about Val’s grip on my arm. I shrugged in resignation.
With an intake of breath so sharp she coughed to recover, Val’s eyes shot open in alarm. She found my gaze immediately.
“It’s not possible,” she breathed before whispering, “I knew her.”
Chapter 14
“You knew who?” I whispered, but I knew already.
“Your mother. Edina.”
“Edina? No, Stella’s mother was Elena, Ms. Avenatio,” Timbra corrected.
I drew a soul-deep breath and exhaled it through strained lips. Then I just laid it all on the line.
“My mother changed her name, Timbra. Apparently she fled Thayer and raised me without ever revealing my true genesis—to me or anyone else.”
“But, who was she then? The only Edina I ever heard of was the one they do re-enactments about at Solstice Fest—the dragon—” Timbra’s words trailed off as her round eyes first held certainty, then doubt, and finally they seemed to plead with me not to admit it.
But there was no going back.
“My mother was Edina. The dragon.”
I relayed the story to Timbra, Layla, and Val. How my mother had been tortured and abused by Brandubh. I told them how lovingly she had raised me, and that she was the kindest, gentlest soul I’d ever encountered. I begged them not to judge her by the horrific actions she was forced to make, and I tried to convince them that she was a victim, too.
“I knew her,” Val said again. “Before.”
“Was she as I knew her? Was she docile and meek?”
“On the contrary, she was fiery—pun intended,” Val grinned and her black eyes gleamed. “She was fun and wild and free.”
“I never knew her that way,” I said, surprised by the loss I felt at the statement. “I think by the time she’d conceived me she’d had all of the “fire” tortured from her. The woman who raised me was gentle, but in truth she was just a shell.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Val said. “We were dear friends. We entered as primos together at The Root, and we were partners in Metamorphosis class since both our forms were airborne. Gods, we had such fun soaring the skies together.” Small white teeth peeked from her lips when shot me a crooked grin. “Even though she dwarfed me.”
“When the attacks began I didn’t believe the stories about her. I knew my friend would never—could never—do such violent things. Then I saw it with my own eyes. I think she would have decimated me if I’d gotten in her way. Her actions were so incongruent with the girl I knew. I could never quite reconcile what went wrong. And I’m afraid many people—myself included—were biased against her due to her fearsome form.”
“Like, ‘that dragon didn’t go crazy, that dragon went dragon’?” quipped Layla.
“Exactly,” her mother said. “I’m afraid no one really stood up for the Drakontos, or any of the dragon families, once the attacks began. And how could they have? They’d have been annihilated just like the gnome and fae people.”
“So, those dragons that were there in the crater when Brandubh attacked you?” Timbra asked.
“My grandmother, uncle, cousin.”
“Damn.” Layla said, and got it right.
“Did you help them escape?” Timbra asked weakly.
“No. I didn’t. They simply got away.”
“So,” I asked Val to change the subject, “did you see anything else? Anything that can help me with Gaspare Shaw? Can I trust him? Should I go to him for help?”
“The path looked clear, though not unburdened, Stella. I saw him as a prominent figure in your future.”
“Well, that’s pretty vague, Val. Anything else? Anything I should avoid?”
“It’s not an exact science, as I said. It is a gift, an art. But I did see that you aren’t free of danger yet. You’ll be betrayed yet again before all of this is through.”
“Figures,” I said. “Any idea who?”
She shook her head sadly and rubbed my back in a motherly way. “I wish I knew, hon. I wish I knew.”
Chapter 15
“Well, besides the freaky aviary show, that was a complete waste of time,” I huffed and shoved my hair from my face after Timbra and I traced back to The Root.
“Oh, Stella,” she admonished, “you know it wasn’t. She gave you some direction. You can feel—well, kinda safe—about going to Prime Minister Shaw for help.”
To my dubious look she sucked a breath through her straight square teeth and shrugged. Then she took on an expression so serious it seemed foreign on her sweet face. “You do realize that our conversation about your mother isn’t over, right?”
Dread skittered across my back like a line of fire ants. I needed Timbra on my side. Besides her I didn’t really have a side. That was not a conversation I was looking forward to. I abhorred the thought of her being frightened…or disappointed. Timbra Redfern’s opinion of me meant a lot.
“I know, Timbra,” I said. “Just promise me —”
She’d stopped listening to me. Her attention was focused across the lawn in the direction of Sabre Hall where a very large, very loud man shook his fist and pointed his finger at anyone stupid enough to stop and give him attention.
“What’s his problem?” I mused as he transferred his anger from actual people to berate the shrubbery. I couldn’t make out what he was saying but Timbra’s cervid ears twitched wildly. She let out a long breath that sounded suspiciously like the word “shit.” At the same time, Mr. Loud and Gnarly whipped his head in our direction. His eyes widened with recognition and he let out a bellow surely heard throughout the entire campus.
“Timbra Dawn Redfern!” he hollered, and both she and I ducked.
I looked to Timbra to see if she was in some sort of trouble. She was in trouble, all right. I could tell by the frantic look in her eyes that her mind was racing. Her normally tawny complexion had paled to an unnatural puce. She unwittingly took a step backward and I followed her lead. It was obvious she knew him. That he was pissed was even more apparent, but about what I sure as hell wasn’t sticking around to find out. I clasped her hand, readying to trace and take her with me when she was suddenly jerked from my grasp. I looked up to find that the man had hold of Timbra’s shoulder and was pushing her toward a small copse of trees.
“Hold the fuck on,” I found the nerve to say. “Get your hands off her!”
“It’s okay, Stella,” Timbra said meekly as the man turned his ire toward me. “He’s my father.”
It was at this point that I noticed the ears—and the antlers. His ears were bigger than Timbra’s; proportional to his broad body. But those antlers. My god he was menacing. Though covered in a gray-brown velvet because it was June, they were nonetheless one of the most extraordinary things I had set eyes on. They grew back from the top of his head before shooting out and upward into a comb-like structure at least four feet wide. The physics of how he remained standing upright was a mystery. The sheer neck and upper body strength it took to support those things was unfathomable. But he was definitely built for it. His thick chest held a bulk of muscle apparent even through his khaki button-down shirt.
My enthrallment must have been obvious because Timbra reprimanded him sharply. “Oh, put the antlers away, Father. You’re scaring my friend.”
“I’ll do what I damn well please,” he said,
unable to control the volume of his words. “And you’ll bite your tongue if you’ve got any sense left in your head. But if what I’ve been hearing is true, you either never had any to begin with, or it’s been corrupted by your perverse sexual escapades.”
Timbra jerked at his words. She stood dumbfounded as he continued to berate and insult her, stopping just short of calling her a whore.
There were sacred few things left I knew to be true beyond a shadow of doubt. One of those things was that Timbra Redfern was decidedly not a whore.
She was also not defending herself. She stood there, shoulders drooped in defeat, a million miles away from what was taking place right in front of her.
“Now wait just a minute, Mr. Redfern,” I interrupted, knowing full well what was best and safest for me was to back away and let the two of them settle what seemed a family matter among, well, family. But Timbra had become my family, and I wasn’t going to let the overbearing hulk of a man insult my friend, who I’d thought was meek by nature, but I was beginning to suspect was molded that way over time. “You’re yelling at Timbra like she’s been screwing the soccer team, and maybe you’ve been misinformed. That’s not her.” That was Bex, but I didn’t want to get into that. “Timbra’s a kind, intelligent, generous person with an exceptional moral compass. Accusing her of ‘perverse escapades’ is…well, it’s hilarious, really, because she’s the last person to be described that way.”
“Is that so?” His eyes were squinted to angry slits; his voice gritty with menace. “So she’s not sleeping with a dog? With that Adder boy?”
Words escaped me then. To confirm or deny Timbra’s relationship with Boone wasn’t my place. She was a grown woman and it was none of his business. On the other hand, I wanted to defend Timbra. Boone was wonderful for her, wonderful to her. They were crazy about each other, and very happy.
