Shade and the Skinwalkers

by Marilyn Peake

  Then, suddenly, we were out in the desert.

  Kai came up behind me. She said, “They’re here.”

  I wanted to say, “Who?” The word was stuck in my throat. I stared at Kai in horror.

  She must have known what I was thinking. It must have been obvious from the terror on my face. She said, “The skinwalkers are here. They’ve been trying to take over this area for a long time. They must have figured out where my Aunt Doli’s funeral was, even with all the precautions we took. They’d know this would bring most of us together in the same place. We’re vulnerable here.”

  I looked out across the desert. With the glamour removed, I could see the real setting for the funeral: a large white tent with smaller ones surrounding it. The main tent and several of the smaller ones glowed with golden light. Tiki torches burned throughout the encampment, reminding me of an African safari.

  I looked up at the sky. It was an incredibly deep black. Strange star constellations I’d never seen in my entire life and a couple of planets burned brightly. The moon was just a sliver, light bent into the shape of a boomerang. Was this real, or was the sky being glamoured?

  I was about to ask Kai about it when I heard a deep, threatening growl, followed by the banshee shriek of a wildcat. I scanned the desert.

  Suddenly, the tents erupted into an inferno, orange-yellow flames and black smoke leaping into the air. We heard screams that were mostly human. People and animals came pouring out of the tents.

  Desperate to escape, they ran into an ambush. A ring of ferocious animals appeared, seemingly out of nowhere. Moving toward those fleeing the fire, they encircled them, growling and snarling viciously. They moved in the way Zoe had moved: muscles rippling under their skin, movements that suggested stalking.

  Kai grabbed my hand. She pointed toward a plateau behind us.

  Following a dirt path, we raced up a hill littered with loose rocks. I fell on a slippery part of the incline. My knees slammed down on the hardened dirt, ripping cuts into my skin. When I tried to stand up, my shoe slid against some rocks, sending them flying down the hill. Scared to death I’d given away our location, I soon realized no one could even hear the skittering rocks over the roar of the fire and the god-awful snarling of the skinwalkers.

  Sitting down, I took off my sweater and used it to dab at my knees. They burned as I wiped away dripping blood. Bits of fiber stuck to my shredded skin.

  Kai said, “We’ve got to go, Shade. Things are going to get bad. Are you OK?”

  I shook my head yes. I’d worry about my knees later. Pushing through the pain, I continued scrambling up the path.

  The plateau wasn’t particularly high. It gave us a place where we could see everything from above, but at fairly close range. Up on the rocky ledge, we were protected from the trouble intensifying below.

  Kai pointed. Her eyes were wide, her pupils dilated and lit with reflections from the burning tents. She said, “There’s my mom.”

  I scanned the entire scene below us. I looked for her mom in both human and wolf form, but didn’t see her. I said, “Where?”

  She said, “Right over there. The bear.”

  I felt incredibly confused. I said, “What do you mean: the bear? Your mother’s a wolf.”

  Kai looked at me as though dumbfounded by my stupidity. She said, “No, I’d recognize her anywhere. She always has white fur in the shape of a star on her head. Look closely at that bear.”

  I said, “It doesn’t matter about the white fur. You told me she was the injured wolf in your kitchen.”

  With exasperation in her voice, Kai said, “She’s a shapeshifter, Shade. She can take on the shapes of different animals. Different humans, too, sometimes.”

  I said, “Oh.” I thought how confusing that must be.

  Kai said, “My mom always has a white star in her hair. My Aunt Doli always had a red arrow. It’s so family can tell who they are.”

  I said, “Oh. I could see where that would be helpful.” I hadn’t noticed the white star on the wolf’s head when I’d seen her shot in the kitchen, but then there’d been so much blood...

  I looked back down at the battle. Sure enough, there was a black bear with a white star-shaped patch of fur on its head. And that shape was extremely helpful in picking it out from the other animals.

  We stood silent, watching. A few minutes later, Kai closed her eyes and lifted her arms toward the sky. She began chanting in a language I didn’t understand. Once in a while, she mixed animal sounds with her words.

  When she lowered her arms and opened her eyes, she said, “I prayed for the protection of all the good shapeshifters. Now, we just wait.”

  The skinwalkers closed in around the shapeshifters. From our perch up on the rocky plateau, it looked like total carnage.

  I said to Kai, “Where’s Zoe? Is she still in tiger form?”

  Kai said, “Yes, she’s the same. Look over there, on the edge of the battle.”

  Sure enough, there she was, battling a wolverine. Despite being only the size of a dog, the wolverine fought with a kind of demonic madness that gave it an edge. It leapt for Zoe, sinking its claws into her side, shredding fur and skin, soaking her beautiful black-and-white-striped fur with blood.

  Zoe threw her head back and roared. She jumped backward away from the wolverine; then pounced at it, sinking her teeth deep into its neck. Wiggling and fighting, it managed to swipe at Zoe’s face with its razor claws, cutting a bloody gash across her nose. Roaring with pain from deep inside her throat, Zoe managed to hold on for dear life until the wolverine stopped squirming. Spasms racked its entire body; then it went limp as a rag doll. With her teeth and jaws clamped down on the wolverine’s neck, Zoe shook it maniacally, ensuring it was dead, then tossed it aside into the raging battle. It immediately got trampled underfoot.

  As she swung her head back around from tossing the beast, Zoe faced a grizzly bear headed directly for her. The bear stood up on its hind legs and opened its mouth wide, displaying enormous pointed teeth. My heart pounded. I couldn’t see how she had a chance. I thought for sure she was done. But Zoe reared up on her hind legs and smacked the bear across the face with her massive paws. Extending her claws, she ripped at the bear’s eyes until it roared with an ungodly sound filled with so much pain it sounded like something out of the pits of Hell. At that point, two other shapeshifters—a hawk and a wild boar—took over. The hawk pierced the bear’s eyes again and again with its beak until there was nothing left but bloody sockets. The boar stabbed the bear in its legs with its tusks until the furry beast could no longer stand. As it came crashing down to the ground, other animals scurried out of the way. The wild boar bowed its head and ran at the grizzly full force, impaling its stomach with its knife-edged tusks. As the boar extracted its weapon, intestines spilled from the bear’s stomach.

  The bear carcass was massive. A cougar fell over it while backing up, battling a wild dog. The wild dog took advantage of the situation, leaping over the carcass and tearing at the cougar’s neck until blood gushed from the wound and the cougar lay still. I had no idea which one was the shapeshifter and which the skinwalker. I felt sick to my stomach. I had been rooting for the cougar because the dog had attacked it so viciously. But what if the dog had been one of the shapeshifters?

  I turned to look at Kai. What was she seeing? I only knew two of the shifters fighting below: Zoe and her mom. Who did she know? Who was she concerned about?

  And who was winning? I could only tell that an animal was a skinwalker if it was fighting with Zoe or Kai’s mom. Otherwise, I had no idea who the good guys and the bad guys were, never mind who they might be in human form.

  I asked Kai, “How are you? Are the shapeshifters winning?”

  She answered, “It’s hard to say. We’ve lost a few people—not anybody I’m close to; but they’ve lost a lot of people, too.”

  Kai pointed. She said, “Look down there ... in the shadows, at the edge of the light. He’s so disgusting!”

  I
could only make out a vague shape. As my eyes adjusted to peering into the dark rather than staring at the light from the fire, I realized it was a man. And—oh, my God!—he had sliced open the chest of a white wolf. He plunged his hand into the opening and ripped out its heart. Tearing the attached arteries and veins with his teeth, he lifted the bloody organ up in his hands, as though making an offering to the moon. Studying it for a bit, he then placed it in a jar that he grabbed from behind a boulder. Returning the jar to its hiding place, he leapt into the air. As he made that jump, he morphed into a lion.

  Kai commented, her tone dripping with disgust, “And that is your Biology teacher!”

  I felt faint. And seriously ill. Stumbling over to a pile of boulders, I reached my hand out to rest against them. Sweating so profusely my head dripped with perspiration and my shirt became soaked, I threw up all over the ground. The smell of my own vomit ... the visual of Mr. Mhavryck Taylor being even more evil than I could ever imagine him ... the heart of that white wolf ... Oh my God, this was how he collected all those organs in jars! ... The organs possibly of shapeshifters, people Kai and her mother might have known! ... I vomited over and over again until I was spilling streams of green bile onto the ledge.

  When I made my way back to Kai, my knees so weak I could barely stand, she said, “I’m sorry I couldn’t come over to comfort you. I’ve got to keep my eye on my mom and a few other relatives and close friends.”

  I waved my hand at her. “Oh, no, don’t worry about it. This is tough for me, but it’s got to be terrifying for you. You have a lot more at stake here.”

  She said, “Yeah. Yeah, it’s horrible.”

  We sat down. My knees hurt like crazy. I hoped they weren’t infected from all the dust and dirt. They were so stiff from dried blood, bending them to sit down felt like ripping a bandage off.

  We watched the battle as it raged on in the light of the inferno. Kai sat still as a statue, her only movement that of her eyes moving back and forth to take in different parts of the conflict.

  Suddenly, she jumped up and placed her hands over her mouth.

  I said, “What’s wrong, Kai?”

  She didn’t answer me.

  Two more times, I asked.

  No answer.

  Finally, I walked over to her and grabbed her by the arm. “What’s wrong, Kai?”

  She pointed. “It’s my mother. Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Oh, my God!”

  It was hard to tell exactly where she was pointing. I desperately searched for a bear. I located a black bear without any white fur, a brown bear, a polar bear. No black bear with a white star.

  Then, suddenly, a silverback gorilla pounded on its chest and moved to the side, posturing. As it moved, it revealed the animal it was fighting: a black bear with a white star-shaped patch of fur on its head.

  I put my arms around Kai and leaned my head on her shoulder. I said, “Oh my God, Kai, I’m so sorry.”

  She struggled out of my arms. She paced back and forth, keeping her eyes on the battle. She balled her hands into fists and screamed. No one could hear her besides me, the battle was so loud and intense.

  I left her alone. She obviously needed space to fret and worry and scream in desperation.

  I sat back down. I kept my eyes on the struggle between Kai’s mom and the silverback. I found my mind obsessively wondering about the relative strengths of a silverback gorilla vs. a black bear. Forcing my mind to run through intellectual analyses kept my greatest fears from paralyzing me with terror.

  I soon realized that everything wasn’t strictly a matter of physical advantage. Battles could be fueled by ratcheting up fury to a level of insanity. They could be won by focusing on strategy while feeding it that frenzied juice of madness.

  Kai’s mom stood up on her hind legs, displaying her full black bear form. She bared her teeth and roared. The wild boar noticed her situation. It came charging up behind the silverback, jabbing its tusks at the gorilla’s leg, but missing most of it and glancing off the side.

  The sharpness of the tusks hurt the gorilla, but didn’t wound it in any significant way. Roaring with fury, it clenched its hand and whipped around to punch the boar with its massive fist. The boar raced around in a circle, escaping impact; then hightailed it out of there.

  While the gorilla was distracted, Kai’s mom attacked from behind, ripping through its back with her claws. She went crazy, tearing at its fur and flesh in a frenzy.

  Furious, the gorilla turned. Narrowing its eyes, the beast focused strategically on Kai’s mom. It dipped its head. In the blink of an eye, it lunged for her stomach, biting and tearing with enormous sharp teeth until it ripped her stomach open. Blood and organs spilled from her body onto the gorilla’s arms. Raging and roaring, the gorilla threw the body away from him. Kai’s mom landed on the ground with terrible force. The silverback pounded its chest and ran off to fight another of the shapeshifters.

  Oh my God. The entire battle disappeared for me. All I could see was the broken body of the bear. I kept thinking it could be fixed.

  Then it dawned on me: Kai could heal her!

  Before I could say anything, Kai took off racing down the rocky path, bellowing hysterically.

  No! No! No! She’d get killed that way! I screeched at the top of my lungs. I couldn’t believe the animalistic sound that came out of me. It was so loud and desperate, it felt like I was possessed. I couldn’t handle losing another friend to violence. I’d just gotten Annie back. I couldn’t lose Kai.

  Kai jumped over a boulder and landed once again on the path. She was a whole lot more sure-footed than I’d ever been.

  I walked to the part of the ledge that connected with the path, then took off running after her. Fueled by adrenalin, I was fast; but she was incredibly faster. I couldn’t keep up with her. I stumbled a couple of times, bashing my already bloodied knees when I tripped over a rock and fell. I was in so much pain after that, I could barely fight through it to stand up and keep on running.

  When we reached the wide-open desert, I saw Kai closing the gap between herself and the fight raging around her mother. I pumped my legs as hard as I could, visualizing myself tackling her and pulling her away from the battle. I kept imagining what I would do. Grab her by the hand. Or jump on her back, grab her by the neck and pull her to the ground. Whatever it took, I couldn’t let her get inside the war zone.

  As I sprinted across the landscape, I became aware of light and shadow. The tents burned with ferocity, sending wild irregular shapes dancing all over the ground. Suddenly, there was a shift in the heavens. I looked up. The star patterns changed several times, as though a giant was turning the wheel of a kaleidoscope in which stars were the shifting gems. The constellations showed different animals. Were these supposed to represent the winners and losers among the shapeshifters and skinwalkers? As I considered that possibility, the stars of one constellation increased in brightness: an upside-down image of a bear. Was that supposed to be Kai’s mom, upside-down because she had died?

  I kept on running.

  Then, suddenly, the sky turned bloodred; the stars turned inky black. The sickle-shaped moon burned with white-hot intensity.

  From somewhere inside the battle, a woman chanted in a tongue I didn’t understand.

  All the beasts fell to the ground. Kai walked among them, right up to her mother. She cradled the head of the black bear in her arms. She wept and wailed.

  My heart beating, palms sweating, I approached them. My knees screaming with pain, I knelt down beside Kai. There was nothing I could do. I asked, “Can you heal her?”

  Kai looked at me with madness in her eyes. She said, “I can’t do that. If I brought her back, she’d be the walking dead. I’m a healer, not a monster.”

  I thought about that. I supposed one couldn’t be healed after death, not even immediately after death. I supposed after one’s life was spent, their body could no longer reclaim it.

  I sat down, wrapping my arms around my knees and rocking back and forth.
I felt incredibly confused. I wasn’t even sure where I was anymore. I’d been transported to an alternate universe where the sky bled red and the stars imploded into pools of ink to write the incredible story of life-and-death drama.

  Fierce winds raced across the desert. Tent flaps that hadn’t yet burned fluttered madly. Hungrily devouring oxygen, flames exploded, burning more than the tents, somehow burning the air itself. Sparks flew upward, fireworks against the bloodred night.

  The chanting woman approached us. Her eyes were solid black, mirrored images of the stars themselves. She wore a strange dress with a hooded cape. It was made from red silk embroidered with the shapes of snakes. Somehow, the snakes moved on the cloth, coiling and uncoiling, slithering to different locations, changing positions like the stars above. Black tendrils—hair resembling vines—flowed out from beneath her hood.

  She placed her hands first on Kai. Then, kneeling, she placed her hands on the head of Kai’s mother. Both times, she spoke in a foreign tongue. I was no expert on languages; but it sounded ancient, as though it was more from a foreign time than a foreign place.

  A kind of peace, more resignation than total acceptance, came over Kai. She took her arms from around her mother’s neck. She silently watched as the mysterious woman performed a ritual over the body of the black bear.

  When she finished, the woman—whom I’d come to trust—walked over to a snow-white polar bear. She raised her right arm and shook it until the flowing sleeve covered in snakes fell away from her hand with a hiss. Flexing her fingers, she displayed metallic silver fingernails about two inches long. Raising her arm higher, then bringing it down in a flash, she pierced the belly of the bear and tore the animal open with her nails. Plunging her hand inside, she ripped out its heart and squeezed until blood dripped down upon the animal.

  I thought she was one of the good ones. I felt more horror than I’d never known in my entire life. I bent over and clutched my stomach. I threw up all over the place. That woman was no better than my Biology teacher and he was an evil skinwalker.