by H. K. Varian
Why would they leave their teammates behind? Darren wondered. Were they afraid the curses would affect them, too, if they moved them?
As if on cue, Margaery performed a spell on the two remaining members of Sakura’s forces.
Darren almost laughed when he saw what it had done—the werewolf and the phoenix floated into the air as if they were completely weightless, and then Margaery used a gentle wind to push them into the tunnel. The prisoners floated gently, bobbing up and down, as the entire group made their way out of the cave.
When they were back in the clearing in the forest, Mr. Kimura reenchanted the tomb. The dark hole seemed to fold in on itself. The entrance to the underground world was hidden and sealed off once again. Then the stone pathway beneath their feet disappeared.
“We must hurry home,” Mr. Kimura said. “There may be more of Sakura’s forces lurking nearby, and we don’t know where the nykur and the naga are. They may have gone for reinforcements.”
They each put a hand on Margaery—Mr. Kimura and Miles each holding on to a sleeve of one of Sakura’s disabled and now weightless warriors—and in a blink, they were back inside Willow Cove Middle School’s enchanted gym. Darren was exhausted but hopeful. They had the talisman. Finding it was the purpose of their mission. They had succeeded.
Soon, Mack will be free of Sakura’s dark magic, he thought. We’ll be a solid team again.
“Margaery and I will take these two to a holding cell at the Harbor,” Miles offered, taking hold of the Changer Mr. Kimura was holding. Both Changers still hovered over the ground. “They won’t be giving us any more trouble. You can all call it a night.”
“Thank you, Miles,” Mr. Kimura said. “Thank you, Margaery. You have done good work tonight.” Then he looked to the three seventh-graders. “You all have. Makoto and I are very grateful.”
Mr. Kimura asked Darren, Fiona, and Gabriella if they would come back to the house with him. “I think you should be the ones to give Makoto the magatama. I know it will cheer him up to see you.”
The small group arrived at the Kimura house to find Mack lying on the couch, watching a dumb comedy on television. Darren recognized the same actor he had seen on the movie theater screen earlier that day.
Mack clicked off the TV when they entered the room, but he didn’t seem all that happy to see them. He wasn’t even curious about what they had been doing.
He knew we were on the mission. Why isn’t he asking us about it? Darren wondered.
“Excuse me, while I put the tea kettle on,” Mr. Kimura said. “I’ll leave you with your friends, Makoto.”
Mack dropped the remote control on the coffee table and sat up a little grudgingly.
“We missed you tonight,” Fiona said, sitting next to him.
“The First Four didn’t want me on the mission,” he said with shrug. “They were worried about me after what happened in class during the training exercise the other day.” He held Gabriella’s eyes for a second and then looked away. “Like I might turn evil on all of you or something.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Gabriella said. “You wouldn’t have hurt us.”
Mack shrugged again, but Darren could tell he wasn’t as indifferent as he was pretending to be. He was hiding his hurt and his fear.
“They don’t trust me anymore,” Mack said, bitterness creeping into his voice. “They didn’t want me there to help you. They didn’t want me to visit my parents’ birthplace.
“We didn’t see anything of Japan—unless you count an underground cave—but the mission was a success,” Darren said. “We brought you back something—a talisman that will protect you from Sakura. It’s going to change everything.”
Mack sat a little taller. “So you found it?”
“It’s a magatama necklace,” Fiona explained. “An ancient protection artifact. With it you won’t have to worry about what happened at Wyndemere ever happening again. It’ll protect you.”
Darren handed the talisman to his friend, and Mack’s face lit up. He ran his fingers over the ancient jade gemstone. “This is pretty cool,” Mack said with a smile.
“Put it on,” Gabriella urged.
Mack slid the magatama necklace over his head just as his grandfather came into the room. They locked eyes and smiled at each other for the first time since Mack had come back from Wyndemere.
“You look like yourself again,” Fiona said.
Darren was watching Fiona when he saw her happy expression suddenly dimmed by confusion and concern.
“Is that supposed to happen?” she asked.
Darren turned back to Mack. The magatama had begun to glow. It looked like it was getting hotter and hotter.
Mack grabbed at it and then pulled his hands away. “It’s burning!”
Chapter 8
Remember
Mack looked down to see that the magatama pulsed with light as it got hotter and hotter. His heart hammered so hard in his chest that he couldn’t catch his breath. The talisman that was supposed to protect him was burning him instead.
He tried to yank it off his neck, but it was too hot to touch.
“Jiichan, help me!” he yelled.
Jiichan looked just as scared as Mack felt, but he came toward him anyway, reaching for the necklace.
Before Jiichan could touch it, and just when Mack thought he couldn’t stand the intense burning sensation for one more second, the magatama turned bright, fiery red. And then it shattered into a million pieces.
The shocked, scared look on Jiichan’s face mirrored his friends’ expressions. It scared Mack more than anything.
They look like they’re afraid of me, Mack thought.
Jiichan, instead of saying something to make Mack feel better, positioned himself between Mack and his friends.
He thinks he needs to protect them from me, Mack thought.
Anger flared inside him, and Mack took a deep breath to try to calm himself down. It didn’t work. Instead, a blinding flash of rage overtook him. It was almost the same feeling he experienced when he was about to attack Gabriella—like it was him or them. Only this time the feeling was ten times stronger.
If I let go and lose control now, he thought, I may never be able to stop myself again.
He took another deep breath. Gabriella stepped in front of his grandfather to show him that she wasn’t afraid.
“Slowly, Mack,” she said, breathing with him. “In . . . and . . . out . . . In . . . and . . . out. Let your thoughts go.”
Soon, they were all breathing together, and Mack noticed that his grandfather had visibly relaxed. He was no longer guarding Mack’s friends from him, but Mack couldn’t help but see that a wary concern was still etched on his face—on all their faces.
His rage flared again. “Will you stop looking at me like that!” he shouted, turning away from them. He began to gather the shards of the magatama off the floor, but he couldn’t stop ranting. “It’s bad enough that I’m stuck at home while you’re out on missions, having adventures together and visiting my ancestors’ homeland,” he said. “I know there’s something wrong with me, okay? But it’s still not fair. Do you have any idea what it’s like to know that your best friends are afraid of you?”
Fiona moved toward him, always the first one to try to make anyone feel better, but he didn’t want to hear her silly words of optimism right now. He shut her down with a fierce glare.
“You’re afraid of me. I can tell. And I know the First Four are trying to fix me, but what if I can’t be fixed? Did you ever think of that? Maybe I’m stuck like this forever, and all of your flying around in the wind won’t solve a thing. I’m broken, just like this stupid, useless necklace.” He threw the shards he had gathered back to the floor.
“Makoto,” Jiichan said. “You mustn’t give up.”
“Mustn’t I?” Mack spat. “You said this talisman would be a magical protection. That it might even cure me. But it didn’t, did it? It tried to hurt me instead. If your stupid ancient protection charm can’t keep me safe, t
hen probably nothing can.”
Mack took a step back. His rage had burned itself out, and he was left feeling helpless and scared. He turned away so his friends wouldn’t see that he was blinking back tears.
Jiichan was at his side before he knew it and wrapped his arms around him. Mack buried his head on his grandfather’s shoulder and let the tears come. He had worked too hard to control his anger. He had nothing left to battle his tears. At the same time, he hated himself for being weak enough to cry in front of his friends.
His grandfather didn’t let go until Mack’s tears were spent. Mack was a little embarrassed, but he felt better, too, as if his tears had carried away a load of worry.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
Darren stepped forward and put his hand on Mack’s shoulder. “Don’t be sorry. I’ve been feeling scared too,” Darren admitted. “This afternoon, it was like, one minute I was a normal kid, having fun at the movies with my friends. The next thing I knew, Sakura’s goons were after me.”
“You don’t have to bottle everything up. Not with us,” Fiona said. “Holding it in only makes it worse.”
“Yeah, we’re the only ones in the world who can relate to what you’re feeling,” Darren said. “Talk to us. We’re here for you.”
“Always,” Gabriella said. “We’re not giving up on you. Don’t you give up on us.”
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” Mack said with a shake of his head. “I’ve been angry at everyone and everything. Sakura messed with my mind, and the worst part is that I don’t know which memories I can trust anymore.”
“I have an idea,” Gabriella said, checking her watch. “I have about two hours before curfew, and battling Changers in ancient tunnels is hungry work. What if we order a pizza and hang out? We can tell stories about what we remember from the last year. Then you’ll have our memories, too.”
Mack smiled slightly. “That’s a great idea,” he said. “Jiichan?”
His grandfather grinned and lifted the phone from the receiver. “Two extra-large pizzas?” he said.
“With anchovies?” Gabriella asked, her eyes dancing with mischief.
“Ew, gross!” Mack answered with a laugh.
“Okay, okay,” Gabriella said, raising her hands in surrender. “No anchovies.”
For the next two hours, the group hung out in Mack’s room together, munching on pizza with extra cheese and joking around.
“I do remember dreaming I was a fox the night before school started,” Mack said. “It was so weird when I looked into the Changing Stone the next day and saw that I was one!”
“Do you remembering running into me in the office the first day of school?” Fiona asked. “You were trying to change your gym class.”
“You’re right!” Mack said. “I thought an independent study in that musty old gym must have been a mistake.”
Fiona smiled. “I’m glad it wasn’t.”
Mack took in all three of his Changer friends. “I’m glad too,” he said.
“Me, three,” Darren said. “Even though I was totally freaked out at first.”
Gabriella shook her head. “I hid in the bathroom on the first day of school because my eyes had turned yellow, but then they went back to normal. I thought I was going crazy.”
“I’m still not sure you aren’t crazy,” Darren said with a laugh. Gabriella punched him in the arm. “Hey! No superstrength at the dinner table.”
Gabriella grinned. “Even after I found out what was going on, I kept ruining soccer balls with my claws. I’d be running down the field and all of a sudden, I could feel myself beginning to Change. I was terrified that someone would notice my eyes had turned yellow or that my fingernails and toenails had suddenly become claws.”
“But no one ever did?” Mack asked.
Gabriella shook her head. “Trisha said something about my yellow eyes in practice one day, but I told her it must’ve been a trick of the sun. Thank goodness Ms. Therian and my aunt were able to teach me how to control my transformations.”
“Before I learned how to control my powers, I was sending electrical sparks all over the place. I high-fived a kid in the hall once, and his hair floated up from all the static electricity,” Darren said.
Mack cracked up. “The same thing happened to Fiona on the first day of school!”
“No way,” Darren said.
Fiona took another swig of her soda and nodded. “It’s true! You bumped into me on your way to homeroom, then this jerk”—Fiona nudged Mack—“made a terrible pun about my hair.”
Gabriella smiled widely. “I need to hear this.”
Mack stopped midbite. “I told her the experience was hair-raising.” At that, the room burst into laughter.
Mack looked around at everyone’s smiling faces. How could he ever think that they weren’t his friends? They had never let him down before, and tonight, they’d risked their lives to find a way to save him. Gabriella was right. He wouldn’t give up hope.
“Do you remember battling Auden Ironbound on the beach?” Gabriella asked Mack as the room grew quiet again. “You were so brave. The rest of us could only do our best to break the army’s focus, but you battled Auden Ironbound one-on-one. And you beat him,” she added.
Mack smiled. “I earned my second tail that day. I couldn’t have done it without all of you. We were a great team,” he said.
“We are a great team,” Darren corrected him.
By the time everyone left, Mack was feeling less alone and less hopeless. He climbed into bed, ready to call it a day.
Jiichan came in to say good night.
“I feel a lot calmer than I did before,” Mack said. “Being with my friends helped.”
“Hold on to that light, Makoto,” his grandfather said. “The warmth you feel from your friends can carry you through any trial. The four of you share a very special bond. Remember that. Nothing can break it.”
As Jiichan turned off the light and closed his door, Mack stared into the darkness, hoping his grandfather was right.
Mack woke up the next morning feeling tired. He’d had bad dreams, but he couldn’t quite remember what they were about. He knew he was fighting something, and that the fight left him exhausted, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t fall back to sleep.
Worse still, he was struggling again to hold on to the happy memories of his friends. He’d felt so sure of their bond just the evening before, but at some point in the night, he’d lost some of that confidence.
When he came out to the kitchen, Mack found a note from Jiichan saying that he’d gone to the store and would be back soon. With nothing else to do, Mack pulled on some jeans and a T-shirt and sat outside, alone on the doorstep, sketching in his notebook.
“Mack!” a familiar voice shouted from across the yard.
“Hey, Joel,” Mack said, reluctantly setting his notebook aside. Joel had been Mack’s best friend since they were little—until this year, they’d had every class together since kindergarten. Before Mack found out he was a Changer, he’d shared everything with Joel, including a love of comic books and superheroes. “What are you doing here?”
“I’ve been meaning to give these to you, but I keep forgetting them,” Joel said, digging around in his backpack. He finally produced what he was looking for: a set of Agent Underworld comics in Spanish.
Mack’s attitude soured instantly. That’s right. While I was busy getting my brain sucked out by the Shadow Fox, you were touring Spain with your parents.
“Dude?” Joel asked, his hand still extended with the comics.
Mack accepted them and set them on top of his notebook, trying to rein in his anger. Stop it, came a small voice inside him. Joel is your friend. He brought you these because he cares about you.
“So . . . how was the park trip?” Joel asked, settling in beside Mack on the step. “Did you bring me back a souvenir, maybe that pinecone I asked for?”
Any attempt Mack had at control evaporated in an instant.
He looked at his friend with new eyes as something deep inside himself seemed to take over.
Is he seriously making fun of me because he went on a cool spring break trip and I didn’t? He doesn’t even know how many times I’ve saved his life—saved everyone’s life in this stupid town. He’s weak. Pathetic. Ungrateful. I could swat him aside like a fly right now if I wanted to.
Mack abruptly picked up the comic books and threw them in the mud. Then he grabbed his notebook, turned, and went inside, slamming the door behind him. As Mack walked hurriedly away toward his bedroom, he heard Joel’s frantic shouting outside.
“Mack, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to make you mad. I was just joking!”
Mack stopped in his tracks. The small voice came to him again, This isn’t you. This is Sakura.
Mack fought with himself for several minutes, but he couldn’t seem to move. It was as though the part of him that wanted to apologize to Joel was fighting the part of him that wanted to sulk in his room. Finally, he got ahold of himself, darted back to the door, and pulled it open wide.
“Joel, I’m sor—”
But the doorstep was empty. Joel had gone.
Mack was blinded by rage. He slammed the door and knocked one of his grandfather’s prized bonsai to the floor. Its porcelain pot shattered on the hardwood floor, reminding him suddenly of the magatama.
Attempting to regain control of his anger, Mack tried to do what his grandfather told him and focus on the light he felt inside when he was with his friends. But his mind kept drifting back to the loneliness he felt. And then he thought about how scared—scared of him—everyone had been when the magatama shattered. How scared Joel had looked when Mack flung his comic books into the mud.
Mack felt the anger and fear starting to taint his happy memories. One by one, they turned to ash.
Where was Joel or Gabriella or Darren or Fiona when I confronted Sakura? They let me go after her on my own. They weren’t there for me when I needed them. They don’t really care about me.
His grandfather had warned him against thinking about Sakura, but Mack couldn’t help it. His mind drifted back to the forbidden tower at Wyndemere Academy, as if it were a scab he couldn’t stop picking at.
