by Melle Amade
“The most important thing is that you’re there and take the oath of fealty. It’s a real thing out there and these guys fight has a unit. If you don’t show up, they’re going to wonder where your loyalties lie and why a local raven didn’t swear to the Ridder. If we’re going to pass you off as a Ravensgaard, you have to do everything they do.”
Pass you off… the words stumble into my ears. I’m not one of them. Not yet. And, while I still have this dove beating it’s wings inside of me, that’s not going to change. We arrived at the end of the driveway and I step into the bushes to pull out my bike.
“I’ll be there,” I nod.
“Good girl.” His smile flashes white in the sun. “I’ll have some Ravensgaard gear delivered to your house today. Wear that tomorrow.”
“Got it, boss.” My hand raises to my forehead in a mild salute, but he’s already turning back to the farmstead where his Ravensgaard are training.
I’m not sure how I’m going to get used to taking direct orders. I didn’t usually do so well with Mom. To take them from Callum doesn’t bode well. I aim the bike downhill and launch myself on to it.
5
It’s actually Aiden who delivers my gear. “Wasn’t expecting you to be Callum’s delivery boy,” I say when I open the front door.
“Callum’s delivery boy and Zan’s messenger boy and your driver,” he grins. “We need you up at the manor.”
I glance over my shoulder and ease out onto the porch, closing the door behind me. “I can’t,” I say. “Mom doesn’t want me going up there.”
“I know. That’s why I texted your dad.”
I frown as the front door opens and Dad’s standing there handing me a basket. “Thanks for taking these things up to Lord Van Arend for me,” Dad says loudly.
“I don’t want to go,” I hiss.
“Don’t worry about your mom,” Dad grins. “She’ll be right. It’s important you hang out with your friends. See ya!” He pats me on the shoulder as he calls out the last words, slips back into the house and shuts the door.
“What’s with him?” I peer in the basket; vegemite, pawpaw cream, timtams and eucalypt oil. It’s like the perfect Aussie get well package.
Aiden shrugs. “You know he’s always liked my dad.”
“I didn’t even know they knew each other,” I murmur.
“I don’t know. They talked a few times at school functions. Your dad used to come around the manor sometimes during the day I think and hang out with my dad.”
“What? Seriously?” I ask.
Aiden nods. “Yeah. Sometimes when my dad’s been bad, you know, drinking, well… that’s how I had your dad’s number when we were stuck up at the Sanctuary. He told me if I ever needed help to call him.”
I stare back at our house as we get in the car. “Why didn’t he ever tell me?”
Aiden shrugs. “I don’t know. Your dad has always seemed like that kind of guy. You know, the one who does the right thing but never talks about it.”
“I guess.”
It only takes us a few minutes to get up to the manor.
“Zan’s in the library with Zaragoza,” Aiden nods down a hallway as if I know where the library is. “I’m going to take this up to my dad.” He holds the basket up.
“You’re welcome to it,” I smile. “Dad’s been trying to make me eat vegemite for sixteen years.”
“Dad loves it,” Aiden smiles.
I turn down the hallway and think I’m about to get lost in the warren, but then I smell it. Dead boiled rabbit and cabbage. For days. It’s the same rank stank as Zaragoza’s burrow, but now it’s in the manor.
Since the Muiderkring gathering where Zaragoza tried to throw me under the bus as a martyr to the cause of diversity, he’s completely avoided me. While, that’s not altogether strange since he’s spent most of his life hiding from people, it still makes my palms clammy as I approach his newest lair. He makes me nervous. And, that’s kinda inconvenient as he’s the only shifter who can probably save me and he’s the only one outside of my five friends, who knows for sure I’m a Passief. He led my Bloedhart ceremony and clearly saw I turned into a dove.
I follow my nose to a humungous room lined with books from the floor to the soaring ceilings. It’s about half the size of the ballroom, but the books impress me more than any of the paintings in that room did. The only picture in here is the gloomy painting of Zaragoza’s wife in her pre-execution witch trial. It leans on a table against some books. He must have brought it up from his burrow. Ice sweeps through me as I glance at the painting. That could have been me. It almost was. Held up and pointed out, almost killed simply because I’m different.
That can’t happen again.
Zan and Zaragoza are huddled to the side standing over a table looking at a book. He’s left off his burlap smock that I’ve seen him in before and now he wears something that looks more like tan pajamas. Slippers clad his feet and they make a scuffing sound on the stone as he hobbles around the table towards me.
“So, you’ve moved into the big house,” I smile ignoring the strained wires running through my shoulders.
“He’s trying to find a cure for Lord Van Arend,” Zan says. “I asked him about that picture I found yesterday.”
My eyes dart to Zaragoza, but his black eyes peer at me with something I’ve never seen before; deep kindness.
“Zan told me you are unable to control the shift. Is there bleeding?” Zaragoza asks.
I nod.
He hands me two tins. “This will help that a bit. It should mute it. And here’s some extra for your mother.”
“Um, thanks.” I’m a little taken aback. He hasn’t always been the most helpful.
“See,” Zan says. “I told you he can help. He’s seen this before.”
“I said I’ve seen this before,” Zaragoza growls as his hand twists the clutch of sticks he carries. They have something to do with magic casting or telling the future, I don’t know. But, they make me nervous. “I didn’t say I could help.”
“Great,” I shrug towards Zan.
Zaragoza reaches out with his free hand and clutches my fingers in his. “Shae, I am going to try and help you.” It feels like cold bones hold my hand.
“When have you seen this before?” I ask.
“Years ago,” he says.
“Years ago as in the last hundred years or-”
“When I was a young, young man,” he shakes his head and shuffles back to the table of books. “A child was left at my doorstep… I kept her and named her Esmeralda, she was such a beautiful girl, inside and out. Her Bloedhart was one of the first I ever performed. We had no idea.”
“You’ve seen this before?” Ice shards of anger drive through me.
Zaragoza closes his eyes and nods, his face grim. “I have. His eyes are watery as they open and he stares straight at me. “I’m sorry. I should have told you, but you see, I don’t know how to solve the problem. I couldn’t help Esmeralda, and I can’t help you.”
Zan is standing there, mouth agape. This is obviously all news to her, too.
“What happened to her?” My voice is low. I’m not sure I want to hear the answer, but I know I need to.
Zaragoza’s eyes squint shut and he turns his back on me. His fingers move furiously, clicking the sticks together rapidly. I step cautiously towards the ancient badger, placing my hand on his shoulder. I’m suddenly struck by his longevity and what he’s been through in his life. Watching his wife die… probably seeing everyone he’s ever held dear die. No wonder he doesn’t want to get close to people.
“What happened to her? Esmeralda?” I whisper.
Zaragoza inhales deeply as he turns back to me, his eyes glisten, but he doesn’t shy away from my gaze. “She died,” he says. “I’m sorry, Shae.”
“How?”
“I don’t think-” Zan steps forward, but my eyes are locked with Zaragoza’s.
“Tell me how she died.”
“In screaming agony,” h
is head moves back and forth but his eyes never leave mine. “She lost control of the shifting and then cuts in her skin started to appear as she shifted. And then she couldn’t control which animal she shifted into, so she started mutating in between them.”
“This isn’t helping!” Zan’s voice cuts stridently across the room.
“How long did it take?” I churn the words out.
“She died six weeks after her sixteenth birthday,” Zaragoza’s chokes as he tells us.
“Two weeks,” I murmur. “For me, that’s in two weeks.”
“You – You were just going to let it happen,” Zan clutches the table as if it’s the only thing holding her together.
“There is nothing I can do,” Zaragoza is not defensive, he’s defeated.
“It’s not his job, Zan,” I say.
“There must be something,” Zan insists, slamming her hand against a book.
“I tried before,” Zaragoza says. “I looked up everything I could find.”
“We have to try again,” Zan insists.
Zaragoza sighs and looks thoughtfully at Zan. “I know how you feel, Zan,” he says. “I know exactly how you feel.”
“Then help us,” I say. “It’s already started; the uncontrollable shifting, the cuts. I’m already dying. I–I can’t give up without a fight. I can’t give up without us at least trying to find a cure or something. A lot has happened since your niece died. Maybe there’s something new. I mean, did you have access to the Van Arend library back then?”
Zaragoza chews on his lips for a moment, the sticks quiet in his hand, his eyes on the floor. We wait in silence, holding our breaths. Watching his eyes twitch as he processes our request. Finally, he looks up at me. “I was wrong to try to martyr you during your trial, Shae. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for so many things. I have tried to stay so far apart from the shifter world that I forgot what it’s like to be a part of something.”
“It’s okay,” I murmur, my eyes sting.
“I am afraid of failing at this.”
“Me, too,” I say.
“But I will help you. I will do everything I possibly can to help you find a cure, even though I don’t think that one exists.”
“Thank you,” I say and before I realize what I’m doing, I have my arms around the old badger and I’m hugging him close. He stands stiffly in my embrace for a moment and then, slowly, his arms wrap around me and he pats me awkwardly on the back.
“I will try,” he says.
Zan flips open the book we were looking at by the pool. She’s not about to waste time with niceties, but if I only have two weeks left to live I want each moment to be precious. “What does it say.” She plops the book in front of Zaragoza.
“The earliest recorded case of someone shifting into two different animals was 800 years ago,” Zaragoza sighs. “It’s always been considered unstable.” His clothes rustle as he swings his head to look at me.
“A shifter came to them,” Zaragoza says.
“Them?” Zan asks.
“I don’t know who wrote the book, but based on the text, the symbol represents more than one person,” Zaragoza explains. “It says the shifter couldn’t control what animal they shifted into. That there was something wrong with their body, with their…this word is hard to understand–they use lightening, but I think they mean electricity.”
“Something wrong with my electricity?” I ask.
“They probably mean nerves,” Zaragoza says. “They wouldn’t have had the understanding back then to understand nerves.”
“What year was this written?” I ask, because if they were trying to fix nerves in the Middle Ages, well that’s not going to be a good thing. It’s going to be worse than Frankenstein’s monster.
“1200,” says Zan.
“What? Did they hook the shifter up to a machine to wait for lightning to strike?”
Zaragoza’s fingers are trailing rapidly millimeters above the splotchy letters on the page as his dry lips mutter silently to himself. Finally, he looks up, his beady black eyes boring into me. “I think that’s exactly what they did,” he says.
“How did that work out?” My voice is as still as a stagnate pond.
Zaragoza turns the page. “The patient died,” he says.
“There’s a surprise.” I wrap my arms around my waist. What am I supposed to do with that? Something’s wrong with my nerves and we don’t have a way to fix it. They didn’t even know nuvervels existed until a couple of weeks ago and they can barely find any information on them.
“Does it offer any advice other than hooking her up to a lightening machine?” Zan asks. The tightness of her voice drags my gaze from my folded arms.
Zaragoza turns the pages, one at a time, his eyes scanning the text scrawled on each handwritten page. The wrinkles on his shriveled face deepen as his finger suddenly stops and he leans in to the book.
His voice is soft as he mutters something. So soft, even my sharpened shifter hearing can’t make out what he says. But Zan is hunched over right next to him and can hear the faint whisper of his words. Her quick intake of breath echoes against the walls of the library.
“What?” I ask. “What is it?”
Zan’s golden eyes bore into mine. “You can choose,” she says.
“It’s by not choosing that you die.” Awe permeates Zaragoza’s voice as he runs his finger over the pages again. “It says here, they discovered they needed a binding spell. The nuvervel needs to choose the animal you want to be and bind that animal to you, trapping the other inside so it never has the chance to come out.”
“What’s the spell?” I ask.
Zaragoza is flipping the pages, scanning and flipping again. Finally, he turns the page and the end of the book is blank. “It doesn’t say.”
“You must know a binding spell,” Zan says.
Zaragoza frowns and he slowly shakes his head. “No, but we have two weeks to find one, if we’re lucky.” Fine dust flies into the stale air as he slams the book shut.
“Where is she?” Callum’s voice carries into the library.
“Over there.” Aiden says. “She won’t talk to any of us.”
“I tried all my masterful charm,” Roman says, “so good luck.”
Callum sits down next to me, but I don’t look at him. His musky leather scent fills my head, but my gaze stays on the same blood red, cracked piece of stained glass that I’ve been staring at for the last hour since Zaragoza told me I’m going to die. The smell of boiled cabbage isn’t even bothering me anymore. Roman and Aiden have joined Zan in looking through the books in the Van Arend library. I know I should help them, but pains keep shooting up my arms, making me lose my grip on the books. I finally just sank into the couch and my friends let me.
“Come on,” Callum says. “We gotta get you home.”
Home. Mom and Dad. Henry. “They are going to freak out.”
“We’re not telling them anything,” Callum says. “Zan, what the hell did Zaragoza say?”
I look directly at Callum. “He said that nuvervels get ripped apart by the dual nature of the beasts inside them,” I say. “I’m paraphrasing, but that was the gist of it.”
“Does Zaragoza know what to do?” Callum asks as he stands up and pulls me to my feet. “Come on, Shae, you can’t stay here.”
I take a deep breath. I know he’s right, but that last hour just sitting and staring in that sofa, sinking into it and letting all my problems float away… that was so nice.
“He had to go help my dad,” Aiden says.
“But he says that he thinks there’s a binding spell, if we can find it,” Zan chimes in. “She just has to choose an animal, shift into it and then he’ll bind that one during the shift and the other one will be gone forever. Or, at least buried forever inside her.”
Roman says, “The only problem is, he doesn’t know what the spell is.”
“And the Order are showing up tomorrow and want to do the presentation the day after that,” Aiden adds.
>
“Okay,” Callum nods. “So, Zan, just help Zaragoza find that spell. Roman, you work with her to help her shift.”
“Was there something you wanted me to do, Callum?” Aiden snarks.
“Sorry,” Callum ducks his head. “I wasn’t -”
“Look,” Aiden says. “Just get her home and we’ll get everything organized for her to bind to the raven. And, yeah, Roman, you have to work with her on shifting.”
Roman’s head bobs back and forth between the two. “You guys okay? I mean, you realize we’re a team, right?”
Zan hugs me as I walk by, but at this stage, I just want to get out of here. My head is about to explode.
“I know you’re not okay,” Callum’s hand goes on my lower back as he ushers me down the hall. “But we will get there.”
“Even if we find the spell,” I say, “everyone’s assuming I’ll chose raven.”
Callum’s hand falls away. “Well…” His voice trails off. “It’s not an assumption. You have no choice.”
“What if I want one?” I don’t even know if I do. I just– I’m just so cramped up and scorched inside that I want to drive an argument.
He sighs and closes his eyes. When he opens them there’s a rawness about him that I haven’t seen in a while. Not since he kissed me in the woods that first night I found out shifters existed. That night I thought kissing him was so wrong.
But he doesn’t say anything until we get into his new black SUV and we’re driving out of the gates of the manor.
“When my father left, I lost him…” He starts slowly, his words lingering in the charged air. I hold my breath and wait. “And, my mother killed herself, I lost her. And, then my brother was murdered, and I lost him.”
My fear for myself is suddenly swept away. My fingers ache to reach out to Callum and touch his skin, comfort him somehow. But I just listen.
“People think that you lose a mother or a father or a brother and they think that when enough time passes, it’ll be okay. They say you’ll always have a part of that person inside you. That the person who’s gone will have made some difference to you and so that’s enough. That’s enough to carry you through and that basically, oh everything will be okay. But Shae when they died, I lost a piece of myself. I lost something that I can never get back. I lost futures and choices and things that will never happen because I don’t have them. They are gone. Everything is different now.”
