by Melle Amade
17
Dad, Zan, Aiden, and Callum have all left the fire pit, but I can’t move. It’s just me and Roman sitting here in the dark under the stars. He’s got that superpower of knowing when I don’t want to be alone, but can’t handle a lot of people.
“How does that even happen?” My voice chokes from a waft of smoke that blows in my face. I squeeze my eyes shut to stop the sting.
“How does what happen?” His voice is soft.
“The Order,” I say. “How does a hateful, fascist regime rise like that?”
“They aren’t fascists,” Roman says.
“They make all the rules,” I say.
“It’s not a dictatorship,” Roman says. “We have a democracy.”
“So, you guys voted to kill my family?” I throw him a look of disgust, even though I know it’s not him. “The Van Arends? Did they do this?”
Roman shakes his head. “They are like the royal family of our region. They have power from centuries of wealth building, and in the early days, they drew together shifters. I think Van Arends were like the first two or three Grand Masters.”
“Grand Masters?” I ask.
“Grand Masters of the Order.” Roman nods. “That’s El Oso’s title.”
“So, the Van Arends established the Order?” I ask.
“They lead the establishment of it,” Roman says. “But today, they’re more like the British royal family. They have a lot of respect, but not a lot of power. There was a time when the Van Arends only had interest for themselves and those who swore fealty to them.”
“The Ravensgaard.”
“And others.”
“Frogs.” I smile.
“Agalychniscallidryas.” Roman throws me a sideways smile. “But for all their charisma and money, it was thought by many, especially the smaller groups of shifters, that the Van Arends and the Order were not concerned with the well-being and protection of shifters everywhere.”
“They’re not protecting shifters everywhere,” I say. “They killed my family.”
“Yes,” Roman says. “But the Order rose as a coalition of the marginalized people led by the Berzerken, Gautrek Fyrissen. He led the coalition during the Battle of Muiderslot against the then Grand Master of the Order, Lord Karel van Arend. They won and took away the political power of the Van Arends.”
“But let them keep their wealth.” I frown.
“It was unusual, but the battle wasn’t a decisive victory. The coalition barely won against the Van Arends. Gautrek knew he needed to keep some of the establishment to maintain popularity, so he established the Van Arends as some sort of known figurehead and drew up agreements that the Van Arend wealth would bankroll the Order.”
“The Van Arends pay for everything?” I say.
Roman nods. “Every last dime.”
“But…”
“Yeah.”
“That means the shifters who assassinated my family… Their money…pay…travel… All of it,” I murmur, “would have come from the Van Arend coffers.”
“It’s not that simple,” Roman says. “There is a trust set up, the Van Arend money goes into it, and the Order lives off the trust.”
“It sounds that simple to me,” I say in disgust.
“Look at it from the Van Arends’ point of view,” Roman says. “They got to keep their wealth and their family.”
“By supporting the death of my people and my family,” I say.
“I’m not supporting the actions,” Roman says. “I’m just trying to give you some perspective. You wanted to know how it happened, and I’m telling you. If you don’t want to listen, I’ll shut up.”
I don’t know that I do want to hear more. But… “If I’m a part of this world, I need to know,” I say.
“The new Order, with Gautrek in charge, looked for ways to serve the shifter world, to unite them and control our natural tendency towards brutality and destruction.”
“No,” I say. “You’re a shifter. Zan’s a shifter. You’re not brutal and destructive.”
“We’re modern.” Roman shrugs. “This was in the 1600s. Life was more brutal back then.”
“Back then?” I say. “My family was executed!”
“I know.” Roman stretches his hand towards me.
I whip it out of his reach. “No, you don’t! I’m one of the last of my kind!”
“Yes,” Roman says. “And if you give in to the hate and the fear…you’ll turn into something like the Order.”
“Never,” I say.
“You don’t know that,” Roman says.
“I do.” I stand up, the world sagging on my shoulders. “Look. I–I think I just need to get some sleep.”
Roman gets the hint, but I’m not quite sure he buys my excuse to be alone. “Okay,” he says. “If you need me, though, I’m here.”
“I know.” I give him a big hug.
The gate slams shut behind Roman. As I turn back to the fire, I see a flicker of the curtain in the upstairs bedroom and a halo of blond light silhouetting dad’s bulky frame. I take a deep breath and collapse into the rickety camp chair, my breath escaping into the night.
He’s the last dove.
My skin itches. But it’s on the inside. Something deep, gnawing, and uncomfortable moving everywhere under my skin.
We are the last doves.
Except I’m not a dove anymore. I gave it up. I can’t shift into Dad’s species.
What have I done?
The fire is almost gone with just a couple of glowing coals surrounded by blackened ash. If I look closely at them, the embers pulsate as if alive. I rub my cold fingers up and down my arms, trying to quell the anxiousness.
I don’t want to do what everybody is expecting me to. I don’t want to stand in front of the Order, turn into a raven, and never have the option to turn into a dove again.
The camp chair tips over in slow motion as I rise and stretch for the kindling next to the fire pit. I don’t want it to die. I throw a piece of wood on top of the kindling and stab it with the poker until sparks fly. My breath blows cold onto the embers until the kindling catches fire. I kneel quietly in the dirt, gazing at the flames, so tame contained here, but devastating as they raced across the Australian outback and removed the traces of my murdered family. My grandmother. My grandfather. It almost got my father.
But he survived.
He struggled and rejected the shifter world, but… he lived. He made it possible for me to be born. Now I’ve given all that up by binding myself to being just a raven. I have separated myself from my father and Henry, who might just be a nuvervel or a dove also. My knees grind into the dirt as the flames burn into my eyes.
“I don’t want that,” I murmur.
“You don’t want what?” Dad’s voice startles me from the porch.
I can’t tell him what I’m thinking. I think. I don’t know. I sag my head in defeat. There’s no one else to talk to. “Are we the last two doves?”
“We are the only two I know,” Dad says.
The steps creak as he steps off the porch, treading lightly across the yard. He straightens up the chair I knocked over and settles into it. Usually he’d poke me, grab my hand, tickle me, or do something, but not this time. He takes out his Bowie knife and grabs a piece of kindling to whittle on. Our gazes connect above the glowing in the flames.
“I want to be a dove.” My voice croaks and my fingernails dig into the palm of my hand so hard the skin breaks.
Dad’s face is motionless in the shadows, his lips compressed in a thin line.
Cramps shoot through my folded legs, but I don’t move. “I want to be a dove more than I want anything in the world,” I say. “I don’t want you to be the last one.”
He slowly scratches the side of his neck. “You made your choice, Shae. And it’s the right one. Being a dove in this world… It’s not such a good idea. It’s a death sentence.”
“I know,” I say. “But I just think about your mom and dad, my grandparents, and
I don’t know how I’m just supposed to give up who I am on the inside.”
“It’s safer—”
“I know what is safer, Dad,” I say. “But—but I don’t know how you pick one thing or the other.”
“Don’t you want to be a Ravensgaard?” Dad asks.
“Yes, of course I want to be a Ravensgaard. I love their strength and comradery. They defend Lord Van Arend and Aiden. They’re like a family who work as a team, all for the same goal and yes, I want that. But I don’t want to give up me.”
“You can’t give up what’s inside of you,” Dad says. “And you can’t change your choice.” He stares hard at the piece of wood, the Bowie knife whittling faster and harder.
“I don’t believe you,” I whisper.
The knife slams down on the wood, slipping and slicing into his finger. “Crap!” he exclaims dropping the wood and lifting the wound to his mouth. It’s like something Vasquez, the mountain lion would do.
“You said the ancestors called themselves into existence.”
“That was in the Dreamtime.” Dad still won’t meet my gaze.
“It’s the ceremony the old Aborigine used to make you a shifter, Dad,” I say. “I can feel it. Why else would they keep that story for thousands and thousands of years?”
“How did you get so smart?” Dad finally meets my gaze.
“If you can do that same ceremony on me, I will be both,” I say. “I am raven. I am dove. I want to be both.”
“You have a binding spell on you,” Dad frowns. He’s caving.
“I can control my shifting,” I say.
“Between the raven and the dove?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“It can’t just be that you think you can,” Dad says. “You have to really be able to. Tell me, can you do it?”
I close my eyes and feel the ice, always there, ready for me to reach out and pull it closer, the rage that brings on the raven. But there is also the golden glow of the dove that warms me with its tingling energy.
“Yes,” I say softly. “I can control it.”
Dad holds my gaze for so long, I think he’s never going to speak. Silence blankets us, impenetrably thick, but full of my future.
“There’s a way.”
In all my life, I have never heard Dad whisper. Now, it’s almost as if he doesn’t want to say the words, but for some reason he must.
“There is a way to keep both, but—”
I lean forward to hear him; the heat of the fire stings my face. “The Dreamtime,” I murmur. “Even Zaragoza didn’t know how to do that.”
“Zaragoza was a master,” Dad says, “But there are millenniums of magic he was never exposed to.”
“Please, Dad,” I say. “Help me be both.”
I clamp my teeth down until my tongue stings in pain as I wait for his answer. I don’t want to lose any part of me.
Ever.
“Wait here,” he says.
He’s back in a moment carrying the cross-stitch of Noah’s Ark.
“Not sure I need the story of the ark anymore, Dad.”
He just smiles, silently turning the frame over.
“But, wait.” It doesn’t make sense. “How did you get that cross-stitch?” I ask. “You left with nothing, wandering around the desert, what? Carrying a cross-stitch your mom made?”
“Can’t get anything past you,” Dad laughs. “But, don’t forget that the fire destroyed everything my family owned.”
“Was it all just bullshit?” I ask. My hope crumbles.
“Indeed not,” Dad glances at me sideways. “Clifford saved this cross-stitch. He knew the Order was coming and went to warn my parents. But they said there was nowhere to run to, they had no place to go. Because I was still out there, they figured I’d be safe, so they decided to stay. They rolled this up and gave it to Clifford, told him to take it to one of those places that only the aborigines know of. They knew it was the one place the Order would never find.”
“So, how’d you get it?” I ask.
“Years later it came in the mail. Clifford had died and this was one of the few things he still had. He made sure it was gotten from wherever he’d hid it. Had some connections that old man. A lawyer tracked me down and gave it to me as part of his last estate.” His voice trails off into a melancholy smile.
“What’s so important about the cross-stitch?” I ask.
Dad smiles and takes out his pocket knife. He presses the blade against the brown paper that protects the back of the small, framed tapestry. In seconds he’s sliced all the paper off the back. I lean in, trying to make out what’s been hidden. The thick frame is hollow. There’s space between the front and the back and it’s lined with a collection of small glass vials.
“Are those…” I don’t even know what to call them.
“Magic.” Dad runs the tip of his knife along the vials, peering in the dim firelight. “Gotcha!” He pries out a glass tube and holds it up, gleaming in the firelight. Symbols are scrawled across the tiny label.
“What does that say?” I ask.
“Birthing,” Dad says. “It’s for the birthing.”
“Was he a shifter? The old man?” I ask.
“Clifford? I’m not sure,” Dad says. “I guess there are some shifters in there, but I never saw Clifford shift and I never met any of his people. We were pretty isolated out there.”
“Do you know how to do it?” I nod at vial.
“There should be instructions in it.” He tries to pry a small cork out of it, but his large fingers fumble with the delicate vial. When he starts to bring it to his mouth I intervene.
“I’ll get it.” I press my fingers into talons and dig them into the edge of the cork.
“How’d you do that?” Dad asks.
I shrug as I tug the cork out of the vial. “Don’t know. I think it’s a Nuverling thing.”
“It’s pretty cool,” he says.
The herbs inside the vial smell of stale oregano and there’s a small rolled up piece of paper inside. I dig it out with my talon. Dad takes both the paper and the vial out of my hand. “This is it,” he says.
“Do you even know what to do?” I ask.
Dad shrugs as he glances at the paper that has scrawl all over it. “How hard can it be?” He smiles with false bravado.
I suck in a bit of air. There’s only one way forward and that’s to do it. I roll up my sleeve. “Where do you want the blood from?”
He taps the vial. “Not now. It’s sunrise magic. We have to be at the top of the canyon at sunrise. Then you’ll call yourself into being. Just like the ancestors of the Dreamtime.”
18
There’s a distinct chill in the October air when Dad wakes me up. I stumble sleepily into the dark yard towards the truck, but Dad tugs at my elbow.
“Can’t take it. Too noisy.”
Instead, Dad hands me a headlamp. He doesn’t switch his on until we’re safely around the side of the house. I follow his bobbing light as he moves along the creek path.
I’m used to the hike to the top of the canyon. It’s the way to the Sanctuary and Aiden’s house. But Dad turns off the path when we get to Make-Out Rock. That’s what I’ve started calling the place where Callum and I first kissed. I wish he was here. I want him to be a part of this, even though he wouldn’t approve.
Dad heads past the Cross Trails and onto a little used path, which leads to the Topanga State Park.
We walk in the dark, listening to the birds sing to wake the sun and call the dawn forward. Our heads are down, and Dad has set a pretty slow pace. I’m not sure why since I know he’s fit enough to run up this hill. Normally, I’d struggle to keep up with him. But this morning, I just plod along behind him. It helps me stay calm. I know I’m about to change the binding spell that Zaragoza did. I’m going to mess with the safety of what we’ve already done. My palms are clammy, but nervousness won’t stop me.
When we get to the top, there’s a faint brushstroke of orange on the blue-black
of the horizon, and a sliver of the moon is still high in the sky. Dad takes me to a place with diagonal rock outcroppings shooting from the earth. The rocks jut up in three clusters that form a private enclave, open to the east. The perfect place to be sheltered and watch the rising sun. Even in the dusky morning light, the place is crisp and clear. It’s completely at odds with the thrumming of my heart that fears opening myself to the dove, the power of the nuvervel that could tear me apart. This ceremony will remove the protection that Zaragoza put in place. It will expose me to risk with the Order. But I don’t care. They cannot control me.
“If this were Australia,” Dad says, “they’d know this is a dreaming spot. But no one here understands the songlines of the Dreamtime. They’ve forgotten.” He puts some sticks he’s gathered in a pile at the center of the enclave.
“What are you doing” I ask. “Aren’t we on public land?” The fire a couple of weeks ago that burnt Topanga down still freaks me out. The last thing I want to see is another fire being built on the canyon.
“It’s okay, Shae,” Dad says. “There’s no scrub around here, and we’ll only have it going for a few minutes. But yeah, we need the fire. You’ve got to just focus on being peaceful.”
I rub my sweaty hands on my jeans. The public thinks I’m a raven. My friends and family know I’m a raven. But right now, I’m changing that. I’m doing the exact opposite of that. I want to keep all of me. I don’t want to be one thing or the other. I want to be all of it.
“This will overcome the binding spell?” My voice trembles in the air. We fought so hard to get the binding spell. If this messes it up, if this unbalances me, it could kill me. Doing the binding spell was the last thing Zaragoza did before he died. Dad’s not even an experienced magician of any kind. If this messes me up, there’s no one around to make it right again.
Dad doesn’t look up from the small flames he’s nurturing. “This is older, more powerful magic. It should make it easier for you to shift between the two.”
Without dying? I wonder. But I don’t say the words out loud.
“It might make your raven side a little more dominant and extroverted.”
“I just want the dove back,” I murmur.
“It’s best if you don’t show your friends that you can be a dove after this ceremony, Shae. Just let them think all that is behind you.”
