by Jade Alters
“Oh, I see,” I say. I give him a little half smirk and tease. “Would that bother you?” He snorts and motions to my tray.
“Not if you slide me one of those shrimp balls.” Alright, I internalize, so not prejudiced. Just trying to pick up a date. He’s a fine looking guy, and maybe he did mean well warning me, but I hardly need anyone else looking out for me.
“And what was your name?” I ask.
“Roran,” the boy says. I pick up a shrimp ball with a napkin and toss it his way.
“Thanks for the warning, Roran,” I say, and go back to scoping out. Or I would have, if River didn’t clink her glass with a crystal spoon. I check my watch. Damn, that came up fast. For all the stress that tightens my chest, she must feel double.
I put my tray down on a cart beside hers and slip into a seat close to her end of the table. Guests from all over the room disband their little circles to do the same. One body after the next lines up on the long benches that flank the white wood table in the center of the Longhouse. Bodies that represent the power of the banners hung from every window. All of them gathered and sat, to listen to someone from the host family speak. This year, that happens to be my roommate.
“He-hello everyone.” River manages to rein in the shakiness of her voice. Her arms hang at her sides, unsure what to do with themselves. I grit my teeth and hope she can keep them from changing into something else. When she glances at me from the corner of her eye, however, I’m sure to have a smile on. I see a little confidence swell in her just before she continues. “This…Dinner is all about gratitude and kinship. Our tribe has been fortunate enough to share these bonds with the communities here, Witches and Warlocks… Magicians…for hundreds of years. The first order of gratitude to mention today is that we could all come together to break bread again.” With each word that magically makes it out from between her lips, River smirks a little more. She feels a little better, and she does better.
“I’m also grateful to have my good friend, Cece, here with me from the Academy as a guest,” River grins over at me. I never thought two words could have so much power over me. Good friend. I never thought she’d say that. Not to me. Certainly not to a gathering of the Academy’s most powerful families. “In this time of strife and generalizations…it’s important we hold onto our connections. The bonds we have, not just between groups, but one another. We musn’t…” River trails off when she overhears the slightest whisper. I’m a little closer to the whisperer, so I hear him more clearly. I can’t believe the words that leave Roran’s lips.
“Not that misforms have business bringing guests,” he says to his older companion, who nods in agreement. I don’t need to have the word written out for me to understand it. Not when Roran spits it out with such hate. Misform. With everything River goes through, she somehow finds the courage to get up and speak, and this motherfucker… I can barely stand to look back at her. River’s skin has lightened two shades. Her shoulders slump under the heavy force of the word. Everything good rising from within her collapsed right back on itself.
“We musn’t…” River tries to start again. Her face glides up and down the bench to the faces of peers and friends. She knows as well as I do that all of them heard it. Yet none of them breaks face. None of them says a thing. Her eyes jump to her future Chief, to see if even he wouldn’t dare come to her aid. Rock sits upright, hands tight on his armrests, but says nothing. “We musn’t give into fear,” River sighs. Her chair slides out behind her. “Enjoy and be thankful. Excuse me.” I can’t bear to watch her take even a single step in flight. There is someone who would dare in the room, even if she shouldn’t.
“You’re not going to say anything?” I call down the table to Rock. He stares at me as if I’m speaking an alien language. From the corner of my eye, I see Jehan and Serah tense up. I’m not sure if it’s fortunate or unfortunate, just now, that disappointing parents seems to be one of my strongest suits. “Then I will.” I lean over the table to lock eyes with Roran. “You’re disgusting.”
“Excuse me?” he rebuts.
“I’m sorry, not used to people looking you in the face when they insult you?” I ask. “Can’t sit through one nice speech about unity and thankfulness without saying something so hateful? You disgust me.”
“You shouldn’t even be here!” Roran laughs at me. All I can picture now is his screaming head, hair replaced with fire.
“That’s enough, both of you,” Rock finally pipes up.
“Leave it be, Cece,” River pleads under her breath. She hangs halfway between the table and the door to the Longhouse. I bite my tongue, both figuratively and literally, but Roran seems capable of no such feat.
“It’s not enough. You should never have allowed the misform to host the Dinner! Let alone bring a Dragon as a guest!” Roran shouts. A good helping of the anger churning inside me now is actually at myself, for not seeing the rotten core beneath his candy coating. Rock opens his mouth for a roar, but Roran’s older counterpart speaks up first.
“There’s no need, Rock. We’ll be taking our leave,” the woman says. The scrape of her chair on the floor is a harsh note in the uncomfortable quiet that’s befallen the room. She leads Roran down the length of the table, to the Longhouse door. This path takes them directly past River. I’ve never seen her fists balled up so tight. Roran just can’t help himself. His back to the mystified table, he murmurs:
“We should never have tried to share a table with misforms and Dragons.”
I’ve never heard a scream quite like the one River unleashes. Everything she’s ever hated in her life shrinks behind Roran’s back. Now it’s all him. Her scream turns to a guttural roar as the joints in her legs snap out against her will. River falls over on all fours and ruffles a lush mane of lion’s fur. Her fanged throat unleashes a cry for blood that terrifies even the most powerful of the Academy’s families. Each of them scramble out of their benches, unsure what to do with themselves.
“See? Misforms are dangerous! She can’t control it! We all know this, yet we continue to let her live in our village!” Roran whines. I jump up and dash to his side, just feet ahead of River’s stomping claws. I shove him through the door.
“Would you get the fuck out of here? You’ve done enough!” I scream at him. When Roran tries to yell something back, I silence him with a plume of hot smog from deep in my throat. He and his companion stumble away, coughing. I wheel around to face River. Her claws scrape deep trenches in the wood floor with each pace she takes toward the door. Toward me. I haven’t seen her like this in years. “River, please. Don’t let them do this to you.” River snarls. “Not over that guy. You’re worth a hundred of him!” I try.
But River leaps. What she intended to do, I’ll never know. Her claws and teeth never near me. A huge, gray mass slammed into her from the side first. The outside of the rhino’s horn bashes River off her feet, into the wall, instead of goring her like I feared. River’s body collapses into a smaller form. I trace the little furry bolt of lightning, a ferret, as it scurries under the table. The rhino turns back into Rock.
“Get outside! This is Ahwahneechee Tribe business now. It’s my duty to make sure she doesn’t hurt anyone!” Rock declares.
“Maybe if you treated her like a person, not a duty, she’d calm down!” I shout back. If Rock hears me, he has no regard for what I have to say.
Plates bump off the side of the table as River shifts beneath it. A second later, a gold-furred wolf races out, straight for Rock. He crouches down to shift into a gigantic tortoise. His shell endures several bites before River cuts around him and heads for the door. She’s stopped only by the grasp of her tail by a long orangutan arm. Rock, in simian form, hurls her back into the longhouse. River digs in her canine heels to catch her footing. She and Rock shift at the same time. The future Chief of the Ahwahneechee Tribe becomes a jet-black jaguar, ready to outmaneuver any shape River could possibly take. Any shape but one. Rock reverts to his human form in terror and trembles right alongside
me when River’s contortions cease, and she’s become something new.
“What…” Rock murmurs to himself.
“I… I didn’t know you could copy that…” I gasp, breathless.
“Neither did I,” Rock admits.” Run.” He turns and flees the Longhouse along with a flood of other bodies, but I’m frozen in place. Besides, it’s not like she can hurt me. I’m looking at something like a mirror image of myself. My real self. River spreads a small pair of canvas wings around a scaly, teal body. She’s turned herself into a Dragon.
Before I can think to say a word, she turns her head and unleashes a column of fire up the wall. In such a small space for her draconic body, the roar of it is deafening. I cover my ears and run to the other side of the room. River draws an infernal arc up the side of the Longhouse and across the roof. When she runs out of breath, she spins around to slap her muscular tail right through the white wood table. She reaches up to tear down banner after banner of powerful Academy houses. The last stragglers hop over fallen chunks of scalded lumber and shoulder through veils of fire to get to the door around me. Everyone but Jehan and Serah.
“River!” Serah screams up at the teal-scaled beast.
“River!” Jehan roars up beside her. But River only spins and coughs more napalm on everything she can. When River finally does seem to notice her parents, it’s with a hungry rage in her eyes. She opens her throat, dancing alive with flame. Jehan wraps Serah in his arms, but neither of them flee. But if this is what it takes to save their daughter, she won’t survive it.
Instinct propels me to act before logic has any sort of chance to catch up. I need to get through to her. I’ll climb inside her damn head myself if I have to. I can’t let her do this. I step in front of Jehan and Serah.
“STOP!” I scream. I put an arm up to River’s smoking snout. Through my cringe, waiting for the agony of my rash mistake, I catch a glimpse of something I can’t explain. For just a second, River’s draconic eyes glaze over with bright blue light. Then she falls in a heap on what’s left of the table.
“River!” her parents scream as one as a cloud of embers and smoke billows up around her. I dive into the wreckage, only to find her human body dimpling the debris, out cold. I just told her to stop…but I don’t need to understand what happened right now. I need to get River and get out.
I scoop her up in my arms and trot out of the Longhouse just ahead of Serah and Jehan. The vaulted ceilings and all of the Academy’s proud banners collapse into a flaming mound behind us.
Bart,
The Kyrie Stronghold, Meeting Chamber
We’ve hardly had meetings like this since Dorian pulled us together and called us the Kyrie. I still call us a bunch of tangled ulterior motives, but there are some important things that all of our successes hinge on. Were there not, I would never have called this meeting. I sit beside Lucidous on one side, Dorian on the other, and across from Fey Rorelia and Horace Dalshak.
“I think the ASTF is on to me,” I tell the group. “Thise had one of the others tail me around the other day. He saw me do nothing all day. It won’t be long until they put it all together.”
“My son. I thought I sensed the little weasel somewhere in the mountains,” Horace sighs.
“What timing…” Dorian grumbles, “I’ve sensed some of Cece’s latent abilities awakening through the Soul of Fire lately, too. The Academy won’t tolerate it, if they find out.”
“So we need to act fast,” says Fey Rorelia.
“We need to act now,” I amend. Then I turn my eyes on Dorian. “I’ve been working her over as best I can… Is she ready?” The look on Dorian’s face would be more appropriate at a funeral than a meeting so close to achieving all our goals. Yet, he says:
“Yes… Next time I see her, I will tell her…all about her mother.”
The Other Side
Cece,
Ahwahneechee Village
River just barely stirs, under my arm. She’s hardly twitched since we fled the Longhouse. Jehan rushes ahead of us to throw the doors to their teepee open while Serah helps me lug their daughter inside. We let her down on the couch while Jehan draws the cloth of the shelter closed. The second River’s out of my hands, I haven’t the slightest idea what to do with them. I can’t believe what I’ve just seen. Even amongst the Ahwahneechee tribe, divisions run deep.
I wonder if things might have gone differently had I just kept my mouth shut. Would River have come back into the Longhouse eventually, hurt, but none the worse for wear? I wonder if anyone was seriously hurt in the fire, not that they didn’t probably deserve it. I wonder how in the hell I managed to stop River, when she was so enraged. It completely escapes me that I’m frozen in the doorway while Jehan and Serah race around the teepee. River’s duffel is splayed open on the floor while they pile food, clothes, notebooks and other supplies into it.
“I…” I almost gag on any attempt to form a sentence. I don’t know that my throat has ever been so dry. The words catch like pebbles in a sandpaper tube.
“It’s probably best that we get you girls back to the Academy,” Serah says while she packs an extra hairbrush in River’s bag.
“You’ll both be safer there under the protection of the Council than you will here. The Chief will want to run a trial, and every powerful Shifter family will back him. If he has to go through the other Councilmembers, though…” I haven’t the slightest idea what’s about to fall out of my mouth when it pops open on its own.
“I-I’m sorry,” I blurt. Before I know it, two hot beads streak down over my cheeks. For all my training, all my practice and discipline, I still managed to bring the Longhouse down in flames. Even if it wasn’t directly me…the fire follows me. “I’m so sorry.” My sniffles are broken before they can begin by the hard clap of Jehan’s hand on my shoulder.
“Don’t apologize to me for defending my daughter,” he tells me. I look up into the same fierce eyes he gave to River. “You did what the supposedly most powerful families of the Academy were too frightened to do. What even Serah and I were too frightened to do. You have nothing to apologize for.” Serah zips River’s bag and goes to her daughter. All of us tense at the sound of trotting footsteps outside the tent. There’s no more time for consolation.
“Get up, honey,” Serah murmurs to River, who stirs with a weak groan. I wince at the little slap it takes to get her fully awake. River shakes it off like a mosquito bite and leaps to her feet. I see confusion in the wildness of her darting eyes, right up until Serah slaps her duffel bag in her hands. When Jehan lifts the handles of mine into my fingers, I take it without thinking. “You need to go, honey. Back to the Academy.”
“Mom, dad, I-”
“There’s no time for that,” Jehan grumbles, “And no reason. Someone should have done what you two did years ago.” River clams up, eyes threatening to spill over. Tears are thrust to the very back of her concerns, however, when even heavier footsteps thump around the back of the teepee.
“Get to the Academy. Be safe, both of you,” says Serah. I’m more than surprised when she spreads her arms wide enough to pull in both River and me. She squeezes each of us in one strong arm. It’s so surprising, and so surprisingly comforting, that I actually let out a little gasp.
“Wait about ten seconds after us,” Jehan says as Serah unclamps from around us. Before River or I can ask, he and Serah throw open the flaps of the teepee. They explode into a sprint across the lay-path common ground of the Ahwahneechee Village.
“This way!” Serah screams in a cloaked, gravely voice no one could mistake for hers. The stomps of her and Jehan’s feet are so convincingly firm and fast that a small crowd gathers at their backs. As two of the swiftest runners in the village, they lead a crowd of voracious prosecutors out into the night.
One… Two… River and I count in silence. The whole time, we grip the handles of our bags tight. We hold onto the outsides of one another’s arms. At ten, we break. The rest of the night passes in those tense ten-second gri
nds. From the teepee to the edge of the village. From the Ahwahneechee Village to Yosemite’s camper-friendly imitation. From Yosemite Village up the stairs in the cliffside. The two of us can’t leap into the Tether Teleporter fast enough.
Cece,
The Broken Academy, The Dragonlord’s Office
River and I stumble out of the Tether Teleporter headfirst, into the Adjustment Lounge. We don’t waste time on conventions like hyperventilating or vomiting, like we once would have after traveling by light-wave. We feel like doing both now, for very different reasons, but we run instead. Even inside the walls of the Academy, we still feel like a rogue Shifter might blindside us at any second. We clear the length of the Lounge in seconds and burst through the door.
In the process, we almost barrel someone over. The body jumps back, then zips around the door toward us. I drop my bag to put up two fists in defense, only to find concerned hands around my wrists.
“Cece, River!” Bart gasps. “What are you doing back?”
“I burnt down the Thanksgiving Dinner,” River admits, numb. Bart’s eyes light up with a rare flash of surprise.
“Yo-you did what?” he stammers. Panic is an odd key to hear his voice in.
“What about you?” I break in. “You’re out after hours, in a rush. What’s happening?”
“Thise called an emergency meeting,” Bart tells us. River and I barely need glance at one another to come to a silent agreement.
“Her office?” I ask, and take my first step in its direction.
“Ye-yes, but…given what you two just told me-”
“Whatever’s happening, tensions from the Ahwahneechee Dinner are going to make tensions between the Council worse. Thise should know about it right away,” I tell him.
“We’re going,” River stops Bart short of getting even one more word out. He sighs and joins in the procession through the lantern-lit halls.
