Stranger

by Sherwood Smith

  Practically everyone her age had already had at least one serious romantic relationship. Mia had been on one date in her entire life, and she hadn’t even kissed the guy. Worse, she hadn’t wanted to kiss him. What was wrong with her?

  Blood rushed to her face when she remembered her dad’s talk after her depressing night out with Carlos. She’d confessed that she’d only gone out with him because she didn’t want to turn eighteen without having ever had a date, and her dad had tried to make her feel better about being such a freak by telling her that some people never had any interest in romance, and that was “perfectly normal.”

  She kicked at a tumbleweed. Normal for freaks like me.

  She stomped onto the porch outside her father’s house, kicked off her shoes, and padded past the empty infirmary, toward the surgery. She nudged aside Spanner, Phillips, and Fluffy as she opened the door. The cats were banned from the surgery, but they were still convinced that if they waited by the door, someday someone would let them in.

  She stepped into clean surgery slippers as she closed the door behind her. Her father, his shy apprentice Becky Callahan, and Sheriff Crow bent over the unconscious boy on the examination table. They had taken off his leather jacket, exposing a tattered, blood-soaked shirt and a clumsily bandaged gash in his left arm that ran from elbow to wrist. Becky was nervously avoiding eye contact with the sheriff as she cut off the boy’s shirt with a pair of shears.

  Mia’s dad glanced up. “He’s lost a lot of blood. Mia, give me a hand with the ropethorn?”

  “Sure.”

  She followed him to the shelf of potted surgical plants. The ropethorn’s green tendrils lashed out when they sensed body heat, extending their thorns to pierce skin and drain blood. Mia picked up the implement she’d designed as a catch-and-shield, a giant spatula with a hole in it. She held it to the thrashing plant, blocking it, until a single tendril poked through the hole. Her father deftly grabbed it behind the thorn at its tip, pulled it taut, and snipped it off at the base.

  “Good catch,” Mia said. He often got stuck by the thorn, but he didn’t like to use tongs for fear of damaging the delicate tendrils.

  He handed it off to Mia, who held it stretched between her hands to keep it from whipping against her arm. Then he set out a basin of saline solution, wiped down the back of the boy’s right hand with alcohol, and nicked the vein with a scalpel. He taped the cut end of the ropethorn to the boy’s vein, and put the thorn end in the basin. Fooled by the warmth and salt content, the vine swelled as it began to suck the liquid from the bowl and transfer it into the boy.

  Mia’s dad gave Sheriff Crow a bemused look. “What happened to him? He looks like you picked him off a battlefield.”

  “All I know is that he said someone was chasing him. When I found him, he was already bleeding and sunstruck and trying to keep himself standing by hanging on to a vampire tree.” Sheriff Crow indicated the bloody bites that marred the boy’s upturned palm. “He had to be pretty far gone not to notice that the bark had mouths.”

  “That’s the desert for you,” Mia’s dad said, tightening the bandage he’d applied to the boy’s arm. “Once you’re injured and not thinking clearly, everything you do gets you in worse and worse trouble. Becky. Treatment for vampire tree bites?”

  Becky’s soft voice was confident here in the surgery, as it rarely was outside. “The sap prevents blood from clotting. Wash out the sap and apply yarrow leaves to stop the bleeding.”

  At his approving nod, she headed for the surgical plants. A ropethorn tendril grabbed a lock of blonde hair that had escaped from her hair net, and she jerked away.

  Mia remembered her promise to Brisa and Meredith, and examined the boy for the details she knew they’d be interested in. Because everyone knew Mia wouldn’t be interested. But that was perfectly normal.

  His face was turned aside, but faces were hard to describe anyway. He had overgrown wavy hair that was as black as the sheriff’s where it wasn’t matted with blood. His body was thin but muscular, his ribs and collarbone sharply etched, and he had a lot of scars for someone his age. Mia bet each one came with a thrilling story.

  Her father sponged at the drying blood on the boy’s side. “That’s odd. This is a gunshot wound. But this . . .” He indicated the bandaged gash in the boy’s arm.

  Sheriff Crow inspected it. “Looks like a defensive wound. Gun battle and knife fight?”

  “Maybe he fought one bandit at close range. Then the other bandit shot him.”

  “Or he was shot, and dropped. When the bandit got close enough to rob him, he fought back, and got knifed. Either way, he put up quite a fight.” Sheriff Crow pushed her hair back. “But he still warned me. Actually told me to leave him and return with armed backup. Take good care of him, Dante.”

  Ever since she had won her place as sheriff, Elizabeth Crow had seldom used first names, and corrected anyone who forgot and used hers. The boy must have made quite an impression on her, to cause her to forget that she was the sheriff for a moment. Mia was impressed too. She wondered if she’d have been willing to risk her life for the sake of a stranger.

  “I will.” Mia’s dad bent over the boy’s injured arm. “Though he may need some difficult surgery. It looks like there’s some damage to the tendons that control the fingers. This will be a good one for you to watch, Becky.”

  Becky nodded as she applied yarrow leaves to the boy’s cheek.

  “Do your best.” Sheriff Crow straightened up. “Well, I’ll search him for weapons, and then I’ve got to run.”

  “Did you have a chance to speak to Tom Preston?” Mia’s dad asked.

  “No, I ran straight here. I’m sure he’ll be on me to know whether or not the boy is Changed.”

  Mia double-checked to see if she’d missed any tentacles or feathers. There was nothing, unless it was a Change that a pair of ripped-up jeans would cover. Of course, he could have a cool nonphysical power, but Mr. Preston seemed less bothered by Changes he couldn’t see.

  Sheriff Crow continued. “All the defense chief will get from me is that I checked for weapons.”

  She shook out the leather jacket, confiscated a knife from the boy’s boot, then slid his belt from his jeans. Another knife and a marvelous array of tools hung from it: two beautiful screwdrivers, a set of lock picks, a miniature pry bar, a folding blade, and even a tiny crowbar. Mia coveted them all, but especially the screwdrivers. Sheriff Crow took the blade and the knife, but left the rest alone.

  “Prospector’s tools,” Mia said longingly. “Could I search his pack for you? We haven’t had a real prospector here for ages.”

  “Well, that makes sense. Prospectors are always targets for bandits.” She tossed Mia the boy’s dusty backpack. “Have a treat. If you find any weapons, you know where to bring them.”

  As Sheriff Crow started to leave, Mia’s father called, “Don’t forget to drink some water and have a good meal. You ran nearly a mile in the sun carrying this boy.”

  “He doesn’t weigh much.” With the half smile that was the only one she could make now, she added, “I could have carried him that distance before I Changed. Maybe not running. But thanks, Dr. Lee.” She nudged Fluffy away with her foot, then closed the door behind her.

  Mia took the sheriff’s place. Now she could see the boy’s face. He had very long black lashes and straight black eyebrows. His skin was smooth medium brown where it wasn’t smeared with blood and dirt, with an underlying pallor that would go away once her father got him back on his feet. The delicate skin under his eyes looked bruised, as if he hadn’t slept in days. His mouth was . . . just a mouth, but Mia liked its shape. She leaned closer, half-tempted to trace it with her finger. Her glasses slid down her nose. She shoved them back up absently.

  “Mia.”

  “Huh?”

  “Take off,” her dad said with a smile. “Have fun with the backpack.”
/>   She kicked off her surgery shoes and walked to the kitchen, where the usual smells of vinegar, soy sauce, and garlic were overlaid with something strange. Not only were the regular jars of cabbage and radish kimchi present, but there was disturbing evidence of experiments with nontraditional goat-cheese kimchi. She made a face. Pickling cheese was just plain wrong.

  She opened the window to air the place out, sat down at the table, and eyed the young prospector’s pack. It was like being a prospector herself. Anything could be in there!

  Prospectors charged high prices for luxury goods like ancient jewelry and art, and for usable mechanical parts. But they also sold scrap metal, cloth and clothing, plastic items, and objects of no clear use. Mia collected those. The last had been a paper-thin metal disc stamped with a woman’s name and numbered phrases like bits of poetry. The prospector had laughed when she asked who bought that sort of thing. “Dreamers,” he’d said.

  Her heart thumping with anticipation, she opened the pack.

  The first thing she found was a blood-smeared knife, which she set aside for Sheriff Crow. Under that was a strip of bloodstained jerky with a stainless-steel bolt and a tiny plastic dog stuck to it. Mia gingerly detached the finds, then tossed the jerky into the mulch bucket.

  An inner pocket held a pouch made of the slippery ancient cloth that melted when it burned, containing a pair of tarnished silver earrings set with moonstones. Beneath those were three matching stainless-steel forks. It was all valuable. But the real find was the plastic cup with a screw-in lid that had a tab that could be slid back and forth to create an opening. How clever!

  Another inner pocket held calculating devices: an abacus and a slide rule. She barely glanced at those, or at the empty canteen, crowbar, chisel, flint, and candle stubs, or the half-full can of oil. Then she found an intriguing object like a plastic clamshell. She worked her nail inside and flipped it open, revealing a mirror and a shallow container. A whiff of perfumed dust rose and vanished. She liked the tiny mirror. That would come in handy if you glued it to something long and flexible, to use for seeing around corners.

  She reached down farther. A coil of rope, a coil of wire, and a purple plastic comb. A folded sheet of flexible plastic to make a solar still to extract water from the ground. A handful of ancient coins in a clear plastic box, a pair of scissors with a bright orange plastic handle, and three chunks of steel pipe that could be melted for scrap.

  Not a bad set of finds. Mia was already mentally sorting her own stash of trade items and duplicate tools as she reached inside again. But when she touched the last thing in the pack, everything else fell out of her mind. Carefully, reverently, she pulled out a rectangular object swathed in more of that slippery cloth. She unwrapped it, revealing . . .

  A book.

  A precious, ancient book. It was battered, like everything from the ruins, but unlike most prospected books, it was intact. It was handwritten in beautiful script, but in an alphabet she didn’t recognize.

  The second page had an incomplete diagram for a crossbow that could shoot six arrows; the blank spaces had notations in those unreadable letters. Why hadn’t she thought of a multi-arrow bow already? She bet she could fill in those blanks and make a prototype.

  Excited, she turned the pages and found more diagrams. Some were enigmatic, but others seemed to be for defense or weapons. If everything in the book was this useful—including the pages and pages of unreadable text that came after the diagrams—Mia understood why someone had tried to kill for it.

  3

  YUKI

  A FLASH OF SILVER DISTRACTED YUKI NAKAMURA AS his patrol rode below the foothills east of Las Anclas. A lizard that shone like molten metal skittered out from between Fuego’s hooves and darted into a crack in a scrub oak. Intrigued, Yuki leaned out to take a look. His rat, Kogatana, left her saddle perch and climbed up to his shoulder, as if she, too, was curious. He scratched behind her ears, and she rubbed her furry gray face against his fingers.

  Paco Diaz reined up next to him. “See something interesting?”

  “A silver lizard.”

  The angles of Paco’s face sharpened with interest. Sidewinder, his buckskin gelding, neatly pivoted on the narrow path and stepped closer to the oak. Paco’s horsemanship was a beautiful thing to observe. He never had to give verbal commands but relied solely on the subtle movements of his body and the animal’s response. Yuki shifted his weight forward and to the right, and Fuego moved obediently to the side.

  He slipped from his saddle. Paco’s feet hit the ground with a soft chuff.

  Paco smiled, his brown eyes narrowed. “My mom and the other Rangers were patrolling here the other night. She said she saw a mutant shape-shifting reptile.”

  “Really?”

  “It looked like a snake, but then it grew legs and ran away. Since she saw it in the dark, I’m thinking it glowed. Might be the same thing. If it’s settled down in there, maybe it’s pulled its legs back in.”

  Yuki sent a silent message of gratitude to his mother for assigning Paco to his bow team after Paco had passed the archery test. They’d never talked much at school. But while patrolling together, they’d discovered that they both sought out new discoveries. Like this snake-lizard—anyone else would ignore it, except maybe to avoid it in case it was poisonous.

  “I’ll take a look.” Yuki took his glasses out of his pocket so he could see up close, then unsheathed his knife and angled it to reflect sunlight into the crack.

  Paco didn’t push his way forward; when Yuki nodded, he stepped in closer, his muscular shoulder touching Yuki’s. The “lizard” had indeed turned into a silver snake. It hissed when the light struck it, then extruded legs and scrambled up the interior of the trunk.

  “What’s going on?” The patrol captain, Julio Wolfe, rode toward them.

  “A shape-shifting reptile,” said Yuki, knowing exactly what Julio would say next.

  Sure enough: “Did it attack?”

  Paco shook his head. “It grew legs and ran.”

  Yuki waited for Julio’s bored eye-roll, and he wasn’t disappointed. It hadn’t been that long since Julio had been in school with them, flirting with the girls and forgetting his homework. Now he was a Ranger, always talking about his “life of adventure.” But to Julio, that meant training and fighting, not exploration or discovery.

  “Move along, Prince.” Julio clapped Yuki on the shoulder.

  Yuki couldn’t help stiffening. By now he should be used to the way people in Las Anclas were constantly, unnecessarily touching one another, regardless of whether they’d gotten any signal that it would be welcome. But even after five years the gesture felt as intrusive and rude as it ever had. And Julio knew perfectly well how much Yuki had grown to hate the word “prince.”

  Mrs. Callahan rode up behind Julio. The dressmaker’s face was sun-reddened. “My son, Henry, would never lollygag about on a patrol. Why do you always waste your time staring at useless bugs and worms?”

  That was another thing: the way nobody minded their own business. When a lot of people were crammed into a small area, it was natural that everyone knew what everyone else was up to. But on the Taka, they had understood that it was only common politeness not to mention your knowledge unless you were invited to do so.

  “I’d think your adoptive mother would have taught you better,” Mrs. Callahan added.

  The nagging was annoying, but “adoptive” stung. It had been a long, hard journey for Yuki to truly feel that the people who had taken him in were his family, but he did.

  Yuki pocketed his glasses and rode out ahead, with Paco right beside him. “I know she wasn’t trying to be rude,” he said, trying to convince himself.

  Paco chuckled. “Nah, I’m pretty sure she was. Mom warned me that Mrs. Callahan hates patrolling. Puts her in a terrible mood every time. Don’t let her get to you. Blood doesn’t matter. Family is family.”


  “Thanks.”

  “Hey, Yuki . . .” Paco cleared his throat and spoke in Japanese. “How do you say ‘lizard’ in Japanese?”

  His inflection and pronunciation were so perfect that homesickness pulled at Yuki like a riptide. He steeled himself not to reveal his feelings, but Kogatana sensed them and nuzzled him, her soft whiskers tickling his chin.

  When he spoke, he made sure his voice sounded casual. “Tokage. Snake is hebi.”

  “So, lizard-snake would be tokage-hebi?”

  Yuki nodded. “You’re a natural. I’ve only been teaching you for a month, and your accent is already better than Mom’s or Meredith’s ever was.”

  “I listen to the rhythm and timbre of your voice, not only the words. It’s like learning a piece of music.” Paco drummed out a beat on the saddle. “Do you speak Japanese with your family?”

  This time Yuki was prepared for the question. “No. Not for years. Mom thought I’d learn English and Spanish better if I practiced at home. And . . . I didn’t try very hard to teach them.”

  When he fell silent, Paco asked, “Because you didn’t think you’d be here long?”

  “As soon as I can find a prospector who’ll take me on, I’m leaving. A reliable prospector,” he added bitterly.

  “Yeah, that was bad luck.”

  “It was a bad decision. My bad decision,” he admitted.

  “No, come on,” Paco protested. “That guy took in the entire town.”

  Yuki scratched Kogatana’s ears, hiding his face. “I should have known he was too good to be true.”

  He felt as angry and humiliated as if it had happened last week, rather than last year. That smooth-talking prospector, Mr. Alvarez, had seemed like the answer to his dreams. Sure he needed a smart, reliable boy for an apprentice. Absolutely he would teach Yuki everything he needed to know in return for a year of his work. Of course he’d show Yuki the world.

  It had taken some persuading, since Yuki still had a year of school left. But he’d convinced his mom and the council that this chance was worth interrupting his education. He’d been saving scrip from his job helping Mrs. Riley train horses, and he got himself fitted out with tools and supplies. His mom and the Rileys had pitched in to get him a horse. He’d said his farewells, promised to come back in a year or so, and set off with a dizzying sense of infinite possibilities.