Salene's Secrets

by Laura Jo Phillips

  “Gee, maybe I should get one on the other cheek,” she said, rolling her eyes.

  “That would be greedy,” Rudy said, then winked at her.

  “See you guys later,” Salene said to her parents.

  “Have a good day, and give Aisling a hug for me,” Lariah said. Salene nodded just as Rudy placed one hand on her shoulder, and took a half step sideways. They vanished from the Dracons’ dining room and appeared a moment later in the foyer of the Gryphon Consul’s circular home on the opposite side of the planet. Rudy squeezed her shoulder gently, then stepped back. “Aisling is waiting for you in the training room.”

  “Thank you, Uncle Rudy,” she said, then headed up the curving hall, her shoes squeaking against the floor tiles. When she pulled the training room door open and stepped inside, she wasn’t surprised to find her aunt at the target range in the back of the room. Salene untied the jacket from around her waist and hung it on a hook by the door. Then she waited until Aisling had thrown the last star shaped, razor sharp shuriken with her usual blurring speed and pinpoint accuracy before crossing the training room toward her. “Good morning Aunt Ash.”

  “Good morning, Salene,” Aisling replied, turning to watch her approach. She frowned. “Where are your weapons?”

  “In a carton somewhere in the deep dark depths of the Ugaztun, presumably. Dede promised he’d ask someone to find it and have it sent to the ranch, but until then I’m unarmed. Sorry.”

  “I’ve got plenty of practice weapons so it’s not a problem,” Aisling said. “I’d like to talk with you for a minute before we begin, if you don’t mind.”

  “All right,” Salene said, instantly wary. There were some things she wasn’t ready to talk about. Things she didn’t think she’d ever be ready to talk about.

  “Don’t worry,” Aisling said as she led her to a counter in the corner of the room with stools around it. “If I ask something you don’t want to discuss, just say so.” She offered Salene a bottle of water from the chiller, then opened one for herself and sat on a stool opposite her.

  “Wearing jewelry while training isn’t generally a good idea,” Aisling said, glancing at the bracelet on Salene’s wrist.

  “It’s a transport disrupter,” Salene said shortly. Aisling nodded and said no more on the subject which was a relief to Salene since she had no intention of removing it.

  Aisling took a long drink from her water bottle, then set it down. “Why did you want to come and train? I mean, why now, in particular?”

  “Before I tell you, will you answer a question for me?”

  “Sure.”

  “Why did you agree?”

  “For one thing, I love you, and I’ll always help you in any way that I can, no matter what,” Aisling said. “I love all nine of my big strapping sons with all that I am, never think otherwise. But I’ve always thought of you as the daughter of my heart.”

  Salene blinked away the threat of tears. “Thanks, Aunt Ash,” she said. “That means a lot to me.”

  “I’m glad, because it means a lot to me, too. Where were we?”

  “You’re telling me why you agreed to work with me.”

  “Ah yes,” Aisling said. “The second reason is that…,” Aisling trailed off, taking a moment to study Salene before she spoke. Whatever she was looking for she seemed to find because she placed her forearms on the counter and leaned forward intently. “You were taken away from a safe place without your knowledge or consent, by beings you’d never heard of and knew nothing about, for reasons they didn’t bother to explain to you. As a result your life was irrevocably changed, but more than that, it changed you, Salene. It changed you on a basic and fundamental level and I know very well that you’re still trying to come to grips with those changes.”

  “How do you know this?” Salene asked in a shocked whisper.

  “Because it happened to me once, long ago,” Aisling replied. “My circumstances and events were different, of course, but I understand how you feel. Sort of like the floor just suddenly disappeared from beneath your feet.” Salene swallowed hard and nodded. “Do you still feel like you’re falling?”

  “Sometimes, when I wake up in the middle of the night and I’m….” Salene snapped her mouth shut, then changed what she’d nearly said. “Yes, sometimes, most times, I feel like I’m falling down a dark hole and there’s nothing to grab onto. It makes me feel helpless.”

  “Is that why you want to start weapons training again?”

  “No,” Salene replied, surprising Aisling. “There’s something I have to tell you, Aunt Ash. Something I haven’t spoken about with anyone else.”

  Aisling’s head tilted as she studied Salene’s face and body language, then she reached across the counter to place one palm lightly on her arm. “You can trust me, Salene. You know that, right?”

  “Yes, I know that,” Salene said, then took a long breath before glancing toward the door to be sure it was closed. “How much do you know about what happened? With the Doftles, I mean.”

  “A lot, I think,” Aisling replied. “But nothing that would put that worried look on your face at the idea of being overheard.”

  “When Rayne and I were still on the Doftle space station, after her Rami took Talus, Jon, and Kar back to the Armadura, a Doftle entered the lab we were in. Rayne was gathering stuff she thought might be of interest to the Council, which I thought was a good idea. So, while she did that, I decided to get some of the gel from the hibernation tanks the guys had been in.”

  Aisling knew enough of what had happened to have an idea what Salene was talking about, but even though some clarification would have helped, she remained silent, keeping her questions to herself. She just nodded when Salene looked up to see if she was following, and waited for her to continue.

  “When Weeble…the Doftle with Xanti legs…you’ve heard of him?” Aisling nodded again, but this time she knew exactly who Salene was talking about. “Weeble was the Doftle who entered the lab. He was looking down when he stepped inside, so I saw him before he saw me. I had time…not a lot, but a second or two, to react. To stand up, to throw something, I don’t know what but the point is, there was time to react, and I didn’t.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I didn’t do anything,” Salene said, hanging her head so that Aisling couldn’t see her expression. “I was kneeling on the floor between two tanks with a small container of tank gel in my hand and I froze. Rayne was hidden behind her shield, and she could have stayed hidden. There’s no way Weeble would have ever known she was there. But, since I was just kneeling on the floor like a statue she had no choice but to drop her shield, shift into her bearenca alter-form, and attack Weeble to keep him off of me.”

  “Why didn’t you move?” Aisling asked very softly.

  “I don’t know,” Salene said, frowning as she lifted her head. “That’s the part I don’t get. I was scared, yes, and I’m not ashamed to admit that. I’d have to be stupid not to have been scared. But there was something else that held me in place and I don’t know what it was, and that bothers me a great deal.”

  Aisling tilted her head. She knew Salene very well, and reading people had always been one of her strengths. She already had an idea or two about what had happened, but she needed to be sure. “If you had moved, what would you have done?”

  Salene frowned. “I don’t know.”

  “Tell me about it, Salene. Walk through it for me.”

  “Weeble had a transport device strapped to his hand. I’d seen him use it before so I knew that’s what it was, and Rayne knew it, too. All he had to do was move his thumb to press the button in the palm of his hand and he’d be gone, along with whoever he was touching at the time.” Salene paused, thinking carefully. “Rayne’s bearenca had hold of his other arm, and even though she was much bigger than Weeble, I could see it was taking everything she had to keep him from getting close enough to stab me with one of his metal legs. He got me once, but it was a glancing blow thanks to Rayne.” She fell
silent again and Aisling waited patiently. “I looked around for something to use as a weapon, but there wasn’t anything except the hibernation tanks, which I couldn’t lift, and the small container of gel that I’d collected, which was useless. I couldn’t join the fight because if I got close enough for him to touch me, he’d transport away with me. The worst part is that she kept Weeble from stabbing me, but he stabbed her bearenca right through the thigh. I didn’t realize it was a bad wound at the time, but it was.

  “After a few moments he must have decided to settle for taking Rayne because he activated his transport device and vanished. Rayne, thank the Creators, was protected from being transported, so instead of taking her with him, she remained in the lab with his arm still in her bearenca’s mouth.”

  Salene fell silent again, then shook her head and looked up, meeting Aisling’s gaze. “I know there has to have been something I could have done, Aunt Ash. But I just can’t see it.”

  “You can’t see it because there wasn’t anything you could do, Salene,” Aisling said. “Attacking this Weeble creature without a weapon, or some way to escape serious injury, death or, in this case, kidnapping and torture, would have been an enormous mistake and on some level you know that. I don’t think you froze so much as you analyzed the situation, as you just explained, and came to the inescapable conclusion that there was nothing you could do.”

  Salene shook her head again. “I left it to Rayne to save me, and it’s not supposed to be that way. I’m supposed to protect her, not the other way around.”

  “Not in this case,” Aisling insisted. “Rayne could shift, you couldn’t. She could self-heal, you can’t. She had protection against being transported, you didn’t. If you’d had a weapon, things might have been different, but the fact of the matter is that you didn’t have a weapon. If you’d jumped in, all you’d have done was get yourself transported, which was the very thing Rayne was fighting to prevent.”

  Salene understood what Aisling was saying, and was forced to admit there was truth and logic in it. But she still felt as though she should have done something. Anything. She raised her head, took a deep breath, and met Aisling’s eyes steadily. “If I’d had a weapon, if I’d known anything about fighting, I could have at least helped my sister,” she said. “This is why I want you to train me, Aunt Ash. Once you do, I will never again go unarmed, but I need more than weapons. I need to learn how to fight. Unfortunately, as you know, I have none of Tani’s agility, or Rayne’s grace. But there has to be a way for me to defend myself and protect others without having to fold myself into a pretzel or do a triple flip six feet into the air.”

  “It’s true that the only person you’ll hurt while trying to do tiketa is yourself,” Aisling said with a wry smile. “But you’ve got excellent reflexes, natural accuracy, and a lot of strength for your size. You’re also a quick study, so I’ve no doubt at all that I can teach you what you need to know. But, as far as I’m aware, you haven’t touched a weapon since before going to college, and even then it wasn’t for self-defense. That means you’re going to have to work awfully hard for the next few weeks.”

  “That’s fine with me,” Salene said. “In fact, the harder, the better.”

  “Good girl,” Aisling said. “Let’s get busy.”

  ***

  Self-defense training with Aisling Gryphon was the most physically demanding thing Salene had ever done. Fortunately for her, she’d expected as much. She pushed herself to the limit in a single minded attempt to learn everything Aisling had to teach her as quickly as possible, and to regain her previous skill with the weapons she preferred; the sai, and throwing knives.

  Throwing bladed weapons at targets took practice and skill, and sparring with Aunt Ash took practice, skill and stamina. She’d enjoyed learning and excelling at both when she was fifteen. It had been fun, which was why she’d done it. But her goals were altogether different this time, and she never forgot that for a single moment.

  On the third day of training Aisling surprised her by adding hand lasers to her arsenal. Salene didn’t object. In truth, she wished she’d thought of them herself. Arming herself as a means of protection made hand lasers, small, light-weight and easy to carry, to conceal, and to use, an obvious choice for her. For the first time in her life she deeply appreciated her innate ability to hit whatever she aimed at with just about anything she picked up. Because of that, adding hand lasers just took a little getting used to.

  One benefit of being a Clan Jasani female was that she was naturally in good physical shape, but she’d always made time to work out with weights and jog regularly just because it made her feel better when she did. Even so, it was still difficult to keep up with Aisling during their long, drawn out sparring sessions with practice knives, sai, and even the bo, a weapon much like a staff. But the hardest part of the training for her was the unarmed, hand to hand fighting.

  Tiketa, a martial art created by and for petite women, focused on speed, momentum, and flexibility rather than sheer strength. Salene had speed, and she was strong, but she did not possess the high level of flexibility and balance that tiketa required despite countless hours spent working at it when she was a child. Hours that had taken a serious toll on her self-confidence when both of her sisters were so good at it that they made it look easy.

  But Aisling understood exactly what Salene’s strengths and weaknesses were, and she designed her training accordingly. She never asked her to flip herself into the air or spin around on one foot while using the other foot to hit her opponent in the jaw, which Salene appreciated since attempting moves like that generally landed her in a painful heap on the floor. Instead she focused on basic fighting skills, such as punching, kicking, blocking, the best places on a body to strike to get maximum effect, and how to break most holds. If Salene went up against someone bigger and stronger than she was with nothing but her bare hands, her best bet would be to stay out of their reach at all costs, and Aisling made sure she knew that.

  By the time Salene got home at the end of each day she wanted to do nothing more than fall into bed. Instead, she forced herself to take a shower, get dressed, and have dinner with her parents. They made a concerted effort to discuss things that would interest her, and she repaid their efforts by joining their discussions with as much interest and animation as she could muster. When she was finally able to escape to her room each night she was completely worn out in body, mind, and spirit, and yet sleep always eluded her for a few hours.

  It was a struggle not to stretch her senses out for the Gryphons because she’d done it so often, for so long, that it was automatic. For the first time she was glad that she couldn’t sense the emotions of those she felt from a distance. Just feeling their presence, no matter how far away they were, was difficult enough. Most nights she cried herself to sleep from the sheer effort required to keep her talent reined in.

  Bonding with Wolef meant she’d have to become a warrior, something she’d never wanted to do, and which she doubted she’d be any good at, which was why she hadn’t made up her mind about it yet. She was beginning to think it would be worth the risk just to lose her ability to feel the Gryphons, even though it would also mean not being able to sense her sisters, brothers, or parents.

  To make things worse, the mysterious yearning sensation continued to grow. It was strange to have such a powerful longing for something when she didn’t even know what it was she longed for. Sometimes she used it to distract her from thinking about the Gryphons, though it always left her feeling frustrated afterward.

  As exhausting and physically painful as training was, it gave her something to focus on besides her confusing and mysterious emotions. It also gave her a sense of accomplishment and confidence that she hadn’t felt in a very long time. Best of all, it diverted her thoughts away from the Gryphons. She could sometimes go as long as ten whole minutes without thinking of them, and could only hope that would increase over time.

  One afternoon she found three cardboard cartons stac
ked just inside her bedroom door when she got home. She paused for a moment, taken aback by the unexpected feeling of nostalgia that washed through her at the sight of them. She went into the bathroom and turned on the shower while trying to understand her reaction. She was nearly through with her shower before the answer came to her.

  The last time she and her sisters were together before anything bad happened to any of them, had been when they were packing up their apartment on EDU-12. They’d graduated from college, finished tutoring the summer session, and her Gryphons were planning a party for them to take place as soon as they got home. All things she didn’t want to think about.

  Finishing her shower, she threw on some clothes and went downstairs to have dinner with her parents, passing the cartons without another glance. She’d already decided not to open them until after her parents left on their trip. It would give her something to do when she was alone in the house, which she wasn’t looking forward to at all.

  Later that same evening she was sitting on the deck watching the moon as it rose into the dark purple sky. After the memories brought on by the sight of the cartons in her room, she was dreading going to bed more than usual so she decided to sit outside, listen to the night sounds, and make a final decision about Jinjie.

  Jinjie had agreed to accompany her to EDU-11 and, according to Rayne, he was actually looking forward to it. The question she’d been debating with herself since learning of his decision had been whether or not to invite him to come and stay with her until it was time for them to go pick up her brothers. One day she thought it was a great idea, the next she didn’t. Once she decided to make up her mind once and for all, it didn’t take her very long to decide against it. She needed to become accustomed to being alone, and she couldn’t do that unless she actually was alone.

  After making that decision she allowed herself to lean back on one of the deck loungers and relax. She hadn’t moved in nearly an hour, and since her mind was, for once, at rest, she felt no inclination to do so. It was a mild evening and the patio door was open behind her, so she had no trouble hearing her parents talking as they entered the living room together. She didn’t pay much attention to what they were saying until Garen said something that caught her attention.