[Phoebe Pope 01.0] The Year of Four

by Nya Jade

  “Gosh darn it!” a girl said after shedding her Shape. Phoebe stood dazed, recognizing her as Leslie from the Conversion Ceremony.

  A rush of excitement charged the game with more intensity. Hayley kicked the ball hard from center field to a lanky teammate who melted into a lion. He stopped the ball with his tail and whipped it to Scott, who swiftly maneuvered it toward Phoebe. From the corner of her eye Phoebe saw a falcon simultaneously swooping down at her with the silver ball in its beak. Releasing the ball, the falcon swung at it with its large crimson wing, sending it sailing above Phoebe’s head. In a split second decision, Phoebe launched herself at the incoming silver ball. She blocked its entry while Scott’s ground attack resulted in a goal.

  A whistle blew. “One all!”

  “Nice call on blocking Xavier!” Sam shouted, dashing by Phoebe. With the game on the opposite end of the field, Phoebe watched as a radiant indigo hawk took a steep racing dive toward Mariko. In an attempt to avoid Mariko’s swinging arms, the bird’s wing swept the ground.

  “Wing foul. Blue team player out!” the referee’s voice rang.

  The game continued its dizzying speed with both sides taking the lead a number of times and each air team losing members to dropped balls.

  From her goal, Phoebe watched as a red team falcon zigzagged toward her, ball in its gold talons. She blinked and the bird dove. As she reached up to block the ball, an arrow came flying suddenly out of the trees, piercing the bird through the chest. Phoebe saw, as though in slow motion, the bird transform into a curly-haired girl, plummet from the sky and hit the ground with a sickening thud. She landed a foot from where Phoebe stood shaking. Phoebe lowered her eyes. The blood pulsing from the wound flowed down the girl’s chest, forming a scarlet pool at Phoebe’s feet.

  For what felt like a long, breath-stealing second, nothing happened. And then pandemonium swept over the clearing. Screams split the night air, which was heavy with the scent of fear. Many students scattered. Others froze in hysterics.

  “Get the pre-cons out of here!” Sam yelled, prompting older students to herd groups of sobbing first-years down the path out of the forest, while the remaining Principes cadets assumed attack stances: palms facing out, nervous eyes darting everywhere.

  Phoebe had barely managed to kneel beside the girl when two boys rushed to join her. One immediately said, his voice hoarse, “Osiah and Gavya, it went through a heart. . . .”

  Phoebe didn’t hear the rest of the exchange between the boys. She’d doubled over in painful distress. Gut-stabbing panic surged wildly inside her, and she tried to smother it. Intense emotion often disconnected Phoebe from her sense of control, causing her to accidentally push her feelings into anyone around her. Phoebe couldn’t let that happen. Not here. Not now. Even as she fought to contain herself, Phoebe felt the panic crushing its way out, pushing into the few students left in the clearing. Immediately charged with a heightened sense of panic, they all ran, climbing over brambles and twisted roots in their effort to flee the forest.

  Alone now, frightened and sick with the horror of what she’d done, Phoebe stared into the girl’s dirt-stained face. She shook at the sight of the arrow embedded in her heaving chest. Phoebe’s senses felt scrambled. Tears streamed down her cheeks. She pressed her hands around the wound to staunch the bleeding, trying to imagine who had struck this girl and why. A thought flew into Phoebe’s mind as the conversation she’d overheard came back to her. Her hearts thudded. Was this the danger the headmaster and the mentors had been discussing? As Phoebe listened to the girl’s labored breathing, she could almost picture her father, and she shivered violently at the memory.

  “It’s going to be okay,” Phoebe said, trying to push what calm she could into the girl to ease some of her fear. The girl gazed up with wide eyes that begged Phoebe not to leave. “I’m not going anywhere,” Phoebe promised, her own memories pressing against her hearts. “Help is on—” A horribly familiar burn coursed through Phoebe’s skin, choking off her words. The girl let out a ragged cry that told Phoebe plainly that her skin scalded as well. A heavy breath, and then a low rumbling growl sounded through the trees. When Phoebe lifted her head to stare into the blackness of the forest before her, the huge, fire-orange eyes of a Vigo stared back.

  FIVE

  The Vigo emerged from the shadows. Silver-striped black fur wrinkled around its eyes as they narrowed on Phoebe’s face. The razor-sharp spikes jutting out of its back glinted like thin, steel cones in the waning moonlight. Phoebe saw that they were barbed. A paralysis gripped her. Her trance only broke when the Vigo charged, yellowed teeth snapping, viscous saliva flying from its jaw. She threw herself in front of the wounded girl and flung up her arms to shield her own face.

  Phoebe felt the scorching heat of the Vigo’s mouth before its jaws closed in an iron grip around her arm. Teeth sunk against bone. She screamed through the explosion of pain. For a few frightening seconds Phoebe could think of nothing as the heavy beast dragged her toward the woods. Sharp rocks tore through her sweatpants and scraped against her legs. In a flash of clarity, she realized how critical these next moments were to her survival. Reaching down with her free hand, Phoebe picked up a fallen branch and struck at the Vigo’s flared nostrils. It had no effect. She stabbed at its eyes. The Vigo only pulled harder and Phoebe felt the searing pain of her shoulder starting to separate from its socket.

  A menacing growl sounded in the darkness behind Phoebe. It rumbled in her bones. Another Vigo, slightly smaller than the first, broke through the trees into the clearing, filling the edge of her vision. In the middle of the forest, far from help that didn’t appear to be on its way, Phoebe realized with fluttering hearts that things had gone from bad to impossibly worse. A bolt of fear ripped through her, and abruptly, her arm fell from the Vigo’s jaw. It hung limp at her side, as blood ran in rivulets across the dry grass.

  Breathing through her savage pain, Phoebe watched in terror as the two Vigos circled each other slowly. She hardly dared to move when both Tigers curled their lips back and lowered thick, corkscrew-shaped canines. Then, to her shock, the smaller Vigo pinned the large one to the ground, its claws deep in the stunned beast’s throat. The large Vigo twisted free with lithe, swift movements and struck a massive blow across the smaller one’s muzzle with a mighty front paw. Blood, thick like oil, splattered in all directions. At a speed Phoebe could hardly believe, the Tigers hurtled their muscled bulk at each other, slashing, snarling, their clashing spikes ringing with an awful clangor. Roars of beastly fury drenched Phoebe in cold terror as the earth beneath her shook.

  Collision after collision, they fought tirelessly. Then, the larger Vigo hooked a claw through the air and missed its opponent’s throat. Unable to stop its momentum by digging its hind paws into the ground, the large cat skidded and crashed against a pine tree. It sprang back to its feet, furious. But it stood absolutely still, transfixed and glaring, as if it were momentarily hypnotized by the presence of the antagonist, who bared its teeth and growled. A low savage rumble.

  As Phoebe watched in bafflement, the larger Vigo rapidly twisted its ears one hundred and eighty degrees so that the backs were facing front, lowered its tail to the ground, and squeezed its eyes into slits. It bowed its massive head slightly and then turned and fled. Everything around Phoebe grew still as the remaining Vigo faced her. Its burning eyes glared at hers down the length of its bleeding muzzle. She saw the fire within them flicker just before the Vigo sped off, becoming a ghost in the darkest part of the forest.

  Phoebe’s thoughts tangled as she fought to make sense of what had just happened. Were they coming back? Had the smaller Vigo been . . . defending her? There was little sense in that last thought, Phoebe knew, but she couldn’t get her head around any other reasoning for how it had behaved. Perhaps the two Vigos were simply competitors, but that didn’t explain why the smaller Vigo hadn’t tried to attack her. Phoebe knew her thinking was foggy, and must be descending toward unconsciousness, for no Vigo would ever
stop a Shaper kill.

  Phoebe dragged herself back to the wounded girl, slowly and painfully, somehow managing not to faint. She grabbed hold of the girl’s hand and held it in a firm grip. Delirious with pain, Phoebe fought off the blurriness invading her vision. Moments passed, and then, just as Phoebe was drifting off, someone gently pried her hands from the girl’s, grabbed Phoebe under her armpits, and pulled her to the side.

  “Everything is going to be okay, lass,” a man’s voice said quietly. Phoebe raised hazy eyes to see Gabe. His hood was down, revealing closely cropped white hair. He smiled reassuringly at her, and then, whipping a small syringe from under his cloak, he pushed the needle into her wound. Phoebe screamed in pain until nausea choked her throat. She vomited and gaped at Gabe, wild-eyed.

  “That’s a good reaction to have,” Gabe said, gently wiping at her sweaty brow with a damp cloth. “It means the Vigo venom hasn’t had time to do its worst yet.”

  The sound of thundering footsteps and beating wings halted Phoebe’s attempt at a reply. Leopards, jaguars, and lions exploded into the clearing. Above them, eagles carrying stretchers descended cautiously to the ground. A whirl of activity erupted, with bodies clustered and throbbing all around Phoebe, voices shouting instructions above her, and strong hands moving her onto a stretcher.

  “Only Phoebe was bitten,” she dimly heard Gabe saying to someone nearby who muttered an inaudible response. “Yes, I gave her the shot,” he added.

  Phoebe rolled onto her side and saw Afua with a dagger ready in her fist. The diamond blade flashed in the moonlight. A second later, body secured to the stretcher by thick straps, Phoebe felt a warm pulsing wind and a lightness take her over as she was lifted upward into the night sky. Fatigue ushered her into unconsciousness.

  In her dream, Phoebe remembered the first time she’d made her father cry on purpose. A thick swirl of fog pressed against the kitchen windows where she sat at a table with him on a day they were denied their spectacular view of the Golden Gate Bridge.

  “Well done,” he’d said, while tears spilled from his blood-shot eyes.

  Phoebe stared at her father, unable to speak. It was hard to reconcile the pride she felt in accomplishing her task with the horror of seeing what her power had done: the strongest man she knew had been reduced to a sobbing infant.

  Opening up her senses to him had stunned her. Once she began, the connection had come instantly, his emotions gnawing at her in a way that was immediately overwhelming, a veritable floodgate. He taught her to see them as glowing keys on a piano, keys that she could tickle lightly or push hard. She reminded herself that it was a gift, but as she took hold of her father’s emotions and played his mood like a sonata, she had to witness him feeling something he would otherwise not. She had found it traumatic.

  “How did it feel?” she asked timidly. “When I pushed?” It had been her father’s idea for her to practice on him. And it had been his idea for her to start with sadness.

  Her father took her hands in his and kissed them. “At first it feels like bad indigestion.”

  Phoebe giggled in spite of herself. “That’s silly,” she said. “It’s your mind I push.”

  “Yes, but I think whatever you do up here”—her father tapped a finger to his head—“floods the chest and then takes over.”

  Phoebe thought about that for a moment. “So can all Shapers do it—?”

  “No,” her father said at once, cutting her off with such an aggressive tone that Phoebe was unsettled and even a little afraid. “No,” he repeated, his tone much softer. “This has to be our secret—”

  he broke off, overcome by another wave of tears. Phoebe couldn’t handle watching him come apart anymore and quickly looked for the key that played happiness. Her father, seeing in her eyes what she planned to do, shook his head.

  “It’s okay to let me sit with this sadness,” he said. “Next time we’ll work on other ones. I promise.”

  And they did work on other emotions, but often returned to sadness. Phoebe eventually came to realize that her father did so when he needed an excuse to cry. She discovered this one day by accident when she’d stumbled on him gazing at an old picture of her mother. Shortly thereafter, he’d asked her if she wanted to try her pushing. Breathing deep, she always agreed, and always they’d start with sadness. Many unanswered questions surrounded her mother’s abandonment. She and her father had never really discussed it, but Phoebe knew one thing for sure: her father still held her mother in his hearts. So she continued to give him his moments of sadness, even when she discovered that her ability came with a drawback; for every emotion she pushed, a piece of it lingered within her for a short time afterward. Phoebe would sit with her father and wrap her arms around his trembling torso and share in his grief for the woman she didn’t know.

  As Phoebe’s dreams began to flicker and fade, her mind grabbed the tendrils of a distant memory and held on desperately. It was the day her father had made her promise never to reveal her ability. It was also the day he’d given her his camera. Phoebe knew how much her father loved that camera, as he would often take her to his outdoor photo shoots, always explaining the importance of capturing light. “Great light can transform an image,” he’d say. Between her excitement over the gift and the sound of the ocean crashing on the shore, Phoebe almost didn’t hear her father’s surprising apology as they walked along San Francisco’s Ocean Beach.

  “I need to apologize to you, Phoebe,” he had said as she hung the camera from her neck and gazed down at it reverently.

  Phoebe raised her eyes to him, surprised by this. “For what? This is the best gift I ever—”

  “For using your ability for my own personal gain.”

  Phoebe said nothing.

  Her father stopped walking and dug his bare toes into the coarse sand. “Your mother leaving, was a very difficult thing for me,” he said, his voice catching. “But I knew that I had to remain strong for you and so I buried the grief so deep within me that I almost forgot it was there. . . . I’ve been using our sessions and your ability to push emotion to help me access that grief.”

  Phoebe was shocked speechless. It wasn’t what her father had said that astounded her, because she’d figured that piece out on her own, it was his admission of it. And at that moment, with her mental gate open, Phoebe felt her father’s shame and torment.

  He continued. “I sensed what it was doing to you, Phoebe,”—he paused for a moment to collect himself—“and I knew it was my fault but still I ignored it. And you suffered in silence.”

  This was true. Phoebe had become increasingly consumed by the sadness that plagued her father; she’d lost her appetite, lost weight, and slept uneasily; all things she hadn’t realized that her father had noticed, even in his fog. And yes, it had taken a toll on her, but Phoebe had believed what she’d been doing was important. She was helping her father.

  “You have to promise me,” he said, extremely seriously, “never to reveal your ability to anyone. What you can do is powerful, and it can be abused.”He looked away and gazed tearfully at the water.“I love you and even I couldn’t help taking advantage of your gift. Think of what some people would do if they had you under their control. With this secret, trust only yourself.”

  Feeling her father’s fear for her swell, Phoebe nodded.

  “Why did she leave?” Phoebe was shocked to hear the words that fell abruptly from her mouth. Many times she’d thought of asking her father that question. And many times she’d failed to put it into words.

  “It’s complicated, Phoebe.”

  Phoebe knew that her father didn’t want to talk about it, but she pushed the issue anyway.

  “Try me.”

  He looked at her with surprise and then looked away. “Sometimes you can’t help who you love, sweetheart, no matter who they are. . . .”

  Phoebe stared at her father as he stared at the ocean. They both knew, of course, that he hadn’t answered her question. And Phoebe had an uneasy feeling tha
t he might never answer it. But she let it go, because at that moment a rich purple-blood-orange sun was setting, and Phoebe, pulled by a need to remember that light, raised the camera to her eye and captured it. And that was the beginning of how she would come to deal with unanswered questions, one photograph at a time.

  SIX

  When Phoebe awoke, an intense soreness hit her first. Then urgent voices whispering nearby slowly registered. Raising her head slightly, careful to look as though she were still asleep, she glanced about the unfamiliar room through the slits of her eyes. Next to a table covered with flower-filled vases, Phoebe could see Professor Yori speaking with a cloaked figure.

  “—no, unfortunately there’s no one for us to contact,” Professor Yori said. When Phoebe chanced opening up her eyes a bit more, the cloaked figure came into better view. It was Gabe.

  “I thought there was a grandfather,” Gabe said, his voice low.

  “Yes, there is. But he’s on her maternal side,” Professor Yori said. “The school must act as her guardian in Shaper matters.” He glanced over at the bed, and Phoebe kept still. “We have a few moments until she starts coming to,” he said, returning his gaze to Gabe. “Give me your assessment.”

  Gabe spoke quickly. “The game was too close to the Campus Above’s perimeter sensors. By the time the system picked up on the presence of Vigo physical energy, the Vigos were much closer to the students than we were.”

  The headmaster sighed, leaned forward, and picked up a mug from the table. “We’ve had students sneaking off to play this game for years without one incident. Now, this will be seen as incompetence on my part for turning a blind eye to the tradition.”