His dark brown, almost black, hair was tousled as if he’d just run his fingers through it and the wrinkles around Gerome’s eyes were a little more pronounced than the last time I’d seen him. Long and lean in direct opposition to Maggie’s build and about a head taller, Gerome had an air of command that never left him. He simply looked a question at Malcolm and the big man slid his hand up from the sway of our back to squeeze our shoulder.
My aunt and uncle noticed his hand hanging out in space seemingly resting on empty air and frowned in unison. I took over from Silver long enough to disengage our light field. Maggie stared dumbfounded for just a second before she burst into delighted laughter, throwing her arms up in the air then clutching us to her breasts so hard she almost knocked the breath out of us.
Silver tried to sound unhappy as she mentally groused, “Good grief, we didn’t come back only to be suffocated by her boobs.”
I could tell she was secretly pleased by how glad Maggie was to see us though. I managed to gasp out, “Aren’t you afraid the twins are going to wake up?”
Malcolm’s deep baritone came from behind us. “Too late and I’m going on record right now as not being responsible.”
Maggie still hadn’t released her hold on us although it was much less crushing as we felt a tug on our leather duster.
A little male voice piped up from waist level. “Mommy, who’s this?”
Another small childish voice that was a match of Silver’s in attitude, not sound, responded to the question. “It’s Silver and Cass, stupid. Don’t ya ‘member their face from the memories Mommy showed us?”
Gerome and Maggie barked in tandem, “Don’t call your brother stupid, Reb!”
My aunt pushed back from our hug and I could see tears sitting in her eyes just waiting to lose their surface tension and tumble over her lower lashes to make a trail down her cheeks. Silver stretched our lips over our teeth in a wide smile. I took over our mouth again to say rather inanely, “Hi.”
Gerome pushed Maggie out of the way with a hand on her shoulder and waded through two three year olds who were determined to be underfoot, before looping an arm around our waist to pull us into a firm sideways hug. He murmured above our head, “I need to talk to you two after we get the twins back to bed.”
Both Reb and Ray heard the word bed and broke into a simultaneous, “Aww!”
We’d been waiting to meet our cousins in person for years. Silver had a closer relationship to them in the Web than I did, mainly because they shared the same love of mischief and I surmised a secret collusion as well, regarding some of their more creative exploits. No doubt Maggie knew about it but I hadn’t voiced any of my suspicions because of how much joy the bond brought the three of them.
Silver had us sink into a squatted position with our buttocks resting comfortably on our heels and winked when she had the twin’s attention. Both children were small for their age, as multiple births sometimes are, so they only stood about three feet tall, give or take.
Rebecca, ‘Reb’ for short, had curly reddish brown hair with brown eyes so dark they reminded us of tiny York Peppermint Patties with fine, barely-there eyebrows and long eyelashes surrounded by an angelic looking face.
Raymond, ‘Ray’ for short, had darker hair like his father with curls around his ears and pale skin that made his light brown eyes and scattered freckles stand out in stark relief. Ray looked so serious and studious, as if he was an old man in a child’s body. I wondered with Silver if he was an almost exact miniature of our uncle at this age, at least in manner.
Reb was the undeniable driving force in the duo so, of course, it was her that spoke first, revealing even more of her personality by manipulating her features into a truculent mask. “Ask Mommy to let us stay up. Why should we go to bed if you’re here?”
Silver didn’t try to cajole or bully Reb in response but replied in a reasoned adult tone as if she weren’t talking to a recalcitrant three year old. “I’ll make a deal with you both but if you don’t fulfill your side, I won’t fulfill mine. Cass will take you to bed and tell you stories until you fall asleep while the rest of us are talking in the Web, then tomorrow if you have a good day at school, I’ll teleport you both up on the roof after dark and show you the area of the sky that Axsa’s galaxy is in before bed. If you misbehave at school or at any time during the day and we hear about it, the deal is off.”
At the mention of ‘porting the twins onto the roof Maggie made a sound above us that made me think she’d swallowed her tongue. Gerome chopped a hand her direction that we caught sight of at the edge of our vision as if he was telling her to calm down.
Reb thought for a minute, biting her lower lip all the while, and turned to her silently waiting brother. “Can we do it?”
Ray reached over a plump-fingered hand that just barely clung to the last of toddlerhood and rested it on Reb’s arm to respond in a serious, quiet voice, “I’ll help you be good.”
Reb stuck out a hand in our direction as if to shake, then thought better of it and pulled it back to spit in her palm before extending the now moist appendage again.
Her tone was concrete firm. “Deal,” she said.
To her credit my twin didn’t bat an eye as she pretended to spit into one of our gloves and returned the handshake before we rose.
Silver told Gerome, “I’ll give you five minutes to get settled and then I’ll meet y’all in the Web.”
My sister left for the vast open mindscape with a speed that no longer surprised me as I stood for a second collecting together the stories I wanted to tell the twins in my thoughts. We’d played this game before when the twins ghosted with Maggie in the Web and she needed to talk to Silver about a medical issue.
My aunt and my sister hadn’t always gotten along but they both had respect for the other’s talents as a healer. Maggie had picked up the ability to heal some things from us since she was another person we touched skin to skin, but she didn’t have quite the range of Silver. My sister could actually go down to the cellular level to manipulate the healing outcome she desired, whereas Maggie had more of a subtle gift, enabling her patients to heal much faster than they normally would.
As a result Maggie and Silver had come to a professional understanding and visited often over our absence—sometimes leaving me to entertain Reb and Ray any which way I could think up. This would be the first time for me to tell them a story outside of the Web in the physical world without any mental pictures or sound effects to aid me. Suddenly my stomach was filled with butterflies at the prospect of not being equal to my assigned task and then I waved the worry away because I actually enjoyed ad-libbing stories—so, what in the world was I fussing about?
I rubbed the still slightly damp gloved hand from my sister’s deal making on our pant leg and nodded my head to the adults in the room before grabbing my cousin’s small hands in each of our own and leading them down the hall toward their open bedroom door. The room was dimmer than the living room with only a small night light for illumination that shone a pale blue, but our eyes were immediately more comfortable.
I took in the differences between the past and the present—when the room had briefly been ours, it had seemed more open because the bed had been a twin instead of a double and the walls had been painted plain white instead of a pale green with some sort of leafy border all around the room near the ceiling. When I focused in tighter the ‘leaves’ turned out to be fairies which I thought was strange since in my opinion the room should be gender neutral and fairies screamed little girl not little boy.
Ray saw my attention to the wall decorations and raised his three year old eyebrows at me then looked sideways at his sister before shrugging. I smiled softly at his wordless acceptance that Reb was a force to be reckoned with. Silver usually made me feel the same way.
Reb let go of our gloved fingers and gave a running leap to launch spread eagled onto the bed then bounce onto all fours with enough enthusiasm to power a second Big Bang. Thankfully, the pajamas sh
e had on were snug fitting leggings and a short sleeve top, otherwise she might have knocked herself out of her own underwear.
The thought filled me with amused indulgence and I decided to immerse myself in the moment to enjoy every bit of their undivided attention while I had it. Ray gave a gentle squeeze to indicate that he was about to let go of my other hand and then he too ran at the bed with the same abandon. At the last second, right before I thought he might run full tilt into the side of the mattress he placed his hands on the edge of the bed doing a somersault to land on his bottom with his legs crossed and his back to the bedroom door.
Reb sniffed in her brother’s direction as if slightly miffed that his flip had outshone her belly flop then aimed an open handed slap at his cheek. Before the blow could land I ‘ported next to the bed and halted it with a casual downward block, but I made sure her fingers would sting.
My tone was pedantic as I adopted my best imitation of Kal’s teaching voice and posture clasping my hands loosely over our tailbone. “Never strike out in anger. Always use your mind to weigh the outcome of any action you might take before completing it. Anger is usually the side result of other negative emotions such as envy, pride and fear. If you see something done by your brother that you admire, then ask him to teach you rather than striking out to wound him. You’re wasting potential and damaging a person close to you.” I hardened my tone and eyed the show Reb was putting on as she hugged her hand to her chest dramatically as if it was broken. “Would you like me to leave now and tell Silver the deal is off?”
Reb’s dark intense eyes snapped upward and the feigned hurt disappeared as she said, “No, don’t tell. I promise, no more hittin’.”
My nod was tight and I motioned toward the pillows at the head of the bed in a wordless command. They scrambled into position to rest their curly hair on the fresh looking linens as I grabbed the bed covers to tug them up over their legs then up to chest level. The movement caused a puff of air currents laden with the familiar scent of lavender to greet our olfactory senses, bringing with it pleasant memories of my aunt Maggie.
From the doorway came the soft sound of Gerome’s voice. “You make that look easy, niece of mine.”
I turned our neck sideways giving him a view of our face in profile without taking all of my attention from the quietly waiting twins, sensing the calm could be broken if they were afforded the opportunity of even a moments inattentiveness.
A brow crept into a peak in query and I asked, “Why aren’t you in the living room?”
He held up his palms as if to ward me off. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay with having the kids thrown at you. Silver just assumed you would be. It’s obvious I shouldn’t have worried about it.”
Something had shifted subtly in our uncle’s personality. He seemed slightly mellowed and more approachable now. Perhaps fatherhood agreed with him? When he turned away I almost called him back to make some sort of friendly overture and thank him for his concern, but something stopped the words from escaping.
I shook off the awkward feeling of failure, my inability to express my emotions left behind, and focused one hundred percent of my being on the two children awaiting entertainment. The end of the bed seemed like the best place to perch and I slid our coat off to let it pool in the floor before I sat with one leg off the side and the other bent backward, gloved hands gripping either side of the semi-stiff jeans stretched over our bony knee.
“I’m going to pick the first story and whoever moves the least gets to pick the next. What happens when you interrupt?” I waited silently for the same response I’d required at the beginning of all our Web sessions.
They crowed in unison, “You stop!” I never counted giggles or gasps of surprise against them since I considered those signs of good storytelling on my part.
I gave an exaggerated, “Hmmmm…what should I start with? Perhaps…The Pearl Shark?” When they nodded with huge smiles on their faces my confidence returned in a rush and they warmed to the story immediately.
“One day a shark in the ocean decided he wanted to be friends with the fish instead of eating them because he was very, very lonely. This shark had a big problem though—if he got close enough to try and talk to the fish his stomach would growl and scare them away. He needed to find something else to fill his belly fast!”
I clutched my stomach and pantomimed being hungry, then pretended to look around. “The shark gazed around the ocean and spotted a sea turtle eating seaweed. He thought, ‘Hmmm I’ll try some of that.’ When he swam over and took a big chomp, the taste of it was terrible. The shark spit out everywhere saying, ‘Yuck! Blech! That’s not for me!’” I made disgusted, twisted faces, pretending to spit out a mouthful of seaweed.
Reb laughed so loud it hurt our ears, and Ray actually covered his, shrinking down under the sheets. Ray’s gaze never left our face.
“His tummy was still growling though, so he searched around in the sea once again until he spotted a whale eating krill. He thought, ‘Hmmm, I’ll try some of that.’ The shark swam around and around trying to gulp down as many krill as he could catch. They were so small he just couldn’t get enough in his mouth to feel full. The shark stopped swimming and gulping to say, ‘Whew, I’m tired and my belly isn’t getting filled up. That’s not for me!’”
Ray was looking a little worried for the shark and his plight, but Reb was getting antsy for the end. I saw her jab at her brother with a foot and he manfully ignored her. I raised my voice to regain Reb’s attention and then made my face sad.
“As the shark began to feel really hopeless he just happened to spot some crabs on the bottom of the ocean eating oysters. He swam down thinking, ‘Hmmm, I’ll try some of that!’ By this time his belly was really growling. The oysters were so good he kept eating and chomping until his belly was so full he couldn’t swim away from the ocean floor. The shark looked around finally satisfied and said, ‘This is for me!’”
Ray began to bounce in place, gripping the edge of the covers as Reb flashed a scowl at her brother.
“Over the years the shark ate so many oysters with pearls inside that his skin turned a beautiful shining white, reflecting a whole rainbow of colors into the water. All of the fish knew he was different and safe to be around so that’s how he came to be called the Pearl Shark.”
Ray clapped his hands in excitement at the end and then commented, “I looked in our memories with Mommy one day and I could only find stuff about crabs eating mussels not oysters.”
Reb made a sour face at her brother. “It’s make believe, dork. It doesn’t have to be real.” She turned forward. “Who gets ta pick next?”
I made a big deal of thinking it over but I already knew Ray would win because I’d observed Reb pinch his leg under the covers when she thought I wasn’t looking. “Ray gets to pick the next story since Reb didn’t keep her hands to herself. You were both very good though! What would you like to hear, Ray?”
Reb pouted then got a calculating look on her face. “You better pick a good one ‘fore the boogey man comes to get ya.”
Ray looked as if he might cry and raised his voice in protest, “I didn’t make it up, Reb, he was here!”
I raised a hand to indicate they should calm down then asked more as a way to assure Ray I believed him rather than in real concern, “What does the boogey man look like, Ray?”
He crossed his arms and gave a look to his twin that spoke volumes before turning in my direction to answer. “The boogeyman doesn’t look like anything because he’s invisible but his eyes make all the hair stand up on your body.”
Reb taunted, “If you can’t see ‘im then how do ya know he was there? What’s so scary ‘bout that?”
As they argued our heart began to race and a great rushing sound of blood in our head thundered to the increased flow of blood in our brain. I tugged frantically at my sister’s presence in the Web all the while keeping a calm patient expression. When Silver popped back into our mind I threw the memory of Ray�
��s words at my twin to absorb.
Her response was immediate. “Get more information from him and find out how many times this has happened. Hopefully it’s just the imaginings of a three year old mind. You know what to do.”
The tone of her voice said she didn’t believe it was coincidence. My twin was gone as soon as she’d appeared, and I continued on with our tiny cousins as if nothing was out of order. Ray was distracted from the topic of boogeymen with another story after I asked a few carefully worded questions, this time a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood. It took three more stories and two renditions of Hush Little Baby in my admittedly tone deaf voice before they both fell reluctantly into sleep.
I stared at their innocent, peaceful faces for a long time before I slowly began to tug the gloves from our fingers. The air was soft and cool against the naked flesh on our hands as I reached out to gently brush knuckles against each of their foreheads thinking, “It’s better to ask forgiveness than permission.”
Chapter Three: Shake and Bake
After our gloves were back in place I stood, staring at the twins sleeping, torn between leaving the room or staying by their sides forever in an impractical attempt to protect them. The truth was, if Shiva decided to take them we wouldn’t be able to do much about it besides bring them back. Leaning down to pick up our discarded coat from the floor at the end of the bed I thought through the issues at hand as I pulled our arms through the sleeves and settled the heavy leather snugly around our shoulders.
I could think of a few practical ways to booby trap the twin’s room but they would have to be taught to avoid the danger and I didn’t like the idea of that. Perhaps we could cover the floor in something that would make a loud noise when stepped on but not harm Reb or Ray if they woke in the middle of the night to use the restroom. I visualized the floor covered in bubble wrap and then dispelled the idea’s effectiveness with a small smile. Covering the floor would only work the first time Shiva ‘ported in, after that if he came again I’m sure he would just make sure to land on the bed or some other piece of furniture. Motion sensors of some type could be the ticket but they would go off when the twins moved as well.
VECTOR (The Weaver Series Book 3) Page 4
