by Tracey Tobin
Chapter Ten
The soft breeze smelled wonderful, like lilacs and lavender, mixed with roses and baby’s breath. Tori took a long, deep breath and sighed contentedly, wondering where this wonderful scent was coming from. For a moment she lay there amid the beautiful aroma, dozing as though still in a dream, but when she realized that there was something warm and furry curled up under her arm she opened her eyes.
She was in a small, brightly-lit room, laying on a small bed piled with blankets and pillows, and Jiki was snoozing softly, curled as close to Tori’s body as she could get without being on top of her. Tori smiled at the little kitten, but was then distracted by what she found was the source of the amazing odor she’d woken to.
The room was positively covered in flowers. The little bedside table was overflowing with them. They were piled up on the windowsill and on top of the trunk at the foot of the bed. They were scattered in groups all along the walls of the room, and there were even some strewn across the blankets themselves, just beyond the reach of Tori’s feet. They were every color: blues, purples, reds, yellows, oranges. Some had large petals like a rose, some were tiny and delicate like daisies. All of them combined together to smell like heaven.
Tori tried to sit up to get a better look around the room, but as she did a shock of pain went through her torso and she couldn’t help but hiss aloud. The noise stirred Jiki, who looked up with bleary sleep still in her eyes. For a moment she didn’t seem to understand what she was looking at, but then her face broke out into an enormous smile. “You’re awake!” she exclaimed, and suddenly she was jumping up and down on the bed, laughing like it was Christmas morning. Tori forced the smile on her face, but she couldn’t help cringing as the movement made it feel like her organs were being punched. She was about to open her mouth to beg the kitten to stop when Jiki leaped from the bed and streaked off out the door with a call of “I’ll get everyone!” on her lips.
Tori blinked after her little friend and couldn’t help but chuckle a little, though she found that made her hurt as well.
What happened? Why am I so damn sore?
While she had a moment of privacy she attempted to examine her body. Someone had dressed her in a loose-fitting white sun-dress that was soft to the touch and gentle on the skin. She pulled the neck of the fabric aside and could see bandages wrapping her shoulder and upper chest. Those made her frown, but the greatest source of the aches were not from her arm. Shifting with her teeth clenched, she wiggled the white dress up until she could see the much larger bandages wrapped around her midsection. Slowly, bracing herself mentally, she loosened the bandages and pulled them down a little so that she could see the damage.
“Oh god…” She felt a bit of bile raise in her throat. The wound that covered a large portion of her abdomen was red, angry, and was no doubt going to leave an incredibly nasty scar. Despite everything that she’d been through and the fact that she should be grateful to even be alive, Tori couldn’t help but feel a few tears spring to the corners of her eyes. She swiped them away angrily and yanked her dress back into place just as footsteps approached from the hallway.
Jiki was the first to rush back in, but following hot on her heels were Kaima and their father, the elder. Walking more casually, and with a lovely warm smile on her face, was Eden. The Maelekanai all looked beyond relieved to see Tori’s eyes open, but the look on Eden’s face was one more of pride and of great faith. She looked as though she hadn’t been the least bit concerned about whether or not Tori would recover.
“You’re finally awake,” Kaima breathed. She closed her eyes as she spoke, and her chest heaved once with a long, deep sigh. It was clear that she’d been wracked with stress while Tori was asleep, which Tori had to admit was a huge surprise.
“How long have I been out?” Tori asked, directing her question to the elder.
He seemed to be working through a calming breath himself, so Tori anticipated a cringe-worthy response. “It has been ten days, young princess,” he finally replied.
Tori’s mouth opened, then closed. When she was finally able to speak the unbidden words that found their way to her lips were, “No wonder I’m so hungry.”
The chuckle that spread throughout the room was strangely comforting. Tori felt that the little bit of laughter had been a long time coming. She was genuinely amazed as she came to realize that the people in this room had been praying for her recovery, and that realization made her feel strangely normal, a part of something that she never thought she would be a part of again.
Apparently determined to bring some seriousness back into the moment, Eden stepped forward and placed one porcelain-white hand on Tori’s arm. “How much do you remember about the battle?” she asked.
The battle…
Tori hadn’t been expecting the question, and so she wasn’t entirely certain what kind of answer Eden was looking for. “What do you mean?” she asked. She could still feel the fire and the fear, the panic and the determination. She could see the looks in the eyes of everyone around her as she shared blood with little Jiki and felt the magic of her heritage flowing through her. “Is there some reason why I shouldn’t remember?”
The elder stepped forward and offered a kind, almost fatherly smile. “I believe what Eden is wondering is, do you recall much about the transformation itself?”
For a second Tori floundered and her memory actually did seem hazy. Transformation? What transformation? she thought to herself. She remembered the fire and the blood. She remembered running with Jiki in her arms, and standing face-to-face with a Shadow while the life drained from her body. Transformation… Then the second half of the battle for the village began to rush back.
The sudden strength and grace that her body had been filled with.
The almost uncontrollable desire to run and jump and climb.
The way she had been able to hear and see things like her senses were super-powered.
Then, with a start, she remembered looking down at her hands and seeing night-black skin tipped with razor-sharp white claws. Tori gazed down at her now trembling fingers. They were the same pale flesh-tone they had always been, and several of her fingernails were cracked and ripped.
“Do you remember it?” Eden asked gently.
Tori looked up at her with a thousand questions in her eyes. “I don’t understand,” she admitted. “It all felt so natural and right at the time, but…” Her gaze flitted over to the three Maelekanai who were looking at her with awe and reverence. “What exactly happened to me?” she whispered. She was somewhat terrified to hear the answer.
No one responded, because just then a startled, choked sound came from the doorway. They all turned, and Tori had to lean to the side to see around Kaima.
Jacob stood there, staring into the room with an unreadable expression on his face. On the floor beside him was a bouquet of baby-pink flowers that he’d dropped in his surprise.
An air of discomfort seemed to permeate the room as the young man stared at Tori with his mouth partially open.
After what felt to Tori like an extremely long moment the elder cleared his throat, gestured to his daughters, and swept them out of the room. With a quick squeeze of Tori’s arm and a soft smile Eden followed, leaving Tori alone with Jacob, who was staring and fidgeting, and couldn’t seem to take his eyes off her.
Eventually he seemed to compose himself enough to think again. He stooped down to pluck the flowers up off the floor and began to walk toward Tori. He almost came right up beside her, but seemed to reconsider and stopped instead at the foot of the bed. There he placed the flowers with some of the others.
Tori couldn’t stand the silence any longer. “Did you collect all of these?” she guessed.
Now that he was being confronted with it, Jacob almost seemed embarrassed. He stared at the bed sheet and flicked his fingers at a couple of loose petals. “Yeah,” he said softly. “I wasn’t sure… I guess I… I needed something to occupy myself with. It’s felt like a hundred years hav
e passed since the battle.”
Tori felt her heart flutter a little. “Did you think I was going to die?” she whispered.
The look on his face gave her the answer, but he responded anyway. “When you fainted you changed back to yourself,” he said slowly, shuddering at the memory. “And when you changed back to yourself the wounds reopened and you began to bleed out again.” His eyes looked haunted as the scene replayed in front of them. “You’d lost so much blood by the time we got Eden and the healer to you. I thought- I thought-” He looked up finally, meeting her eyes and holding them, a confession on his face. “I thought I’d failed you,” he admitted. “I’d been a royal guardian for less than two days and I thought that you were going to die on me.”
Tori didn’t know what to say. She could see the mixture of pain and relief in his eyes and just didn’t know what to say. Careful not to let the pain show on her face as she pushed herself into a sitting position, she held Jacob’s gaze and did her best to push away her pride. “I haven’t exactly been an easy person to guard,” she told him.
His lip twitched, but he bit back the laugh. “Well, I can’t really argue with that,” he said.
She smiled. Reluctantly, so did he.
There were a million possible words hanging in the air between them, but they were cast aside when Kaima and Jiki reappeared laden with bowls and cups. Jiki excitedly showed Tori the berries they had picked for her and the pastries that had been dropped off by the village’s best cook. Kaima was very quiet as she arranged wooden cups of water and a milky-looking substance on the side table. The older sister gave a short bow as soon as her work was complete and neglected to meet Tori’s eyes before excusing herself and hurrying back out the door.
Jiki must have seen the question on Tori’s face because she piped up with, “She knows she was a schishia-na to you,” before taking off after her sister.
Jacob snorted and tried to cover his smile, confirming Tori’s suspicion that the word Jiki had used was not one for polite conversation.
She turned to reach for the bowl of berries that Jiki had left on the side table and couldn’t stop herself from hissing in pain as the wounds in her stomach twisted. Before she could regain herself Jacob was at her side, gently forcing her to lean back against her pillows. She tried to tell him, “I’m fine, I’m fine,” but it came out as a raspy gasp that didn’t sound fine at all. When she was settled and breathing steadily again Jacob turned and picked up the bowl himself. For one mortifying moment Tori was sure he was going to try to feed her the berries, but he seemed to think better of it and placed the bowl gently in her lap.
“Eat, princess,” he told her. “You need to regain your strength.”
Tori felt her cheeks warm. “Please don’t call me ‘princess’,” she mumbled before popping a few berries into her mouth. They tasted like blueberries that had been dipped in maple syrup.
She thought while she ate, and Jacob stood silent until she was done.
“Jacob,” she finally said, working up the courage to ask the question for a second time. “What exactly happened to me?” She didn’t have to elaborate; she could see that Jacob understood what she was looking for.
He started first with a question of his own. “Did you not feel it?” he asked. “Could you not tell that something had changed?”
Again Tori’s gaze was drawn down to the skin of her hands. Though she was uncharacteristically pale, it was the same ivory shade it had been for as long as she could remember. “I remember feeling strong,” she replied, “and maybe a little crazy, like I was high on something. I felt invincible.” She frowned and balled her fists into the blanket. “I keep having this flicker of memory, of looking down at my hands and seeing skin as black as coal, but it seems like a weird dream that I can’t quite shake.”
Jacob was nodding slightly, but he had a bit of a frown pulling at the corners of his mouth. He looked everywhere except in Tori’s eyes for a moment, but then he sat down heavily in the chair beside her bed and ran a hand through his shaggy hair. “When you took in Jiki’s blood,” he began, “a transformation came over your body. It was unlike anything I could have ever imagined if you had given me a lifetime to imagine.” He looked at Tori then, and once again she saw the awe with which he had gazed at her after the battle. “You became something else; not quite you, not quite them. Something new. Something amazing.”
Tori’s heart flitted faster; she thought it might rise up out of her chest and fly from her mouth. “Became something?” she repeated. “What does that even mean?”
Jacob opened his mouth to answer, but it was Eden’s voice that replied. “The magic in your blood triggered the change,” she spoke from the doorway. “Your subconscious, combined with what you required in that moment, chose the form. And now you’ve become a little stronger, something new and different, something with the potential to grow and be able to defeat Iryen in his demon form.”
Tori and Jacob stared at the mysterious woman who had started them on this strange path. Tori’s lips were pursed, but when she saw the loving gaze with which Eden looked back at her she felt her annoyance melt a little. “I don’t understand,” she admitted in a mewling voice.
Eden smiled. “You will, my child. You will.”
Ten more days later Tori stood outside the council room hut and cringed. “I don’t think I can do this,” she told Jacob. “I feel like I’m walking in there and pretending to be something I’m not.”
Jacob’s smile was warm and encouraging. “But you’re not pretending,” he insisted. “You may not feel like it, or even really believe it yet, but you are what you are. And besides,” he added, “it’s just a celebration. Everyone just wants to see you, to be able to rejoice in your victory. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to tonight.”
Maybe not tonight, Tori thought to herself. But you’re all expecting me to do it from here on out. You’re all going to be expecting me to be your ‘princess’.
Aloud she took a deep, shaking breath, fixed a nervous smile on her face, and let Jacob support her with his arm. “Okay, let’s get this over with.”
Tori’s body was still recovering, but with the help of Jacob’s arm she was able to walk more-or-less steadily down the hallway and into the beautiful celestial council room. There, every remaining member of the Maelekanai tribe was waiting for her. Her heart leaped into her throat as the entire room of two hundred or more turned to stare at her. For half a moment she felt like she was back in her old world, walking into her high school, with everyone staring at her like she was some kind of science experiment. But then, to her deep surprise, a hush fell over the room and every single Maelekanai dropped to their knees before her, their gazes directed to the floor. If it weren’t for Jacob she wouldn’t have known what to do, but he gently tugged at her arm and led her to the center of the room, where the elder and his daughters knelt beside a smiling Eden.
Jacob released Tori’s arm, and Eden stepped forward to take her hands. “Are you ready, my child?”
Tori couldn’t help it; she shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she admitted. “It still feels like I’m dreaming this insane dream. I don’t even know if I can do it again.”
But Eden was not swayed. “You can, my child,” she insisted. “The blood magic has been awakened, and it is a part of you now. It will always be a part of you now.”
Tori was still shaking her head when a small, fuzzy hand found its way into her own. She looked down to see that it was Jiki who had reached up to her, her eyes shining like onyx gems. “You can do it, krishi-ka,” she whispered.
Well, if the kid thinks I can do it, Tori thought, and took a deep breath.
She turned to the crowd, who were now looking up, expectant and quivering with barely-contained excitement. She shot a quick glance at Jacob, who was standing supportively beside her, and then closed her eyes. Think about the blood, she told herself. Imagine the light in the blood… She concentrated on her heartbeat - which was racing a li
ttle bit - and tried to envision the plasma that was being pushed through her body with each pulse. In that pulse was a magic that had been there since she was born, a magic that had been waiting for her since ancient times. All she had to do was reach in and pull it out…
The sensation wasn’t as overwhelmingly obvious as it had been the first time when she was injured, but Tori could feel the shifts in her body, the way her skin seemed to crawl and stretch, the way her fingers and toes tingled. She could feel a heat from within her body, a desire to move, a need to be active. She knew that she was something else - still Victoria, but something else as well.
She opened her eyes and observed the looks of wonder on the Maelekanai faces. She caught Jacob’s eye out of the corner of her own and winked at him before leaning forward and taking off at a run.
She was aware that the Maelekanai were following her, laughing and hooting in amazement as they jumped together through the trees. Tori laughed with them, exhilarated, astounded at the warmth in her veins, the tingle of the magic running through her, the strange and total acceptance of what had happened and was currently happening. All the doubt melted away as she ran, jumped, climbed, swung, all to the joy and amazement of the people running with and around her. In this form, in this body, in this mind, Tori wondered how she ever could have been afraid of anything. She was strong, she was powerful, she was magical, she was everything.
She roared, and was proud of the mighty sound that echoed throughout the forest. Behind and around her the Maelekanai answered her call, roaring out their dissent against Iryen and his Shadows, roaring for their homes and families and everything they’d lost, and roaring for the lost princess who had finally come home to save them.
