I swoop down and land in the grass near the checkpoint, making a show of pecking about for food. I sidle closer to the car, cocking my head to get a good look at the devil-eyed man.
“Pass?” the guard says, one hand gripping his rifle.
“Shondenhaim,” the man replies, in a language the girl does not understand.
“Shondenhaim,” repeats the guard. “You may proceed, Dr. Kippler.”
The man waves and sets the car in motion, rolling through to the front of the building. In a moment he leaves the car and heads inside, past saluting guards. And then I cannot see him anymore.
I have seen enough. Shondenhaim, I tell Hayli, but I do not think she will remember. The word is too strange, too foreign; it will not survive her Shifting. It means I may let out our secret, but I don’t think I have a choice. I fly back to the old factory she calls her home, and there I find the dark-haired boy—Derrin, I remember—talking to a smaller boy I know I ought to recognize. But Hayli’s memories are not mine, and sometimes I cannot sort them quickly.
As I approach, Derrin stretches out a hand to point somewhere, and I take my chance and land on his arm. He stares at me in surprise.
“Hayli?” he asks.
I contemplate the name. “Hayli,” I say.
“Blimey!” the little boy shouts, eyes round as eggs. “Blimey, that bird talks!”
“Hayli,” I say again, proud of myself.
“That’s not Hayli! Hayli’s not a bird, Derrin!”
“Hayli, can you Shift back?” Derrin asks. “Are you all right?”
Shift. He wants to get rid of me. Perhaps he is afraid of me. Hayli clamors to be free, but I cannot let her out. Not yet. I have something to tell Derrin. I have spoken once. I can speak this. I must.
I ponder the word again. Shondenhaim. I must say it now.
I tilt my head to look at Derrin, blinking as I concentrate. Then I say, “Shondenhaim.”
His brow crinkles; he is confused. I repeat the word, mimicking the voice of the devil-eyed man and bobbing my head to make him see how important it is.
“Shondenhaim?” Derrin echoes.
“Shondenhaim! Hayli!”
I leave my perch, and close my eyes. I don’t want to go. I don’t want to be forgotten again. But this is in Hayli’s hands now.
I came to myself kneeling in the enclosure, dizzy, head pounding. Derrin and Bugs were standing over me, staring at me wide-eyed like I’d done something far stranger than Shift.
“Hayli,” Derrin said, crouching down in front of me. “Are you all right?”
I met his gaze, my thoughts reeling. All through my mind swirled memories of the crow’s last few hours, a hazy patchwork of gleaming color and perception. I’d always wanted to know what the crow saw, but with it all crashing over me like a flood, I felt only a vague vertigo and an emptiness I’d never have imagined.
“I’m jake,” I said, shaking my head once, slowly. “What’s wrong with you two?”
“Hayli!” Bugs shouted. “You were…you were a great big grobbing crow! How’d you do that?”
“It’s my gift,” I said, quietly. “I’m a mage like Shade, Bugs. I just div’n tell anyone.”
“Blimey,” Bugs breathed. “I shoulda guessed.”
“Hayli, did you know the crow could talk?” Derrin asked.
“Talk, you mean like, caw?” I asked, making my best impression of a crow call.
“No, it said your name. And something else.”
“She did? She said my name?” I pressed my hands against my temples. “What was the other thing?”
“I didn’t understand it. It didn’t sound like Cavnish. It said, shondenhaim.”
My eyes widened. With that word came a whole rush of images—the devil-eyed man from the white room arguing with a bald man, a brick building with a chain-link fence. Aeroplanes. A motorcar that wasn’t Tarik’s. A flock that wasn’t my own. Her own.
I shuddered and shook my head back and forth, slowly.
“I have to see Rivano,” I said. “I think I know where I got taken.”
I staggered to my feet, arms flailing like wings, trying to steady me. And for a moment—just for a moment—I remembered being pushed back. The crow had refused to Shift, and had even flown so high up in the sky that I would have died if I’d have Shifted then. A cold little prickle washed over me. She’d pushed me back as if…as if I were someone else. But here I was, thinking about her like she was someone else. But we were the same.
We had to be the same.
“Hayli, what’s wrong?” Derrin asked, tipping his head to study me.
“Maybe it was better when I couldn’t remember my crow life,” I said, quietly. “She frightens me a bit. Maybe it was my mind’s way of protecting me.”
I glanced from him to Bugs, but they couldn’t understand. They stared at me…they stared at me the way the other crows watched her. Maybe she looked just like them, but they knew she was something…different. Would it always be that way?
I sighed and turned to go.
Derrin called after me, “Shade was looking for you earlier.”
“Where is he now?”
He shrugged. “Not sure, probably out.”
“Yeah,” I said. “He’s always out.”
I hesitated a moment there, torn between hunting down Shade—apparently my favorite hobby these days—and searching for Rivano, which would risk me running into the mages who kept the riffraff from pestering the Clan Master. I shivered. I knew that if I ever did get in with the Clan, I would have to get used to the other mages, but they all seemed so…otherly. Human, but not quite. So powerful. It wasn’t even the kind of powerful like Tarik was, or the King himself…it was a stranger and more wondrous and deeper kind of powerful, and it scared the blazes out of me.
No. I’d wait to talk to Rivano. If Shade was looking for me…
“Derrin,” I said, backing up. “If you see Rivano, can you tell him I’m looking for him?”
Derrin gave me a stern look that didn’t quite mask the smile in his eyes. “What, am I everyone’s errand boy now?”
“Seems that way,” I said, grinning, and headed out to hunt for Shade.
I could go faster and see all the streets from above, I thought—or no, I didn’t think it, but a voice in my head told me. Blimey, the crow was talking to me in my thoughts.
Shh, I told her. I know you could, but hush a while so I can think.
I stood on the street gazing left and right, debating.
Go right. To the railyard, the crow said.
Why?
Because I saw him walking that way when I flew back to the Hole.
I shuddered. Stars, maybe Rivano was wrong, and it wasn’t just Aces who ended up cracked. I felt like a loony already, talking to a voice in my head like it was someone who knew something I didn’t…though technically I supposed that was true. I smacked my forehead and tried to get myself sorted.
By the time I got to the railyard, the crow had stopped muttering at me, and I’d gone off on a dafty hunt for a name for her, because it seemed kind of rude to just go about calling her the crow. I even tried asking her what her name was but she must have been cross with me, because for once she didn’t come back with a snappy answer.
Or maybe she didn’t answer because she was just me and I was being cracked about the whole business.
I wasn’t the only one who was cracked, though. I spotted Shade immediately once I reached the Station, because he was sitting on top of the blithering Station, perched at the corner in his black trousers and black waistcoat which made him look rather like a crow himself.
I can reach him, the crow said.
I stared up at Shade, wondering if he’d spotted me yet. If he could identify me from that high up.
How did he even get up there? I asked, but the crow didn’t answer. A’right. Fly.
I shot a fitsy glance around, but nobody was watching one lone street rat cowering at the corner of the railyard. So I flexed my fing
ers and gave myself a nod, and watched the world drift away.
I fly to the rooftop, startling Shade as he crouches on the lip of the roof. He watches me settle onto the bricks beside him, puzzled.
“Hayli?” he asks.
I am not Hayli. I am, but I am not. Why can’t he understand that? She is begging me to let her talk to him, but I want to talk to him, too.
“Hayli,” I say, and cock my head to study him.
He doesn’t seem surprised. Instead he smiles and wraps his arms around his knees.
“That’s pretty good,” he says. “Can you say my name?”
I blink at him. “Shade.”
He laughs and holds out his hand. I hop back, coy, and peck at his fingers. I can feel Hayli’s heart beating. I can feel her sadness. But she isn’t jealous. She pushes me forward. And after a moment I take a few steps toward him, then jump up onto his knee. He holds out his hand, hesitating, waiting to see if I will fly away. But I have defeated him already, and I know he will not attack me. His finger brushes over my feathers, and a sad, thoughtful look fills his eyes.
I shout once, which makes him smile again.
“How’d you find me?” he murmurs, but I don’t think he expects me to answer him.
I watch him a bit, then hop down and attack the shining buckles on his boots. His fingers trace down my back.
“Why is everything so complicated?” he asks.
You should talk to him, I tell the girl in my thoughts. He wants to talk to you.
No, she whispers. Please don’t Shift. Please don’t. Not yet.
Why not? I ask her.
Because as soon as it’s me, he will pull away, and close down. He would never…
Her voice dies as Shade reaches and coaxes me onto his hand, drawing me close to his chest. I tilt my head to study his face. His eyes shine, a knot of pain tightens his brow. His other hand rests on my back. I know he has me pinned now, but somehow the thought doesn’t frighten me. I peck at the buttons on his waistcoat, pulling the chain of his shiny pocket watch. But I know I must go, even if Hayli will hate me for it.
I slip free of his hands and fly a few feet away, and call Hayli from her shell.
“Hayli! Careful!”
I sat down right where I was, muddle-headed from Shifting and terrified of going too close to the edge of the roof, too close to Shade. The world blurred, taking a tick too long to catch up as my gaze roved over the rooftop. Shade had a hand hovering between us, like he’d meant to reach out to me but thought better of it. The fear in his eyes startled me, because Shade never seemed too keen on showing the world any of what he was feeling.
“Stars, Shade!” I cried, planting my hands on the smooth stone. “How’d you get up here?”
“I climbed,” he said, shrugging. “Did I ever tell you I’m afraid of heights?”
“Then what’re you doing up here, you great dafty?”
I inched my way closer to the edge, my stomach doing little somersaults on me, though I couldn’t tell if it was from the roof’s height or from the way Shade was watching me.
“Thinking,” he said, his gaze still on my face.
“Derrin said you were looking for me.”
His eyes widened. “Oh. He did?”
“Weren’t you?” I asked, wondering at his surprise.
He shifted about to face the city, his arms wrapped around his knees. I caught myself staring at his hands, with their long careful fingers and raggedy nails, remembering…
Shut up, Hayli…
“I was just…” He let out his breath. “You were practicing your Shifting? I liked hearing you talk.”
“Canny, aye? She picked that up today.”
He got a funny sort of look on his face, and I even thought I saw a bit of red creep over his cheeks. “So…” he said, and snapped his gaze away. “So you’re starting to remember what happens when you’re the crow?”
I stared at him, at his deepening blush, and had to fight back a little laugh. Shade was terrified. Terrified that I would remember what he’d just done. How he’d held me. And the funny thing was, I did remember. If I thought about it hard enough, I could imagine I felt his hand on my back again. The memory chased a flutter all through me, from the pit of my stomach to the tips of my fingers.
“Some bits,” I said, to spare him his embarrassment. “I can’t always sort what she sees though.”
“Mm,” he said, and didn’t look at me.
I finally managed to get all the way to the edge of the roof, scooting forward inch by inch until I could let my legs dangle over the side. In the back of my mind I knew I should be trying to follow Kantian’s advice and learn as much as I could about Shade, but it felt so wrong. If Shade wanted to trust me with something, he’d tell me. I didn’t want to trick it out of him.
“Shade,” I said. “Does…does your gift ever make you feel like you’re two different people?”
His head snapped up and he fixed me with a baffled stare, grey eyes all in a storm. For a few seconds—far too long for comfort—he just measured me in silence, then he gave a little silent laugh and nodded.
“Yes.”
“I dan’ mean just when you’re using your gift.”
“I know,” he said. “I didn’t mean that either.”
“It’s like you’ve got two people warring inside your head.”
“And both of them want to be you.”
I nodded. “Sounds a bit cracked, dan’ you think?”
“Well,” he said, smiling. “We’re both a bit cracked, aren’t we?”
I grinned and pulled up my knees, feeling silly at those words, and I hardly knew why. We’re cracked, he’d said. We. Me and him. He understood, even if no one else did.
“So, the crow kept me from Shifting earlier,” I said. “And sometimes…sometimes I think she’s talking to me.”
He thought that over for a bit, chewing on the least raggedy of his nails, I suppose to make it match the others. But he didn’t seem to be just trying to find a thing to say, not with that little line on his forehead making him seem a bit nervous.
“Think about it this way,” he said finally, twisting about so he faced me, which brought his body so close to the edge of the roof that my stomach lurched. “It’d be like if I tried to be another person…you know, not just putting on a mask for a few minutes, but to actually live like someone else for a bit. It wouldn’t be just a face and hair and a body, but all the way he would speak and act and even think. After a while I think I’d start getting both him and me yammering in my head, you know? Because they’re both me, but they see the world in two different ways. It’s kind of like you and the crow. You’re both you, but different. And you both need each other.”
“Suppose that’s right,” I said, and kicked my feet against the bricks.
He pitched a bitty chip of stone at me. “Course it is.”
“Hey, Shade, could you turn yourself into a girl?” I asked, feeling wicked.
He got such a look of horror on his face that I couldn’t help laughing, and couldn’t stop till I was silly with it. And still he just stared at me, half-smiling, looking like he was apt to trounce me for saying it…but of course he never would. That got me sobered up a bit, and I brushed hair from my face as he turned his head away, quiet laughter on his lips.
A minute and his smile faded, but he didn’t go all stone-cold statue-faced on me this time. For just a moment he failed to mask his sadness and I saw it written all over his face—sadness and some deep burning confusion.
“Shade, you jake?” I asked, my voice a bare whisper in the wind.
He straightened, the emotion gone in a flash. “Jake,” he said. “Frustrated, that’s all.”
“What about?”
He didn’t say aught else for a good while, and I cursed myself for being nosy. But after a bit he leaned forward on his knees. He still sat twisted so he faced me, so now he was closer to me than ever…and yet, farther away than a daydream. Always.
“I
appreciate all of you,” he murmured. “Honest. But…all this playing games and pretending to be useful, just so I can have a chance to talk to a fellow who’s supposed to help me find somebody else…it’s a bit too much. I don’t know why everyone’s so secretive here. Really, I don’t much care. Maybe it’s because I don’t know what’s going on, but from the outside it all seems a bit silly. And I’m sick to death of being used like some damned puppet.”
I frowned, because just like that, the wall was back up between us, like we’d never joked and laughed, like there’d never been a we.
“Well,” I said. “You knew Rivano’s life’s got threatened, right? If he shows his face in public, he’s good as a target.”
“So Derrin thinks I’m here to assassinate him, I suppose.”
“He doesn’t think aught, but he’s got to play it safe.”
“So many lies,” he said suddenly, burying his face in his hands.
“I’m not lying!” I cried.
“Not you, Hayli. This city. It’s a city of lies. Can’t you feel that?”
“Hey!” a voice shouted suddenly, bellowing up from the street. “What’re you doing up there?”
Shade turned to peer over the edge of the roof. “Copper,” he said. “Guess that means we’re in trouble.”
I glanced down at the uniform, so far below that all I could see was that he was a man, that he was angry, and that he was carrying a rifle.
“Maybe you are,” I said, wicked. “Who can blame a crow for sitting on a roof?”
I half-expected him to holler at me for abandoning him, but he just smiled a bit with an odd light in his eyes.
“Scram, Hayli.” He jerked his head toward the roof behind us. “Go that way so he doesn’t see you Shift.”
His face got a strange, almost sick look, like he’d suddenly just imagined something horrific, but it flicked away in an instant.
I scooched back from the ledge and got to my feet. “What about you?”
“Get down from there, NOW!” the copper shouted.
“Or you’ll what?” Shade murmured. “Shoot us?” He turned back to me. “Get out of here. I’ll be fine.”
The Madness Project (The Madness Method) Page 32
