by Nina Berry
I followed her slowly, buttoning up my coat against the chill. Where was Caleb? I walked faster. Maybe he was in there with the other kids. I got warm all over just thinking about seeing him.
Up close, the building looked surreal, like I was viewing it in fantasyland hi-def. Climbing fig vines shiny and green as jade twisted up between sugar pines with bark like scraped chocolate and knotholes so much like eyes that I expected them to blink at me as I opened the warped door.
Inside lay a large, dark room with uneven wooden walls and a small hawthorn tree growing in the middle of it. November slipped through a door to the left, but I stopped to take in everything around me. To one side flames crackled in a huge fireplace next to a rickety, spiral staircase made of living branches covered with tiny leaves like green fur. I walked over to its base and looked up, but caught only a glimpse of a room opening up to the second story. A deep red leather sofa squatted nearby with a boulder serving as a coffee table.
I opened the door November had gone through and found a smaller room filled with a huge stone dining table. Chairs of different woods surrounded it. The surface teemed with steaming ceramic cups and platters filled with roasted meats, broccoli, corn on the cob, and bread. My mouth started watering, until I saw every face turned to me, and the fairy tale feeling fled. If Morfael’s earth maw had been available, I would’ve gladly crawled inside.
Morfael sat at the head of the table, his narrow face as pale as ever despite the heat rising off the food. His moonstone eyes sent a chill through me. Siku towered to his right, plate in hand as if about to serve himself. His fist tightened around his fork as he glared at me.
Next to him sat another boy, maybe a year or two older than I but skinny as a pencil with an unbecoming line of black bangs falling into his coffee-colored eyes. His smooth skin was almost the same warm brown color, but he didn’t look comfortable in it. His bony shoulders stooped forward, as if trying to hide his thin chest. Gawky elbows jutted into Siku’s space. His head looked too big for his long neck, and his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed a bite of fish and stared at me. This had to be Arnaldo, the eagle-shifter.
London sat on Morfael’s other side, shrunk down in her oversized black clothes, eyeing me, her plate empty. Next to her, November was smirking and looking around to see what everyone thought of me. The verdict did not look positive.
Caleb walked in from what had to be the kitchen, holding a big wooden bowl full of salad, and his eyes went straight to me. He didn’t say anything, just set the bowl on the table and sat, ankle crossed over his knee. I sat next to him, wanting to take his hand, to talk to him alone and to find out what he’d seen after we’d parted under the earth. But this was not the time.
“If you pray before meals, do so now,” said Morfael, his voice clear and cold. “There is much to do tonight.”
“I’m good, thanks,” I said. “This looks delicious.”
As if freed from a spell, everyone unfroze and turned to the food, passing dishes back and forth in silence. Despite her heavy snacking in our cabin just minutes ago, November had her plate piled high and was tucking in with verve. Caleb uncrossed his legs and leaned forward, reaching for the platter of roast turkey. He was tense, angled away from me.
I grabbed a hunk of soft brown bread, sliced off a creamy slab of butter. “You okay?”
“Basically.” His eyes slid over to me, eyes burning in a way I’d never seen before.
“What . . . ?” I began.
But Caleb interrupted, saying to Morfael, “What plans do you have for us tonight?”
I buttered my bread until I poked holes in it, trying to distract myself from my tumbling thoughts.
Morfael considered Caleb. “You and Desdemona will attend a meeting of the local Council within the hour.”
Caleb stiffened as Morfael continued. “The rest of you will go to your cabins and shift to animal form and back again once more. Your cabin mate must witness this shift and report your success to me. If you’re unable to complete the change back, I will tend to you when my meeting is done.”
London frowned and grabbed a pork chop as Siku groaned and kept eating the pile of strawberries dipped in honey he’d accumulated on his plate.
“What about November?” Arnaldo said.
November made a tsk noise. “Big mouth.”
Arnaldo pulled out a phone and pressed a button. “According to my log, November only shifted once today.”
“You keep a log?” London asked, then looked surprised she’d said it.
“Geek!” November sang out.
Arnaldo ignored them. “The rest of us shifted twice; the first time when we went to greet them at five forty-seven a.m.” He jerked his head toward me and Caleb. “So this will be our third shift, but only November’s second for the day. It’s not fair.”
Morfael’s pale eyes rested on Arnaldo, and Arnaldo got very still. “And what makes you think,” Morfael said, his voice soft with a hiss of menace, “that I am concerned with being fair?”
Arnaldo shrank back in his chair. “I . . . I just . . .”
“Do not question my lessons again,” Morfael said. Arnaldo flushed and said nothing more. Morfael resumed cutting up his steak with short, precise strokes of his knife.
It was quiet except for the various sounds of everyone slurping, chewing, and clanging their silverware.
“Why,” I said into the quiet, “are we meeting with the local Council?”
November’s eyes got very round, and London darted a nervous look at Morfael.
Morfael finished chewing. Apparently he liked to take his time between pronouncements. “Your arrival here is unprecedented,” he said. “The parents of my current students would rightfully be displeased if I took in two strangers, one with no lineage, the other not a shifter, without clearing it with the Council.”
“I can’t pay tuition, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Caleb said, shoving himself away from the table. “Dez’s family might manage it.”
Something sparked in Morfael’s pale eyes, but I couldn’t tell if it was amusement or anger. “If the Council votes in favor, you may stay until the end of the term, on scholarship. At that point I shall review your prospects.”
“Who exactly sits on this Council?” I asked. “I like to know who’s judging me.”
“Every region on every continent has a local Council with five members,” said Caleb, when Morfael did not respond. “One from each tribe. I bet all Morfael had to do was say ‘tiger’ and they all came running.”
“Why are you consulting them?” I said to Morfael. “Do shifters rule over callers or something?”
As soon as it came out of my mouth I knew it was the wrong thing to say. Morfael’s head reared back, his eyes alight, and everyone else at the table tensed. Caleb’s mouth twisted, as if holding back an incredulous smile as he looked at me. “I mean,” I said, stumbling onward. “I don’t understand how this world is organized. That’s all. ”
The corners of Morfael’s mouth curled upward. For a moment I didn’t recognize the expression; then I realized he was smiling. The other kids didn’t get it either, exchanging surreptitious glances with each other.
“Come, eat,” said Morfael, stabbing a piece of meat with his fork. “We have little time.”
The tension eased enough so that everyone began eating again. Under the table, Caleb’s hand touched mine. My heart lifted, and I curled my fingers around his. “Nice move,” he said under his breath.
“You’d better explain this to me later,” I said. “Or the next thing I say is going to get me killed.”
CHAPTER 14
We helped the other kids clean up as Morfael vanished behind another door, telling us he would come for us soon.
When Caleb and I had a moment alone gathering empty dishes on the table, I lowered my voice and asked, “What happened to you? Where did you go when we got separated?”
He gave me one quick glance, then looked away. “Nowhere.”
I stopped, holding a bowl full of salad dregs. Caleb’s tone was light, but something in it rang false. “You must’ve seen something. I had this whole weird thing with my mom trying to stop me from crossing a river, and I fell in the river and had to shift to save myself. But when I woke up in the cabin, I was dressed and dry, so maybe it all just happened in my head.”
“It was probably a dream if your mother was in it,” Caleb said. “I didn’t have anything like that. Just wandered out of the tunnel and found the school. I was worried when we got separated, but then Arnaldo told me Morfael had walked back with you.”
He kept gathering the plates, and I now felt sure he was lying. I put my hand on his arm. “Why don’t you want to tell me?”
“There’s nothing to tell, okay?” he said, and walked through the swinging door into the kitchen.
Morfael broke through my jumbled thoughts when he appeared and beckoned. Caleb and I followed him back out into the first living room area, expecting to go outside and maybe head deeper into the woods to find the Council’s meeting place.
Instead, we went farther into the strangely angled house, through a wide door into a room lined with heavy shelves and row upon row of books. I barely had time to register the overstuffed chairs, low lamps, and dusty rolls of what looked like parchment before we went through another door.
Space gaped around us. We were in a cave. The house must have been built across the mouth of a deep opening into the cliff. Now we were inside the mountain, complete with a dirt floor, stalactites jutting down from the ceiling, and a yawning darkness ahead.
To the left someone had laid down rubber flooring and placed various pieces of gym equipment. I spotted a battered heavy bag, a gymnast’s vault, parallel bars, and rows of free weights. Backed up against the wooden wall of the house was a jarringly modern computer area.
Morfael grabbed a black ring set in the wall, then pulled down a white vinyl screen, like the kind my teachers used for PowerPoint presentations. As Caleb and I stood there, he tilted a tiny camera at us, then clicked his mouse.
“The Council’s deciding our fate via video conference call?” I asked.
“What were you expecting?” Caleb said. “Some kind of tribal circle with war paint, drums, and talking sticks?”
I almost said yes, but Morfael gave us a flinty look. “I will speak first,” he said. “Do not speak unless a member of the Council addresses you directly.”
“But we need to tell them about the Tribunal facility where we were kept in the desert,” I said. “They need to know where it is, what they do there . . .”
“Speak only when spoken to.” Morfael’s voice cut through mine.
I shut up and nodded. Caleb raised his brows in acquiescence. Morfael clicked his mouse, and five windows appeared on the screen, each featuring an unsmiling adult face. I spotted a woman with tufts of gray hair; a man with wild reddish eyebrows; a sleek, brown-skinned man with hooded eyes; and a woman younger than the rest, her black hair in a messy bun. In the fifth window a heavyset woman with white skunk streaks in her black hair was just sitting down. Morfael gave us one more diamond-hard look, then raised his staff and knocked five times on the wooden floor.
He closed his eyes and lowered his chin to his chest. The five faces on the screen did the same in what looked like a ritual. Caleb pointed at the woman with the tufted gray hair and mouthed the word “cat.”
I nodded, fascinated. So she was the cat-shifter in the group. Caleb pointed around the ring of faces rapidly as I memorized what he told me.
Man with bushy, red-gray eyebrows: wolf.
Man with hooded eyelids: hawk.
Woman with her hair in a messy bun: rat.
Woman with the skunk streaks: bear.
He was still pointing at the bear-shifter when they all lifted their chins. Caleb casually moved his pointing finger to scratch his nose. All eyes, flat, hooded, baleful, or indifferent, stared at us from the screen.
“It’s late, so let’s get down to the business at hand,” said the cat-shifter. “Morfael you all know. Some of you have relatives who have attended or are attending his school. Welcome, Morfael.”
Morfael bowed his head an inch to her. “Greetings, Chief of the Council, Lady Lynx.”
So the cat-shifter was a lynx. Her ruddy brown skin, round dark eyes, and mussed gray hair looked more like a lady lumberjack than a wild predator.
“Moon above, are we going to do the formal set of greetings and all that bull?” The wolf-shifter leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Can we stipulate that Morfael greeted us all with respect and we did so to him in return?”
“Seconded,” said the lady rat-shifter.
“I agree, which carries the motion,” said the lynx. “And we all know the basic facts. A young caller of shadow and a girl claiming to be a tiger-shifter wish to join Morfael’s school until the end of the term.”
At the word “tiger,” all eyes slid over to me.
“Very well, then, girl,” the lynx said to me. “What is your name? And what are you doing in this hemisphere?”
“My name’s Desdemona Grey. I’m here because my mom adopted me from Russia. She brought me to California when I was eighteen months old.”
“Adopted!” The wolf-shifter’s voice boomed in consternation. “A shifter adopted by a family of humdrums? Never heard such a thing.”
“What happened to your birth parents?” said the lynx, leaning forward until her nose almost touched the wide angle lens of her camera. “Tell us how you came to be adopted.”
So I cleared my throat and gave them a halting account of what my mother had told me: how the reindeer herder had found me in the ring of dead trees in the forests of Siberia; how my mother had then found me in the orphanage. Caleb looked at me. The details of the story were new to him.
“Extraordinary,” said the hawk, his tone skeptical.
“No tribe would allow it,” said the bear.
“Who knows what the tigers would do?” said the rat. “No one’s had contact with them in decades.”
The lynx bit her lower lip. “Perhaps danger threatened, so her parents placed her where they thought she would be safe and left to draw the danger away from her.”
I hadn’t thought of that before. It made a weird kind of sense. But maybe I’d rather believe that than that I’d been left to die.
“Then why haven’t they come looking for her?” said the wolf with disdain. “Our kind would move the earth to find one of our cubs and bring them back safe.”
“You’re assuming her parents survived,” said the rat-shifter.
My throat got tight. There was a chance I’d been wanted. But that meant my biological parents were dead.
The rat-shifter continued, “If they both died, the rest of the tribe might assume their child had died as well, and not search for her.”
“Both parents dead?” The hawk shook his head. “What could have killed off two tigers?”
“The Tribunal,” said Caleb. All eyes moved to stare at him. “I’m sorry. But we all know how powerful the great cat-shifters are. It would take a force armed to the teeth with silver to take out one, let alone two, of them.”
“He’s right,” said the rat-shifter, adjusting her knot of dark hair as it began to tumble down. She stuck a bobby pin in her mouth and spoke around it. “When he requested this meeting, Morfael said that the Tribunal knew of this girl’s existence. How did they find her when none of us knew?”
“How they first became aware of her remains unclear,” Morfael began.
“They were keeping watch on a lightning tree in my neighborhood,” I said quickly, before Morfael could stop me.
Morfael did not turn his head, but his eyes narrowed. On the screen, the wolf frowned while the others looked thoughtful.
“Go on,” said the rat. “What happened?”
“I’ve been climbing that tree since I was a kid,” I said, and spilled out the story of my capture, including the location of the Tribunal base.
“That area must be placed under quarantine,” said the lynx. “Be sure to alert all family representatives in your tribe so they know to give Barstow and that part of the desert a wide berth. I’ll let the Continental Council know.”
“What will they do?” I asked, earning another piercing look from Morfael.
All five of the Council stared out at me.
“That is none of your concern, cub,” said the hawk.
I took a deep breath to quell the anger rising in me. Didn’t they see? “These Tribunal people kidnapped me, then tried to take my family,” I said. “If you don’t stop them, they’ll do it again to someone else.”
“Wolves can take care of our own,” said the wolf.
“But my family is on the run!”
“That is not our concern,” said the hawk.
“How can you not care what happens to other people, people like you?” I said. “We have a common enemy. Why can’t we . . .”
“We are not like you,” said the bear. “We are bears, ursine, honey seekers. You are a tiger, feline, night prowler.”
“But . . .”
Morfael grabbed my upper arm in a viselike grip. “None of this is relevant.” His voice cut through my protest and closed up my throat. I couldn’t have continued speaking if I’d tried. “I wish to take these two into my school until the end of the term. That is the only matter now before the Council.”
“If she doesn’t stay within the shelter of Morfael’s school, the Tribunal will probably find her and kill her,” said the rat. “That’s why we have to keep her away from the school,” said the wolf, narrowing his eyes. “If the Tribunal hunts her down there, they find the other children. She’s not worth the risk.”
“Exactly,” said the hawk. “What have the tigers ever done for us?”
The rat-shifter frowned, her straight black brows crowding her dark eyes. “A better question might be: If the situation were reversed, what would we like the tigers to do?”
“Wolf-shifters would never let this happen,” huffed the wolf.
“We must try to contact her tribe,” said the lynx. My breath stopped at her words. “The tigers must be told she is here.”
