Otherborn (The Otherborn Series)

by Anna Silver

  “She’s getting worse,” Rye said. “While you guys debate who or what she is, London is getting sicker.” His shoulders sagged. It didn’t matter what they believed anymore, what they knew. They were losing London. He was losing London.

  Harlan opened his mouth to say something, but Tora cut in, “He’s right, Harlan. You know he is. We can’t just stand by any longer. You have to make a decision.”

  Her words were stern, and Rye suddenly picked up on a conflict in the air he’d not been privy to before.

  Abigail, the Healer, stirred from her taciturn observance. “Tora, you know we can’t—”

  “Yes. You can,” Tora said, crossing her arms. She glared at Harlan to intervene, but he only shook his head.

  “What’s going on?” Rye asked. “What are you three talking about?”

  Tora ignored him and continued to bore into the old man with her twice-gifted eyes. “If you let her die, Harlan, you’ll never know. Whatever she is, whatever she knows, will die with her. She can help us. I know she can.”

  “Help you?” Zen said. “You’re supposed to be helping us.”

  “Yeah, what are you talking about?” Kim asked.

  Tora continued to ignore them, her fierce look lingering on Harlan without mercy.

  The Elder was crumbling beneath it. “Tora, you know the risk. What you’re asking…it could cost us one of our own. You realize that?”

  “I know the cost. But without her help, we’ll lose one of our own eventually anyway. And then another and another. Until we’re gone. All of us. Everywhere. And all hope with us. Is that what you want? Do you want to let them win? Do you want to hand our future over to them on a silver platter?”

  Harlan rubbed at the back of his neck with a withered hand, oblivious to Rye, Zen, and Kim’s questioning stares. “No. That’s not what I want.” He sighed.

  “Harlan! You can’t be serious.” Abigail stepped up, roused. “It’s all we have left. Who knows when we’ll get more?”

  “If we get more,” Tora added ominously.

  “What?” Rye asked, finding the ambiguity maddening. “More what?”

  Harlan stared at Tora, who stared back while Abigail stared them both down. Rye and his friends exchanged bewildered glances. Meanwhile, Clark looked lost in his corner, but didn’t seem obliged to speak up.

  “She’s right, Abigail. It’s getting harder and harder to come by. They’re cutting us off, starving us out. If we don’t find a solution, a real solution, soon, it won’t matter. We’ll be wiped out anyway.”

  Harlan seemed old and tired, weighed down by a predicament Rye didn’t entirely understand, but he realized for the first time that the Outroaders were facing problems much bigger than solving the mystery of a few runaways. A twinge of guilt seized his conscience. Maybe they should have tried explaining their dreams to the Elder. Maybe Harlan would have understood. He seemed to put some faith in Tora’s.

  “I won’t do it,” Abigail refused, hands on hips. “I tell you, I won’t do it, Harlan James!”

  Harlan sighed again. “Yes, you will, Abby.”

  “Do what?” Rye asked, his friends unified in concern behind him.

  “Abby, it’s the only way,” Tora said lightly.

  “What about the other camps? Someone’s bound to have more! Maybe she could hang on. Have your scouts returned yet?” the Healer argued.

  “No, but—” Harlan started.

  “They won’t, Abby,” Tora stated gently. “I already know.” Her eyes met the Elder’s with a burden of regret and sadness.

  “It’s not just us, Abby,” Harlan reasoned. “They’re doing it to everyone. You know that. We’re right outside Capital City. Capital City, Abby! If we can’t get it, no one can.”

  “But there are reserves! Surely someone has reserves,” she pleaded, her broad shoulders sagging and wisps of tethered brown and silver hair breaking free around her plump face.

  “Abby,” Tora intervened, her voice almost scolding, like a mother to a much-loved child. “Could you really ask that of them? If it’s one of theirs or one of ours, what’s the difference? The loss is still the same.”

  At that, the Healer hung her head in submission. She rubbed her bulging eyes and pinched her nose at the bridge to relieve some tension. Without a word, she started for the door of the tent, then paused beneath the flap and turned to where Tora stood protectively in front of London’s cot.

  “You’re going to regret this, Tora,” she said simply, sadly, with no hint of threat in her voice. Then she passed into the morning.

  FIFTEEN

  Astral Awakening

  Si’dah moved effortlessly through the marsh.

  A couple of days ago, if one could call them days here, she’d awoken beneath the faded awning of a sky-colored shelter she didn’t recognize, to the soft, sloughing sounds of water lapping happily at the folds of the strange fabric. She rose a little stiffly, and carefully made her way to the shelter’s edge, peering out to find an infinite stretch of mist and marsh all around. She frowned, let the flaps fall closed, and returned to her bed. She was in the Astral, the Lowplane by the looks of it, with no idea how she got there.

  As her mentor had taught her, she stayed firmly put, occupying herself with old songs and little games she made up as she went along. These mishaps often righted themselves in due time. It was to be expected for a Traveler. Restless spirits tend to wander, nothing more, nothing less.

  Still, it was more than a little unnerving.

  After all, her spirit wasn’t her own anymore, was it? It belonged to the Other now, at least in part. So why would the Other send it here? They’d only just reclaimed the Midplane. And that had ended poorly. This abrupt awakening to the Astral, on a plane the Other had yet to navigate, was not in keeping with what Si’dah had come to know of London.

  Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.

  Then she got an unexpected visitor.

  A listless nap on a hammock of metal sticks came to an abrupt end when she felt the presence watching her. Si’dah opened her eyes to see the bright face of a young girl, golden haired and frail, with enigmatic peridot eyes, standing next to her. Her hand was outstretched at her side, clasping…nothing.

  Had she not known the ways of the Astral, Si’dah may have missed the signal. But unlike her Other, she knew all three planes like a mother’s arms. She knew their speaking, she read the signs. Standing, she took her place next to the girl and clutched her hand. Instantly, fear overwhelmed the visiting spirit, but Si’dah did not let go. She held fast and tight, reassuring the girl as best she could with a kind smile—a gesture recognized in any language, on any plane. The girl calmed, relaxed, and, when she was ready, let go. Then, she faded from the little room of sky fabric, leaving Si’dah alone again.

  When the mists began to invade shortly thereafter, Si’dah knew it was time to leave. This foible would not clear on its own. The shelter had been like a doorway suspended between the worlds. That is how the girl-spirit had found her. It sat squarely among the marshes of the Lowplane, floating like a raft. Suspended. Waiting. While the mist and water swirled without. Only the Other could have held it there. As the mists made their way inside, hanging delicate drops of condensation along the interior of the sky fabric, Si’dah knew her Other was failing. The shelter was sinking into the Astral, becoming part of it rather than simply existing in it.

  She sighed, gathered her skirts about her, and waded out into the Lowplane.

  At first, there was nothing else to see for miles in any direction but water and mist. As was typical, however, the horizon quickly began to change, and soon enough, so did the landscape. Here and there, the water grew thick with strange, dancing grasses—a sort of marriage of water and earth. One second, Si’dah was waist deep in the mud and slush of Astral marsh, the next, she was scrabbling onto a rise of soppy land, clawing her way out of the endless water. It was tiring and she collapsed on the bank, wet strands and plaits sticking to her face and back, her
chest heaving with labored breaths. Wading the water had been easy, but as she’d expected, the water did not want to let her go. How many souls had given up and wandered here among the reeds forever?

  When she’d first come upon the land, it rose suddenly and steeply from the water, a tiny island in the mists that swam over her head, nothing more. Now, as Si’dah sat up and took scope of her surroundings, the water had receded completely, the mists hung in straying, ankle-height tendrils, and, for as far as her trained eyes could see, she witnessed only the wet, black earth of the Lowplane. She stood on trembling legs, reached down, and wrung the marsh from her skirts, then started in the obvious direction toward the Midplane.

  Really, she could have wandered off in any direction and it would have made little difference. Direction was a state of mind here, not a point on the horizon. But Si’dah saw soon enough that the thick tar earth of the Lowplane was rising to meet the gentle green slopes of the Midplane. It was there that she would find the answers she sought. Hopefully.

  The crisp Midplane air was a welcome change from the briny pressure of the Lowplane. Si’dah breathed in deep when both her feet finally touched on downy grass. She stretched and turned around, not at all surprised to find that the swollen earth and choked marshes of the Lowplane had vanished and she was entirely surrounded by sweet, undulating plains of sweeping, verdant grasses. The Lowplane and its sinking tent were lost behind her now. Ahead, the Astral grove awaited.

  She walked for an inordinate amount of time before she finally saw it.

  Just as she was beginning to think the Astral would not reveal it to her, she saw the towering trunks of the grove rise in their splendid ring on the horizon, a living, leafy henge.

  Si’dah tucked her chin and picked up her pace, heading straight for the solitary landmark. This is what she’d come to find. The answers she needed all waited inside.

  Within moments, she found herself at the lonely center of a silent grove. Nine stones stood in an empty circle. Nine trees rose to meet the mists overhead, which swirled and tumbled in an angry dance, reflecting Si’dah’s own discordant mood. Where were all the beings of before? The witnesses? Where were Degan and the three remaining? Had the Circle abandoned her too?

  Si’dah tried hard to remember the details of that fateful gathering when she had decided to make the Great Sacrifice, before the Other had possessed her so completely. But her connection to London muddled so many of her own memories. They had been in this very same grove, she was sure of that. How long ago had it been? Or how far in the future? Was it yesterday that she’d made the pact? Or tomorrow?

  Si’dah raised her jet eyes to the swirling sky and cursed the mists. The Astral could be infuriating when one tried too hard to nail it down. She moved to one of the center stones and plopped down, folding her slender arms over her stomach. Yes, it had been here that the pact was made, her fate sealed. Only then, the grove was full, as it was when she returned just days ago and the Other’s fear had intervened. Then, it had been alive with voices and faces of all kinds. And each of the stones held one of the Circle upon it, like Astral thrones. One, the one, she realized, she was sitting on now, in fact, had been her own. And the stone directly across from her had been his…

  Si’dah snatched at the trace of memory, using her mind like a net. She could see him sitting there, across from her, his proud face circled with red markings as they stole glimpses of one another. Roanyk. She could taste his lips on hers even now and scent his spicy aroma in the air, like fir trees and cinnamon and some unknown herb. She could see their fingers intertwined as they strolled among the trees, waiting…for something. She remembered it like a dream of a dream, gazing into the ice-pure eyes of this unlikely love. Al mihte ru Roanyk…al mihte ru…

  Was it the love of the Others that had infected her and Roanyk? Or was it their own Astral passion that had transferred to the Others? Si’dah could not seem to separate where one began and another ended. The memory was an autumn leaf, falling from her mind. Then it was gone. And the hard rock beneath her beckoned for answers. Why? Why did she have a place among the stones? Si’dah grasped at the wisps of memory that roiled and fled like the mists above, like skittish birds.

  A place among the stones…

  Si’dah straightened instinctively. To hold a place among the stones was of great importance. It filled her with an untethered pride. A flood of realization emerged from the new emotion. She was proud because she was a member of the Circle. This was a great honor not only among her people, but among countless peoples. People of yesterday. People of tomorrow. People of worlds that danced in and out of space and time like spinning marbles. So many worlds, so many doors. And yet they all opened here, in the Astral. It held them all together like cosmic glue. Those who sought the doors from their world to this were like her; they were Travelers among their own people. They knew the secrets of the Astral. How to walk its planes. They came here to seek, to learn, to know. It was here that they met and formed the Circle, a council of the highest among them. The most wise, most gifted, of all Travelers. Si’dah had earned her place among the stones, as had the Si’dah before her, because she was one of those who knew the Astral best.

  A triumphant smile tugged at her lean lips. She lifted a hand thoughtlessly and began picking at them. When she realized what she was doing, she dropped her hand in alarm. This was not her habit. It was the Other’s. London was infecting her. A moment of panic enveloped her before Si’dah realized it was to be expected. Had not she injected herself into this life, this Other? Had not she imposed herself, her soul, her memories upon this one? Had not London lived with the metastasizing presence of Anya, like a cancer? Now, she felt a little of what her Other must be experiencing, and, for perhaps the first time, Si’dah found an overwhelming tenderness blooming inside her for London. The sort she imagined one would feel for their child. Perhaps, because of the Great Sacrifice, she had become a mother after all.

  The snap of a nearby twig slammed an invisible door on Si’dah’s musings, and she sprung to her feet, spinning to find Degan approaching from behind.

  “Sit, Si’dah,” he said calmly. “I thought I might find you here.”

  “Why? How?” she asked, confused.

  Degan smiled warmly. He looked so much like she remembered him, from the time before the Great Sacrifice. And yet also like the time after, from her Other’s memories. He was very young for a wise one, younger even than Si’dah. His ageless skin and slim, adolescent shape did not reveal the great burden of his position. His hair, now the color of Lowplane earth, seemed a little longer, and his hazel eyes were flecked with all he had seen in his years. Si’dah lowered herself back onto her stone as he took a seat next to her and waited for his reply.

  “How much do you remember?” he asked.

  She sighed. “Not enough.”

  “It has been harder than we anticipated,” he told her then. “We thought it would come so much easier: the memories, the knowing. We thought it would happen faster.”

  “The Others are stronger than we gave them credit for,” Si’dah said. “They are not empty shells we can inject our souls into. How did we forget this? That each life carries its own will, which hangs over the soul like a veil and changes it. Forever.”

  “Even the Circle can make mistakes, Si’dah.”

  Si’dah looked up at the mists above, a silent thunderstorm in fast forward. Their forecast was dark. “You seem different somehow. Yet, you have not changed. Why do you wear the Other’s face?” she asked him.

  Degan smiled. “I was of his world before, don’t you remember, Si’dah? I am one of his people, though my time came much sooner than his. It was I who brought the plight of our kind to the Circle. It was I who asked the Great Sacrifice of you, of us all.”

  Si’dah squinted. She seemed to recall it now. Degan was much then like he was now. Young, fair, wise from lifetimes of experience. He’d paced within the stones, the passion in his words moving them all to do the unthinkable, to
give up their lives in their worlds, willingly, that they might be reborn in another that needed them more. That was the Great Sacrifice. London’s world had a word for it: suicide. Si’dah wrinkled her nose in disgust. That was an ugly word for a desperate act. The Great Sacrifice was an act of charity, carefully plotted and arranged in the Astral. And even more carefully carried out. Only the most adept Travelers could ever hope to succeed in it.

  “I remember,” she said at last. “You have made the greatest sacrifice of all.” Si’dah knew, as the details of that fateful decision flitted back to her, that Degan would never leave this plane. The violent end his Other had met in their world would trap him here eternally. It was a calculated risk they all had taken.

  “Perhaps. I’m not so sure of that. My time there was very short. In some ways, it is a blessing. But the Other is too much a part of me because we are of like kind. I will never be the same. He has changed me.”

  “They will change us all,” Si’dah told him. “We were foolish to think otherwise.”

  Her eyes traveled over the rough trunks of the trees encircling them, pulled like taffy to unnatural heights. A flash of movement or light caught her attention, disappearing behind one branch and emerging again around another. Si’dah squinted to make out what she was seeing, but it continued to elude her, winking in and out of the grove’s shadows.

  Degan looked at her quizzically for a moment, then asked, “Do you remember my name Si’dah? Before the Great Sacrifice?”

  “When I look at you,” she said, “I know you as the Other, Degan. I can recall little else. Only glimpses of the before.”

  “Try Si’dah,” he urged her. “Push back the will of your Other, London, and try to access your own memories. You will find me there.”

  Si’dah closed her black eyes on the green meadows of the Midplane and tried to move within herself, beyond the walls of the Other. Pinches of memory bubbled up until a spotty pattern began to emerge, like a tartan soup.