Shatterskin

by Beca Lewis

  Zeid rose to go, and I grabbed his hand. “You haven’t told me yet, Zeid. Who are my mother and father? Where are they? “

  Zeid turned and knelt in front of me. The look of sadness on his face scared me. “Your mother is dead, Hannah. She was visiting one of the villages in the West when the Shrieks arrived. Everyone died. There were no survivors. The entire town was stunned, and then shattered and swallowed. Buried. That’s why your father, in his grief, sent you away to be safe.”

  “And my father?”

  “Survives. But his grief has weighed him down, and he is dying from it.”

  “Does he know I have returned?”

  “Yes. At least part of him knows. The part that has given up does not, and that’s the part that governs him right now. Once we have defeated the Shrieks and Shatterskin we’ll go to see him, and hopefully, he will recover because you have returned. If we don’t, it won’t make any difference anyway.”

  This time I didn’t stop Zeid from walking away. My world was shattered once again. All along I realized that I had harbored the belief that Leif and Sarah might be my birth parents. Now I knew they were not. My mother was dead. My father was dying, and I still didn’t remember them. I didn’t even know their names.

  I looked down at the Priscillas in my lap. “You know who they are don’t you.”

  They all looked down at their hands trying not to make eye contact with me.

  “Please,” I said. “At least tell me their names. Perhaps it will help me remember.”

  Pris looked up and sighed.

  “My parent’s names, please?”

  “Rowena and Darius.”

  I hoped their names would open the door further into my memory, but nothing happened.

  I don’t know how long I remained staring into the fire until the Priscillas talked me into lying down, reminding me that the next day we would be going into Beru’s village. I would need my rest.

  “Give it time,” Pris said, as I lay on my moss mat. The three of them hummed until I fell asleep, hoping I would dream of my parents.

  Thirty

  If I dreamed, I didn’t remember. I probably didn’t have time enough to dream because Niko and Aki woke us all in the middle of the night and told us that we had to go. No one asked why. For once I kept my mouth shut and did what I was told to do.

  Cahir came to my side, and we were off through the woods. As always, we had a safe path, provided by Ruta and the trees. A path that closed behind us as we walked. We could see where we were going because there was a faint light coming from the ground. As soon as we passed, the light faded away.

  I had seen this phenomenon before, so I wasn’t surprised, but this time as I walked I could feel the energy coming from the ground through the soles of my feet. When I bent down to touch the earth, I could feel a slight vibration. It was like the breath I had felt when I had the dream of the planet breathing in and out.

  When I stood, Zeid smiled at me. He must have sensed what I had felt. There was nothing to say. Something had clicked back on. It was a good sign, one that we both needed.

  Without speaking out loud, I asked Pris where we were going.

  “The village,” was her answer. I knew there wouldn’t be any more explanation, so I let it rest.

  As we crested the hill, the village of Kinver appeared below. The sun had just risen and was painting the roofs of the buildings a soft pink. I could see what looked like the main street of maybe ten stores, and a few roads that fanned from there. It didn’t seem larger than maybe one hundred buildings.

  The closer we got, the prettier it looked. Kinver was filled with gardens of all kinds. Although it was fall, there was enough left in each plot to see that there were both flowers and vegetables in the mix.

  Once we reached the road into town, I could see two groups of people facing each other. In the middle was a man who appeared to be keeping them on their respective sides.

  “What’s going on?” I asked Niko.

  “Now, Hannah, what does it look like to you?”

  “Disagreement.”

  “And so it is. Now we need to resolve it. And that, my dear, will be up to you.”

  I stopped in my tracks. “Wait. What are you talking about? I don’t know these people. I don’t know what to say to them.”

  Niko turned and looked at me the same way he looked when he sent me out to spar with Zeid.

  “They know you, Princess Kara Beth. They don’t know that you don’t remember them. They know your ability. They trust you. They will follow you. We have told them what Beru and Ruta warned them about is true. We scared the living crap out of them. Or I hope we did.

  “But they are still not sure. The villagers think that if they stay here, they will be safe. The Shrieks and Shatterskin are far away. They don’t believe that they will ever come this far East.

  “You, Kara Beth, have to convince them to do two things: fortify their town, and practice their magic skills again. And, you who don’t remember enough to be effective, have to convince them that you still have magic, and you need some of them to join us as we head out to destroy the Shrieks.”

  My blood was boiling. Niko spoke to me as if I were less than nothing. The more he talked, the madder I got. It wasn’t my fault I didn’t remember anything. I didn’t ask to be Princess Whatever. Niko spoke to me as if I was utterly incapable.

  No, I didn’t remember being any kind of princess, but I did remember being Hannah. Hannah who was more than capable in Earth. Much more than she was in Erda. Hannah who had talents and abilities that changed people’s lives. I remembered her.

  Niko kept poking at me with words. I felt something happen. Power surged up my legs and out my arm, and I touched Niko with it. He fell on his ass. And laughed.

  “Now, that’s my girl,” he said. “Use that.”

  Realizing that he had just used me, made me even angrier. So angry I only had a small awareness that my touch had landed my martial arts instructor right on his butt in the middle of the street.

  I marched to the front of my team. Yes, my team. I stopped in front of the man who was standing between the two crowds.

  One side cheered and bowed to me. The other glared. Perhaps that group of people didn’t recognize me. I lifted my hand above my head and sent a bolt of lightning from my hand. It shocked me almost as much as it astonished the crowd. Both sides started cheering as I pretended that I knew what I had done.

  I turned slowly, staring at them in turns, giving them a look like the woman they knew would be their queen someday. Powerful. In charge. I thought of the words Suzanne had spoken, “beautifully terrifying,” and tried to look that way.

  I saw part of my team standing together to the right of me. Niko, Aki, Zeid, Ruta, and Beru. The Priscillas were tucked into my coat pocket. I could see Lady sitting in a huge tree right outside the village, and I knew Cahir was waiting for me on the outskirts of the crowd.

  I felt powerful. I knew the fight was for me to do. The team knew it, and now I knew it too. I had remembered enough magic to make the village stop and listen. I had to use the gift of words to convince them to do what needed to be done and to recognize that their daughter and friend, Beru, was a hero.

  Standing in front of one of the crowds was a little girl. She was leaning against her mother, and her father had his hand on her shoulder. She was counting on me to keep her and her family safe. I was not about to let her down. When she smiled, I knew that she had not forgotten her magic and was ready to use it. At that moment, we understood each other.

  I bowed, planted my walking stick firmly into the ground, and began. And the village listened.

  Thirty-One

  I found Beru standing in one of the gardens on one of the smaller roads off of the main street. It looked as if it had been neglected for a long
time, so I wondered what had brought Beru to it.

  After my demonstration of lightning leaping from my hands, and the two crowds becoming one, Niko took over. I’m sure he sensed my desperation. Shooting lightning bolts were enough for me to handle at the time.

  By the time Niko was done with them, the village of Kinver was eating out of his hands, both literally and figuratively. First, he convinced them that there was a danger, and it was necessary to protect their village. Pay attention, post scouts, prepare to fight, practice their magic, and cloak the town the best that they could. It wasn’t a skill that was often practiced, but Niko promised to give the most gifted among them a how-to lesson before we moved on.

  Imagine that. A how-to lesson on how to cloak a village. Not one on how to put up a gutter, or run a program on your computer—a magic lesson. I couldn’t get over how cool that was. Maybe I was getting used to being back in Erda while maintaining the wide-eyed wonder I had brought with me from the Earth Realm.

  I thought that Niko would collect people to march with us, like an army, but he said that fighting the Shrieks and Shatterskin could not be won by brute force but by outsmarting them. However, a small group of men did volunteer to come with us, and after conferring with Zeid and Aki, he agreed to take them on.

  After that, he fed them. All of them. Once again, there was food. A long table was placed in the center of the main street, and everyone was invited. Food of all shapes and sizes was piled on the table by Niko, Aki, and Zeid. No one seemed surprised. Maybe magically appearing food was ordinary, or after seeing lightning bolts shoot into the sky, the villagers were ready for anything.

  After taking enough food to satisfy the little hunger that I had, I went off in search of Beru. She had disappeared as soon as Niko began his talk.

  It didn’t take me long to find her it was such a small village. Beru was standing alone, and either didn’t hear me coming, or allowed me to think that she didn’t. As I came closer, I could see the tracks of tears on her cheeks. I was surprised. Since I had known her, I had never sensed a trace of sadness, in spite of being shunned. Now that the village had welcomed her again, and she and Ruta were no longer outcasts, she was sad.

  “Why the tears, Beru?”

  When she didn’t answer, I waited and listened which is what I should have done in the first place. In all of the village, I had not seen Beru greet anyone. Where were her parents?

  “They aren’t here any longer,” Beru answered my unspoken question.

  “They died?”

  Beru turned to me with a slight smile on her beautiful face. “No. At least I don’t think so. After I left, the village didn’t treat them well, so they moved. No one is sure where they went. I hope it was further east though, and not to the west.”

  Usually, Beru didn’t like to be hugged, and I am not much of a hugger anyway, but this time I reached out and pulled her close to me. She was a wisp compared to me. It was like hugging a flower.

  “When this is all over, I’ll help you find them, Beru,” I said.

  Behind me, a loud burp interrupted our moment together. Thinking it was Ruta or maybe even Zeid, I turned around ready to give the offending person a look of disdain.

  Instead, I found myself staring at five Ginete. Perhaps the five who set up the Remembering Ceremony, but these dwarf-like people all looked the same to me, so I wasn’t sure. Besides, those huge golden eyes still scared the pants off me.

  Where had they come from? Why were they here? Did I need another ceremony? All those questions flashed through my head before Beru left my side and flung herself into one of those dwarf’s arms.

  “Pita, I am so happy to see you and your brothers,” she said.

  After that, I had no idea what was said. It was a series of grunts, maybe burbs, whistles, and sighs that must have been language because the five of them seemed to be carrying on a conversation that they all understood. After a few more smiles and hugs, Beru must have remembered that I was there.

  “You remember Pita and his brothers, don’t you, Hannah?”

  “Yes, of course,” I said, faking it.

  “Pita says my parents are safe in a village further east.”

  “That’s fantastic, Beru. But why are Pita and his brothers here and how did they get here?”

  “What they have to say is probably best said to the team all at once,” Beru said, neatly avoiding answering how they got there. “That way there is no confusion, and we can all decide together what to do.”

  “About what?” I stupidly asked. Of course, I knew what it was about, didn’t I? It’s just that for a brief moment I had enjoyed the illusion of safety in a quaint town. I wanted to stay and explore, meet more of the people, maybe even learn about gardening. But I was sure that what Pita was there to tell us would mean something terrible was happening.

  Lightning bolts were great and all that, but I would need more than that to fight off screaming blobs of green and a big shattering machine made of metal. Actually, when I said it to myself like that, it didn’t sound all that bad.

  Until I heard what Pita had to say. Then I was terrified all over again.

  Thirty-Two

  We stayed one more night in Kinver and decided not to have the meeting with the Ginete until morning.

  “The news can wait,” Pita said, “but not long.”

  I think everyone just needed one night of sleep inside and a chance to get really clean before heading back out on the road.

  In the morning we gathered in the mayor’s office. Even though our dimensions seemed worlds apart in some ways, in others it was very similar. The mayor’s office reminded me of the one I knew back in the Earth Realm.

  The Mayor told us that there was a small police force in Kinver that never had to do anything other than find a child who might have wandered too far from home, or rescue a cat or two.

  But there was a disturbing trend of small pranks. Mean ones that would never have happened before. He wanted to know if we thought that it was the result of Abbadon’s movement further east.

  Suzanne had joined us for our meeting with the Ginete, so she was the one that answered.

  “Yes, it probably is. Even though you can’t hear the Shrieks yet, those sound waves are traveling around the planet. Sound affects everyone, even the ones that you can’t hear. It could easily be disturbing people enough to make them act out.

  “Even more reason to stop them before they move any further east. That uprising among your people will only get worse even if they never find your village. It could cause everything we love in Erda to self-destruct.

  “Which means that we have to eliminate every Shriek. The problem is, we don’t know how Abbadon is making them.”

  “Making them?” I asked. “I hadn’t thought about that. So you are saying the Shrieks are not living beings, they are machines that Abbadon made?”

  “They are a weapon, or weapons, that somehow Abbadon has produced,” Suzanne answered. “They are not born from anything natural, they are human-made, or in this case, Abbadon made. But if he made them we can unmake them.

  “There are a few problems with that, as you know. They are a sound weapon. As a weapon, they disable anything within the range of the sound that they make. It rarely kills, but it doesn’t have to because Shatterskin comes right behind them, and it does the killing.”

  “Does the shrieking disable everything?” I asked.

  Pita stepped in. “There are very few reports of anyone surviving the dual attack of the Shrieks and Shatterskin. But we have heard that some insects manage to keep on moving during the sound attack. They would have to move quickly out of the danger zone before Shatterskin arrives, though, because everything dies when he shatters.”

  “Is he using sound too?” I asked.

  “That is a great question, Hannah. Yes,
he is—not the same as the Shrieks. His sound is different. It is not designed to stun, but to shatter.

  “Think of the stories you’ve heard about singers shattering mirrors and glass on their high notes. It’s akin to that.”

  “And do you know how Abbadon made Shatterskin, or what he runs on? Where’s the energy that keeps him going?”

  Zeid looked at me approvingly, and in spite of myself, I felt a tinge of satisfaction that I had pleased him.

  “Now you are asking the right questions, Hannah,” Suzanne said. “No, we don’t know how Abbadon made Shatterskin, but we have an idea about how he is powering him. We have noticed that there is a brief cycle of time when Shatterskin is shut down, or off.

  “A group of Shrieks arrive carrying something and swarm over him. When they withdraw, they are carrying something away. We are making a pretty valid assumption that it is some kind of battery. They are bringing it from the west and taking it back that way, so we think that Abbadon keeps on sending out fresh ones every few days.

  “If we could block that supply line, even for a short time, we might be able to destroy Shatterskin as he runs out of juice. At least we could determine what kind of metal he is made from and from there determine how to stop him.”

  I turned to Pita and asked. “You said you have news for us?”

  “Yes, I have good news and bad news. They are the same. Depends on which way you want me to tell it.”

  Ruta made a sound clearly indicating that Pita should just get on with it.

  “The Riff has moved closer.”

  Inside my coat pocket, the Priscillas shivered. Everyone else just looked stunned. We all knew what it meant. We would get there sooner, but the Shrieks and Shatterskin were closer to towns and villages.