Othersphere Page 26

  You’re a bird.

  That was all I could think to say. I thought how she had flown away when Orgoli had attacked me in his biggest form, how quickly she had abandoned me. So much for the blood tie she always seemed to invoke. My friends had stood by me more solidly than she was capable of. Once I had thought she might be the key to finding myself, but now the only thing I felt for Khutulun was indifference.

  I fly, but am not a bird.

  She preened a little.

  Then fly away, I thought back at her. Go. You’re no use to me.

  You could fly, too. You can be anything you like in this world, for the Amba are one with everything here. With Orgoli gone, this world is yours.

  Even if what she said was true, I didn’t want to own a world. The idea was ridiculous to me now. I wanted . . . her help.

  How can I speak to all those animals below? I asked. Can you communicate with all of them at once?

  She peered down her striped nose at the river of creatures ebbing around the buzzing by the doorway. Several indistinguishable shapes scuffled near its edges, and I caught my breath, wanting to somehow rush past the crowds and get there.

  Why would you wish to speak to those who are beneath you?

  My anger and dislike for her rose precipitously.

  That’s no concern of yours! I lashed my tail and bared my teeth. Tell me how!

  Khutulun’s eyes in this form were still tip-tilted and green. They examined me with cold calculation. I felt the deep cunning behind them working its will.

  I will tell them anything you wish. If you promise to stay in this world forever, to take it back from Orgoli, and to protect me.

  I shivered. There it was. The thing I could do to save all those animals. And if I sent them safely home, I would no doubt save many of the shifters fighting against Orgoli on the other side and probably my friends as well. Orgoli alone would still be tough to defeat, but it was better than facing an army.

  The ground on the other side of the doorway heaved upward with a brain-rattling harrumphing sound, as if a great beast under the floor had wakened.

  Your father wreaks havoc on that world, Khutulun said inside my head. While you stand here and refuse me.

  Oh, she was good. All that guilt to get me to stay with her. I tried to picture a life without Mom, my real mom, and Richard, without Arnaldo and his brothers, London, Amaris, Morfael, and Lazar.

  Without Caleb. A pain deep as the great sea struck my soul as I thought of him. I would never see Caleb again.

  But saving all those animals, maybe saving the world from Orgoli—that was worth a sacrifice.

  You will be living where you were born, as was meant to be, Khutulun said, her husky voice crooning. You can help heal this world from all the damage Orgoli and your world have done. And every night the moon will sing you to sleep.

  The moon could sing to me back home, if only I stopped to listen. And back home there was a lot of healing and helping to do, too.

  But maybe that home wouldn’t exist if I didn’t do this to stop Orgoli.

  You promise to tell them exactly what I say? I asked. And you promise that all of them will hear you?

  Khutulun leapt from my back to take brief flight, then shifted in mid-air with such precision that her suddenly humanoid feet gracefully touched ground. Her tall, elegant form was clad, as mine had been, in soft white thistledown woven into a long, warm, clinging dress. Nature in Othersphere cooperated with the Amba, acting in perfect concert to keep us warm whenever we needed clothing, to help us move through and around the world, and to part the clouds of the eternal storm. It spoke to us and helped us. Orgoli had violated that covenant. Perhaps I could restore it.

  Khutulun’s head in her humanoid form was as high as mine in my tiger form. She stretched out a graceful, long-fingered hand and stroked the fur on my cheek.

  “I will do as you say,” she said, now speaking aloud. “If you will make me that promise.”

  I looked back at the horrible doorway. An exotically spotted ibex with huge horns and a giant buffalo had crossed the threshold, and charged off to one side, out of sight. Whatever fighting had been going on before was no longer visible. I had to help. Somehow. If I promised to come stay with her when all this was over, maybe I could pull the creatures back and fight Orgoli with my friends before I came back forever.

  I . . .

  A terrible roar split my ears, and a striped blur flew up the dune to leap, paws outstretched, right for Khutulun.

  She reacted too fast to follow, jumping to one side as the Bengal tiger twisted in mid-air, trying not to miss.

  He landed on the sand at my side, twisting and snarling, ready to leap again.

  I put a paw bigger than his head on his back and shoved him down, digging my claws in enough to hold him, but not deep enough to draw blood.

  Hold, please.

  He struggled, but not with his full strength, snarling at her.

  Let me kill her! Why do you protect this vile thing?

  I glanced up at Khutulun. She was backing away, her already pale skin now so paper white I could see the tiny blue veins running beneath it. She was afraid of the tiger-shifter. But that made no sense. He and his kind hated Orgoli, too.

  I know of no reason to kill her.

  The Bengal slowed his struggling, still growling at Khutulun.

  It was she who helped Orgoli imprison us. She is his ally and mate!

  A chill ran down my spine, even as I told myself that the Bengal had to be making a mistake.

  But then why was Khutulun shaking her head, stepping back from us both, moving carefully on the shifting sand beneath her feet?

  “No,” she said. “I was Orgoli’s mate twenty years ago, when he brought your kind through. That’s where you remember me from. But you were just a child then, and not long after that I broke with the tyrant, for he wished to consume my child, my daughter. . . .”

  The Bengal shot me a look of dawning comprehension.

  You are her daughter.

  I nodded.

  She lies. In her tiger shape she helped Orgoli and his friends to round us up, to put us in prison. That was only months ago.

  Another tiger-shifter paced up, the Caspian and Bali tigers not far behind her. She growled at Khutulun, crouching and ready to pounce. This tiger shot an angry glare at me when she saw I had the Bengal pinned.

  He speaks the truth. She is the tyrant’s ally!

  “Not anymore.” Khutulun’s voice shook as she backed farther away. “I broke with him again. Don’t you see? We’re on the same side now.”

  I lifted my paw from the Bengal, and he slowly got up.

  You broke with him recently, not years ago. That’s why you tried to contact me a short time ago, I said to her. By possessing my mother at the Lightning Tree.

  “I contacted you then because at last I was free to do so!” Khutulun looked behind her as a few tiger-shifters circled there to surround her. “Your father kept me prisoner, forced me to do as he asked, and as soon as I could, I ran away and tried to find you.”

  The Bengal paced closer to her.

  You laughed well enough as you stood by the tyrant’s side when he locked us away.

  The female tiger-shifter, who looked like the Russian female I’d spoken to earlier, lashed her tail and bared her fangs.

  She joined him in killing and eating those of us they could not imprison. Such a crime cannot be forgiven.

  I stared at Khutulun. Had I ever really hoped she might help me learn who I was? The mysterious figure who had seemed to want me back these last few months looked ashen. She evoked nothing in me but disgust.

  You didn’t want me back in your life because you loved me, I said. You wanted me back because you quarreled with Orgoli, because you needed my help to kill him and save your own hide.

  “You need my help!” Her voice rose, shrill and commanding. “You need me to speak to all the creatures down there. You made me a promise.”

  But I hadn’
t promised anything. The Bengal had interrupted in time.

  And if Khutulun could communicate with all the animals in Orgoli’s army—why couldn’t I? I was her daughter, after all.... Like the moon rising, rays of light crept through the dark corners of my mind, and I saw how it could be done.

  I don’t need you, after all. You knew all along I could speak to them myself. You’re a liar.

  All the pleading fled her face, replaced by disappointment and shrewd calculation.

  Very well then. Go, and die under your father’s claws.

  I nodded, and inwardly said good-bye to my dream of a birth mother who might define me. The death of that dream was surprisingly easy, for it had been replaced by the reality—that, as Caleb had said, I was who I chose to be. That would not be Khutulun.

  Be careful, I said to the tiger-shifters. She is dangerous.

  I turned my back and began descending the dune.

  “Fool!” Khutulun shrieked as the tiger-shifters closed in. “You walk away from the ultimate power! You could have everything! No, you shall not have me!”

  I heard the warping of air as she shifted and the whoosh of tiger-shifters as they pounced.

  A terrible squeal accompanied by a desperate flapping of wings, and Khutulun flew raggedly over my head, whimpering, one leg dripping red. She curved her black-striped wings away from the doorway and disappeared against the dark sky, heading back toward Othersphere’s greener slopes. I didn’t try to watch her go.

  I climbed the next, lower dune, and looked down at the great bears and snakes, the frogs and the herons and the mastodons clustered near the doorway, cawing or trumpeting or baying unhappily. I reached out with every atom in my body—pushed outward in all directions, into the sand, the air, out to sea, and I asked them all, animal and rock, plant and ocean, to hear me. I’d been able to communicate with a storm, after all, and with a tree, and with tiger-shifters. Why not with all of them?

  Friends, I said. Please do not go.

  Hundreds of animal heads turned to me. If they had ears, they were at attention, even though I had not spoken out loud. Except for the unnatural drone from the doorway and the sweet lapping of the waves on the sand nearby, this part of Othersphere was silent.

  Whatever Orgoli promised you, it was a lie. I am his daughter, and I know, for he tried to kill me. He slaughtered his way into ruling this world, and now he’s using you to conquer another. But you will die there and gain nothing. Don’t go.

  The silence was broken by a hundred different sounds, animals of every shape and size braying and honking and rumbling in confusion. Among it all I caught a thread of one main emotion—fear. Fear of the doorway, of death beyond it, but mostly fear of Orgoli. They had followed him because they were afraid.

  The tiger-shifters moved up behind me, quiet, watchful. The other animals flinched at the sight of them, probably reminded of the Amba.

  We won’t hurt you, I said. Go back to your homes. We will put ourselves now between you and Orgoli. We’ll make sure he never hurts any of you again.

  I only hoped I could make good on that promise.

  At the fringes of the group of beasts, a few rhinos snorted and ran off. A cloud of red and blue parrots rose up and swooped back to their forest. The rest moved uneasily, edging away, but not yet certain if it was really safe to leave.

  Come.

  I walked down the side of the dune, the tiger-shifters following. As we approached, I came face to face with a giant horned reptile, a dinosaur I remembered from books in early science classes as a triceratops.

  Which meant that the Amba had been collecting animals from our world for tens of millions of years. This gentle-eyed creature, with its fearsome pointed horns and herbivore’s teeth, waggled its huge head at me and stepped carefully aside to let me pass.

  I nodded, thinking Thank you, and began to move past it. An eight-foot-tall bipedal kangaroolike creature with mighty legs meant for jumping and a pouch on its belly hopped to get out of my way.

  Beyond her, a creature seven feet high at the shoulder with great antlers spreading more than twelve feet across waited, with six or seven others like him grouped nearby. I recognized them as relatives of the elk that sometimes gathered near Morfael’s school. A baby of that group had once walked right up and stuck his nose in the small of my back while I was kissing Caleb.

  I couldn’t smile in my tiger form, but I paused and extended my nose delicately toward the great elk.

  He eyed me with a cautious liquid gaze, then ever so slightly stuck his own bulbous nose out toward me and sniffed. I exhaled softly at him, purring. He lifted his head high, as if no longer worried and bellowed out a cry that I understood in some way. It was a call to go home, to leave this place, never to bow to tyrants again.

  The crowd of animals stirred, then parted before me, and the small herd of elk dug their hooves in and took off, running down the beach along the water’s edge under the bulging moon.

  I kept walking toward the doorway, and they all made way. Some were nervous, some curious. Some bolted away. The crowd was thinning. The purple frogs had hopped off; the beetle swarm flittered into the distance. Mastodon and antique ostrich, warthogs and families of giant shrews. They all waited as I passed, then turned and walked or scurried away.

  Thank you, I thought.

  Nearest the doorway stood a great tawny cat-creature with two long curved fangs like tusks curling down from its upper jaw. A smilodon, a prehistoric relative of the modern tiger, all sinew and deep-chested power, coiled violence waiting to spring. Behind it slunk a slightly smaller female and two youthful cubs, all watching me with vigilant green eyes.

  I paused and bowed my head to the great cats. Then, with the tiger-shifters doing the same behind me, I strode past them and up to where the doorway stood, buzzing and droning like a huge fly eternally flinging itself against a windowpane.

  The doorway looked out though a hallway made of shining tubes and metal struts, supporting a heavy structure of some kind above. Fifteen feet down that hall, the room opened up. It was semicircular, filled with the blue gleam of steel and mirrors; a metal walkway led up to a steel door. As I stood there a red light began to flash, and a claxon rang out an alarm. The humdrums knew something was going on.

  A clatter of hooves gave us a moment’s warning before the giant ibex I’d seen go through the doorway came leaping around the corner up ahead and down the hall. I barely made it out of the way as it galloped past me, burrowing through the mass of tiger-shifters, who hastened to let it through.

  What had frightened it? I lifted my paw to cross the threshold.

  Heavy pounding sounded from near the hallway entrance, and hissing as a buffalo, followed by two very hairy naked hominids with tiny foreheads and alarmed expressions, and three forty-foot-long boa constrictor type snakes thicker than my tiger body bolted and slithered toward us.

  We were readier to give way to them, and they didn’t pause as they fled. The snakes fanned out to dart between the legs of the tiger-shifters as they headed back to their swamps.

  “Did you see that?”

  I swung my head back around at the familiar voice, coming at us down the hallway. A petite girl I knew all too well sauntered toward us. Her short-cropped hair was standing on end and she was naked as the day she was born. What a sight for sore eyes, showing all her pointed little teeth in a wide grin as she put her hands on her hips and surveyed the bevy of tigers before her.

  “Did you see?” November asked. Behind her, a dozen more small human figures scurried, including one who looked like the rat-shifter on the local council. “Snakes—running from rats! Well, rat-shifters anyway. I ought to try it with all of you!”

  She bared her teeth in a mock grimace and laughed. I crossed the threshold without a second thought to run my rough tongue up her face, purring.

  “Ew!” She scrubbed at her cheek. “Good to see you, too, Stripes, but we need to get busy. We got in the rat way, but now we need to open that door”—here sh
e pointed to the metal door at the top of the stairs near the flashing red light—“and let our friends in. Because Orgoli’s busy destroying the machinery right around the corner. And Arnaldo told me we’d better stop him or we’ll never be able to close up this ugly old hole. Orgoli’s bigger than my brother’s RV, and he’s mad.” Her shining eyes flicked to the tiger-shifters amassed behind me. “Wanna bring your friends to a fight?”

  CHAPTER 17

  The answering roar rattled the metal tunnel around me.

  November narrowed her eyes against the blast of sound. “Guess they understood me. Oh, hey, what’s this?”

  She stooped over to pick up something she’d stepped on, a broken black shard of glass about three feet long. The Bengal beside me nosed it curiously.

  Carved figures writhed along it up to the sheared-off end. I knew it as well as I knew November. I’d seen it when it was whole in Orgoli’s hands as he took on his shadow-walker form. It was his staff, or part of it, broken.

  “What the hell’s Orgoli’s thingie doing here?” November said. “Here’s another bit of it.” She hunched down and came back up with a smaller splinter of shiny dark glass, sharp as a knife, with one carved anguished eye still visible.

  I looked around. Above and behind the door, thousands of tiny metal tubes wound around each other, coming around to all point at the heart of the doorway we’d come through. Those had to be the lasers, created by the National Ignition Facility. We were in the heart of that place, standing in front of a doorway created by those lasers not long ago. All that metal around me made my hide twitch and itch.

  November saw where I was looking and snapped her fingers as a thought came to her. “Those tubes must be the laser guns, probably. Arnaldo told me they all have to fire at a single tiny sphere of metal or gas at the exact same time to generate the power the humdrum scientists were looking for.” She held up the pieces of Orgoli’s staff. “Was there an accident or something when Orgoli turned them on?”

  A clank of metal, and sparks flew high up in the canopy above us created by all the laser tubes.

  “Oh, crap,” November said. “Orgoli’s still destroying stuff.” She looked past me at the tiger-shifters. “Arnaldo told me Orgoli would try to do that after opening the doorway, and that we’d better stop him or we’ll never get it closed again. Playtime!” she shouted at the tiger-shifters.