“Can you tell me what happened?” I said in my calmest voice.
Takahiro didn’t say anything, and after about a minute Val said, “They were doing a sweep in this area. I was surprised; Copperhill is over ten miles away, yes? And you have not the assumption of a cobey series in Newworld, I believe. Takahiro and I were out here, but I could feel something going on—as, I believe, could Takahiro.” He stopped and looked at Taks. And waited.
Eventually Takahiro muttered, “Yes. It was the best thing that had happened since I came here, when they stopped doing regular sweeps. And this one’s fiercer than I remember.”
“The gruuaa did not like it either,” said Val.
“Then you’re seeing them again—er—you know they’re there,” I interrupted.
“Yes,” said Val. “I do not see them as well as I once did—”
How well is well? I wondered. Do you know how many legs and how many eyes, and are there teeth? For that matter, are there mouths? Is it vocal cords in a throat that Hix uses to hum with?
“—but the skill is returning—now that I am employing it. I guessed Hix had gone with Maggie this morning, which was both good and bad; good that she would protect you, bad that she thought you needed protecting. In Oldworld, when a big cobey opens, usually at least one more opens near it, and gruuaa are very sensitive to the energy shifts this causes. Sometimes they can damp these effects for their human colleagues. Sometimes they cannot.” He glanced at Takahiro again. “As I say, we were out here when this powerful sweep began. . . .”
The throb of the armydar was less awful in the shed, maybe because of all the gruuaa. “Why would a cobey sweep upset all of us?” I said. “It’s just supposed to make the cobey easier to manage, isn’t it? But it feels like it’s trying to turn me inside out.” Armydar didn’t use to make me feel like that. But the regular sweeps stopped right around the time I hit puberty. Which is supposedly when your magic gene tended to flick into active status. Back in the days when anyone had a magic gene.
“Yeah,” said Takahiro very quietly.
“It interests me very much that they do such a sweep,” said Val, “here in Newworld, including a bandwidth that apparently disturbs magical effects. In Oldworld the sweep after a new cobey is for any sign of another one in the area, but it is also for any local use of magic. The dimension shift of a cobey will distort any magic done within its range of influence.”
“Foreseers,” I said. “Um.” Not wanting to say Casimir’s name. “Aren’t there—foreseers?”
Val looked at me in surprise. “Yes. But foreseers are human, like the rest of us, and even a very good foreseer can miss a little cobey, which may nonetheless cause local disarray. It is perhaps Newworld’s lack of foreseers that explains the strength and extent of this sweep, if it is still the result of the cobey in Copperhill. Although perhaps there has been some further activity nearer at hand.”
I sighed. “I think—I think there was—well, I don’t absolutely know it was a cobey, but it was something. At the park. This afternoon. It was pretty electric. And the army hammered down.”
Val looked at me. I looked at Takahiro’s long-fingered hands holding onto his blanket. The silence got kind of thick. “I hope you will tell us about it some time,” said Val at last.
Maybe. Just not right now. I could hear Val really wanting to know, and I should tell him, but I was thinking about how beautiful Taks’ hands were. When he’d been a bony little boy his big hands had been part of his strangeness. But they were elegant and graceful now, even holding a ragged old blanket closed with one of them, and petting my hyper dog with the other.
“About half an hour ago many of the gruuaa left abruptly,” Val said. “I did wonder if that was to do with you, Maggie. Shortly after that the quality of the sweep changed, and I could see it was causing Takahiro increased distress.” Val stopped and waited again.
Takahiro said reluctantly, “Yeah. The first whatever—sweep—was like olly-olly-oxen-free on the playground. The second was like they’d got the bloodhounds out and were coming in after you.”
“At this awkward juncture Elaine knocked on the door and said there was a man in a military uniform who wanted to talk to ‘everyone in the house,’ which meant Takahiro as well as me. I could not risk that he might know that Takahiro was here. This man—Major Donnelly—asked me many questions, most of which I did not know the answers to, but I did not like that he was asking. I have suspected for some time that I may be on a list of potential malefactors—that if anything unusual happened in this area they would wish to re-examine me. Until last night I found this ironic. Today . . . I was as stupid as possible without, I hope, being deliberately rude.”
Takahiro said softly, “Val’s English got very bad.” He was almost smiling. Mongo was in one of his rubber-skeleton poses, licking the hand that was petting him. Dog therapy. It’s good.
“Yes,” said Val. “Very bad. I might not have gone to pieces quite so quickly except that I knew what was happening to Takahiro by then, and I wanted the good major out of the house before it did.”
Takahiro’s head snapped up. “How did you know?” he said. “How did you know?”
Val patted his shoulder. “I have met your kind before, of course. They are not widespread anywhere on this world, I believe, but we have a few in Orzaskan and the rest of the Commonwealth. They frequently have a talent for magic.”
I remembered the sense of something trying to stop me from going to the shed—and the go-away-stay-stay-stay once I was inside.
“As the change approaches, there is an unmistakable smell.”
“Hormones,” said Takahiro bitterly.
“They peak just before the change becomes visible,” Val went on, cool as spring rain. “It was rather close by the time we finally saw the good major through the door again. I’m afraid that’s when Mongo escaped, although he did us a favor—the major had the decency to be embarrassed, and wished to help Elaine catch him. I escorted Takahiro back out here where—er—there is less to break. But you were remarkably self-restrained.”
“I might have killed you,” said Takahiro. “You don’t know. You go nuts when the change comes.”
“You were not nuts at all,” said Val. “I have seen much worse. And it is in the highest degree unlikely that you could have killed me.”
There was something about the unshowy way Val said this that made me for the first time feel that I was seeing a little bit into Val’s old life. Perhaps including why his government had ordered him and not someone else to do . . . what they’d told him to do. Why Casimir’s mom thought what she thought. How it wasn’t an accident—or a coincidence—that eight hundred zillion gruuaa had followed him into his new life, even though he hadn’t known they were there. Or that Newworld, even though they let him in, maybe had him on a list.
“It would—I would—” Takahiro sighed, a long, long, weary sigh. “Thank you. It’s—more awful when you’re alone.”
“Yes,” said Val. “I have been told that by other young weres. But—have you not finished your training? If Maggie hadn’t come home soon I was considering going through your wallet for the name and phone number of your mentor. I hadn’t done it immediately only because I hadn’t decided how to manage the conversation with someone who might not be your mentor. I assume it is not your dad?”
Takahiro gave a creepily bark-like laugh. “No, not Dad. Dad’s not—like me.” There was a pause, but Val was clearly waiting for more. “I don’t have a mentor,” muttered Takahiro to Mongo. “I just . . . cope. Mostly.”
Val stood up. He looked like he wanted to pace but there wasn’t room. He sat down again, this time on the chair. “That’s . . . inhuman, if you will forgive the term. I am sure weres are uncommon in this country, but . . . in Orzaskan it is illegal for a young were not to have a mentor—an authorized, trained, experienced mentor.”
“I had
my mom. Till she died. Then they forced my dad to take me.”
I didn’t mean to but it burst out: “Forced?”
“Yeah. I’m why he left, you know? When he found out.”
Val rubbed a hand over his face, as if wiping the look of pity away before Takahiro saw it. “It’s genetic. Both partners must have the gene to produce a shape-changer. He may not be able to change himself, but he has to have known he carried the gene.”
“If he knew he had gene, he is not saying,” Taks said jerkily. “But my mom is—was—kitsune. She say—says—he knew before he married her. I don’t know if he’d’ve liked me any better if I changed into fox. But I changed into good old unmistakable Newworld timber wolf and he freaked out.”
“But he’s your father,” I said—and kind of realized, as I said it, some of the echoes of what I was saying, with Val standing there.
Takahiro shrugged. “Yeah. And he pays housekeeper me—to feed me. But I was ten when Mom died and they sent me here. I was a little old for leaving in basket at police station door. My mom’s family didn’t want anything to do with me. They hadn’t been happy about her marrying gaijin. When I turned wolf, they cut her off. Me too of course.”
“But—don’t you—I mean, when—”
“Don’t ask me about the full moon,” said Takahiro even more wearily. “Full moon is no big deal. I mean, you do feel it, but it’s about as dangerous as having a bath. It’s worry and stuff makes you turn. You want to know why I’m such a grind? Why I get straight As in everything all the dreeping time? It’s not because I’m so incredibly brilliant, or because I like studying my brains out. It’s because I can’t afford to be worried about tests. Just in case.”
Val said gently, “Your mother must have taught you how to turn voluntarily?”
“She tried. But I’d figured out my dad left after he found out I was ’shifter, you know? I think it kind of shorted out system. I think also it was different for her—woman and fox—although she never said so. She used to say, it’s okay, we try again later. . . .”
I couldn’t think of anything to say. There was a faint tap on the door, and my mother’s voice said, “Are you all right in there?”
Val opened the door and my mother looked in. “Oh, Takahiro, I’m so glad you’re safe,” she said. “You were right about Maggie,” she added to Val.
Val shook his head. “My experience with shape-shifters is limited. But we didn’t have many options. Takahiro, how do you usually shift back?”
Takahiro grinned. Fiercely. “Oatmeal,” he said.
“Oatmeal,” my mother said blankly. She slid inside the shed and shut the door behind her. Val put an arm around her, but he almost had to, there was so little floor space left.
“Yeah. That’s something my mother taught me. Human food you have strong reaction to will probably give you way to shift. Not if you’ve just ’shifted. You have to wait till you’ve kind of—settled into that body. Then if you eat something you think of as really, really human it’ll probably bring you back. When I still lived with my mom, umeboshi used. It was what she’d used when she was first learning to do, when she was little girl. After she died . . . umeboshi hard to find here is, and it so much part old life was. It was so much a part of my old life. I wanted something Newworld. I loved umeboshi . . . I hate oatmeal. But Kay—my dad’s housekeeper—kept trying to make me eat it because she thought I was too small and thin.”
I remembered Takahiro when he’d first come here. He had been too small and thin.
“I was too stunned, right after my mom died. I felt nothing—not even grief at first. That got me through—everything. And it got me here. But after I began to get it that I was going to have to stay here . . . I ’shifted once after—it was one of those placement English exams. I think they wanted to put me in special school, and my dad say, ‘No way, he can speak English.’” Takahiro closed his eyes briefly. “Kay was supposed to bring me home. It was after normal school hours. I run to boys’ restroom, there when change hit. I had to get out—went through window. But I was only cub then, you know? Anyone who saw me, think it was student joke. They might report it, but they’d report big puppy.
“I got home all right—your sense of direction amazing as wolf, and you can run what feels like forever—but I had to shift back before Kay got home in car. . . . I was clawing my way through kitchen, looking for anything that might shift me back. I didn’t really have any idea what I was looking for. I was also sure I’d failed test, and my father would be furious. I knocked over trash bin and there was morning’s oatmeal. It rolled out, big congealed lump, and went splat. It was so gross, like somebody’s brains. I thought about how much I hated it—then thought yeah and ate it—and ’shifted.
“I just got to my room and into pajamas before Kay arrived—bringing knapsack I’d left behind in test room. I don’t know what anyone thought about the wrecked clothes on boys’ room floor, but I guess there wasn’t anything that made them mine—jeans, T-shirt, cheap sneakers. Nothing in pockets but lint. I didn’t have much trouble being so out of it I couldn’t answer any of Kay’s questions—and then I think my dad got to her because next day she left me alone. Oh, and I passed the test. I didn’t pass it very well, but I passed it.”
Takahiro stopped but we were all totally listening. I kept thinking, he’s been my friend for nearly eight years and I don’t know anything about him. As the silence went on and got kind of heavy Takahiro glanced around at all of us: my mom, Val, and me last. Last and longest. He really looked at me. I smiled. It was probably kind of a shaky smile, but that was because I was trying not to cry for the little boy who got sent to the other side of the world to live with a dad who didn’t want him. The only sounds in the shed were the vines outside the window rustling in the breeze and Mongo’s tail still thudding (slower now) against my leg.
Takahiro said, “For a while I kept a box of instant oatmeal on the top shelf of my closet and I used to keep some made up in a jar on the floor. If Kay ever found it I don’t know what she thought, but she had no business in my closet, you know? And then I ’shifted again . . . after another bugsucking English test . . . and I found out the instant stuff doesn’t work. That was very bad.
“I could have figured out how to make real oatmeal, but I couldn’t have done it regularly without getting caught, you know? Kay rules the kitchen. So I told her I wanted a bowl of oatmeal as a bedtime snack—oh, twice a week or so. It gets moldy after three or four days. She was kind of surprised . . . but Kay’s not bad really. She makes me oatmeal. And we have a lot of fat wildlife in the woods behind our house. Raccoons are like waiting for me when I take the old stuff out.”
Takahiro had never been much of a talker—even after his English caught up with living in Newworld. I wanted to tell him, it’s okay, he didn’t have to tell us all this. But I realized he wanted to—oh, not wanted wanted to, who would like telling someone else that his dad didn’t love him? but to have someone to talk to. I sometimes thought my dad’s death might have killed me if I hadn’t had Jill to talk to—and I’d had Mom and Ran too. Takahiro didn’t have anyone.
Casimir, I thought suddenly. Oh, drog me, I’d forgotten about Casimir! I’d forgotten about Casimir! I looked up at my mother. She was looking down at me—maybe just a little ironically. “Your friend,” she said in a neutral voice, “had to go to work. So I came out here to find out if—well, if things had gone all right and if so, if you might need clothing or anything.”
“He’s not going to wear anything of mine well, that is certain,” said Val, who was easily a foot shorter and twice as wide as Takahiro, although “well” was a nonstarter concerning any of Val’s clothes.
“Nor Ran’s,” said my mother. Gods, I’d forgotten about Ran too. “Ran’s at Alec’s this afternoon,” she added as if she was reading my mind again, “so I can go to the mall and pick him up on the way home. Most of it’s open till late. Tell
me what you need. No, wait. First tell me what happened.”
Val said, “As I said, my experience with shape-shifters is limited. But one of the things anyone—anyone with my background—will learn is that physical contact—preferably unexpected or sudden contact—with someone they have a strong incorporeal connection with—for example a long friendship—will bring them back. Especially if they want to be brought back. I thought of Maggie.”
I remembered my insane urge to drag the front half of something I now knew was a timber wolf onto my lap. It was funny in a sort of death-wish way.
I didn’t remember Takahiro and me getting to be friends—mainly I remember that by the time we were both coming out from under—my dad’s death and his mom’s, and his being shipped here like some kind of package, and having to learn to live in English and in Newworld—we were already friends. Friends who seemed sometimes to exist to zap the electric crap out of each other, but still—friends.
I remembered him showing me how to make my first origami fish. That was before he was talking—pretty much at all. He sat down beside me in some class or other—I don’t remember which—and started folding, because that’s what he did all the time. He used to sit beside me because I’d leave him alone. A lot of kids would try and take his paper away from him, or flick what he was working on out of his hands. I’d sneak looks at him. It was hard to remember now that he’d been little for his age. But his hands were already big even then and his fingers really long. I used to half-imagine they had extra joints in them. I didn’t understand how he could make paper do all that. But I remember the first time I picked up a piece of notebook paper and folded it over into a triangle and then folded and tore off the end so what was left was a square. He’d stopped what he was doing when I folded my paper over. I opened it up again and held it toward him. He stared at me—it felt like a really long time. He hardly ever looked at anyone and he never stared, and that’s when I found out his eyes were the darkest darkest darkest brown, the barest bit not black—like he was wondering if I was just going to start teasing him too.