Shadows

CHAPTER 7

HE WAS RIGHT ABOUT HIS CAR NOT BEING A GOOD car, but I was used to the skanky cars Jill’s brothers let her borrow. This one ran. Mongo insisted on staying in my lap (which is majorly illegal so I hoped the gruuaa would disguise this from any ordinary traffic cops) and when we got to my house he still wouldn’t move and I couldn’t open the door or get out. Casimir came around and opened the door for me. “Get down,” I said, and heaved Mongo onto the drive.

I looked at the house. It looked totally normal. No—shimatta—there were gruuaa, trying to look like standard shadows, lined out under the rosebushes along the front of the house. They looked eerily like some kind of fortification. They also looked smushed and unhappy, if shadows that aren’t really shadows can look smushed and unhappy. There was an odd little hum, almost a moan, from Hix. The rest of the gruuaa that had come with us washed across the lawn like a tide, and thickened—reinforced—the ones under the rosebushes.

It might have been the armydar. It was making me feel pretty moany. It was just as bad here as it was in the center of town.

“Do you want to come in?” I said. I didn’t know what I was leading him into but I was feeling that I could use all the friends I could get, even ones who thought I was some weird mythic thing and not just a clueless seventeen-year-old girl. I looked over my shoulder like I was expecting a column of soldiers to be trotting along Ramage Avenue and across the mouth of our little street. Not yet. “I can probably give you that cup of coffee we didn’t have downtown.”

Casimir tried not to brighten, but he did. That’ll be the thought of meeting Val, I thought drearily. Never mind. I got to look at him a little longer. The line of his throat when he turned his head . . . and that dimple when he smiled. “Thank you,” he said.

It also meant he carried my knapsack up the walk to the door. Some of the gruuaa peeled off from under the rosebushes and joined us. Mom opened the door before I got my hand on the knob: she must have been looking out for us. Her face was all pinched up with worry. She shouldn’t be worried and at home in the middle of the afternoon. Ran—no, if it had been something about my accident-prone little brother, she’d’ve told me. She was immediately distracted when I introduced her to Casimir, however. Her expression struggled between amusement and “wow.” When she turned away to lead us into the kitchen and the coffee machine she shot me a look that said, “Yup. Gorgeous.” Some other day this might have annoyed me. Not today. Besides, he was gorgeous. Even your mom could see it.

I noticed there were a couple of new little origami critters on the windowsill (not that there was room. One of them was arched over an African violet like a dragon protecting his princess) and a third on the kitchen table. I had known Takahiro was going to be taking some kind of gizmohead science tutorial with Val, and I hadn’t liked the idea at all. When he’d told me I’d wanted to say, hey, whose friend are you? but I hadn’t. Staring at the little creature on the table now I had this dumb spasm of feeling that Taks’ origami made everything all right. I was sure it had been my new mascot that had taught me (somehow) to do whatever it was I had just done as Hands Folding Paper in the park. The throb of the armydar almost faltered.

This didn’t last even as long as it took Mom to bring the mugs of coffee out of the kitchen. I looked into her face: she was really frightened. “Maggie,” she said in this unnaturally calm voice, “would you take a mug out to Val? He’s in his office.” Which was what we called the shed when anyone else was around.

I couldn’t very well ask her what was going on with Casimir sitting there, or why she was sending me instead of going herself and leaving me to entertain my guest. I flashed an “it’s okay, Mom’s harmless” smile at Casimir and picked up the mug, telling myself that whatever happened it was not going to freak me out like it had the last time something weird had happened out there.

I let myself out the back door, Mongo plunging through before I could decide whether I wanted him or not, and a lot of gruuaa with him. I didn’t think they had to wait for someone to open a door, but maybe they were being polite. As I walked the few yards to the shed door it got harder and harder to put my feet down and go that way. It was so peculiar a sensation I couldn’t decide if I was just feeling reluctant—which I was, although I wouldn’t have said it was strong enough to glue my feet to the path—or whether there was something really trying to stop me getting to the shed. Hix patted my face. It felt like, Go on, I’m here.

If there was something trying to stop me, it failed. I knocked. “Val? Mom sent me out with some coffee for you.”

There was movement that didn’t sound like someone walking to the door—but it sounded like it had something to do with something large. Then the ordinary sound of footsteps, and the door opened. A crack. “Maggie,” said Val.

I held the mug out. Whatever was going on, I was happy to stay out of it. The day had been dreepy enough already.

“I would like you—I would ask you to come in,” said Val carefully. “But—please prepare yourself.”

Prepare myself for what? Hix was silent and motionless. I looked down. Mongo was wagging his tail. It was a happy, hopeful wag. Well, so it couldn’t be too bad—could it? Huh. Mongo was an optimist.

Val opened the door the rest of the way. Behind him on the floor was a huge shaggy grey and silver dog with yellow eyes lying on a heap of rags. It looked tense and miserable. Val looked pretty tense too, and worried. Like Mom. Mongo’s tail beat harder. The huge dog was panting heavily, although it was cool in the shed, and its tail was clamped between its legs. I looked down. Mongo had his head lowered and his ears not-quite flat, his eyes wide open but soft, and his tail was going like four hundred and twelve. Friendly but submissive. I looked at the other dog again.

It looked awfully like a wolf.

“Please come in,” said Val. “Mongo too, if he wishes.”

The shed wasn’t that big. To get the door shut behind me I had to go closer to the huge dog (or wolf) than I wanted to. As soon as the door was shut I backed up against it till I couldn’t go any farther. I could still feel that keep-away sensation I’d felt outside, but inside the shed it was weirder. Much weirder. It was both go-away and please-please-please-stay. The shed had gruuaa everywhere—there was even one wrapped around the cord that the little ceiling light hung from.

Mongo got down on his belly and crept toward the other dog. One of the other dog’s forefeet gave a funny twitch and then it whined—a pathetic, heartbreaking sound. I knew that sound; I heard it at the shelter all the time. I also knew that the last thing you do is rush up to a strange animal and touch it just because you know it’s miserable.

Well, okay, I didn’t rush. I took two deliberate steps—past Val, who made no move to stop me—and knelt down by Mongo, who was by this time licking the big dog’s chin. Petting this monster seemed rude somehow . . . not that what I did was sensible. I sat down next to it and reached out for it like it was Mongo. Like we were on the sofa, and he was sitting next to me. I reached out as if I was going to drag the front half of it into my lap.

Never, ever do this.

It gave a moan, and shoved its gigantic head under my arm and . . . there was a totally doolally blur, I don’t know, all teeming and boiling and wildness . . . not wholly unlike a smaller denser version of what had wrapped around Casimir and me in the park . . .

. . . and I suddenly had my arms around Takahiro. A naked Takahiro. Val produced a blanket out of somewhere and dropped it over him, and then knelt down beside him and hung on: Takahiro was shivering like he was having some kind of fit. He still had his head under my arm, and his arms were across my lap. One of them reached around behind me and grabbed the pocket of my jeans like it was saving him from drowning. I didn’t know what else to do, so I wrapped my arms around his naked chest and back and held on too.

It was over in maybe a minute. Then he went limp, and his hand fell away from my jeans pocket. Val and I let go, but Val was tucking the blanket around him, as tenderly as if Takahiro was his baby son. A six-and-a-half-foot baby son. I realized the rags that the “dog” had been lying on used to be clothes. I thought I recognized what used to be a sweatshirt with our high school logo on it. He rolled away from me and tried to sit up. Val had begun chafing his blanket-covered back and shoulders like you might do someone you’ve just saved from drowning. “You’re all right,” said Val, pausing to retuck a bit of the blanket. “It’s over. You’re all right.”

“I’m not all right,” said Takahiro in a voice I barely recognized. “I have never been all right. I have always been this.”

I wanted to scream or throw up or run away or all three, but I couldn’t. Takahiro, as many times as I’d wanted to kill him in the last more than seven years, was my friend. And werewolves were a myth. Like mgdagas. I got up, a little unsteadily, and picked up the mug of coffee on Val’s table. “Coffee?” I said inanely, and held it out toward Takahiro.

He glanced up and away again as if he couldn’t meet my eyes. The blanket slipped down over one shoulder. He had the most beautiful creamy skin, like a golden pearl. He pulled the blanket up over his shoulder again—Val was still kneeling beside him, rubbing his back. I kept on holding out the coffee (Taks was as much of a coffee hound as Jill and me) and eventually, without looking at me, he took it.

I sat back down on the floor too, immediately in front of him, where he would have to look at me (I hoped). I was fighting wanting to scream or throw up, and if I still wanted to run away—and with the army out there cranking its zappers and wave machines, I did want to run away—I wanted to take Takahiro with me. Far away from this world where everything was going so rats’ assy. Mongo, however, was thrilled by the situation. He crammed himself between Taks and me. Taks got the soulful brown eyes. I got the being beaten to death with a tail.

“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.

He pulled out a fresh piece of already-square origami paper, folded it over, and opened it again like I had. I nodded. Then he started showing me what to do. After I made a horrible mess of my piece of squared-off notebook paper he gave me a piece of origami paper to mangle. Then he gave me a second one. The second one actually turned into a fish.

There’s a really big gap between being able to make origami fish and hats and boats and those fortune-telling boxes where you write silly things under paper folds and make people choose one, and your first crane. I wasted a lot of time (and paper) trying to fold a crane. I could follow the directions—by this time I had my own How to Do Origami book at home—but the results were always smudgy and lopsided and bent-looking. And then one day I got it. The folds were all crisp and sharp and right first time and the little hole in the bottom was centered and square and when I set it down it stood up straight. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been so happy—probably not since Dad had died—maybe the day we brought Mongo home. I went racing into the dining room and the Lair to show Mom—Ran had been totally unimpressed but he was still pretty little. Mom got it although I think she mostly got it about something making me happy.

“What are you going to do with it?” she said. “We could make space on a shelf somewhere.” Mom has a collection of family china and stuff that takes up most of the corner cupboards in the dining room. The gaps and corners had silted up over the years with stuff like report cards with gold stars on them (not a lot of these) and family photos and candles too pretty to burn and tiny vases that weren’t at that moment holding deadheading accidents from Mom’s garden and a few of my china dog statues although by unanimous vote Mom and I made Ran keep his car models in his room. The crane would have looked right at home.

I thought about it. “No,” I said. “I’m going to give it to Takahiro.”

Mom didn’t say anything about how Takahiro must have made millions of cranes and the last thing he’d be interested in is another one. She nodded. “He’ll like that.”

I took it to school the next day in a box, I was so afraid of crushing it. I found Takahiro on the playground—off in a corner by himself, folding paper. I knelt beside him. He looked up, startled. I opened the box and took my beautiful crane out. It suddenly looked a lot less beautiful than it had the day before on the kitchen table where I’d made it. It was the cheapest origami paper and the red on the colored side was streaky, and there were flecks of white on the borders where the ink hadn’t quite gone to the edges. And it was just a crane. Takahiro had made millions of them. Just like Mom hadn’t said.

My hand shook a little as I took it out of the box, but it was too late now not to do it. I held it out to him. I know my voice shook. “It’s for you,” I said. “It’s the first crane I’ve ever made that isn’t awful.” I’d looked up how to say something like “Please take this, it is a gift for you” in Japanese on the webnet, but all of it but the “please” had gone out of my head: “Dozo,” I said.

He took my crane gently, as if it was beautiful. He looked at it and then he looked at me again. I think it was the first time I’d ever really seen him smile. I was staring straight at him—terrified he’d laugh or be bored or something—and I saw his mouth say “thank you” but I don’t think he said it out loud.

“You’re welcome,” I said, hugely relieved. (I’d looked the Japanese for “you’re welcome” up on the webnet too but I couldn’t remember it.) “Um—do you want the box?” He nodded, and was putting the crane carefully back inside it when the class bell rang. We stood up together and just before we turned to the school door he bowed and said clearly: “Domo arigato gozaimasu.” Which means “thank you very much.”

Of course it took me about fifty more cranes before I made another one that was anywhere near as good. But a crane did finally get put on the dining room shelves: Mom gave me some patterned origami paper after I’d been doing it about a year, and I made her a crane out of the prettiest pattern, and a peony out of the pinkest. I also made Ran a Tyrannosaurus rex and a racing car, although he went on and on about what kind of car it might be (the book I got the pattern out of didn’t say) till I was sorry (I told him) I hadn’t made him a guillotine instead. (There was a pattern for a guillotine on some extreme-origami site I’d looked at—you can make anything out of paper if you’re good enough. A guillotine is probably beyond me, but Taks could make one.)

I looked at Takahiro now. He was looking at me with an expression I thought I remembered from that day I’d given him the crane: surprise. Wariness. Hope. Although there’d been an awful lot of chain-yanking between him and me since that day. The weeks he suddenly wouldn’t talk to me—which were pretty dreeping aggravating anyway, and worse when he’d been helping me study algebra and it was like he made me look like the bad guy when I wouldn’t let him help me any more just because he wasn’t talking to me. Or I’d see him at Peta’s after school with his geek crowd and when I waved he’d look straight through me like I was, I don’t know, a nongeek. Which I was of course.

That’s how Jill and I started using Japanese phrases—when he wasn’t talking to me he wasn’t talking to Jill either, and it was Jill’s idea to speak Japanese to annoy him, since he never did—speak Japanese, I mean. That thank-you when I gave him the crane was probably the only Japanese I’d ever heard him say. And that was before I started needing to annoy him. Then it kind of caught on. It was all Newworld girls and their ’tops—Steph joined the Annoy Taks group when she had a crush on him and he looked through her too, and then Laura and Dena did because they were tight with Steph, and he ignored all of us. But I like to think we were irritating. Also, some of us—Jill and me anyway—just liked the way the words felt in our mouths. Like sumimasen. Shimatta was a lot more satisfying than damn. And sugoi is a whole different kind of amazing than amazing.

I guess I was maybe feeling a little guilty now. “I was thinking about you teaching me origami. And that crane I gave you.”

He nodded. “I still have it.”

“You do?” I said, astonished.

He glanced at me and away again. “It was the first time anyone I’d ever showed how had actually gone on with it and done stuff. It was the first day I . . .” He didn’t finish what he was saying, but I thought I could guess: I’d probably been his first friend. He didn’t start hanging out with his geeks and gizmoheads till his English was up to arguments about servebots and why physwiz did or did not rule (there’s a gizmohead tough-guy thing about physwiz). At the beginning though it was just me and origami. And the origami was really visible. It could have gone either way: the rest of the kids could have exiled me the way they’d exiled Takahiro. That they didn’t was mostly Jill. If I liked Takahiro then she did too. And everyone liked Jill. It was Jill who first got him talking (in English) at all. She just started talking to him and I don’t know how she did it, but she made it seem like they were having conversations, till they were, till he started talking back. He showed her how to fold paper too, and she was pretty good but I was better. It was a pity I couldn’t take Enhanced Origami instead of Enhanced Algebra.

But then Taks grew about two-and-a-half feet, discovered geekery, and periodically forgot how to talk again. I think he’d always been like this, it’s just we only started noticing after he was talking sometimes. And you never knew what was going to set him off. You’d think you were having a conversation and then you’d ask him something like what he thought about the movie the other night and he’d go silent and then just walk away. If this happened to you (as it happened to me) in the middle of the corridor at school with a lot of other people seeing it happen you felt like a total dead battery. But you know that thing about how a friend is someone you could call at three o’clock in the morning if you needed to? I could call Taks at three a.m. if I was in trouble. It was the day-to-day “hi, how are you” stuff that wasn’t so good.

Mom was writing down the sizes Takahiro gave her and then said, “Wait a minute,” went away, and came back with Val’s dressing gown. “Come along, Maggie,” she said. “Leave the boys to cope.” Mongo, after what was evidently a terrible struggle, came with me, after wildly licking Takahiro’s wrist one last time.

“Are you okay?” Mom said softly to me. “Er—it’s been a rather harrowing day. Again. And I don’t even know what happened to you at the park.”

“I think I could sleep for a week,” I said. “But I’m okay.”

“How do you—you and Jill—know Casimir?” she said, trying not to sound like a mother and failing. I knew she didn’t approve of college kids hanging out with kids still in high school: imbalance of power, she called it. And Casimir was terrifyingly good-looking. What did a nineteen- or twenty-year-old who looked like Casimir want with a seventeen-year-old who looked like me? I didn’t think I could tell her about the mgdaga stuff; even to mention it was dinglebrained and woopy. And he had come in with me and talked to my mother. That would rate with her.

“He works at P&P,” I said, trying not to sound like a teenager being asked personal questions by her mother, and also failing. “We met, um, today at the park.”

There was a little silence as we went through the kitchen door. Casimir hadn’t remotely hinted anything to her about the new cobey or she’d have been all over me with panicky-mom questions. I owed him for that. She thought we were having a standard mother-daughter conversation. It was still better than Hey, who would have guessed Takahiro was a werewolf?

“Casimir told me he’s from Ukovia,” Mom said finally. “His English is very good. He sounds a lot like Val.”

“He’s heard of Val,” I blurted out. “He said ‘Valadi Crudon?’ like it was some big deal.”

Mom turned and looked at me. The day before yesterday I’d’ve said it like an accusation. Today I was just frightened. Her husband was an ex-magician who had killed his best friend because his government had told him to. Except that he wasn’t ex-. One of my best friends was a werewolf. I had an invisible humming creature with too many legs and eyes wrapped around my throat. There had been a cobey in the park—the park less than two miles from where we lived. A cobey that Casimir, who had heard of Val, recognized as a cobey. A cobey that I . . . I . . . I looked at my poor algebra book, lying on the kitchen table. You could see the gap the missing pages made, a little black hole against the spine, and the closed cover lay at a slight angle. Mom hadn’t noticed, or she’d’ve gone ballistic—textbooks are expensive. But she wouldn’t expect me to be a book mutilator. And how was I going to explain?

Two days ago Mom would have heard the accusation in my voice and shut me out. Two days ago we hadn’t met Hix or seen a werewolf in Val’s shed. Or heard why Val had been exiled. Today she said, “I knew there were things Val hadn’t told me. But there were things I hadn’t told him too; why should he tell me everything? I had even guessed—before last night—that Val was more important in his old life than he wanted to talk about. And I can’t imagine anyone who has moved so far away, and to a new country, wouldn’t have some mixed feelings about what they’ve left behind. Until last night it hadn’t occurred to me that anything he hadn’t told me might be dangerous.”

Mongo, not getting the response he wanted merely leaning against me, was licking my hand. I sat down abruptly on the floor and started petting him fiercely with both hands. He lay down and stretched out to make this easier. His feathering—the long stuff on his neck and belly and legs and tail—needed brushing. His feathering always needed brushing. His eyes said, Don’t stop. Hix flowed down one arm and across Mongo’s ribs. His eyes moved—I guess he could see her better than I could. She curled up under his chin, and he raised his head not only as if he knew exactly where she was, but as if she took up space, which I still wasn’t clear about.

Mom said carefully, “Casimir seemed to think you were a bit special too.” I didn’t know what to say so I didn’t say anything. Mom waited and then added, “Something a little unusual. About a prophecy.”

I exhaled. I reminded myself that us Newworlders did believe in coincidence. And that he hadn’t mentioned the cobey so I still owed him. But maybe a little less. “That’s just some dumb folk tale. It’s a joke.”

“I don’t think . . .” Mom began, and stopped. I was thinking about my grandmother turning green and scaly. I was thinking about magic winning over science. I was thinking about Takahiro. I had a headache.

“Oh—a thousand dead batteries,” I said. “Clare was expecting me—”

“No, she’s not,” said Mom. “I phoned her while I was waiting for you to come home. Whatever happened with Takahiro, I didn’t think you’d make it to the shelter this afternoon.”

“Oh, poor Clare,” I said. “I wonder who—”

“She told me to tell you that she wasn’t surprised, that everything was a hot wire this afternoon, and that she’d already called her brother.”

Clare’s brother was still pretending to be a farmer with a few acres at the other end of what had used to be their family farm, but he earned his living as a legal aide for a family law practice specializing in abused children. They both had the rescue-things gene, speaking of genes. He and Clare shouted at each other a lot but he always came when she needed him. I relaxed as much as I could relax. Which wasn’t very much. I’d much rather have spent the afternoon cleaning kennels because nothing else was happening.

The default position in this household was that you boiled water and made a hot drink. Mom filled the kettle and put it on the stove. She took four mugs out of the cupboard and lined them up on the counter. The kettle began to make that faint far-off hissing noise that means it will produce hot water before you die of thirst (probably). Mom stood staring at the cupboard. There is a long time for thinking thoughts you don’t want to think while you’re waiting for a kettle to boil. She got the milk out of the refrigerator and put a lot of it into a pan. It was going to be hot chocolate then. That meant it was serious.

Well, it was serious.