Dreamseeker (33 page)

Finally the Potter drew back from the table. My mother was beginning to stir now, moving her head from side to side, whispering things that didn't sound like English. I felt a knot form in my stomach. What if this process skewed her brain so badly that she appeared even sicker than before? My aunt and uncle would take her to a hospital for testing, and God alone knew what would come of that. Would tests of
her newly restored brain match the ones from before this operation? What would the doctors make of it if they didn't?

Suddenly her eyes opened. I held my breath as she stared at the ceiling for several seconds, then slowly looked around the room. Her eyes were wide. “The colors . . .” she whispered. “So different.”

The Potter helped her to a sitting position on the table. Mom seemed very weak, but that might just have been from the drugged tea. “Tell me what you see.”

“The colors . . . look brighter. Everything. Brighter. Like I'd been seeing the world through a grey veil before, but didn't know it. Now suddenly it's gone.” She laughed softly, a sound of wonder and delight. “My God, I don't know the right words to describe it.”

“I understand what you mean,” the Potter said softy.

Mom turned to me then, and I went to her and held her, and this time I let the tears come. So did Tommy, I think. He hid his face so we wouldn't see them, but I saw his shoulders tremble.

Finally we disentangled from the three-way hug. Mom looked at the Potter. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Whatever you did, it feels like something is better. Thank you so much.”

The elderly female face smiled sweetly. “I'm glad to be able to help.”

Mom slid her feet down to the floor, tested her weight on them, then pushed herself away from the table. “Even the pressure on my feet feels different,” she whispered. “More . . . more detailed.”

“The spiritual channels within you are fully open,” the Potter said, in her best New Age voice. “Your qi is flowing freely again, and all your senses are coming back to life. It's part of the natural healing process.”

Mom looked around the room. “Where are Rose and Julian?”

“In the kitchen, I believe. I asked them to give us privacy. They've been most patient.”

Tears glimmering in her eyes, Mom hugged us both again, then headed off to find the rest of the family. We watched as she walked down the hall, staring at every piece of furniture she passed as though seeing its color for the first time. Soon she was out of sight.

“Was that a normal response?” Tommy whispered.

“Not uncommon. It's a good sign.” The Potter looked at her watch, then at me. “We'll give your family some time to absorb the news and express their gratitude, then you and I should retire to somewhere more private for your own alteration. You won't want to be seen right afterward.”

I had been so focused on Mom, it took me a moment to realize what she was referring to: my own scent change. “We can use my room,” I said. I felt a bit queasy that someone was about to reshape my body, no matter how minimal that change might be.

A few minutes later Rose and Julian and Mom joined us, and the atmosphere was downright festive. Everyone told the Potter how grateful they were for her help, and Julian tried to offer her payment for her services, but she refused, saying that she'd done it as a favor to Miriam Seyer, not to worry about it. So Rose said that if there was ever anything they could do for her, ever
,
she had but to ask, and Mom said that went double for her. The Potter accepted their gratitude in a friendly old-woman way, and once more I was struck by the ease with which she switched roles depending on circumstances. Finally she said that Tommy and I had asked about her crystal work, and if it was okay with everyone she'd like to go off with us and teach us some things about the energies of semi-precious stones. And of course it was okay, though Rose did make me promise to share the information with her later.

There was a tremor of fear in my stomach as we headed up the stairs to my room, adult laughter fading behind us. But you gotta do what you gotta do.

My transformation hurt. A lot. When it was finally done I felt like I'd spent a day on the beach without sunblock, then rubbed sandpaper into my skin until it was raw, then taken a bath in lemon juice. And I looked like a boiled lobster.

But if this was what it took to get my body to exude a new cocktail
of oils and gasses, so that my scent was no longer recognizable to the Hunters who'd smelled me in the past, it was worth every minute of the five-donut operation.

Tommy perched by my side during all of it, clearly wanting to be helpful but not knowing how. At one point when I was struggling not to cry out in pain he reminded me of the
Mythbusters
episode where they demonstrated that yelling profanities improved pain tolerance. The information didn't do me much good—I couldn't yell anything without my whole family bursting in to see what was wrong—but it got the Potter's attention, and when she was done turning me into a lobster she asked Tommy to describe the experiment in detail. Apparently no one on Terra Prime had ever thought to ask whether screaming “oh, fuck!” at the top of your lungs would really make something hurt less. Maybe you needed an American mindset to come up with that.

The look on Tommy's face during that conversation was something to see. For a few precious minutes he wasn't a little kid, or a silent spectator, or even an ignorant Colonnan. He had knowledge that this powerful alien Fleshcrafter wanted, and she respected him for it. By the end of the conversation he was glowing so brightly from pride that you could have used him to light a room.

I understood just how he felt.

The Potter remained with us until the worst of my pain had faded then declared the operation a success. As she packed up her crystals and river stones, she told me my unnatural redness should fade within the hour, and recommended I avoid the rest of the family until I looked more normal. She also told me to wash all my clothing and my bedding, and throw out any garments that weren't washable, as they still had my old scent on them. I hadn't thought about that.

I could travel on Terra Prime now, I realized—or any world—and the Hunters who'd tracked me before wouldn't recognize my scent trail. That was a heady concept. The Potter gave me a card with her contact information on it, and told me to get in touch with her if I had any concerns about her work. The name on the card was
Reginald
Harrington III, Master of the Guild of Potters,
and the contact point was an office of the Guild of Greys. My hand trembled slightly as I noted that. Yeah, I understood that interworld mail deliveries normally went through the Greys, but servants of the Shadows were the last people I wanted to have knowledge of my business. At least I had the alias that Seyer had given me, so I wouldn't have to give them my real name.

It seemed like all our business was done, but as she turned to leave Tommy suddenly asked her, “What's with the donuts?”

We both turned to look at him—the Potter startled, me aghast.

“You've eaten fourteen of them since you got here,” he pressed. “Not like I'm counting or anything. Jesse obviously knew you were going to do that, since she's the one who asked Aunt Rose to get them. So. . . . are you like, hypoglycemic? Or is it something more interesting than that?”

I was glad that my skin was already red so the Potter wouldn't see me blush. “Tommy, please, don't be rude—”

But she seemed more amused than insulted and waved off my concern. “It's quite all right.” To Tommy she said, “Aside from the energy expenditure required by fleshcrafting—which is considerable—our Gift has certain limits. I can force my flesh to take any shape I please, but I can't create flesh where none exists.”

“So you can change your body shape, but not your mass.”

“Correct.”

“So if you wanted to make your body bigger than it is right now, you'd have to put on weight like a normal person first. Right?” His face had taken on the same solemn expression as when he was reviewing a new game system. I guess, to his mind, he was doing just that.

She smiled. “Precisely.”

“So how much weight will you have to put on to go back to your regular shape? The male one, I mean.”

She looked down at her stocky form and chuckled. “The bodies are roughly commensurate in mass. Deliberately so.”

I suddenly remembered how small the Guildmaster's body had
been, independent of his extra arms. And many of the Potters in his grand hall had likewise been slender of build. The girl with the wings had been downright tiny. All of that made perfect sense, if a Potter who wanted to create extra appendages had to reassign existing flesh to do so.

Leave it to my little brother to connect that to their chocolate fetish.

Finally Tommy ran out of questions, and the Potter was allowed to leave. With a weary sigh I fell back on the bed, so tired in body and soul that I felt like I was bleeding into the mattress. Which was a good thing. Any sensation other than pain was a good thing.

For a moment I lay there with my eyes closed, enjoying the silence.

The total silence.

Without the sound of footsteps leaving my room.

I cracked open one eye. Tommy was standing by the bed looking down at me. His expression was solemn.

“What's up?” I asked.

He shook his head and made a tsk-tsk noise.

I opened my other eye. “What? Is something wrong? What is it?”

A spark of amusement glittered in his eyes. “You didn't tell me there was a junk food Gift.”

I picked up a pillow and threw it at him. It felt good. Normal, even. I was home.

For now.

S
EER
G
UILDHOUSE IN
L
URAY

V
IRGINIA
P
RIME

A
LIA
M
ORGANA

M
ORGANA WAS IN HER STUDY
when her organizer chimed, alerting her to an incoming call. Taking out the appropriate harmonie, she placed it in the holder on her desk and activated it. The image that took shape before her was of a woman wearing a mask that was half human and half bestial. Morgana nodded a greeting. “Well met on a hot summer day, Lady Fleshcrafter.”

“I prefer cool summer nights,” the woman responded.

Morgana nodded her acceptance of the coded greeting. One could never be too careful with Fleshcrafters, as any skilled member of that Guild could sculpt his or her flesh to look like any other. Not to mention the caller was wearing her consortium mask, which could transform anyone. An identity check was the first order of business in any such conversation. “You have news for me?”

“You told me to let you know if the Colonnan girl showed up.”

A delicate eyebrow lifted slightly. “She approached you?”

“She came to barter information with His Grace. She was spoken for by one whose word he valued, so she was granted an audience.”

Morgana's eyebrow rose slightly. “The Green Man?”

“Indeed.”

That one is playing a dangerous game,
Morgana mused.
I may need to stage another attack on him soon, to remind him of his duty.
“And the information she offered to His Grace?”

“That's Guild business, and it doesn't pertain to the favor you asked of me so, with respect, I would prefer not to discuss it.”

“As you wish.” Normally the Fleshcrafter wasn't so evasive, which suggested that the information Jessica brought them had been unusually sensitive. Something Morgana would have to look into. “I trust you were diplomatic in turning her down?”

“On the contrary. His Grace approved her petition. A Master Fleshcrafter has been assigned to help her.”

Morgana's eyes narrowed. “I asked you to keep her from closing a deal with your people.” There was an edge to her voice now, razor-sharp. “Are you telling me you failed?”

“Alexander may value my counsel, but I can't give him orders. Least of all with no explanation. The girl arranged to fulfill an existing commission, for which he'd already promised payment. If I'd tried to convince him not to honor his own contract, he would surely have questioned my motives. Something that would not be good for either of us.” A pause. The sculpted mask was impassive, but something about the eyes made Morgana think she was smiling. “I do believe she outplayed you, Alia.”

“Apparently so,” Morgana muttered.

“Is that going to be a problem?”

She tapped her fingers on the table, a drumbeat of irritation. “I would have preferred to control the exchange. I prefer to control everything around me, you know that. But if she's strong-willed enough to fight for independence, and clever enough to earn it . . . well, we'll just have to see where that path leads her.”

“You have big plans for her.”

“That's hardly a secret.”

“Is she part of the experiment you've been hinting about?”

“That part
is
a secret.” Morgana chuckled softly. “Have patience, Lady Fleshcrafter. All will be revealed in its proper time.”

There was nothing more for them to discuss, so the masked Potter took her leave and deactivated the connection. As her image faded, the Seer leaned back in her chair. A cold smile spread across her face.

Well played, my daughter. Keep this up and you may yet survive what lies ahead of you.