Authors: Nina Berry
Otherkin (5 page)
“Afraid of me?” I realized I was combing the same section of hair over and over and stopped. “Why?”
“Well.” She furrowed her brow. “You were only eighteen months old, but you’d already had more adventures than most folks have in a lifetime, or that’s how I saw it. The orphanage had a thin file on you, but I can still remember it—gray and creased and stained. It was written in Russian and some tribal tongue from the place they found you. I hired a lawyer to help me with the red tape, and she got a translator to help with the tribal language. Isn’t it funny? I haven’t thought about this in years.”
I stopped pretending to comb my hair and turned to stare at my reflection in the mirror, trying to see past the green eyes and the freckles to a large feline underneath. As far back as I could remember, I’d known I was adopted. I often wondered what my biological parents looked like, moved like, sounded like. I hadn’t let myself wonder too much, since I figured I’d never find out, and poking at the tiny empty space inside me was painful.
I didn’t look like a cat. Had my father’s nose been a bit too long, my mother’s eyes large and green? I held up my hands and scrutinized them. One of my parents had given me slender fingers and nails that always easily grew long and strong. Was that typical for a tiger-shifter?
“Where did they find me?”
“You’d been transferred to Moscow from some tiny town in Siberia,” said Mom. At the word “Siberia,” a strange chill ran through my bones. “The section of your file in that tribal tongue was a transcription of what the person who first found you said to the officials. He was a reindeer herder.”
“I was found by a
reindeer herder?
” This was getting stranger and stranger. “Was he my father?”
reindeer herder?
” This was getting stranger and stranger. “Was he my father?”
“Oh, no.” She shook her head. “He’s just the one who found you, out in the woods. That’s what he said anyway. And they had a photo of him. He looked like he was Chinese or some sort of native Mongolian tribesman. Nothing like you.”
“I was found in the Siberian woods by a Mongolian reindeer herder,” I repeated. “That is the weirdest thing ever.”
“He spoke rather poetically,” said Mom. “He was out in the snow with his deer, and the sound of angels and your cries led him to you. You were the only thing alive in a great circle of dead trees. I think he said you were wrapped in furs, or maybe he wrapped you in furs.”
“A circle of dead trees . . .” I said. “Is that what scared the orphanage people?”
She shrugged. “They didn’t say much. I almost didn’t even get to see you. I was waiting alone in the reception area of the orphanage in Moscow for a while, and this skinny old man I’d never seen before came out and motioned for me to follow him. I couldn’t understand a word he said, but he pointed at a door. When I went inside I found you, smiling right at me. Vines had sneaked through the window and wound themselves around the slats of your crib, as if Nature herself was tending to you. You had your green thumb even then. And I never saw that old man again. I’m certain now he was an angel.”
Mom really believed in angels too. It always sounded like wish fulfillment to me. “So I wasn’t scary to you?”
“Scary, Desdemona? Not at all! You held your arms out to me right away, and that was it. I was yours forever.” She smiled, her eyes misting with remembrance. Tears formed in my own eyes. I was used to hearing her say how much she loved me; Mom was touchy-feely like that. But that was the moment when we’d become a family.
“At first they told me you weren’t available for adoption,” she continued. “But when my lawyer checked, she found out that wasn’t true. They called you Varvara, which means ‘stranger.’ You were my little fairy child from the start. Well, now you’re my tall fairy child.” She smiled.
My heart jolted in my chest. Stranger? Had they known what I was?
Mom didn’t notice my disquiet. “They said you made flowers bloom and clocks stop. Stray cats would sneak in and snuggle up to you. I just hoped it was all true.”
“You don’t still have this file, do you?” I tried not to let the deep urgency I felt creep into my voice. “I’d love to read it.”
“No, sorry.” She shook her head. “They wouldn’t let me take the original, and they took the transcription from the lawyer. I got a whole set of new files once the adoption went through, of course. All cleaned up and sanitized so that it didn’t look like they ran a country where babies were found abandoned out in the woods.”
“Stranger.” I stared at my racks of brace-mandated waistless dresses, elastic-waist pants, and long tunic T-shirts, pretending to select an outfit. But in my mind’s eye, I saw a man in fur from head to toe, walking toward one of his reindeer as it nuzzled a squirming, squalling bundle in a ring of dead trees. Who had left me there, and why?
“You were three months old when he found you, and someone had cared for you very well. They must have loved you, Desdemona.”
“And you think they’re probably dead?”
“Who knows?” She shrugged. “Maybe the herder lied and killed your parents, but couldn’t bring himself to hurt you. Maybe your family ran out of food and knew he’d be coming by. We’ll probably never know.”
“Yeah.” I tugged a new dress out of the closet. “Can’t see me rushing off to Siberia anytime soon.”
“Maybe after you graduate we can take a trip to Russia so that you can get a sense of where you came from. Would you like that?”
“Yeah,” I said, warmth spreading through me. “That’d be great.”
“It’s a deal.” She opened the bedroom door and headed down the hall, shouting. “Who wants eggs?”
I threw on my clothes and grabbed the cash from my dresser. Caleb might still be waiting for me. Mom was humming to herself in the kitchen. Avoiding the creaky board in the middle of the floor, I crept down the hall, out of sight of the kitchen, and ran to the front door. Chilly early morning air embraced me as I stepped outside. The cypresses murmured in the breeze, and a few birds sang toward the rising sun.
But no tall boy in a long black cloak stepped out of the shadows. The curb across the street sat empty. Caleb was gone.
CHAPTER 7
School had been mild torture for years, but that day it was a blur of torment. I literally ran into Iris after history, my head down, trying to move through the halls unnoticed.
“Whoa, there,” she said, stepping back hard. “You don’t know your own strength.”
“Sorry,” I muttered. The tide of students eddied around us, two small stones in the stream. Iris had her long dreadlocks piled up to show off eight different earrings, four in each ear, every one a different color. Around her neck hung several chains featuring a silver unicorn, a gold Cheshire cat, and a tarnished Eiffel Tower. Her “friends,” as she called them, were nearly popping out of the top of her sleek white blouse. She’d painted purple flowers on her Doc Marten boots.
She fell into step beside me. We had art class next. “You okay?” she asked. “No offense, but you look like shit.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I like the flowers.”
“Aren’t they cool? Inspired by your azaleas.” She kicked up one of her feet to get a better view of the blossoms on her boots. “This hippie phase I’m going through has totally fueled my creativity.”
“Iris, you’ve been in a hippie phase for two years,” I said, weaving my way through the throng. “If you got any more creative you’d be growing flowers out of your ears.”
“Hey, great idea!” She laughed her infectious, deep-throated chortle, and I couldn’t help smiling. “That’s better,” she said. “Now quick tell me what’s wrong before I kick your butt in pottery class.”
“Competitive art, the way it should be,” I said. “I just didn’t sleep last night, that’s all.” Did that spiky head of hair up the hallway belong to Jake? I slowed down. No way I wanted to run into him today. I leaned down and spoke low. “Jake Peters asked me to the dance.”
Iris’s perfect eyebrows shot up. “Holy shit. What did you say?”
“I said I don’t dance.” I tried to adjust the brace without being seen. It was extra uncomfortable today, as if my body was rebelling. “And then he put his hands on my waist and, well, that was it, right?”
She frowned. “Why? Did you knee him in the balls or something?”
I threw her an exasperated look. “No. He touched the brace. He looked all crazy, and I got the hell out of there.”
“Oh, right. I forget you have that thing.”
She forgot?
How was that possible? Was I really that good at pretending it wasn’t there?
How was that possible? Was I really that good at pretending it wasn’t there?
Iris’s big brown eyes shifted back and forth in thought. “So you didn’t talk about it with Jake, give him a chance?”
“No!” I started down the hallway, my stomach twisting. “Why does everyone say that? Like Jake Peters or anyone else is going to date a girl encased in rigid nonbiodegradable materials.”
“Anyone else?” She craned her neck to get a look at my face as I sped up. “Who else you been talking to about this?”
“It’s not important.” This was too hard. The lies were piling up. First Mom, now Iris. If I couldn’t tell them the truth, it was better to be left alone. “I’ll see in you class, okay? I’m going to hit the bathroom.”
“Okay, but I need more details!” she yelled after me.
I headed for the bathroom. Maybe a few moments of quiet in a graffiti-covered stall would clear my head. I slipped past a few guys outside the boys’ bathroom, almost there, when one of them turned in my direction.
Damn.
The spiky hair did belong to Jake Peters. He looked at me, then turned away. I ran the rest of the way to the bathroom,
The spiky hair did belong to Jake Peters. He looked at me, then turned away. I ran the rest of the way to the bathroom,
A toiled flushed, and a girl in a yellow sweater emerged from a stall and headed to the sink. I kept my eyes down, moving toward the other faucet, hoping she’d leave me there alone. But the door from the hallway swooshed open behind me.
“You okay?”
I whirled. Caleb stood there, looking somehow more solid, more real, than anything else in school. The girl in the yellow sweater saw him in the mirror and squealed.
“I could ask you the same thing,” I said. “What are you doing here?”
Yellow sweater girl didn’t wait to dry her hands, but ran past Caleb, glaring at us both. The door thumped closed behind her. We were alone.
“Where have you been?” I asked. “I came outside this morning as soon as I could, but I didn’t see you anywhere nearby.”
“I saw your lights go on and thought I’d better get out of the area in case the police had been called or your parents came out looking for the scalawag who hijacked you.”
The door from the hallway opened, and a girl walked in. She stopped dead at the sight of Caleb, then swiveled on her heel and walked right back out again. He turned back to me, his mouth twisting in a smirk.
“Scalawag indeed,” I said.
But he was staring at me now from under his black eyebrows, like I was a puzzle with some pieces missing. “Where’s the shadow?” he said.
“What?”
He moved up to me and took my right hand in both of his, never taking his eyes from mine. I stared back, confused. He hands were slightly rough, but strong and warm. His touch sent a flutter through me. “Last night the shadow was coming off of you in streams. Now, I can’t see it at all.”
My heart leapt. “Does that mean I’m normal again?”
He shook his head and hummed low in his throat, pressing my hand between his. The vibration moved through me, as if I were the body of the guitar and he were strumming the strings. At first that was all. Then something deep inside me stirred.
I heard myself gasp. My hand curled inside his. The thrumming continued, pushing at me, relentless. The core of me trembled, began to awaken. Something dark in my heart reached out, filled my veins, extended its claws . . .
“There it is,” he said, his voice uneven. He cleared his throat. “I found it, but it’s buried deeper than any shadow I’ve ever known.”
Our faces were inches apart, his breath hot on my skin. The purring inside me took on a different tone as I fell into his night-black eyes. I felt paralyzed, yet so alive, electric. His gaze fell to my lips as he dipped his head toward mine.
“No!” I pulled away and turned to lean my hands on the sink to steady myself. God, he’d almost pressed up against me, against the brace. “That’s enough. I can’t . . .”
He didn’t say anything for a moment. I looked up to see him in the mirror, standing behind me. He looked unnerved and slightly flushed.
“I’m sorry,” he said, pushing his hands into his pockets. “Something about you . . .” He shook his head and turned away so I couldn’t see his face. “I lost track of what was going on there.”
My own reflection looked wrong somehow. I leaned in to look at myself and inhaled sharply. My eyes were even rounder and now startlingly gold instead of the usual green.
“My eyes. They’re . . . tiger eyes.” I brought my hands up to touch my eyelids. The lashes looked longer, thicker, blacker. Caleb’s warm scent lingered on my palms. I turned, breathing in, and a hundred different smells passed into me. Acrid cleaning agents mixed with old makeup, mold, and urine. And then there was Caleb. Even more than before, I caught his scent, like the woods just before a thunderstorm. I could have been placed on the other side of the room, blindfolded, and known for certain that he stood there.
I heard Caleb’s shirt slide across his skin as he turned to look at me. Water dripped behind the second toilet, and out in the hall, footsteps hurried and disappeared as another door squeaked open and bumped shut. Classes must have started. I’d be late to competitive art.
And I’d nearly been kissed.
“That explains why I couldn’t see the shadow in you. And why you didn’t shift before yesterday. Somehow, the shadow in you has been suppressed.” Caleb lifted one dark eyebrow sardonically, and my heart did a little flip. “I seem to have brought it out.”
“How could it be suppressed?” The new smells and sounds retreated as this sank in. My eyes were shifting in the mirror, getting greener, smaller, more human. My thoughts remained a crazy jumble: Caleb’s lips moving toward mine, the purring in my chest. My skin was about to jump off my body—or was that normally how shifters felt?
“I don’t know.” His eyes ran up and down me as if they couldn’t help themselves. “You’re full of surprises.”
My whole face flushed. I’d worked so hard at being invisible for so long, I wasn’t used to being looked at that way. “Maybe I’m doing it myself,” I said. “Pushing it back subconsciously.”
“You’re pushing something back.” He seemed to tear his gaze away from me, looking a little lost.
The late bell blared.
Oh, thank God. An excuse to bolt. “I’m late,” I said.
“Late for what?”
“Uh, my next class?”
“Oh, right. Humdrum education. Just meet me after school,” he said, his voice catching.
I moved to the bathroom door, head down. “I’ve got a doctor’s appointment at four thirty,” I said. “But I can still get you the money.”
“Doctor’s appointment?” Alarm took over his voice. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Just a checkup on my progress with the brace. I’ll get a spine X-ray, hear the same old lectures, no big deal.”
“Okay.” He put a hand on the door to the hall, took a breath, and gathered his thoughts. “Look, I don’t care about the money,” he said. “I just need to see you again. Make sure you’re okay.”
“I’m fine,” I said, willing it to be true and looking up into his eyes firmly.
He opened the door to the hall for me. “Meet you outside after school?”
I nodded and darted past him, careful not to touch. The halls were empty. “Meet me at the oak tree in the park next door,” I said. “You can’t miss it.”
His smile flickered with relief. Then he bowed at the waist, like a courtier. I shook my head, laughed, and ran to class. I’d never been late before. But a lot had changed since yesterday.
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