Shadowshaper (12 page)

Sierra swallowed a wave of panic and squinted at the dark trees around her. “This dude just
loves
disappearing,” she muttered, crouching. She placed the green chalk against the pavement, took a deep breath, and drew three sets of eyes. Then she looked up. The road was empty. “Come on, spirits. I know you out here.” She squinted, and for a few seconds all she saw was the muted star shine of the night lanterns. Then three small, plump shadows emerged from the darkness and swayed toward her. “There you go.” She steadied her trembling hand, raised it to the air, and gulped as the figures launched into a run. The icy swirl poured through her; Sierra slapped her right hand against the eyes, and they sprang to life, each set swerving across the pavement into the night.

Sierra smiled. “Find Robbie,” she whispered. All three pairs of eyes swung off the path into the forest. She rolled her own eyes. “Really, dude? You just had to go right into the creepy forest, huh? Ugh.” She steeled herself and stepped into the woods.

Sierra had never known such total darkness. She put her hands forward and moved quickly between the trees, trying to ignore her thundering heartbeat. A flash of green glinted across a tree stump a few feet ahead, and she made her way toward it. “I’m seriously going to have a talk with Robbie when I find him,” she growled. “Seriously.”

When Sierra first heard the humming, it wasn’t because it had just started then; it sounded as though it had been going on for a while. It was like when she’d be sitting in class for forty-five minutes and finally get so bored she’d notice the stupid heater had been clacking and smashing away the whole time. The voices grew around her in a cloud of sound.

Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh …

It sounded like the choir at Bennie’s church — both beautiful and haunting. The voices ranged from low and mournful to high and exultant; they blended together in rising and falling harmonies that filled the night. Sierra stopped walking and glanced to either side, but the forest’s darkness was unyielding. She wanted to yell out “Who’s there?”, but that was too much like what the chicks in horror movies did right before they got ate, so she kept quiet and stayed perfectly still as the hum rose and fell in harmonious waves.

It was too late to turn back. The noise was all around her, seemed to well up from inside her. “Nice,” Sierra said. “Got myself lured out here to this stupid forest.” She took a step back toward where she hoped the wide-open field was. “In the middle of this stupid, stupid situation.” Another step. The humming kept getting louder. “After this stupid week full of stupid weirdo things happening.”

She couldn’t take it anymore. The drone seemed to be covering her, bursting through her.

Raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

Sierra ran. She didn’t care about what she might run into or what direction she was going — all she wanted was to get away from that noise. But the sound kept with her, burned incessantly through her ears, trailed her like a stalker around every turn. Branches slapped against her face and arms, biting into her skin. She saw a log up ahead, planted one foot hard on the ground, and threw her body into the air.

It was only after she’d sailed over the log and landed several feet past it that she realized something was different. First of all, she’d
seen
the log lying there right across her path. It wasn’t just her eyes adjusting to the darkness: She could see everything around her in crisp detail. And then there was the jump. She’d been airborne for five or six seconds, easily. She had basically glided along until she felt ready to land.

For a flickering moment, Sierra saw herself as if from above, bounding through the forest in long strides, nailing each leap. It was terrific and terrifying at the same time — like she was some kind of superhero. And then she was back, without having lost a step.

She hadn’t escaped the voices. In fact, they were louder, and now she could make out dark shapes moving along the edge of her vision. She turned, her suddenly spectacular eyesight capturing every nook and nub of each tree, and she realized that there were indeed tall shadows rushing along on either side of her. They emitted a slight, pulsing glow, a single, illuminated heart beating through each one. A jolt of terror coursed from her throat to her stomach and sent tremors up and down her arms and legs.

The humming, once a deep baritone, was becoming higher pitched.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH!

She bounced from rock to rock up a steep hill, grabbed a hanging branch, and hurled herself toward the top. Everything seemed to slow as she burst through the night air. The shadows flitted and swarmed around her, reaching out.

Sierra saw a cement walking path ahead, aimed for it, and came down running. Something about these spirits buffered her, kept her afloat. She was protected. She could feel it all over her body, like the same faint glow the spirits emitted radiated from her too.

She shot forward, barely conscious of her feet moving at all. The path led to a clearing, and beyond that would be the Long Meadow and then Grand Army Plaza. She pumped harder; the trees became a blur on either side of her.

Where was Robbie?

As if in answer to her silent question, a pair of green eyes flashed past her along the tree trunks and then whizzed off toward the Meadow. Sierra kept her course along the edge of the woods, the shadows swirling and dancing around her. He’d said “combat ’shaping,” and he would be ready for her, wherever he was out there. She couldn’t just roll out empty-handed or with a bunch of unformed shadows. Without losing stride, Sierra pulled out her chalk, now only a stub, and dragged it along the trees she passed. When she’d tagged more than a dozen trunks, she doubled back, the spirits still storming along with her in long strides. She raised one arm and then retraced her steps, tapping each chalk mark as she passed. The shards of green burst to life as spirits danced through her.

Now
, Sierra thought, and she felt her small battalion of green projectiles fall into formation around her. Once again, the night seemed to hold its breath: a blessed moment of silence. Then Sierra pivoted off a stone and burst out of the woods. Shadows and green spikes unfurled around her like a crashing wave. She landed in an open field and raised her head just in time to see a splash of bright red flush across the dark grass toward her. Sierra leapt toward the nearest tree, caught a branch and swung up onto it as Robbie’s red tide passed.

Where is he?

The three pairs of green eyes flew out into the field and converged at a darkened area at the far end of the park.
Go
, Sierra commanded her shards. She leapt out of her tree and hit the ground running, flashes of green flitting along at her side.
Go!
They burst ahead, racing across the field. Robbie’s red tide swept out again, but this time Sierra was ready. She leapt up into the night sky, surrounded by the pulsing lights of the shadows, and landed far outside of the tide’s reach.

“Whoa!” Robbie yelled from his hiding place.

Sierra smiled and dashed into a dark grove of trees as another red tide swept past. She crept through the underbrush, finished off her chalk on a nearby tree trunk, and shaped four more spirits into the jagged lines.
Eyes
, she called silently. The six eyes appeared on the ground before her.
Lead the way.
They sped off.

Shards, when the eyes find him, strike.
She walked briskly through the woods as the shards dashed ahead.
But be gentle.

Sierra strode out into the field toward the darkness, watching the bursts of light as her spirit soldiers converged on Robbie. Something red flashed, but then vanished.

“Ow!” Robbie yelled.

“What happened?” Sierra called.

“Ow! Call them off! Dang, Sierra, you won! I get it!”

Back!
Sierra thought.
Fall back.
“Sorry, I’m still getting the hang of it! You give up?”

“Yes! Jeez!” Robbie stumbled out of the darkness, his face smudged with green streaks. “Where’d you learn to do all that?” He was smiling in spite of himself; Sierra could tell it was one of those smiles that couldn’t be held back or tempered.

She shrugged. “It just … seemed natural, I guess.” She wasn’t really sure what had happened. Had all that flying through the air just been her excitement at being part of this magical new world? Or was something else at play? Either way, she felt amazing. “Let’s do it again!”

Underwater again. The hundred million souls reached their long shadowy fingers up from the depths of the sea. It was a stretch that lasted centuries. A calming, uplifting, terrifying, sorrowful kind of movement, gentle and deadly like the tide. Sierra drifted somewhere in the middle of all those souls — a flash of living flesh amidst so much death. They wrapped around her, poured into her nostrils and became her blood, sanctified her spirit with their longing. She inhaled and the world caught its breath; exhaled and a tidal wave of space emptied out around her.

A hundred hands held her, released her, brought her close, sent her spinning away.

Sierra.

The souls whispered songs about their lives and deaths, a swirl of loves lost and remembrances, hymns and murder ballads.

Sierra. Wake up.

They were so full of life it was easy to forget they were dead. They pulsated with the love of all things alive, a powerful yearning that Sierra could taste.

Sierra!

Sierra opened her eyes reluctantly, releasing the soothing ebb and flow of the spirit world.

M’ija, you need to focus.

It was a faraway echo, that voice. Barely there. The early afternoon sun painted sharp geometric designs across Sierra’s room. She’d gotten home at sunrise and slept all morning. Had she dreamed the whole night? No. Echoes of it seared through her mind: the haint attacking, Robbie’s tattoos, the tingle of spirit as it passed through her into the chalk.

She sat up and rubbed her eyes. Wick was out there, plotting, sending these dead things to ruin her life. She shuddered, flung herself out of bed, and stumbled into her clothes. Her notebook lay open on the desk; lines she’d jotted down from Wick’s journal criss-crossed the pages. She shoved it in her shoulder bag. Today she would solve the riddle.

When she opened her bedroom door, Tía Rosa’s cackle echoed through the house.

“What is that noise?” Timothy’s face poked over the bannister from the floor above her.

Sierra smiled. “My stupid tía. Sorry. I’m pretty sure she’s proof my family has hyena blood.”

“Oh, ha!” Timothy blushed. “Right. Okay, just wanted to make sure everything was alright.”

Alright
wasn’t the word she would use, but Sierra kept up her smile and waved as she headed down the stairs. “Right as ever!”

María Santiago looked exhausted; the lines etched across her face had suddenly grown sharp and pronounced. “Pa’ dónde vas, m’ija?”

Sierra stopped at the door and rolled her eyes. “Out.”

The coffeepot let out a gurgle. “You want a cafecito, sweetie?”

Sierra turned. “No, Mami, I want to talk about what’s been going on around here.”

“What do you mean?” Rosa asked.

Sierra didn’t take her eyes off her mom. “I’m pretty sure I wasn’t talking to you, Rosa.”

Rosa gasped.

“Sierra,” María snapped. “Don’t talk to your aunt like that.”

“I want to talk about what’s been going on around here for years now,” Sierra said again. “I want to know the truth about Abuelo and the shadowshapers.”

Sierra’s words hung in the air for a moment.

“The truth,” Rosa said, “is that your grandfather is crazy. He was crazy before the stroke, and now he’s just more crazy. You hear me? He’s lost his mind. He lost it a long time ago. I don’t remember a time when Papi made sense — do you, María? He’s been babbling about spirits as long as we’ve been alive. He’s the shame of the family, he almost got himself put away because he wouldn’t shut up about it, and —”

María slammed the coffeepot down. “Ya. Enough, Rosa.”

Rosa sighed and fiddled with her long painted nails. “She asked for the truth.”

“I said enough. We don’t speak of this. Sierra, are you happy now? Is that what you wanted to hear?”

Sierra shot a stony glare at her aunt. “No wonder you’re miserable.”

“Sierra!” María gasped.

“What are you talking about, child?” Rosa said, squinting across the room at Sierra. “Oh, are you still upset about your little hissy fit the other day over that Negrito you’re dating?”

“Negrito? He’s taller than you. And we’re not dating! Mom, really, are you gonna let her talk like that?”

“I’m just saying …” Rosa began. María sat there with her eyes wide.

“I don’t wanna hear what you’re saying. I don’t care about your stupid neighborhood gossip or your damn opinions about everyone around you and how dark they are or how kinky their hair is. You ever look in the mirror, Tía?”

Rosa turned bright red as her face scrunched into a fist.

“You ever look at those old family albums Mom keeps around?” Sierra went on. “We ain’t white. And you shaming everyone and looking down your nose because you can’t even look in the mirror isn’t gonna change that. And neither is me marrying someone paler than me. And I’m glad! I love my hair. I love my skin. I didn’t ask your opinion about my life and I don’t wanna hear it. Not now, not ever.”

“W-well,” stammered Rosa, her face the picture of flabbergasted.

Sierra’s voice went calm. “What are you running from?”

“I …”

“What are you afraid of?” She turned to María, whose mouth hung open. “What are
you
running from?”

“I don’t see what that has to do with your crazy grandfather,” María said weakly.

Sierra turned around and stormed out of the house.