Out of This World (20 page)

I can change shape because I will it.

I dial down intense smells and sounds by deliberately willing that to happen.

I've shut down the flow of pheromones I was putting out because I willed it to stop.

I know I can rise into the air in spirit form and safely return because I can will it.

So that's what I do now.

I don't try to relax, or empty my head, or anything else we've tried before. Instead, I imagine a wall in my mind and behind it is the map I'm trying to access. I study the big stones of the wall for a long moment, then I will it to come down.

In my imagination the wall explodes as though a giant boot kicked it aside. I have a moment to smile, thinking about Des and those old Monty Python shows he likes, and then there's my map—that weird GPS thing that first appeared in my head, back when I was in the skatepark. Like it never went away.

It's so stupidly easy.

I can see it all in my head, the landscape and everything around me for a radius of a hundred yards or so. I push it out
farther, taking in the route I took to get here. The dry waterfall, the rim of the mesa, the camp. I note Tío Goyo, still sleeping.

Why does it work now, when it wouldn't before?

Because this time, I
believed
it would. I was relaxed about it. It's that simple. Just like you don't think about reaching out and picking something up. You don't forget how to move your arm, your fingers. You just do it.

I shut the map down and call it back up a few times, just to practice and explore it. I keep it close, let it spread out for miles, then reel it in again. Not until I'm sure I can call it up whenever I want, do I practice the other thing I came here to try.

I let my mind fill with everything I felt when my spirit rose out of my body—every part of that disconcerting sensation of slipping out of my flesh that I experienced after drinking Tío Goyo's special tea. When I'm sure I've got it all figured out, I let it happen again.

It's like throwing a switch. One moment I'm in my body, the next I'm looking down at myself in my mountain lion shape. Then that tawny shape dissolves into the long branch of the pine it's lying on and I shoot back to the camp, quick as a thought. I mean
literally
.

I hover there, high in the night sky, and look down at Tío Goyo's sleeping form.

I don't entirely trust him. I suppose I should take him at face value, seeing how he hasn't steered me wrong so far. Or at least not that I know. He could honestly be helping me find Elzie. But he could also be pulling some kind of mental sleight of hand, making me think he's my friend, and instead leading me into a confrontation with one of those evil spirit monsters he and his
brothers are chasing. Maybe he needs my help to defeat one of them. Well, I'm not about to join their little priesthood.

I watch for a few moments longer before I zip through the sky and I'm above the spot where I lost the de Padillas' trail earlier. I drop down to earth and pull my physical shape out of the ground.

I have a bad moment, wondering, what if I get it wrong? What if when I re-form, my legs are sticking out of my shoulders or my head's in the middle of my chest?

But nothing goes wrong. I even remember to be wearing clothes, and my new longer dreads are still with me. I don't even have the hunger that I get when I shift from the mountain lion shape to this one.

In spirit form I detected a faint trace of the de Padillas' passage—a slight, lingering echo of where they'd walked. Now I can only smell the fading remnants of their trail. I wake up the map in my head and try to push it—not away from me to take in the surrounding terrain, as usual, but right at the place where the de Padillas crossed between the worlds.

Nada.

I've positioned myself at the exact spot where they disappeared, but the map in my head tells me nothing. It just shows the ground at my feet. My nose tells me more, but nothing I don't already know.

Damn. I was so sure I could make this work.

Okay. Time to try something else. I keep the map in my head and let my body fall away so that I'm just a spirit floating a few inches above the ground.

I have a little trouble keeping the map in place, but once I'm
sure I can hold it, I superimpose the map in my head with the spirit's ability to see the residue of the de Padillas' passage. I don't know what the residue is, but it doesn't matter. All that matters is that I can see it.

I lay them on top of each other, like putting a transparency of one map on top of another, and focus on the point where the residue disappears.

This time I get a sense of something—a faint thrumming sensation in the air—sort of like a heat mirage. As though the border between the worlds is just a little weaker there. I push at it, not hard, but firmly, and suddenly I'm through. When the map in my head explodes with a whole new topography, I'm still able to hold on to the map of the world I left behind.

Now I've got two maps, with the trail of the de Padillas laid upon them. This world's not a whole lot different from the one I left. The forest is denser—smaller pines, with cedar and birch instead of the towering ponderosas. I expand the map for a couple of miles, but there's no sign of people or habitation. Still, the path is there, following a game trail as it switchbacks down a steep incline, the forest thick all around it.

I follow along above the trail until it disappears again.

Now I know what to look for. As soon as I find that weakness that marks the border, I push through again.

It's easier this time, and now I've got three maps superimposed over each other with the de Padillas' trail marked on each. The mesa world. The deep forest world. This new, third one is flatter. The de Padillas' trail follows a narrow road now, and I can sense a village nearby.

I congratulate myself as I follow this new trail through the third world, happy to have finally figured out how it's done.

But my self-congratulation comes too soon. Just as I'm nearing the end of this third segment of the de Padillas' passage through the worlds, I lose hold of all maps and I'm whipped back to my starting point. It happens with the abruptness of the rubber-band wars I have with Des, when I'm about to take a shot and the elastic snaps in two in my hand.

Thorn does a thorough scan of the sky to make sure the condors aren't making a return sweep, then leads me deeper into the city. Debris still litters the streets—the wild reclaiming the once-tame blocks. We step around fallen rubble from the buildings, skirting our way past rusted cars, trucks and buses. At one point we pass by a tree whose limbs embrace a bicycle that's now embedded in its trunk, which pretty much says it all. But as we get closer to the city center, the buildings are much taller and many are in better shape, though their windows are mostly busted out.

Twice we have to do the invisible-cloak thing. The second time we're out in the open and one of the condors comes swooping down, snatching something out of the weeds down the street from where we're standing, the two of us frozen and invisible. When the bird rises, that something is wriggling in its talons, but even with my Wildling sight I can't make out what it is. A young tabby cat maybe. Or a baby raccoon.

The bird rises until it's near the top of the buildings, then it lets go and the little animal comes plummeting down, a terrified mewling echoing on the buildings as it falls. The
splat
when it hits the pavement seems magnified—a horrible wet sound that's
way louder than you'd think it would be. It's all I can do to just keep hanging on to my invisibility and not throw up. My hands are clenching my length of pipe so hard they're starting to cramp.

The birds continue to circle above until I just want to scream. But finally they drift away and we can let the invisibility drop. Thorn's face is pale.

“This … this is new,” he finally says.

“What do you mean?”

“The condors don't hunt here—they leave that to the hounds, and the hounds only play games with us. Fierce and unpleasant games, I'll grant you, but games nonetheless. Games we can survive. Not … not like that.”

He nods in the direction of where the little creature died.

Neither of us says anything for a long moment. Then Thorn sighs and heads that way.

“Do we have to see it?” I ask.

“This is the way we're going,” Thorn says. “You can always avert your gaze.”

Which I totally plan to, but it's like rubbernecking at an accident. You tell yourself you're not going to do what everybody else does, but as soon as you're close enough, the morbid scene draws your gaze like a magnet.

We get to the other side of the rusted car, pushing through weed and brush until we find the body sprawled like a broken doll, abandoned, like everything else in this awful place.

It's worse than I expected. The condor didn't kill a cat. It killed a Wildling who changed back into a boy at his death. It's so sad and horrible. The face is turned away. The body lies with its limbs at awkward angles. The back of the head is cracked, and blood and brain matter are seeping out.

When I see that, I turn away.

I'm aware of Thorn going around to the other side of the body and crouching down on his haunches.

“I don't recognize him,” he says.

“Shouldn't we do something?” I ask, still not looking. “Like bury him?”

“No time. We don't know when the condors will be back.”

I wait until I hear Thorn stand again and start to move, then I walk around to join him. I'm doing fine until I get to the other side of the body and my morbid curiosity makes me look at the dead boy's face before we go on.

I stop in my tracks, staring.

“Marina?” Thorn asks.

For a long moment I can't speak. I clear my throat.

“I … I know him,” I finally get out. “That's Jeff Phelps. He goes … went … to my school.”

My gaze lifts to search for something that makes sense in Thorn's eyes, but he just looks sad and bewildered.

“How could he have gotten here?” I ask.

“He must have been chased here, the same way you were.”

I'm about to say that I never knew he was a Wildling, but that's not true. I made a point of knowing who all the Wildlings were in school—mostly so that I could avoid them and not have them figure out that I was one, too. It's easier than you think to pull it off, or at least they never let on that they knew I was a Wildling. I suppose we were all in denial, praying that no one would find out. But even if I did manage to stay under the radar of the other kids, you could never hide it from one of the elders like Auntie Min or …

I glance up at the sky.

Those awful condors.

I shiver, remembering the horrible sound of impact when Jeff hit the ground.

“If that's true,” I say, “and they killed him because he came from Santa Feliz, then they'll be looking to do the same to me.”

Thorn gives me a sympathetic nod. “But you already guessed that.”

“I suppose. It just didn't seem entirely real before.”

Thorn glances at the body. “It's real now,” he says. His nostrils flare and he kicks at some debris before he turns away and starts off down the street once more. His pace is fast enough that I have to hurry to keep up with him.

Ten minutes later, he stops at the edge of a sunken roadway filled with water. It goes off in either direction like a canal cutting through the city, reeds and brush choking the sides. Right in front of us is a makeshift bridge of boards crossing the water, and we use it to get to the other side, walking in a single file. The wood creaks and sags under our weight, but otherwise holds up just fine.

On the far side, Thorn points to a tall building where the street ends a few blocks away. It towers over its broken-down neighbours and seems relatively unscathed until I realize that it's missing all of its top floors. I can't imagine how tall it must have originally been.

I've been walking with a prickle of anxiety gnawing at me deep between my shoulder blades. I keep anticipating that the condors will show up so suddenly that we won't have time to hide from them. I can almost feel their talons digging into me, ripping me from my footing as we go up and up.

And then the long fall.

I shake my head, trying to push the fear away.

“Is that where we're going?” I ask.

Thorn nods. “Canejo's warren.”

“Warren? What's
that
supposed to mean?”

“You'll see.”

And that's when we both freeze.

From somewhere behind us we hear the hunting horns. With all the echoes bouncing around, it's impossible to tell how close or far away they are.

Thorn gives me a push forward. “Run!”

He doesn't have to tell me twice. I take off at full Wildling speed, and whatever kind of being Thorn is, he has no trouble keeping up with me. The tall building gets closer and closer.