Shared Skies (8 page)

They loaded the car and were just starting
to pull off when Gaiah thought of her father and checked her phone.
There were two missed calls. Trying to return the call, a voice
told her she had insufficient credit. “Oh, would you mind just
hanging on a sec while I run back and see if I can buy credit
here?”

“
No problem.” Alasdair
stopped the car again.

She ran back and stopped in her tracks just
inside the door. There was no sign of the woman. But there were two
guys who seemed to fill the space. She stared at the one behind the
counter, who was facing her.

He was gorgeous. Really gorgeous, well up
there. He was tall, with the darkest brown eyes she had ever seen,
and those, put together with floppy black hair, made an unbeatable
combination in Gaiah’s book. But at this moment he was looking up
angrily at the much bigger bloke looming across the counter at him.
Tension filled the small shop. Gaiah could only see the back of
this figure, a ponytail of thick, dark brown hair and broad
shoulders.

Everything seemed to recede into the
background as this form lent forward and said, “I told you I’d had
enough! This isn't the place for you. I'm serious, Graeme. You
should go back to where you came from!”

Having so recently been a victim of bullying
herself, Gaiah’s blood boiled. All that had happened in the last
few days had given her a new view of herself, and a fast-growing
confidence that she could never have imagined. She was not going to
stand back and watch this intimidation. Stepping closer, she hit
the guy hard in the back with her mobile.

“
You big jerk! Leave him
alone!”

He whirled around, already crouching into a
fighting stance. His broad, tanned face was tight with anger and
his green, green eyes were bright with rage.

“
Who the hell are you?” He
stopped and his expression changed. He straightened and gazed at
her. She knew him. The guy from the shop in Inverness. Was it? She
wasn’t sure. He seemed familiar, he towered over her as she looked
up at him. His almond-shaped eyes, narrowed in fury, seemed fathoms
deep. The smiling face of the shop guy came in between
them.

“
Hi, I’m Graeme, don’t pay
any attention to Neal, my overly-dramatic friend here,” his smile
revealed deep dimples at the sides of his full mouth. Then he put
his arm around her shoulder and led her around Neal to the counter.
His eyes lingered appreciatively on her. “What can I do for you? Oh
wondrous stranger, what is your name, where do you live and are you
staying long?” His grin was so open and infectious that Gaiah
couldn't help smiling back and there was nothing offensive in his
bantering tone.

“
Gaiah. I’m starting
school here on Monday. Twenty pounds of credit.”
Oh God!
She was
mortified to hear such a stupid sentence coming out of her mouth.
Colour flooded her face.
Where was the
sassy big city chick, the urban cool?

This was pure country bumpkin stuff!

He was looking at her and laughing. She
noticed his Johnny Depp cheekbones and as if this wasn’t enough his
eye lashes were so long they nearly brushed his cheeks when he
blinked. Her search for composure was halted by Neal.

“
Hey! I meant what I said
Graeme.” Neal took a step closer to Gaiah and a frisson of fear ran
through her. He looked at her and held her gaze. She was being
pulled into a whirlpool.

“
Oh fuck off, Neal.”
Graeme’s voice broke the spell and Neal just turned and left
without a word. Graeme grinned, “Take no notice of Neal–I don’t.
Right, let’s get you sorted with your credit.”

Gaiah wondered how a situation which had
sounded so serious and tense was dismissed so easily. Graeme keyed
in the transaction and said, “Well there’s no question about when
we three shall meet again.”

“
Huh?” Gaiah could come up
with nothing better.

Graeme laughed, “Monday. We’ll see you in
school.”

“
Him too?” Surprise gave
Gaiah voice and she nodded her head towards the door.

“
Yup, ‘fraid so. He’s
repeating yet another year. Never mind him, I’m suddenly looking
forward to Monday!” He leant across the counter, those amazing eyes
were serious, belying his flippant tone.

Gaiah coloured; she still couldn’t think of
a witty or clever comeback. She just nodded, muttered, “Thanks,”
and almost ran out of the shop.

Alasdair and Kaley smiled
at her as she rushed into the car and continued their discussion
about dinner. She used the pretext of messaging her father to calm
down.
Aaaargh, I hope he didn’t think I
meant ‘thanks’ for saying he was looking forward to Monday. How
weird. I've been told that the world is nothing like I always
thought it was, that I’m a half-breed offspring from another
dimension and I'm dealing with it, kind of. But those two guys
really rattled me.
She closed her eyes,
leant her head against the cold window and tried to will her brain
into neutral.

Chapter Six

When she next looked out of the window, her
heart jumped. Although it was getting dark, she could see a
familiar laneway. It had the same hedges, the same rose bushes and
there, in the clearing, was the one-storey house with the wooden
porch she remembered so well.

“
How the hell can this be
here? We drove every inch of this place, I know we did.”

Kaley looked at her, eyes soft with
sympathy. “I know, my dear, I know. It’s just that this house was,
and is, a construct from Gaiana. I’m sure you learned in physics
class that the world is constructed from atoms. Everything, and I
mean everything, people included, are atoms held together by
various forces. And inside each atom, its nucleus is rattling
around in its own space like a ping pong ball perpetually bouncing
around a football stadium.”

Gaiah did indeed remember. For a long time
after that particular science class she had been convinced if she
put her ear down on the table and had complete silence, she would
hear the nuclei moving.

Kaley continued, “On Earth now, they are
discovering things get even smaller, now they have quantum physics
which make atoms look like sardines in a tin. But the energy
holding things together is still the same. And, as Alasdair said,
Gaianans are beings of energy. We can affect the forces holding
matter together, we store energy and use it as we need.”

They’d parked beneath the huge lilac tree
Gaiah remembered so well. Kaley got out of the car, gesturing at
the scene that was Gaiah's memory come to life. “Our house here was
held together by Gaianan energy and when we returned to Gaiana we
simply released the energy holding the atoms and–poof–they all
slowly dispersed; tiny, tiny, invisible atoms going to a billion
different places. Now we need a house again, so we reassemble atoms
and supply energy and here we are. It’s not identical but it’s
basically the same.”

Different atoms or not, it still felt like
home to Gaiah. Alasdair opened the front door and stood back to let
Gaiah in. The same yellow, cream and ochre colours surrounded her.
She almost ran around the house, finding the same carved armchairs
and sofas with their richly-coloured upholstery and cushions in the
pleasing arrangement of rooms. Yes, these were the heavy, ivory
brocade curtains she remembered. They were pulled across the
windows in every room, shutting out the dark highland night and
making a bright, cosy haven of the cottage.

The kitchen hummed and purred as the bright
red Rayburn whooshed into life. Kaley turned on the dishwasher and
a new addition, an American retro fridge, crackled on with its ice
making.

“
All on Gaianan energy?”
queried Gaiah.

“
Oh no, dear–special
delivery from Harrods! I do believe in spending as much as I can
when I shift Earthways. It helps the economy.”

“
But surely not if it’s…if
the money is…y’know, fabricated somewhere?” Gaiah was studying
economics for her A levels and was quite sure first principles
stated money had to be backed up with real cash value, and not spun
into existence out of the blue.

Kaley looked shocked.
“Powers no! We’d
never
do that. We have several small but extremely lucrative
businesses here on Earth staffed by Gaianans on Earthways sojourn.
We make more than enough to spend what we like while we are here.
In Scotland we have a luxury cashmere shop. It’s mostly mail order
but with some retail. Perhaps we’ll get you a weekend job there?
You will have to be seen out and about, you know. Some things have
to be open and above board. I’m sorry about the short notice for
school, but we really needed to get you up here now.”

Oh God! School!
She knew she had to go but hadn't wanted to think
about it. “Do they know I was thrown out of my last
school?”

“
Of course! The whole file
was faxed to the head, Mrs. Patterson, but I encognated her after
she read it, so now she thinks it was wonderful and she’s looking
forward to greeting a high-achieving, well-liked student, coming to
finish her A levels in her school–a most welcome
addition.”

“
You...what-ed her?” Gaiah
was almost speechless at the implications of this
sentence.

“
Encognate
. It's an ancient word that
means ‘influence thinking’. Gaiah, you know you have that ability
too. In fact, that’s why we had to get you here so suddenly, you
were encognating so wildly and strongly, we felt it. It was only a
matter of time before others noticed. Our brain patterns are more
energy-than electricity-based and therefore are capable of
influencing the human thought pattern.”

Of course, Gaiah knew exactly what Kaley
meant, if not the whys and hows. But to hear it spoken about so
casually, astonished her.

“
But don’t you need eye
contact? That’s the only way I could do it. Are you doing it to me
now? Is that why I’m not freaking out?”

“
No eye contact needed.
That’s just the way you developed it on your own, which is
extraordinary anyway. And no, we can’t encognate each other or,
unfortunately, the Or’kans. And in your case, you can’t encognate
your father because he’s family. But I was able to, when I spoke to
him on the phone. I told him it was okay to send you here, and he
should keep working. I can’t help him create, and he lost his
extraordinary ability when he lost Nia, but he’s still a very
talented artist.”

“
And the
policewoman?”

“
Yes. She took some time
to encognate. Doing it down the phone takes a lot more energy. Your
father was easy enough because I know him so well. But Bryant is a
zealous and thorough woman. I had to do quite a bit of work there.”
Kaley smiled at the memory but a shadow crossed her face. “I do
feel bad for asking her to bring you up here, poor
woman.”

Gaiah nodded. ”She was really nice, I hope
she’s okay.” She looked at Kaley. She could hardly believe she was
having a conversation about ‘suggesting at’ people. This was
brilliant. “So I suppose you encognated the idea of an open day
too, as a focus for getting me up here”?

“
Oh no. That was all
Patterson’s doing. She’s very keen on the idea of student
participation. She runs that at the start of every
year.”

“
You know, any time I
tried suggesting...well, encognating, it just seemed to make
trouble when I was younger, and when I was older, I felt as if I
was cheating or something. It never made me feel good.”

Alasdair had started to make dinner while
they talked. “We’ll show you how to guard your thoughts," he said,
“so you’re not encognating random ideas at passing strangers. It’s
not difficult, just a sequence of thoughts to go through before you
encognate someone. Very quickly your brain gets used to this and
won’t encognate unless this pattern is completed first.” He was
beating eggs when suddenly he stopped; there was a noise outside
the window. Kaley and Alasdair jumped.

“
Surely not,” Kaley
whispered.

“
Stay here.” Alasdair ran
to the door.

It could be a dog, a cat, or even a fox or
deer up here, but surely nothing threatening enough to warrant
those expressions?

Gaiah watched her grandmother’s anxious
face.“I’ll just go and help.” Gaiah started for the door.

“
No! No,” Kaley’s voice
rasped in an urgent whisper. “Just wait.” Alasdair had gone out the
front door and around the side to the kitchen.

Gaiah ran to the window and pulled the
curtains open. Warm kitchen light flooded out into the courtyard
and illuminated Alasdair, who was looking over the low wall into
the garden. A figure darted through the dark towards him.

“
Grandpa!” She banged on
the window. “Look out!”

Alasdair turned as the shape lunged and
tackled Alasdair to the ground. They grappled and rolled across the
cobbled courtyard to just under the window. Her grandfather’s fists
smashed into the attacker's face with such force she actually saw
teeth flying and the man choke on blood from his battered nose. It
didn't stop the attacker. He lurched to his feet. Alasdair picked
himself up from the ground, as he straightened the assailant kicked
him violently in the stomach.

Alasdair doubled over, the man’s fist caught
him under the chin, rocking him upwards and backwards so that he
crashed, poleaxed to the ground.

“
Grandma! Do something!”
shrieked Gaiah. But her grandmother wasn't in the kitchen; she was
standing in the courtyard pointing a gun. Even in her panic, Gaiah
registered another level of shock, at her grandmother, holding a
gun with such ease. Its dull metal looked menacing in her hand. The
tall, thickset intruder took a step forward.