The Night Shifters (19 page)

So, like hapless
Alice, I was falling. But Alice eventually reached bottom. I wasn’t
going anywhere, and since this wasn’t a road, I didn’t have Voice
to advise me. But even if Voice were here, what advice could she
give?

Ask yourself
questions.

“
How come I’m
still falling?” was the most obvious. But that wasn’t a good
question, because I was supposed to ask
myself
– presumably I shouldn’t ask anything I didn’t have the
answer to. So I thought about what had happened just before the
fall, hoping there might be some hint there. I had been watching
the Wild Hunt and thinking that some monkey bars looked kind of
familiar. And then Two gave me a push and said,
It’s for your own good...

“Why is this good
for me?” I wondered. But maybe he wasn’t actually talking about the
fall. Maybe he was talking about how awkward and unhappy my reunion
with One had turned out to be. And that was a shame, because I had
enjoyed my first encounter with One and Two, our flirty interlude
in the trees. I felt sorry One didn’t like me anymore, and sorry
that there was nothing I could do to change it. Yet I felt
compelled to keep trying anyway, and apparently that just made him
angrier.

So Two was right
about that, it was better for me just to move on. Alas. Everyone in
this Night world had an agenda to pursue, and my agenda had
conflicted with One’s. It would conflict with others, too. Med had
warned about that. I could make deals with some, but that would
make some others my enemies. Or at least, not my friends.

So yes, it had been
time to leave the tree. And the next time I saw One and Two, things
would be different between us. We were all getting on with our
Night lives. Or they were – I was still falling nowhere. So how
could I make it stop?

Sometimes you have
to break the rules to get things to change.

“
Great!” I
said. “Tell me the rule that applies to this situation and I’ll
break it!” I had already done everything I possibly could, no
amount of struggle seemed to make a difference. When I was on the
road to nowhere, all I had to do was,
Stop walking!

So what could
I do now? Stop
falling
? It couldn’t
be that simple.

Prove it,
said a
little voice in my head. It was probably my own voice, not some
kind of telepathic communication from Voice, but it still startled
me. Wasn’t I already proving I couldn’t stop falling, simply by not
stopping falling?

On the other hand,
if I was falling, shouldn’t I land at some point? And if I hadn’t
landed, could that mean I wasn’t really falling? And if I wasn’t
really falling, and I couldn’t see where I was in my current
situation, couldn’t I just sit up and take a look around?

I sat up. Suddenly
I felt solid ground under me.

“Oh,” I said,
sheepishly.

The tree had
its fat trunk firmly planted in the earth, and I sat at its feet.
My butt felt wet from dew. And I heard the sound of night crickets,
going chirp-chirp-chirp. Oddly, this was the first time I had heard
them all Night. You would think chirping crickets would be
de rigueur
in the City of Night. But maybe the
Night Shifters would get tired of them. After all, that would be a
heck of a lot of chirping.

I stood and took a
good look around. The grove appeared pretty much the same way it
had before I had fallen out of the tree, with rounded trunks and
silver leaves – yet something about it was different. Not the way
it looked. But maybe the way it smelled, felt, sounded. It was as
if the Night world I had been knocking around in had taken on some
extra dimensions.

Yet it still didn’t
feel like the Day world I had come from. So what was it? Something
new? Something different? Or did I simply not know enough about the
City of Night to understand everything it had to offer?

Or maybe this was
the City of Night 2.0? And the other City of Night was just the
training version?

I couldn’t
help thinking of
Alice in Wonderland
again, despite my general ignorance about the contents of
Carroll’s books. One time she fell down a rabbit hole, and the
other time a looking glass was her mode of
transportation.

Through the
looking glass...

Things on the other
side of the mirror might appear to be exactly the same, but were
they? By the time I was old enough to understand what a mirror was,
I felt very suspicious of the reflected world I saw in the glass. I
always suspected the mirror Hazel might be watching me, mocking me
when I wasn’t looking.

Or maybe she was
entirely innocent, and some other entity watched from just beyond
the edge of the reflection. The Snark or the Jabberwock.

Or
Serena
.

Why did I just
think that? Why would Serena have access to a network of
Hazel-watching mirrors? That seemed like a nutty idea, totally
paranoid. I had no way of knowing that she ever heard of me before
the Night came to stay. And it was downright schizophrenic to
assume that she would have kept tabs on me all those years from the
other side of mirrors.

Yet – not totally
implausible, under the circumstances. After all, this was the realm
of Night Shifters. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed
like something that might be true.

I braced myself for
the impact of another pink envelope, but it didn’t happen. So I
wandered through the chubby trees for a little while, mostly
looking for a way out, but glancing up at the lower limbs from time
to time, half expecting to see Camilla’s men, or Blue, or even the
Cheshire Cat. The memory of his fading grin made me think of Mom
again, though her smile was nothing like his.

Mom – do I have a
dad?

Of course you do,
sweetie.

Then – where is
he?

He doesn’t belong
to this world.

Suddenly I could
hear that conversation almost as clearly as I had on the day Mom
and I had knelt beside our flower beds, putting in new annuals.
Some kids at grade school asked me what my father did for a living,
and I didn’t even know who he was. I had never thought much about
it before then. So I asked Mom about him. What she said made me
feel better – but what else had she said?

I reached for more
memories, but she faded like the Cheshire Cat. If I wanted answers,
I wouldn’t find them in the trees. I had to direct my hopes toward
solid ground.

A clearing in the
underbrush looked like it might be a path. Pausing, I studied the
dirt for any signs of claw-finger thingees. It looked innocent.
Looks might be deceiving, but I was very tired of stumbling through
underbrush, so I boldly took the path. In short order it led me
right out of the trees, away from the cricket symphony and back
onto a quiet, paved street, where I had to pause and catch my
breath.

The City of Night
loomed on all sides – and it was more magnificent, more charming,
eccentric, and mysterious than ever. It had never looked less like
a city from the Waking World to me. It didn’t have banks and post
offices and fast-food joints, no wires stretched from building to
building, no electric lights burned away the starlight. Its walls
were not indifferent, its windows were not blind, and its streets
wandered whichever way they chose.

You belong here. Stop fighting and just
be
here
.

Had the City
of Night shifted again? Or was
I
the one who
had changed?

Remembering
something else about me that had changed recently, I looked down at
my body, hoping I may have grown back up – but I was still in kid
mode. My boobs had not achieved a size A, and my hips wouldn’t have
held up a pair of jeans without a good belt. If I was Hazel 2.0, I
couldn’t call this an improvement. My happy mood evaporated.

“Why did this
happen to me?” I asked the Night. “Why do I have to be a kid? I
hated being a kid.”

Most people spend
their first twenty years wishing to be grownups and then the next
eighty wishing to be kids again. Probably they just wish for the
healthy, smooth-skinned part, not the feelings and doubts and fears
of childhood. But personally, I didn’t miss perfect skin one bit;
wrinkles seemed to be a minor sacrifice to get away from the
tweens.

I didn’t hate
being a
little
kid. At least,
I think I didn’t. I could sort of remember being eight or nine
years old, having all kinds of silly notions about what the world
had to offer based on movies I had seen and books I had read.
That’s fun stuff for a girl to dream, but what do you do when you
get older and realize that the gang from
Beach Blanket Bingo
all grew up, got divorced, and developed skin
cancer? That any Heathcliff who’s willing to trek across the
heather to visit your window must be on a manic rampage, and that
the handsome king from
The Thief of Bagdad
already had 365 wives before he even met the princess in the
story?

I pondered those
disappointments as I wandered down the wonderful street, gazing at
eccentric walls and doors, quirky gables and turrets, lovely
gardens, fanciful gates, and stained-glass windows depicting very
odd subjects. Faerie lights danced around eaves and treetops.
Kicking any available stone I encountered, I wondered why I was
getting so carried away with all that old stuff that should
probably just seem funny. How deep had the kid transformation gone,
to put me in such a pout?

When I was with
Blue, I felt a lot of the old jealousies and doubts a kid usually
feels. But maybe Blue wanted me to feel that way. Without her, I
felt more like my old self (or my older self, anyway). I didn’t
want the Masked Man or the Car King to see me this way, but I felt
sure I could hold my own in a conversation with Sir John.

Finally I gazed at
the sky, whose stars made an ordinary night look impoverished. No
hole scarred the view. But as I searched for that anomaly, I began
to get an odd feeling in my chest, where my crystal heart beat. I
stopped and gave the Night sky another radar sweep.

Couldn’t see
the hole. But my crystal heart seemed to be trying to warn me that
it was still there. If I couldn’t see it – maybe
it
could see
me
.

I shivered,
but not with terror. Instead, I felt oddly thrilled. My kid body
wasn’t quite sure what to do with the sensation, though my adult
mind recognized it perfectly. “I
really
need
to grow up again,” I begged. “How do I do that?”

“Hazel...” said a
voice I knew well, and I jumped.

•

“Masked Man?” I
glanced around like a thief, color rushing into my cheeks, hoping
it was really him, but also hoping it wasn’t. His voice floated to
me through the open gate of a little courtyard. Not simply wood or
wrought iron, this gate seemed to have been carved out of pure
jade, depicting the beauty of nature under the celestial clouds of
heaven. I peered through, into a tiny, perfect space with miniature
trees and splashing fountains – but I didn’t see him, and it really
hadn’t sounded like he was calling my name. It sounded more like I
was overhearing parts of a distant conversation.

“– from the
Celestial – “ he told someone, his voice rising in and out of
range. “But you – “

Another voice
answered him, also going from audible to distant, and this one made
my hair stand on end – but not because it was scary. It was a
woman’s voice, full of music and power. Its owner must be the most
beautiful woman in the universe. And she was talking to my Masked
Man.

“The daemon – “ she
replied, and then, “ – drab little thing.”

When the Masked Man
answered, I began to move toward the sound of his voice. “ – to
love – “ he said. “ – cannot worship – “

Her answer was
almost completely unintelligible, I could only make out, “ – Hazel
–? “ as I drew closer, and then a scornful laugh. My cheeks burned.
She had no business laughing at my name, it was a fine name. Just
who did she think she was?

Well, maybe a
goddess. Or something damn close, judging from the sound of her
voice. Who else would dare to speak to the Masked Man that way? It
was actually pretty nervy of me (mere mortal that I was) to
eavesdrop on them – and I was hardly in any position to present
myself as a rival to a goddess, considering my kid condition. But I
couldn’t help tip-toeing into that courtyard and straining my young
ears to catch more words on the wind. They kept talking – and I
should have been able to hear more as I drew closer, but the
opposite seemed to be happening.

“ – Wild Card – “ I
thought I heard him say, and he said plenty more, but I couldn’t
make out a single word, and at the end he seemed to be moving
away.

Another carved gate
stood open, so I sneaked though it with pricked ears, finding a
small lane with lots of closed doors that might lead to apartments.
It all looked very private, exclusive even, and I started to back
out, but then I heard the woman say, “ – lost that contest.”

Contest? Did she
mean me? If I had lost a contest, I couldn’t remember it.

I turned back and
crept up the lane, listening carefully. I spotted another open
gate, and when I got close to it I distinctly heard him say, “ –
far too young – “ and “ – grotesque –”

He must know
what had happened to me! I felt horribly embarrassed. But how could
I be
sure
he was talking about me?