Doug was sleeping late. He usually slept late now. There was no job to get up for, after all. That would have to change someday, but there were other things to do first. Few employers hired monsters.
He was drowsing, not really sleeping, thinking in little fragments on the plans for the day. Head back to the Field Museum with Gus and follow up on that … that “scent,” that clue, if that’s what it was. They could both feel it. They agreed it was a trace of magic. Worth following up.
His right ear twitched, cocking a little to catch the slight sound of footsteps. These halted, right at his door, which stood open. He had spent the last five years almost entirely outdoors and was, he now found, a little claustrophobic. Or maybe he felt the need for an escape route. He should probably work to overcome it. But meantime he left the door open.
He opened his eyes a crack. It was Amy, the older of his two younger sisters. She stood where she was just barely able to see him. When she met his gaze, she started to flinch back, then paled and looked away.
“Sorry,” he said. “I know it’s quite a sight. I should sleep with the door shut.” He pulled the sheet up over himself. Before, he would have been wearing pajamas, but he had none that fit just now; he was wearing only shorts, on backwards so he could use the fly for his tail. He felt uncomfortable, exposing his body—this body—to Amy. “Do you want me to put on the glamour cloth?” That would make him look as he did before, except for the height.
“That just–” she said, and stopped. Just makes it worse?
“I’m sorry I scare you,” he said softly.
“What’s the matter?” It was his mother, her voice coming down the hall from the kitchen. A moment later, she was visible in the doorway. She looked from Amy to Doug.
“I scare Amy,” he mumbled. “And no wonder.”
“It will take getting used to,” Mrs. Cheung acknowledged. “But we have that cloth, and someday,” she said to Amy, “he’ll be able to turn back. Those magical people said so. Come have breakfast.” This last was to both of them, so, after Amy skittered past, Doug rose, threw on a bathrobe—size XXL, bought two days after he came home—and followed to the kitchen.
There, his father was already dressed for work in white shirt and black tie, and his grandfather was dressed for retirement in a bathrobe far more eye-catching than his own, with a pattern of peacocks in neon colors. Both were eating toast, sipping tea, and reading, though Mr. Cheung was working his way through a stack of serious-looking envelopes while Yéyé—Grandpa—was reading the sports section. Both looked up and immediately caught the expressions: Mrs. Cheung looked stern, Amy looked tense and shut down, and Doug–
Being male, Chinese, and a soldier, he had been drilled in keeping distress out of his face more than most, but he wasn’t doing a good job of it at present. He was doing all right with his human features, but his slit pupils flared wide and his feline ears and whiskers drooped.
“What’s wrong?” asked their father.
“Nothing,” Doug answered reflexively, then, since this was patently untrue, added, “…that can be fixed right now.”
“What do we need to fix later?” asked Yéyé. “Or is it just–” He gestured up and down Doug’s height as his grandson folded himself carefully into a kitchen chair. “–the shape?”
Doug took a teacup off the counter—he would not have had the reach for this before—poured tea from the pot on the table, and huddled over it. “I frighten Amy.”
Yéyé surprised him by chuckling. “Stop jumping out at her and yelling ‘Boo!’” he advised.
Doug was surprised to find that he was smiling a little. Amy looked aggravated, though that was still an improvement. “I never said that!” she snapped.
“You didn’t deny it,” Doug answered. He shrugged in his huddle. “I’m scary. I’m sorry. I don’t want to be.”
“That’s not the issue!” she insisted.
“What is the issue?” her father asked.
Amy stood silent for a few seconds. She was gathering her courage, Doug could see. She locked eyes with Doug but he felt she was withdrawing. She said, “I don’t feel sure you’re really Doug.”
Doug’s heart clenched. On the one hand, this was not as bad as it might be. Not quite. On the other hand, they had been through this the night he came home, and he clearly hadn’t convinced her. While his mind spun, all he could do was stare back and look more than ever like a lost cat in the rain.
His father echoed his thought: “Okay, but we went over this when he came home. He and Gus, right here at this table, proved themselves over and over, answering questions, telling us stuff only they could know, childhood and army days and like that.”
“Look at this,” said Mrs. Cheung. She went to the refrigerator and plucked four pictures off it. Not children’s art, not for many years. But she, like her husband, was an optometrist and mothers are weird: she adorned her refrigerator with photos of her children’s eyes. “I got curious when he said the change got rid of his astigmatism, so I examined him a couple of days ago. Look at these—before and after.” She spread the photos on the table.
Amy looked confused. (Doug privately noted she moved to the table to look at the pictures, and so closer to him, without hesitation.) “What’s his astigmatism got to do with it?”
“Nothing,” said Mrs. Cheung impatiently. “But I took these pictures when I was testing him. Look at the irises.” One photo, an old one, showed a round, mandala-like image of a golden-brown human iris. The other, Doug thought, looked like the eye of Sauron from the movie, but was at least the same human color. “This one is slit, of course, but look at the crypts on the sides.” Child of optometrists, Amy of course knew that the darker shapes in an iris are “crypts.” “It’s the same pattern. And look at these. These are his right retina, before and after. They’re identical. The after one is paler, but that’s his tapetum. The pattern of blood vessels is identical.
“Now,” she concluded, “I don’t know how magic works, but why would he have the same retinas and the same irises (or nearly) if he wasn’t Doug? Why deliberately fail to copy the face, the size, the skin and then go ahead and copy the eyes?”
Amy looked at Doug. He used the eyes in question to look back. “That’s not what I meant,” she said, and she said it to him. “I don’t think you’re an impostor. I mean, are… are you still Doug? I mean, you told us. Your mind yanked around. Being in a hive mind for years. Going through all that stuff… You’ve told us about it, but I really can’t imagine what it was like. How much–? Are you still Doug?”
Doug did not know what to say.
His mother did: “Of course he’s still Doug! You wouldn’t be asking this if he’d got shot up in Afganistan. What difference does this make?”
“It’s magic!” Amy retorted. “What can’t happen?!”
Their father said, “You’re right. We never knew the supernatural existed before.” Yéyé grunted softly. He was a retired cop; he’d seen his share of odd things and was now reconsidering them in the light his grandson had brought home. His son held up an envelope. “This is the renewal for Humanist magazine. I’m not going to bother. Secularism seems … quaint now. As you said, we don’t know what can’t happen. But this did happen: my son came back. Your brother. This is Doug.” He had been speaking matter-of-factly; now his voice began to rise. “He talks like Doug, thinks like Doug, loves us like Doug, needs us the way Doug needs us after he’s been through hell and come out the other side hurt.”
“Dad– Bàba–” Doug began, but his father waved him into silence. It was just as well; he didn’t know what he’d been going to say. But, well, he was a big boy now (he was huge) and shouldn’t need his father to defend him against a younger sister. Should he?
“Now is not the time,” their father continued. “You want him to be Doug? Treat him like Doug.”
“But we can’t know,” Amy insisted.
“Look at the evidence,” said Yéyé. “Talks like Doug, reasons like Doug, emotes like Doug. That’s evidence. He’s Doug.” He met Doug’s eyes. Doug felt he was looking into a fire. “I am so relieved to have you back. And so damned proud of you. I don’t know which is eating me up faster.”
Doug had to look away from the fire. “Why proud?” he asked.
“Of the way you’re holding it together.” Yéyé looked back to Amy. “Don’t make it harder.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, and the creak in her voice told Doug before he looked that she was crying. Then she surprised him very much by seizing his right hand, scales and knuckle spurs and all, and squeezing it. “This is the one that got cut off?” she asked.
“Yes. You can’t tell any more. Gus got his tail cut off twice. Tempting trophy, I guess. Captain Fletcher said that regrowing our bits was a clue we could learn shapeshifting.”
She squeezed again. “I won’t make it harder. Can I help?”
He smiled (keeping his lips shut; he wouldn’t make it harder for her by showing his teeth). “Just don’t tell anyone what we keep in your brother’s bedroom.” She smiled back.
He let go her hand and rose. “Where are you going?” his mother demanded. “You haven’t had breakfast.”
“I’m going to get dressed and call Gus. We’re going back to the Field Museum to check out that lead.”
“Breakfast before you leave.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
A few minutes later, Gus knocked at the apartment door just as Amy was leaving, to make her way to the ‘L’ and thence to the University of Chicago. “Hi, Amy,” he started to say as she opened the door on him.
“Oh, Gus!” she exclaimed, hugging him just under the rib cage.
“Uh…” he replied, gingerly hugging back.
“Good luck!” And she darted off, down the hall.
“Come on in, gaijin,” called Yéyé. The Japanese word for “foreigner” was his nickname for Gus. Early on in their acquaintance, Gus had accidentally said “Japanese” instead of “Chinese” and Yéyé was never going to let him forget it. The first time he had called Gus “gaijin” after their return to Chicago, Gus had teared up and so had not seen Doug’s grin. But Yéyé had seen both.
Gus came in and sat in the chair next to Doug with the same care as an adult sitting on a child’s chair. Both now looked human, but both were still over seven feet tall and heavily built. Both wore boots, jeans, and ruddy brown jackets. These were gifts from the Grand Normans, who had brought them back from the outer edges of reality. They did not have a lot of clothes that fit. At the throat of each jacket peeked a thin roll of white silk, the glamour cloth that made each look as much like their old selves as possible.
“What’s with Amy?” Gus asked.
“We had a little–” Doug began.
Yéyé broke in: “She got herself knotted up with the idea that Doug is secretly a werewolf or something and not really Doug any more. So we dog-piled on her until she got over it.”
“…Oh. I guess she did get over it, or she wouldn’t’ve hugged me on the way out. You ready for the museum?” he asked Doug.
“Yep.”
Mrs. Cheung put a white paper bag on the table between them. It gave off warmth and a savory smell. “Barbecue rolls and egg tarts,” she said. “From the bakery across the street.”
“Thanks, Mrs. C, but I figured we’d buy lunch at the museum.”
“This is for on the ‘L.’” She nodded at Doug. “He only had tea and toast. What did you have?”
“Uh, cereal and coffee.”
“Uh-huh. You’re big, busy young men. Over three hundred pounds each. You’ll get hungry.”
Mr. Cheung rose and advised them, “Don’t argue. Never helps. Good luck.” He shrugged into his coat while Mrs. Cheung gave each of them a peck on the cheek. (Their faces bore no scales.) Then the Drs. Cheung left for their office.
Yéyé waited for the sound of footsteps to fade, then asked, “How’re things at your place, gaijin? Anybody got whim-whams about you?”
“Well, Mom cries a lot when she thinks I can’t hear.” Gus’s ears were not only mobile and pointed but acute. “And Dad smiles at me a little too much, and once I overheard him cryin’. I wear the glamour scarf a lot.” He picked at the silk at his throat. “Maybe that helps.”
“And your sisters?”
“Josie hugs me and holds my hand a lot. Maybe that’s just her, though. I’ve been away five years, after all. I’m kinda still gettin’ to know her. Evie and Steve were over, and that went fine.”
Yéyé nodded. “And are there any big changes in your minds? Either of you? I mean, of course, besides getting wired for tails and the big, honkin’ cases of PTSD.”
Gus and Doug traded glances. “You think we have PTSD?” Doug asked.
Yéyé snorted. “If you two didn’t have at least a little, I’d think Amy might be right. When you first came back, you just about slept the clock around. That was natural—you could relax like you hadn’t in years. But now you rouse at every little noise. Any nightmares?”
“Fairly often,” Doug admitted. Gus sighed and nodded.
“And you’re hypervigilant. Appetite goes up and down.” He shoved the bag of rolls toward them. “And sometimes I just catch you doing these thousand-yard stares. All pretty standard, really.”
Silence for a little while. Then Doug asked, “What should we do, Yéyé?”
The old man shrugged. “You’re doing fine. Keep on keeping on. Accept help. Go easy on yourselves. Give it time.” He picked up the sports section again. “Whatever happens, I am still so proud of you.” He looked at Gus. “You too, gaijin.” Gus blushed and rose. Doug rose too and picked up the bag. “Leave me one of those barbecue rolls.”
They left him two of each kind.
II
They got off the ‘L’ at Grant Park, threw away the empty bakery bag, and strolled to the Field Museum. In the main hall, they marveled nostalgically at Sue the skeletal tyrannosaur and the pair of taxidermied elephants. “I don’t think I’ve been here since I was a kid,” Gus remarked, “and now this is the second time in a week.”
Doug nodded. “It’s like how we’re right here next to Lake Michigan but I never learned to swim until I was in the army. People are just like that.”
Gus laughed softly. “I guess we’re still people.”
Doug smiled. “Guess so.” The thousand-yard stare looked out of his eyes briefly. “Hope Amy goes on thinking so.”
“She will. It’ll be a lot easier on her once we can turn back. You just caught her off guard, lyin’ there looking like a road-kill armadillo.”
“Easier on everybody, especially us. I don’t remember the fiberglass pterodactyl.”
“It was here Wednesday.”
“I mean from when I was a kid. Where was the Egyptian section?”
Their immediate goal was to go back to being human as soon as possible. However this was to be done, they needed to find their way into the Chicago magical community as the first step. They had wandered around the city, dropping in on mediums and psychics and the kind of stores that specialized in crystals and “botanicals,” and they developed a set of leading questions to drop, but never a whiff of magic did they feel. The psychics and shopkeepers responded only with confusion or offers of love spells, incense-heavy purifications or, in two cases, overtures to join the local community of furries.
Wednesday morning, after the last furry invitation, Gus’s frustration boiled over. “No! We don’t wanna play at animals! We need help fixin’ this!” And he had tried to snatch off his glamour scarf. It knotted.
Gus had taken a private vow to not swear. He sputtered incoherently as he struggled with his vow and his scarf at the same time. Doug seized him by the elbow and gently guided him out of the store and away from the terrified teenage boy with feathers stuck in his hair, wearing a Hawkman T-shirt.
“That was the Sundering in action,” Doug told his friend after he had calmed down. “You tried to reveal magic and your luck turned. Stop pushing it.”
“Right. Right.” He stuck the scarf back into his jacket, jammed hands into pockets, and sulked down the sidewalk. Doug strode beside him. He noticed people clearing the sidewalk ahead of them. They might not look like scaly lion-ogres at the moment, but they still looked like two extra-large samples of fullbacks in bad moods, wearing something like uniforms.
“Why would the Sundering care about one high school kid who’s already dabbling in the occult?” Gus asked querulously. “Where was the Sundering when we got snatched, in bulk, by the dagorrodel?”
“The Sundering cares about public disclosure. There were security cams in the shop. As for us, well, we got snatched. Out of its jurisdiction.”
“Okay, I get it. Shouldn’t’ve popped off at the kid, anyway.” He gave a fuming growl. “There’s gotta be plenty of magic in a city this big!”
“Haven’t picked up on any, though. Not yet.”
They then tried the museum as a change of tactics. Just as the place was closing, they had finally felt a hint of magic in the Egyptian exhibit.
The next day had been spent acquiring phones, gifts their families insisted on giving, and re-establishing contact with their friends and benefactors in Grand Normandy. Now it was Friday morning.
They sauntered among the cases of scarabs and pottery fragments, and through the reconstructed mastaba, savoring the faint tang of magic. They had learned how to do this from Grand Norman teachers, who had told them the speed with which they picked it up was another sign that they were now fays. They kept on the alert for any variation in this “signal.” Finally:
“Ah-ha,” said Doug. In a corner, half behind a small case of statuettes, was a door. It was not strictly hidden but it was working very hard at not attracting attention, being set and painted to look like a section of paneling. It had no visible hinges, and the latch was recessed. Above that latch was a small, equally shy sign reading “Personnel Only.” The signal, the scent, the feel became stronger here, and more individual. Something about it was familiar.
“I think it’s glamoured,” said Gus.
Doug nodded. “I don’t think I’d have noticed it, except for the magic trace. I guess you can’t use glamour to hide magic. Or it’s a whole different thing.”
They contemplated the door. “Should we hide until the museum closes,” Gus proposed, “then break in?”
Doug contemplated a little longer, then answered, “One: given guards and cameras and our sizes, I don’t give us a big chance. And Two: I. Am. Just. Plain. Tired of waiting!”
“O-kay!” Gus seconded.
The Egyptian exhibit was popular, so they did have to wait a bit. Finally, no one was in eyeshot. They approached. Gus stuck a finger in the latch, hoping it was not locked. It was not.
A scant second later, two very large bodies passed through a very small doorway.
Gus went first. It was dark, but his slit pupils flared wide. Cat vision and air currents on whiskers immediately told him he was at the top of a dark, narrow stair. There was no room on the tiny landing for both. He grabbed Doug’s elbow and pulled him in while crouching and starting to slither down the stairs on the small of his back to make room.
As the scant second ended, Doug stepped onto the landing and closed the door behind them. Below him, Gus stood and headed down. He followed.
They were in a cramped, dimly lit basement. To their shining eyes, the lighting was quite adequate, even though filtered fourth or fifth hand from other areas. They stood still for several seconds, ears swiveling as they listened for alarms, voices, footsteps. Nothing.
As for magic, unfortunately, the nearest and clearest trace was on the door they had just passed through, glamoured to look even more inconspicuous than it was. Gus noted this to Doug and added, “I wonder why they didn’t make it just plain invisible.”
Doug considered the question for a bit, then offered, “Well, if it gets discovered some other way, with this you can say, ‘Oh, I just missed it,’ but otherwise, you say, ‘Hey! It’s a freakin’ invisible door!’ Maybe the Sundering wouldn’t even let you do anything as conspicuous as public invisibility.”
“Mmph,” Gus grunted. “Or I could argue that the Sundering wouldn’t let the invisibility fail and get discovered. Look at me Wednesday, when I couldn’t break cover in front of that kid.”
“Okay, take your pick of my first explanation or ‘I dunno.’ Let’s scout around.”
They moved around quietly, despite being big and booted. The place was a maze of granite block walls containing a finer maze of shelving, loaded with crates and boxes, sometimes clearly labeled, sometimes not. They didn’t really pay attention to the boxes, feeling instead for magic.
“Ha!” said Doug softly, just as Gus went “Hm” on registering a whiff of magic. Doug pointed ahead to a door with light leaking out from under it.
Silently, they drifted by the door and felt the magic rise and fall. Then they drifted back and paused, considering.
They were learning to feel, not only the presence of magic, but its quality. Glamour, such as they were wearing and such as hid the door, was delicate and heady. The magic here was complex. Nothing roared/stank/glared at them. Rather, there was a quiet bubbling of many different little magics. And there was a little white card tacked to the door, readable to their eyes: “Hengist”.
Doug grinned, met Gus’s eyes, held up his new phone, and nodded at the receding hallway. When they were several yards away, he said softly, “Let’s check that name. Call in the cavalry.”
“Cool. Yeah.”
Doug dialed. A male voice answered in a British accent: “Doug! Two times in as many days! What’s up?” In the background was a sound of multitudinous drumming. Fletcher was out in company with several horses, or it sounded like that.
“Hi, Captain Phil. We’re following a lead on our shape issue. We’re in the basement of a museum in Chicago and have found someone named ‘Hengist’ doing magic. Can you tell us anything about him, or how to find out?”
“Ah. Hold on.” There were a few seconds of uninterrupted hoof beats, then: “I’m texting you the number for the Vanguard civilian contact office. Tell ’em I referred you and give ’em your full names. They’ll have you on file. Gus with you?”
“Yessir.”
“More power to you both.”
A few minutes later, they were ready. Gus stood straight and asked, “Do I look human?”
“As much as you can. Wait, your tail’s showing.”
“Prob’ly that slide down the stairs.” Glamour is fragile unless reinforced. He took off his scarf and put it on again, re-setting the illusion.
They returned to the door and this time let their footsteps ring. Doug nudged Gus with an elbow. Gus rapped the door and said, “Mr. Hengist?”
There was silence in which even a feeble imagination could hear amazement and alarm, then a man’s voice answered sharply, “Who is it?”
“I’m Gus Weisskopf, and I’m here with my friend Doug Cheung. We’d like to ask you for some advice.”
“How did you find me?”
Doug answered: “We’re Sundered and looking for magical help. We ran across the glamoured door upstairs and, ah, followed up. We hear you’re a Kerdean and so might know something that could help us.”
“Help you with what? And what do you know about the Kerdeans?”
“We know that the Kerdeans are a very old international organization of scholars,” Doug replied. “You study Sundered stuff from the Sundered side.”
“As to the help we need,” Gus put in, “that’s an interesting story.” Doug gave him a thumbs-up. Bait.
“We only want advice,” Doug said. “We understand we’re a surprise, and we’ll just go away if you want.”
“But you’ll miss that interesting story…” Gus teased.
They heard a faint snort of laughter. Hengist knew he was being baited. “You come in peace?”
“What, are you on the Moon?” Gus asked. “Yeah, we come in peace. We’re not dangerous. Well, we are, but not to you. We promise.” “We promise,” Doug repeated, just to be explicit.
There was silence for a few seconds. Hengist must be contemplating the offer of an interesting story, the promise of peace, and the fact that he was, after all, cornered in his office. Being a Kerdean, he must have stupid amounts of both curiosity and courage.
“What are your full names?”
“Okay, you want to play those games,” Doug answered, letting a bit of impatience creep into his voice. “Neither of us has a name geas, but here goes:
“I, Douglas Shengming Cheung, promise I come in peace and mean you no harm.”
“And I, August Virgil Weisskopf, promise I come in peace and mean you no harm.”
Another few seconds of silence passed, in which they could feel the curdle of little magics shift around some. “All right. Come in.”
Gus opened the door, but coming in was another matter. The office had clearly started out as a closet. Shelves intended for cleaning products now held books, loose manuscripts, and bits of pottery and metal that, on a quick glance, looked like they should go up into the Egyptian exhibit, or had come from there. For a desk Mr. Hengist had room only for the kind of classroom chair that has an arm that doubles as a writing surface. This was occupied by a large laptop. One normal person might have stood before that desk. There was no room for Gus or Doug.
Mr. Hengist himself was wiry, middle-aged, gray-haired and cleanshaven, and wore a tweedy jacket. He gazed at his visitors in renewed consternation. “Oh!”
“Uh, maybe we should take this conversation up to the cafeteria,” Gus proposed.
Hengist didn’t answer. He was giving them both penetrating stares. Doug caught the tiniest flicker of magic from him. Then Hengist’s eyes went wide and his face went pale.
“He sees through our glamour,” Doug said.
“Right,” said Gus. He took off the scarf. “Here you go. Get a clear view.”
Doug took off his as well and passed it to Hengist. “Get a look at that, too. I expect you have the skills. Military-grade magic from Grand Normandy.”
Hengist stared at them, fascinated. Their muzzles were no longer than their human noses had been, but they had muzzles, sprouting whiskers that reached out over their broad shoulders.
Their ears were large, long, pointed, and equipped with their own whiskers, as cats’ are. These twitched as their owners worried about approaching footsteps.
Their eyes, though human brown and blue in color, were slit-pupiled, and reflected the closet light back to Hengist.
At their throats and on the backs of their hands, he saw traces of the alligator-hide texture that armored their bodies. Spurs grew on their knuckles. In the gloom behind them, he caught glimpses of leonine tails switching uneasily.
“Take a look,” Doug repeated, gesturing at the scarf he had put in Hengist’s hands.
Hengist tore his gaze from them and contemplated the scarf and its spell for over a minute. Then he looked them over again. They wore ruddy brown jackets, blue jeans, and boots. Each carried a blue cowboy hat matching the jeans. “Grand Norman military,” he said. “Yes, it fits.”
“You know about the Grand Normans?” asked Doug. “This is all their gift—the clothes, the scarves. They rescued us.”
“I really think we should go up to the cafeteria,” Gus said, “where there’s room.” He noticed Hengist was staring hard again, this time at his mouth. At his teeth. Hengist should like the cafeteria, he thought sourly. Small chance we’d try to eat him in public. To push the cafeteria idea, Gus put his scarf back on and looked human again.
While Doug retrieved his scarf and did the same, Hengist asked, “What are you?” He was first puzzled, then annoyed to hear an echo. Gus had chorused with him.
“Everybody asks that,” Gus said. “We call this shape lungmao.” He nodded to Doug. “He made it up. Chinese for ‘dragon-cat.’ The guys who put this shape on us didn’t call it anything. They just took us.”
“And now we’re back,” said Doug, “and we want to be human again.”
“Back?” Hengist echoed.
“We’re from Chicago.”
“Like I said,” Gus said, “it’s an interesting story.”
II
Several hours later found Hengist, Doug, and Gus gathered around a table in the museum cafeteria. Hengist had his phone recording but still scribbled busily in a notebook.
“…so that’s why we tried here,” Doug concluded.
Hengist put his pencil down and sighed. “Five years,” he said meditatively.
“We knew it had been at least three years,” said Doug, “but it turned out to be five.”
“Given what we got mixed up in,” said Gus, “I guess we’re lucky to have come back in the same century.”
Hengist nodded. “And the glamours restore your original appearance,” he half-asked, confirming.
“Well, our faces,” said Gus. “They have to match our new height and bulk.”
Hengist rose and put his hands to his back, stretching out kinks. “And you spent three of those years in a ‘hive mind’ with twenty-five other captives, a ‘troop,’ as the Grand Normans called it, and you became fays when you were put in the troop,” he summed up. They nodded in synchrony.
He gazed at them thoughtfully. “But you’re out of the troop now.” They nodded in synchrony again.
He sighed. “Well, you were right. It is an interesting story. And I assume that there are many more details, if we only had time. Right?” A third synchronous nod.
“That– That tale was certainly worth something. I’d like to propose a deal. I know someone who may be able to help you. If I put you in touch, would you be willing to stay in touch with me, so I can go on quizzing you about your…” He had been about to say “adventure” but changed it to “…experience? I’m, ah, greedy for data.”
Doug gave him a lopsided smile. “Kerdean. Sundered scholar of the Sundered. I get it.”
“Will this score you points with the other Kerdeans?” Gus asked, likewise smiling.
“Well, yes, but I want to know more even aside from that.”
They glanced at each other. “Sure.” “Deal.”
Hengist smiled. “I will keep private whatever you want kept private and keep you anonymous as much or as little as you wish. On my honor.”
They stared at him. He had been coasting along, viewing only their apparent human faces, but now their detail-swallowing cat eyes showed through. “What was that?” asked Gus.
“What?”
“There was a little … thing when you swore,” Doug said. “A little zip or puff or spark. There’s no good word for it.”
“Ah. I have an oath geas. It lets me put myself under a binding oath when I swear that vow. If I do it freely,” he added, just to be careful. “But you must know about things like that. You said downstairs… Didn’t you run into that with the Grand Normans?”
They both nodded again. “We did,” said Gus. “Captain Coudray put a vow in when she made this little speech, making all of us officially welcome on the ship.”
“And their magic officer swore to the truth of what he told us,” said Doug. “But that was before they started giving us lessons in detecting magic. We haven’t run into it since.”
“We’ve run into other stuff,” said Gus. “Like the little extra twinkle around your eyes when you look through our glamour.”
“Mm, yes. A very expensive treatment, but I’ve never regretted it. Well, now that we have our deal–”
“Do you want us to promise with our full names again, like we did downstairs?” Doug broke in.
“Promising to give me more detail?” Hengist hesitated. “No. It’s a loose, open-ended thing. Let’s just be candid about it.” On an impulse, he thrust his hand out to shake. First Doug’s, then Gus’s hand engulfed his. The glamour was perfect; he only felt faint hints of scaling on the backs.
He sat and began writing on a page from his notebook. “Her name is Helen Greathouse. She is a professor at the University of Chicago. She’s a– Well, I’ll let her explain herself.”
“Why will she want to help us?” Doug asked.
Hengist smiled. “She’s a Kerdean too. She’ll take the same bait I did. Here’s her office and her phone.” He passed them the notebook page. “You head on over. I’ll contact her and let her know you’re coming.”
II
If the next Kerdean they met had an office squirreled away in a dark corner, Doug thought, he was going to ask if there was a rule about it or something.
The University of Chicago was not far. Doug had kept an eye out for his sister as they crossed the campus, but didn’t spot her. They made their way to a grand, gray stone building and followed the directions to a dark corridor. It was a lot classier than the museum basement, with rich (dark) wood paneling and little Victorian-style brackets for the (small, few, dim) electric lights. “Prof. Helen Greathouse” was engraved on a small brass plate, not written on a card. Gus knocked.
“Come in!”
They obeyed and were nailed by the gaze of a solidly built middle-aged woman. She had long dark hair gathered up behind her head, black eyes, and an olive-toned oval face. She held a phone to one ear as she stared at them.
“They’re here now. … Yes, I see that. … Oh, yes, never fear. … Vow? Okay, that’s nice.” Without further ceremony, she hung up and put the phone down. She never stopped staring.
“Hengist?” asked Doug.
“Yes.” More staring.
“You’ve been on the phone with him all the time we were in transit? We didn’t break any speed records.”
“You gave us a lot to talk about.”
“Argue about?” Doug hazarded.
“I did not ask to have…” Her confident, even defiant stare continued, but words failed her for the moment.
Doug chuckled, which won him a flicker of annoyance from her. “Didn’t ask to have a golden research opportunity dumped at your door? With ‘teeth and tails / and claws and scales / and all those dragon-like details’?”
Curiosity won out. “That’s from an old cartoon.”
“We’re current on pop culture because we lived it. Hengist must have told you we really are just two guys from Chicago. To begin with.”
“Mm-hmm.” She was still staring. It occurred to Doug that she was holding his gaze. Why?
The same question had occurred to Gus a few seconds earlier, and he had wondered if it was to keep them from looking around. So, while she engaged with Doug, he looked.
Like Hengist’s cell, her office was lined with books and artifacts, but it was larger. There was space for two cushioned chairs before her desk, and a carpet on the floor. Where Hengist’s artifacts had run to the Egyptian, hers were American Indian: grass-woven baskets, a kachina figure, a drum with faded art on the skin, photos of people in regalia. And there was the raccoon.
It was a big one, at least two feet high. It sat at the corner of her desk, upright on its haunches, gazing at Gus as fixedly as Greathouse gazed at Doug. It put its ears back in no friendly manner, and it became obvious that it was magical. The two things seemed to be part of the same threat display. Gus responded as he would to a dog; he hunkered down, extended a hand, palm down, and said softly, “Hi. It’s okay. It’s okay. We can be friends.”
“No, you can’t,” Greathouse declared, breaking off her conversation with Doug. “She chooses her own friends, and it takes some time before– Oh!”
The raccoon went down on all fours and waddled over to Gus. It took several seconds of approach and retreat before it finally touched nose to Gus’s fingers. These had looked human, on the surface, but on contact the illusion faded. The raccoon thrust its head under the hand, and Gus willingly continued into a caress.
It came out from under his hand, looked Doug up and down, then stared at Greathouse, which Doug felt had the same import as a nod. Then it turned back to Gus and raised a paw. Gus returned a gentle high-five with his dragonized hand.
The raccoon then waddled behind Greathouse’s desk, hopped up on a low set of bookshelves, and, with a very humanlike gesture, threw open a set of shutters. The sun showed the campus from a story up. It then let itself out and dropped from sight.
Light at last! Doug rejoiced to himself. He doubted anyone on the campus saw a raccoon jumping out of the window. “We pass?” he asked Greathouse.
“Yes,” she agreed drily. “That’s one of her areas of expertise. Glad to see you aren’t twitchy about animals, like some city folk.”
They both laughed. “We’re way past twitchy,” Doug told her.
“Taught elvish by dogs?” said Gus. “Rescued by guys who were as much horses as guys? And look at us! We’re not alienated from animals.”
“May I look at you?” she asked, nodding at Gus’s single unglamoured hand.
“Oh. I thought you could see through it,” said Doug, starting to pull off his scarf. Gus followed.
“My way of piercing glamour isn’t as quick and easy as Hengist’s,” she said. “Since you don’t do any magic yet, you probably don’t realize it’s terribly non-standardized.”
They stood before her without illusions. She herself stood, looked them up and down carefully for two whole minutes, walked around them, returned to her desk, and gave a deep, satisfied breath, like a zoologist who has finally seen a live platypus. “Very interesting!” she acknowledged.
“Can you help us?” asked Gus. “Are you willing?”
“I have never done anything like it before,” she mused, “but I think so. I can think of a way. Half the battle. But!” She raised an index finger. “My price is that I want in on your deal with Hengist. I want to look you over, quiz you, hear about your travels.”
“Sure.” “No problem.”
She motioned to the chairs. “Sit down. Let’s talk details.”
II
Gus’s dad drove them to Greathouse’s address down in South Shore. It had been five years since either of them had driven, and when they last had, their bodies had fit behind steering wheels better. Certainly, night was not a good time to re-acquaint themselves with driving.
“Pronounce it again?” Mr. Weisskopf asked.
“Mesh…keh…kyew…kway,” Gus ventured, then, to Doug, “You say it.”
“Mshkekiwkwé,” Doug said.
“And that’s Potawatomi for ‘medicine woman’?” Mr. Weisskopf asked again.
“That’s what she said,” Doug confirmed again. “When she’s not around, I’m going to say ‘shaman.’ A magic-worker whose basic trick is astral projection.”
“And how does that help you two?”
“Well, she mostly does her projection into the spirit world, she says,” Gus answered. “And she says she’s gonna take us there, too. Take our souls, anyway. And astral forms can change shape easier’n physical ones, so she figures she can change us there.”
Mr. Weisskopf thought for a block or so. “Your astral forms aren’t already human?” he asked.
“She seems to think not,” said Doug. “She seems to think our astral bodies look like our physical ones.”
“I– I– Dammit! Your souls are the same!” Mr. Weisskopf roared/protested/insisted. Then, after a few seconds’ startled silence, “Sorry.”
“No, thank you, sir,” said Doug, just as Gus said, “That’s okay, Dad. Thanks.”
“I guess,” Doug went on, “souls are further in than astral bodies. And she says she figures, if we’re shapeshifters, then our physical bodies will follow our astral ones, once they’re changed back.”
“Does a soul, just a bare soul, have any shape?” Gus wondered.
“What shape is longing?” Doug asked. “Or grief?”
Mr. Weisskopf nodded silently and drove on.
They pulled up in front of a small brick house on a residential street, backed up to a patch of woods. Downtown gleamed through the night to the north. Lungmao ears could pick out a gentle roll of waves behind the light traffic noise. Mr. Weisskopf, pushed forward by nervous energy, reached the door first and knocked.
It opened immediately, held by a man very like Mr. Weisskopf himself, middle-aged and casually dressed, though dark where Weisskopf was fair and slender where he was blocky. Behind him stood Dr. Greathouse, looking nonplussed. So did the man. “You are…?” he asked.
Gus quickly shifted from looming behind his father to eclipsing him. “I’m Gus Weisskopf. This is my friend Doug Cheung.” Doug moved into view. “Dr. Greathouse is expecting us?” He peered over the man’s head at her, met eyes, and smiled hopefully. “And this is my dad.” Gus moved aside. “He drove us here. Y’see, we, uh…”
“Last time we drove,” Doug filled in, “it was five years ago and we were different shapes.”
“Oh. I hadn’t thought of that,” said Dr. Greathouse, stepping forward. She wore a long, loose robe of deerskin leather, and went barefoot. “Come on in.”
“We hadn’t thought of it either,” Doug admitted as they entered, “until we started planning this trip. We’ve been getting by on walking and the ‘L’.”
The man (Mr. Greathouse?) looked up at Doug and Gus. “You’re glamoured?” he asked.
They glanced at Dr. Greathouse, who nodded minutely. Gus muttered, “Yessir,” and the two of them took off their scarves. While the man goggled, Mr. Weisskopf said to Dr. Greathouse, “There’s another reason I drove them.”
She looked in his face and immediately said, “You’re worried.”
Mr. Weisskopf stared at her wide-eyed, and shrugged. “Look what’s happened to them already. And now you’re going to …” He trailed off and stared at the floor.
“I’m going to try to help them,” Dr. Greathouse said a bit sharply. “What do you think you could do to save them if something went wrong? Or save them from me?”
He went on staring at the floor and shook his head.
Gus turned away from Greathouse’s husband-or-whatever and said, “Dad, she’s just going to try to teach us something we need to learn. So we can leave off being this.” He waved his arms.
Doug took the other target. “Dr. Greathouse, the patient’s family very often hangs around outside the operating room. It’s just natural concern.”
“Is it dangerous?” Mr. Weisskopf asked, nearly in a whisper. “It sounds dangerous.”
Dr. Greathouse sighed impatiently. “What will happen is that they and I will go sit in my … workroom. I will talk to them about their situation. Then, if you were there, you would just see the three of us appear to doze off. They will wake up having learned something, I hope. That’s what you’d see if you were there. I do not want you there. This is a private ceremony. Operation. Thing I’m doing. Other people would distract me.”
Mr. Weisskopf met her eyes and gave a half-smile. “It was even odds you were going to have a caravan of cars outside your house. Me, Doug’s dad and grandad, their moms, brothers and sisters, a brother-in-law…”
“Good God!”
The man laughed. “How awkward!” he said to her. “Your specimens have families!”
She glared at him and snapped something in a foreign language—unless it was Potawatomi, in which case it was the very inverse of foreign. He gazed back steadily, smiling, and replied in the same language.
Doug looked from one to the other. “What’s the issue?” he asked.
The man, still smiling, replied, “Creative differences.”
Gus watched the apparent standoff between the man and Dr. Greathouse for a few seconds, then said, “Look, we got a deal going on here. She gets to examine and interview a couple of real fays. Elves. Pawagans. Norembegans. Whatever. In return, she tries to teach us shapeshifting. Can we get on with it?”
Greathouse turned away, saying, “Follow me,” and led the two of them off.
She took them to a small, plain room, paneled in raw wood. There was no furniture except three thick, coarse pads of homespun. There were no lights except candles in corners, standing in shallow bowls of white sand. The outer wall had a large picture window, but it was curtained now.
She had them sit. “Now,” she said, “on the one hand, you’ve told me you freak out at any touch of coercive magic—leftovers from your captivity. On the other hand, you’ve told me there’s no harm if magic pushes your mind in a willing direction—as with your friends who made willing pledges to other magic-workers. So tell me true: Are you willing for me to do this to you? To take your souls with me where I go and shape you, put you back the way you were?”
“Yes!” “Oh, yeah!”
“Good. But this is one of those things where enthusiasm gets in its own way. Relax. We’re going to try for a light trance. It may take some time. Close your eyes.” She began a rhythmic, wordless crooning.
II
Back in the living room, Mr. Weisskopf shifted uneasily, then said to the other man, “I’m, uh, I’m Marcus Weisskopf. His, uh, his dad.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder, the way Gus had gone.
“Micah Greathouse. Her brother. Let’s sit.” They sat.
Mr. Weisskopf cleared his throat and said, “I noticed, when I asked if this was dangerous, she didn’t say yes or no.”
Micah Greathouse laughed. “Very astute.” He sighed but went on smiling, though more sympathetically. “Helen herself is always in a little danger when she does one of her spirit-walks. Your son and his friend– We just don’t know what’s ahead for them. I don’t, anyway, and I don’t believe she does.”
“Are you a mesh– meshkeh… a shaman? A medicine man? Sorry if that’s–”
“Mshkekiwkwé is a mouthful, isn’t it. ‘Shaman’ is fine, and no, I’m not. I’m not even a Kerdean, though of course I’m so Sundered, it’s not funny.”
“You and your sister have … some disagreement about this?”
Greathouse’s steady smile turned grim. “We do. She asked me here—a little reluctantly, because we often disagree—to be a sort of official witness to her … goings on. I certainly came to do that, but I stayed to lower her confidence.” He noted the alarm in Weisskopf’s eyes. “You see, she’s too confident. Cocky. Has it all scoped out, what she’s going to do—told me in detail. Called me in to witness her triumph. It’s to be a triumph, you see, because no one’s ever done anything like this before, that we know of—been there to teach two newly fledged spirit-people how to do their magic.
“And because no one has done this before, I’ve spent the last hour or more pointing out to her how much she doesn’t know about the situation. She thinks she needs confidence; I think she has far too much and needs caution.
“Now, here is a thought of mine that might give you a little encouragement: She should be cautious just because your son and his friend are spirit-people, pawagans or fays or elves. There are forces of destiny working in the world, Marcus. One of them is the Sundering, as you’ve recently learned. Another attends fays. The word comes from the French fée, from the Latin fata, ‘fate.’ They are the people of fate. When such folk touch your life, they change its direction. Every time. So your son found for himself, so you and your family have found already, and so my sister will find.
“As I said, when she does her shaman work, she’s always in a little danger. As for your boys, usually, things like them are the danger.”
Micah Greathouse smiled encouragingly at Marcus Weisskopf and kept to himself the reflection that, in fairy tales, it is by no means certain that the fairies come out ahead.
II
Doug reflected that it was probably not the Done Thing, ceremonially, to check the time on your phone, but jeez! how long had it been? He heard Gus give a soft, deep sigh and whisper—barely audible even to his ears—“Holy crow!” The night they were snatched and changed, they had already been well-trained soldiers; they had since learned many skills, like wilderness survival, sword fighting, and elven languages. But they had never learned how to fall into a trance.
When all you could think about was that maybe, maybe soon, you could be human again, and put some nightmare behind you, stop being a nightmare, it was very hard to make your mind a smooth, dark blank.
Finally, the crooning developed words. They couldn’t make them out. Potawatomi, presumably. But it was a change. Then they could make them out. Interestingly, they could understand them though she was still speaking Potawatomi: “Follow me. Follow me. Follow me. Follow me.”
“Okay.” “Where?”
She opened her eyes, and the room went dark. A breeze hit and there was gentle noise, wind in leaf and on wave. They were outdoors, in woods. They stood up, switching their tails uneasily.
Doug looked up, between tree tops. “Those are Chicago’s stars,” he confirmed, and felt Gus relax a little beside him. In some sense, they were still home.
Hardly more than arm’s reach away, seated on the pine needles, was Dr. Greathouse, gazing at them. Her deerskin robe had been richly embroidered when they first saw it. Now, here, the embroidery gleamed like glass or silver. So did her eyes.
“Your spirits are with mine, now,” she told them, “in the spirit world.”
Their army reflexes kicked in and, without realizing it, they stood to attention. Greathouse smiled, drifting upward as if she had no weight, as indeed she had not. “Very gratifying. But I’m not about to issue orders. I’m about to–”
They fell over. It was dark. They were cold.
“–surprise you.”
They thrashed around, struggling to rise. Something was different as they began to get up. They felt both weaker and lighter.
"Why's it so dark?” Doug asked. “What’d you do?” he demanded of Greathouse.
“Here,” said Gus. “Let me try the light on my phone.” He fumbled for a few seconds, then got the beam shining. After a few more seconds, Doug had his own light on, playing over Gus.
Each saw the other’s astonished face. Astonished and human.
Doug wiped his free hand around his mouth. No muzzle. No whiskers. He ran his tongue around inside. No fangs.
Gus played the phone’s light over his body. The clothes hung loose, far too large. There were no scales or spurs on the backs of his hands. And: “No tail!” he laughed. “I got no tail! You got no tail!”
Doug laughed back. “It’s dark because we don’t have cat eyes! And we’re– we’re little!” The last word was knocked out of him as Gus leapt on him with a bear hug. Hugging, they hopped around in joyous circles.
“I’d hardly call you ‘little,’” Greathouse said, chuckling. “You look about six feet tall, to me, both of you. But you’re not seven. Oh!” Suddenly, she was getting hugged by Gus, quickly followed by a kiss on the cheek from Doug.
“You okay?” Gus asked her. “You’re cold.”
“Spirit form,” she answered, then cocked a doubtful eye at Gus, whose hug had been quite warm, as had Doug’s kiss. “Let’s see if I can do something about the lighting. I can see fine, but this is my trip.” She looked up at the sky, where the stars began gleaming with unnatural brilliance. She turned her gaze back to her patients. “Your clothes… Clothes usually… adjust…”
They weren’t listening. “We gotta show your dad!” Doug exulted. “Right! Right!” Gus agreed.
“Hold on!” Greathouse commanded. “He couldn’t see you yet. Your bodies are still sitting in my house, with mine. Still, ah, leonine.”
“But they’ll change to match us, right?” Gus said.
“That’s the whole idea, right?” said Doug.
“Yes, yes, of course. Now, let’s try it again.”
“Wait!” yelped Doug. “You mean go back to–?”
There was another burst of change. They did not fall over this time, but then they had their tails to help balance.
“NO!” roared Gus, sounding more genuinely lion-like than he ever had before.
“Why!?” demanded Doug, baring the fangs that were back.
Greathouse took a step back, but then brought herself to a halt. It was part of a shaman’s calling to confront and even provoke supernatural monsters. “You have to learn to make the change yourselves. I’m not sure about your case, but sometimes transformations wear off. You want to be able to change for yourself, then, don’t you?”
“Oh, God!” Gus exclaimed. Doug was startled. Gus never swore, as an act of personal devotion. Even this was– Oh. Doug realized this was actual prayer. “God,” Gus continued, “let me have this! Let me do this! Let me be what You made me!”
“Amen,” Doug added, and then, “Ditto.” To Greathouse, he commanded, “Let’s have it, then.”
Another shock. Loose clothes. Darker dark. No fangs. No tails. This time, they did not fall down.
“Okay, yeah,” said Doug. “Just give us a minute this–”
She did not. Their mouths crowded with teeth and their pupils flared wide. They could feel themselves towering.
Then they were little again. Then they–
“Ha!” exclaimed Doug. He held his forearm before him as if blocking a blow. It swelled, but shrank again and stayed human.
“Touché,” said Gus quietly. He stood with feet spread and arms out, as if ready to spring, but he was human.
Greathouse folded her arms and met their eyes. “Good! Very quick study! I suppose. I’ve never done this before, as I said. Now let’s see you make the change yourselves.”
Gus adjusted his stance, though for what reason he could not say. Then he said to her, “If we go cat and can’t get back, you gotta change us. Promise. Don’t leave us like that.” Doug just stared at her, straight and hard.
“Of course,” she answered promptly. Shamans may provoke supernatural monsters, but they should not do so unnecessarily.
Gus reflected how his centaur friends had said they could no longer remember what it was like to have toes and just two legs. But he could remember the tail, the moveable ears, all that. It was just a few seconds ago, after all. It felt like this. It went like this.
As Gus started to swell into his clothes, Doug remembered the magical “blow” he had “blocked.” Remember that change starting. Think on it continuing.
“Very good,” said Greathouse, surveying the two monsters with satisfaction. “Now back.”
She had them do it ten times, in all. After a few, she had them vary the speed. “Next,” she said, “try being a seven-foot man. Or a six-foot lion-thing.”
“Lungmao,” Gus told her. “But can we be done for the night? I don’t feel out of breath or anything like that, but I’m using up something.”
“Manitou,” she told him. “Also called orenda, mana, prana, chi, and so on.”
“Spell points,” said Doug.
She snorted. “Come on. You’re right. It’s time to get you home.” She led the way through the wood. “I just dropped us here, but let’s walk back. I want to go slow for the next part.”
And there was the back of a suburban house, bearing a picture window with the curtain drawn.
“Are we back in the physical?” Gus asked. “Or is this the dreaming? Or the astral?” “Europeans use those distinctions,” she answered. “I don’t. We’re standing on the edge between the spirit world and the ‘physical.’ We’re in spirit form.” She walked up to the window. “You realize you’re on the other side of this curtain? Your bodies and mine are sitting there?” They nodded. “You won’t freak out, seeing yourselves from outside? Because I’ve had patients who did.” They shook their heads.
“How do we get back in?” asked Doug. “Into our bodies, I mean. Or do you take care of that?”
“I’ll–”
“Hey!” said Gus in happy surprise. “I wondered if you’d show up again!” He was addressing the raccoon. It met his eyes briefly, then Doug’s, then looked steadily at Greathouse.
“Go ahead,” she told it. It shuffled over to a side pane containing a cat flap. As it squeezed through, she explained, “We’re going slow, remember. We could just walk through the glass, but I want to show you first.” The raccoon, now oozed through, began pulling on the curtain. “Since you are now, by nature, shapeshifters, or so you’ve been assured, I think your material bodies will automatically shape to your spirit forms. If that doesn’t work, I’ll try adding some energy to the process—‘pushing.’ If that–”
“You, ah, sound unsure,” Gus noted, watching the curtain inch sideways.
“Listen, Doctor,” Doug told her, “even if this isn’t a complete success, it’s already a solid partial success.”
“Yeah. We can build on it. If we need to. Um…”
The raccoon had now pulled the curtain more than halfway aside. They could now see Dr. Greathouse’s form, sitting slumped on her cloth pad. The other two pads lay before her, empty.
“Okaaay,” Gus said in the deliberate, “let’s not panic” tone, “where are our bodies?”
“I know you haven’t annihilated us,” Doug said, voice tight as a cello string, “because I’m here being confounded. Confusio, ergo sum, or something like that.” He and Gus both looked at Greathouse. “You haven’t got a clue, have you?”
Greathouse went on gaping. On the other side of the window, her body curled up tight and shuddered.
“Can you at least tell us that our bodies exist somewhere?” Gus demanded.
“Why would… Why wouldn’t our clothes still be there?” Doug asked. “Shouldn’t we leave neat little piles of clothes behind? Like getting raptured?”
“They gotta be somewhere,” Gus insisted, following his own line of thought. “They were– we were over three hundred pounds each. Wouldn’t the Physics Police object if we just went poof?”
Greathouse’s body was now rocking back and forth, curled into an impossibly small-looking ball. The face of her spirit form was still registering horror.
“Don’t you go anywhere,” Doug told her. “Don’t curl up into nothing, or just snap back together and run out of the room screaming. Nothing like that.” He reached out and seized her upper arm, working hard to be merely firm, not violent. He noted his hand was now scaly and spurred. He exhaled loudly through his nose and shrank back to human.
Gus stared into her face. “You said you just ‘dropped’ us into the woods in the spirit world. Well, just drop us back. Never mind about the slow and easy approach. We’re past that. Click your heels or whatever you need to do, and do the drop.”
Greathouse’s eyes shifted from blank to seeing. She met his gaze and nodded. She stepped back so she could see both of them at the same time. She “dropped.”
II
Greathouse uncurled and gasped. She was so desperate to see what was before her, the effort defeated itself for a moment. Then she realized she saw two empty cloth pads.
Her rising dismay was distracted by a pounding noise. She looked to the picture window, where the raccoon sat on the sill, looking from her to the source of the noise. Doug was rapping on the glass. “Hey!” called Gus. “Which way to the door? We don’t fit through the cat flap.”
II
Marcus Weisskopf was giving Micah Greathouse a detailed account of his boys’ lives (they were both “his”) ever since their return to Chicago, inevitably conveying how their families were both upset and overjoyed to a pitch that was hard to contain in one set of hearts, when there was a pounding of feet in the hall. At the same moment, the front door burst open.
Helen Greathouse seized Gus by the shoulders to make sure of his solidity, her eyes watering, her mouth open to both cry and laugh. Gus breezed past her to go hug his father, but Doug was there first. There was laughing, shouting, incoherent questions, and nothing else for some time.
II
A short while later, Micah Greathouse was passing coffee cups into trembling hands (“Decaf for you,” he told his sister.) while Dr. Greathouse detailed her experience with Gus and Doug into her phone. Her description included many technical details using terminology in Greek, Latin, and Potawatomi, but her brother appeared to have no trouble following along and offered commentary, ending with “So how about a summary of the unexpected features?”
She exchanged a Look with him, cleared her throat, and said, “Well, the biggest one, of course, is how they were missing from the material plane.”
“And?”
“…and there were little differences in their presence in the spirit world. They were warm. The images of their clothes were unaltered, vivid, didn’t adapt to their changes in size.”
“And there were their phones.”
“Yes. You don’t usually get images of personal effects, either, unless it’s something you’re using all the time, like glasses or a cane.”
“‘Images’? Kind of a pity no one tried making a call. I wonder if you’d have had coverage.”
“Don’t be…” She trailed off. “Are you saying those were their real phones? And clothes and boots?”
“And, above all, real bodies. You dropped them into the spirit world and, in a way, what more normal than their bodies going with them?”
“Because that’s not how it normally happens,” Dr. Greathouse retorted.
“But you’ve never sent folk on such a spirit trip before. Or rather, you’ve never before sent such folk on a spirit trip.”
Dr. Greathouse considered a while. “That would mean my job was already done before we came back to the house. There was no need to get them back into their bodies because they never left their bodies.”
“That would fit the facts.”
“Why? Why wouldn’t their souls leave?”
“Because they’re spirit-people? Pawagans? Fays?”
She gave an impatient hiss. “Just saying ‘that’s how pawagans are’ isn’t an explanation.”
Doug, a little tired of being discussed in the third person, cleared his throat and said, “I can think of a bit more. The man who told us we had become fays told us that fays were immortal shapeshifters. Well, we’ve established he was right about the shapeshifting.” He had been sitting on a sofa. He stood and, with a satisfied smile, changed from man to lungmao as he rose, then stretched his arms and shrank back to man again. “Obviously, it’d take forever to establish the immortality, but grant it. What if ‘immortality’ means our bodies cannot be separated from our souls, not under any circumstances? Send us to the spirit-world and all of us goes.”
Dr. Greathouse nodded and shrugged. “It might be. Maybe the spirit-people one meets in the spirit world are all there in the body. We assume they are pure spirits, discarnate, but how would you know? You two are the first ones I’ve met who want to stop and talk metaphysics.”
Micah Greathouse smiled wryly and said, “There’s the reverse. Maybe you never meet anything but bodies. The inanimate hypothesis.”
Gus’s father, who had been busy texting while the technical discussion went on, looked up and asked, “‘Inanimate’?”
“The old idea that fays have no souls. Like in ‘The Little Mermaid.’ The original.”
Mr. Weisskopf looked at his son’s stricken face. “That’s ridiculous,” he stated.
“Oh, I agree,” said Micah. “I find the Whilk hypothesis much more interesting and convincing. Nathaniel Whilk is a Kerdean,” he explained. “I’m not one, but I still read a lot of their stuff. Whilk agrees that fays have no souls. But he says they don’t have bodies either. They're a third thing. A fay—” He nodded at Gus over his coffee. “—is a body and a soul at the same time, or some third thing that is a fusion of them. They—you—are immortal spirits that are also bodies, and so immortal bodies. And, as spirits are much more changeable than ordinary bodies, they can change shape readily. Your different shapes are different ways of thinking.” He smiled at Mr. Weisskopf and clapped Gus on the shoulder. “This is your son’s soul. A solid soul. So says Whilk.”
Father gazed at son, looking anxiously back. “I can believe that,” he said. He looked back to the Greathouses. “You drink beer? Whiskey? Wine?”
Brother and sister traded looks. “I think we can take a little firewater,” Helen Greathouse said.
“Because all those relatives I told you about? I texted ’em that it worked, and they’re all coming here to celebrate.”
⇦ O’Hare
And Join the Circus ⇨
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