In her great pain, Berangere did not remember much of their first day journeying the Sargan Vos. While Kiera splinted her arm with two Zalgyne shards and the laces of the dead soldier's boots, even the faintest touch ignited an excruciating explosion of anguish, and made of her best friend an unknowing enemy--for Loren was unaware that her every affectionate pat and squeeze delivered a vicious jolt, and she tormented Berangere by these tender signs of friendship. That said, Loren soon grew flustered herself, for when she drew near, Berangere would wince, as if allergic to the other girl's touch.
While her best friend had become an unknowing monster that dogged her steps with painful fondness, the werewolves were worse, for in their dogginess, they brushed and rubbed against anyone with whom they spoke, for while they were intelligent animals, they were nonetheless as much wolf as human, and could not converse without transferring their scent along with their meaning. While a whole Berangere might have thought this cute even in such uneasy allies, broken Berangere could only squirm and force a smile over gritted teeth as the monsters brushed close in bringing the girls to their point of view.
For while they trod the desert of chipped wood, stone, and earth called the Sargan Vos, the werewolves were now their constant companions. While the woman werewolf hopped along as a three-legged wolf, so as to hobble along as best as she could, the man might walk lightly in his human skin, especially while relating Alsantian politics or some other meaty idea to chew at leisure with his meditative, mental jaws; but in narrating anecdotes or Alsantian stories, or when expounding upon some memory, or some thought founded in personal experience, he slipped into his transitional form, and capered beside them on hindlegs, wriggling his tail enthusiastically as he warmed to his listener more than his subject.
While at first Berangere was leery of the werewolves, their doggish charm soon wormed its way into her heart, and now she only wished their bounding would not batter her broken arm, which had become a limp bell-clapper rung by each jolt.
"If what you say is true," said Berangere, "I understand your loyalty," She winced. "The Vieno you describe is different from the one I know."
"Than the one we know," chimed in Loren. "Although I don't agree."
When a gigantic Ashflower stopped midstride to bend its flowery maw toward them, their conversation dissolved in the sudden stillness. Its vegetal head, maned and bearded with thorns and bright red petals, bowed deeper and deeper, then flicked back to its upright stance with a resounding crack that vibrated through the loose chips at their feet. As it walked away, they continued their conversation in low tones while they stood in a nervous huddle.
"Lady Loren, you are speaking of your mother." growled the werewolf. While Lorth was a ruddy, shaggy-haired man, and red-haired as man or wolf, in his transitional phase, his hair darkened, as if the evil of lycanthropy was more clearly concentrated in that twilight form.
The hobbling werewolf's name was Raoka. Whereas once her hindleg was a clean snip, as the stump lengthened, the bone that protruded was nearly clear except for a milky trace eerily bubbling in the fragments. Berangere was glad she stayed on three legs, for festering bones would not only be distracting in conversation, it would remind her of her own broken bones, which obstinately insisted on knitting at unmagical Earth speed.
Berangere replied, "if she's Loren's mother, she never knew. She treated us the same." While this was by no means true, and the Elderlich and the fox-girl shared quiet times, if Loren didn't want to mention Vieno's favoritism, neither would Berangere.
"And though she never acted like a mother," insisted Loren, "you can't fault my instincts, for any of the countless times I asked if she was my mother, she denied me."
"And so you deny her," said Lorth with a grim smile of satisfaction.
"What do you mean?"
"Surely you had some reason for thinking she was your mother. Though you hide these moments of motherly attention, her affection was as real as the dead horse I smell over the next dune. Instinct is a higher knowledge than seeing or hearing, Loren. Do not lie to a werewolf."
Loren licked her lips. "I smell it too. Who's to say your instincts are better than mine? Where you sense motherly affection, I felt a predator's absorption in its prey." This time Berangere winced from seeing the ravenous look on her best friend's face; not the face of human hunger, but an animal appetite banishing all trace of the girl in its coy flicker, like a fox peering from its lair. When Berangere cringed under waves of revulsion, she nearly tripped over hobbling Raoka, and would have fallen, had not Kiera seized the back of her vestment and held her upright.
"You may be right," said Lorth. As they circled the dune of piled wood and stone chips, he looked intently ahead. "To the highborn, all are prey. It is the same on Earth, or even among the talking rats or mice of Alsantia."
"So I should excuse her wickedness for being aristocratic? Not hold her to a higher standard?"
"While Alsantian beasts are known to criticize their kings, to hold your parents accountable is a transgression against the noble pelt."
"Faugh! Your half-dead lies shame us, Lorth." spat the other werewolf, then hobbled over her own spittle as she spoke her mind, panting in her awkward unfamiliarity with this tripod style of locomotion. Her wolfish palette seemed to spit out each word half-chewed, although they were not so hardbitten or chomped as to be unrecognizable: "We are no longer beasts, but humans ourselves; the Queen has decreed it."
Berangere chuckled, then wished she hadn't when they turned glowering, golden eyes--not only Lorth, whose transitional limbs, face, and neck were lightly furred with a burgundy coat, but the black-furred, three-legged Raoka, who slavered under her smoldering stare, and even Loren, whose hurt glance darted at her best friend. Those pained eyes howled in her mind, which only moments ago had laughed at the thought of Suvani changing beasts into people by proclamation. When the yellow glint of Loren's eyes was like Raoka's or Lorth's, not only did her friend seem as unreal as a scarecrow, but Loren the fox broke in to worry Berangere's chicken heart. Not only was the revelation irreversible, but she couldn't help caring for the transformed animal. Perhaps this helpless compassion glinted ferally in Berangere's own eyes, for Loren's hurt gaze shifted a step toward cruel malevolence, as if she laid her eyes not on one who was familiar, but one who was appetizing.
Berangere admitted that it made a lot of sense out of her friend. While Loren seemed kind and warm, in retrospect, this kindness and affection was self-serving, such as the way she snuggled up in disregard of Berangere's own comfort, curling in whatever tight nook even at the cost of tightening Berangere's breath. If Berangere had not noticed that she paid in comfort for Loren's kindness, it was because in the Mansion's quiet halls, unthinking reciprocation was better than pensive loneliness. But if Loren's coziness was possessiveness, any warm body might have sufficed for the girl—the animal's, she reminded herself, pillow. For years, Berangere's security was possession, as if she was a territory marked by scent.
When Berangere fell back to dwell on these maudlin observations, Loren released her held hand to press closer to Lorth, whose transitional form became furrier and redder, as if in scenting Berangere's anxieties, he shifted nearer his animal nature to feed the feral instincts that relished tearing weak flesh.
"Did you hear that, Berangere?" Loren walked backwards a few steps, her bright and flushed half-turned face looking like an exulting but exhausted marathon winner.
"Last I checked, we're still in the same desert being led by the same werewolves.
What of it?"
"In Alsantia, I'm considered human."
"You're considered human on Earth as well, Loren." Berangere could not keep the exasperation from creeping into her voice.
"You're also human in Ephremia," said Kiera, "although we cannot make this truth a law when the Queen forbids us self-governance. Moreover, we extend this courtesy—their right by nature—to all talking animals." The Zalgyne pilot walked a few steps behind them, bringing up the rear of their group. When her gaze focused on an unknown point ahead of the werewolves, it made Beranger intensely curious, for all directions in the Sargan Vos pointed to equally indistinct, shapeless horizons of chipped wood and stone.
"I can't wait to get there," purred Loren.
"While I'm glad to hear it, your grace, I don't know the lay of the Sargan Vos and I can't vouch for our guides."
"You don't trust us?" Raoka's growl bubbled up into a yapping cackle.
"Why did you help us? I still don't understand that part," said Berangere.
"We already told you the story, your highness." While Lorth humbly bowed his head, his eyes were burning circles.
"So you only jumped in because your captain attacked Loren, and your first loyalty is to her mother, a person of distinction among talking animals in service to Suvani."
"We call ourselves Sworn Beasts to distinguish ourselves from the rebels, who dub themselves Free Animals."
"I understand. While your first loyalty is to Vieno, you keep that quiet, and your second and loudest loyalty is to Queen Suvani. You owe her your legal status. What I don't understand is why not simply grab Loren by the scruff of her neck and leave us Ephremians to the Ashflowers."
"Why would helping Ephremians contradict our service to Queen Suvani? Is Ephremia at war with Alsantia?" Lorth wheezed a little laugh, as if he had just triumphed at a board game.
"What the princess knows about Ephremian politics she learned from me during our desert journey," said Kiera. "If you paid attention, you know what she knows. If she assumes things that aren't there, she's been on Earth for eleven years. It's only natural that she makes assumptions by superimposing her world over our own."
"Apology accepted," snorted Lorth with a leering smile.
"You make presumptions too, werewolf," retorted Kiera, "as a princess of Ephremia does not apologize to the likes of you."
While Lorth took this in stride and only increased the rapacious width of his grin, Raoka bridled, rose upright in her transitional form, teetered madly on one foot, then toppled to her side with a gibbering howl. Moreover, the beast dinged her tender, sprouting bone by putting her weight on that budding limb.
"I'm sorry, Raoka," blurted Berangere, "you too, Lorth. Kiera doesn't speak for me—although she's right in saying that we're not at war."
"It is I who should apologize, your highness," said Kiera, "having offended you."
"You didn't offend me, Kiera."
"I'm a little bruised by Kiera's insinuations," chuckled Raoka ruefully, keeping to her transitional form but aping her three-legged dog hobble by dragging herself with her arms and kicking with her good foot. If it was a self-deprecating laugh, it was the most savage humility Berangere had ever seen. Although Lorth had all his limbs and most of his marbles, Raoka was less whole on both counts, and much more fearsome. "But as she's our lady's little playmate, we'll excuse her Ephremian breeding."
If Kiera was pained by these insults, her face was as smooth and unyielding as her armor. Although they had only met days ago, Berangere knew the warrior was sensitive of her height, for while only a few inches taller than her twelve year old princess, she was seven years older, a young woman in her own right. Kiera looked not only close in age,
but like a friend Berangere might have chosen, had they shared a past in The Mansion of the Shining Prince. Or if she grew up an Ephremian princess, Kiera, or someone much like her, would have been appointed her personal guard.
"Did you lose your foot or your eyes, Raoka? Kiera is much older."
A smile flickered in Kiera's impassive, steely face. "While you are good to speak up for me, your highness, I am resigned to my diminutive stature; Raoka sees perfectly well, though she smells to high heaven."
Raoka's rebuttal was a harrowing snarl, which stalled, then stuttered into a savage chuckle. "The afterlife is what you smell, Ephremian. I would hold your tongue if I were you."
Lorth stole a knowing look at the other werewolf. "Hush, Raoka. A glorious wind blows over these dunes."
When Loren sniffed the air, her eyes watered, her nose quivered, and she slunk back to Berangere and Kiera. As her skin reddened and her ears lengthened, she stopped the change with a growl and a dizzy shudder of her head that left her face pasty white as if fighting the urge to vomit, not to change skins. Having become a fox by instinct while pawing the ogress, she only returned to her girl body through the coaxing of the werewolves, and since then had not risked taking her true form.
As their friendship was tainted more by her own uncertainty than by Loren's animal nature, when Berangere felt that it must be dismal to deny your true self, the pity surging for Loren was churned by contempt, that she could be so low as to find relief in her pathetic reaction to the afflictions of her friend.
Kiera directed a stern look at Loren, then turned to Berangere. "Might I speak with your highness in private?"
As self-loathing warred with distrust in Berangere, she hastened ahead, leaving both in the dust. Only when their angry stomping had lagged far behind the werewolves did Berangere turn.
"Am I your princess, Kiera?"
"This you already know, your highness."
"You think so? If I was used to throwing my weight around, I would have ordered you to make friends with Loren."
"Is that your decree, your highness?"
"Yes."
"And if she is a spy, your highness?"
Loren shouted, "I'm not a spy! I thought we were playing along with the werewolves!"
"We are," said Berangere. "As they're faster and stronger, we can't prevent them forcing their goodwill on us, and must cozy up to them for the time being."
"Those are my thoughts as well," said Kiera, "so long as we are in this accursed desert. In Ephremia, you need not suffer unwanted admirers."
"If we're all playing along," hissed Loren, "why does she think I'm a spy, and not you? And don't act like you haven't changed towards me as well!" Loren bawled huge dripping tears, then at the end of her jagging cry, inhaled, sucking some of the salty drips through her nose.
"We're the same, Loren." While Berangere heard her own hollowness, she hoped she delivered the lie with the adamantine emphasis Loren might accept if she wanted to believe.
"Don't you want to know what I have to tell you?" said Loren.
"While coming to Alsantia made Oji a boy, and you a fox, I'm still not a mind-reader, Loren."
"I smell it too, Bear."
"Smell who? Raoka? So do I." When Kiera laughed, it rang out so fast that Berangere knew at once it stemmed only from the warrior's loyalty. While the overwrought laugh was mortifiying, this was neither the proper time nor place to address it.
"What do you mean, Loren?"
"The bad smell, Bear. The evil smell that made the werewolves happy."
"Can't you be more specific?" asked Kiera.
"That's the maddening part," said Loren. "While it's very familiar, I don't know."
"Your fox nose would be more discriminating."
"I couldn't do that. I might not be able to change back."
"You changed back before."
"They were helping me, believing in me."
"How can it be hard? Isn't that you?"
Loren wept until slippery face puddles drenched her cheeks and neck.
Berangere said, "Loren's not like the werewolves, Kiera. This is a borrowed form."
"Borrowed?" wept Loren. "if the body is a house for the soul, this is as much me as that's you."
Berangere was floored. While she had often wanted to discuss Elderlich theology, she assumed Loren only pretended to listen in class. In realizing that she had underestimated her friend, her cold guilt was freshly warmed. "Loren," she said, "was it the ogress?"
"It smells something like that, but also like something else."
"Have you always had this strong sense of smell, Loren?"
"I suppose I did. I thought it was normal to know what's cooking by the smell trickling through the vents."
"Didn't you say she could See, your highness?" asked Kiera.
"Of course I can see," said Loren.
"Not see. See. Your magical gift."
"You told her?"
Berangere frowned at Kiera. "In confidence, Loren. It was your story that overcame her reluctance to rescue you."
"More so your refusal to cooperate until I did what you asked," glowered Kiera. "Why justify yourself, your highness? You're a princess, and she's your friend. Can you See or not, fox?"
"I'm not a fox!" shrieked Loren, causing the werewolves far ahead to cringe, then lope back.
"Say nothing," murmured Kiera. "They can't know."
"Can't know what?" As Lorth burst upon them, his man-wolf head wagged up, down, and all around, like a canine compass.
"How hungry we are."
Lorth's eyes narrowed as he lunged toward Kiera, then snapped short, inches from her face, as he bit off his next words. "Why can't we know that, Ephremian?"
"We're all in the same boat, wolf. It's not fair to expect you to find food for your lady and my princess while we're sneaking under the Ashflowers and across the Sargan Vos."
"Is this true, my lady?"
"That we're sneaking?"
"No. That we're hungry."
"I don't know if 'we're' hungry, but speaking for myself, I am definitely hungry."
No sooner was it said than Lorth bounded across the loose wood and stone, sliding and skidding as he made his way, and Raoka hobbled after.
"I'm not that hungry, you know," said Loren with a forlorn tone, for she had complained of having little appetite since her rescue from the northern shores of Alsantia. Not for the first time, Berangere wondered just what Vieno had done to make Loren turn her head at the blandest fare; to make her friend turn green at the sight of the berry bush that morning. While Kiera, Berangere, and even the werewolves had exulted--for it was a miracle that the bush either survived the annihilating Ashflowers, or somehow took root in the desert of mulch--Loren hiccuped, held her hand to her mouth, and pressed her sprig of berries on Berangere.
"If they know you can See," said Kiera, "they won't let you out of their sight."
"What good is Seeing here?" Loren opened her arms in a sweeping gesture that indicated the stark sameness of every acre, every square inch of the Sargan Vos. The vast monotony of chipped wood and stone was relieved only in flowing down into sinkholes and up into dunes. "Nothingness is in every direction, and I would see nothing new with my magic eyes."
"You could lay those eyes on the owner of that strange scent. Or look for rescuers."
"Aren't you the rescue party?"
"When they learn that we've crashed, they'll send more rescuers."
"How would they know?" retorted Loren. "Radar?"
At Kiera's blank stare, Berangere interceded, "Something like that, Loren. They have their own version in Alsantia."
"Not Alsantia," said Kiera vehemently, "it is an Ephremian art."
"We were taught this is all Alsantia," said Loren. Bernagere cringed, for the Elderliches never taught the geography, politics, or history of this world, except where they appeared in myths. Loren assumed her presumptions were facts.
"I doubt it's that simple even on your world," said Kiera. "As one life has many offshoots, and many lives make many worlds even on one map."
"Are you calling me simple?" said Loren.
"Not in so many words, your grace."
"What if there are no choices?" asked Loren. "And we are guided in everything we do? Even when I See, as you call it, I can only See what the Seeing allows."
"It is said all sight, magical or not, is the gift of the Albatron."
"What's an Albatron?"
"The Albatron is an artifact of old Alsantia, a mirror that reflects any portion of reality it chooses. While the bearer may look wherever or whenever they will, the omniscient Albatron sees the whole mosaic of events. Moreover, as it is not trapped behind the glass, but only resides there, there are legends that it whispers to pure souls, sending warnings of present evil in dreams, and dire futures in waking visions."
"Then this isn't me, but some mirror?" That Loren sounded more disappointed than relieved confirmed what Beranger long suspected, that her friend's power was a source of pride.
"While some modern historians claim exactly that, they are in the pay of Queen Suvani. Ancient historians and philosophers write that the Albatron is only a window through which Seeing enters our world."
"So this Albatron is like me."
"Of course not, your grace," said Kiera. "The Albatron is an ancient artifact that sees as it wills when it wills, and you are a kit...excuse me, a girl who uses Seeing to bake cookies."
"You TOLD her?"
"I already said I did." Berangere was relieved to take the brunt of Loren's irritation, for otherwise Loren might ask what a 'kit' was, and learn that Kiera persisted in thinking of her a talking animal.
"Why did you tell her that!"
"Do not imagine that I could think any less of you, your grace." Kiera's supercilious bow dipped so low that it both underscored and drew the venom from her elegantly phrased contempt, so that it had the mark of sweetness. "But if you wish me to take you seriously, you must make a solemn attempt to use your gift."
"I cannot use Seeing while walking."
"Then we'll take our lunch here."
"I have always Seen at night and in bed."
At Loren's hopeful look, Kiera said--somewhat waspishly, though she stopped just short of a sneer--"should I stretch my backpack into a mattress?"
Berangere said, "Loren only meant we should wait until we make camp."
"Why waste time? If something's slithering around, our escape may depend on rescue. Or, our captivity may be enacted by the Queen's conspirators. Let's camp now."
"Could we not reach the other forest if we walk through the night?" asked Berangere.
"You mean the Luskveld."
"Whatever you call it."
"You must know the names of things if you're to rule."
Berangere kept her thoughts to herself. While she would rather backtrack to Earth than rule in Ephremia, she played along with Kiera because the petite but competent warrior had reunited her with Loren, and might soon unite all the Animalytes.
It wasn't Kiera's fault that Loren came back burdened with a body wracked by transformation and a mind altered by fear, and Berangere now wondered if staying in Ephremia might not be the best thing. If Loren lost control of her shape on Earth, she would be run over by a sports car at worst, or carted off by animal control at best. While their home world held too many unknowns, in Ephremia they might stay together, just as they were constant friends in the Mansion.
Contemplation of this anxious hope only made Berangere queasier, a sickness exacerbated by the werewolves loping (in Raoka's case, lumbering) back to sniff a circle around their campsite.
"This is bad," said Raoka.
"Aren't you hungry, werewolf?" said Kiera.
"When I am, you'll be first to know, Ephremian. If I could crack your shell and scoop out the cold fish inside," chortled Raoka. "I say again--this is bad; not because we don't need to pick a spot, but because you've chosen one so unprotected from the Ashflowers."
"It's not like they can see us," said Berangere. "If you hadn't told us they track our vibrations, I would have figured it out myself. It's easy enough to see it when you look at those walking trees. No eyes, no ears, no face--I doubt they have a brain."
Lorth said, "yes, they're so easy and obvious that they'll eat us in an eye blink. You would have us sleep on their dining table, to be scooped up as they trundle through the crumbs of the Sargan Vos."
"Where would you have us sleep?" said Loren. "In a dune?"
The werewolf answered her seriously, as if he hadn't heard her sarcastic tone. "That is a bad idea, my lady. We would drown when the chipped earth collapsed on our heads."
"No," said Raoka. "We'll continue through the night." While Berangere admired the werewolves' pluck and perseverence, she was too exhausted to take another step.
"We've already slept one night in the Sargan Vos. What's wrong with another?" asked Berangere.
"Last night couldn't be helped. We were more than a day's journey from any of this desert's borders, and while Lorth might have trotted on without us--"
"As I might have done were we not tasked with guarding my lady," agreed Lorth, as if it was an everyday occasion for one werewolf to leave another in the misery of injury and regeneration.
Raoka snapped her teeth to indicate her displeasure at Lorth's interruption, then continued as if she left off mid-sentence on her own accord. "--we had no choice but to risk a night."
"And you have none now," said Loren, "unless you drag me to the Luskveld. I'm tired."
When Raoka and Lorth growled, yapped and bow-wowed as if the others did not exist, Berangere shuddered at the sight of their gnashing, slavering jaws. For a moment, she had the ghastly thought that they vied to devour the three girls, an argument in which Lorth gave way on four legs as fast as Raoka scrabbled ahead on three.
"What if I carried you, my lady?" asked Lorth.
"I would never put you to that trouble."
"In your natural form, it would be no trouble at all," said Raoka. "I'd carry you in my mouth." She sniggered, then added, "not as my mouthful, but dangled from my jaws like a mother babies her pup."
"No." Loren's face whitened.
"Don't worry, my lady. It's perfectly safe. Fox meat is completely unappetizing." Raoka bowed her eyes, then laid her head on her paws at Loren's feet.
"No," stammered Loren. "I want to rest." Berangere saw that Loren wasn't acting. Whether or not Loren had the will to make for the Luskveld, whatever reserves of strength brought her this many miles through the foldings and furlings of transforming skin were entirely drained. "Lorth, Raoka. Please listen to me." Then she turned her plaintive look. "Berangere. Kiera. Please let me sleep tonight. My paws are more worn than any of yours."
"As you will, my lady. A few hours here and there matters not," sniffed Raoka.
"A few hours? I mean a whole night," said Loren.
"As you will, I said," snapped Raoka. Her scowl flickered to a wicked, knowing leer. "I hear that rabbits and moles are too dumb to leave this desert. Should I fetch one, my lady?"
"Lorth can do it." As Loren's sigh vented her pent-up fund of exasperated wind, there could no longer be any mistake, even in Raoka and Lorth's eyes, that the girl concealed not only fox fur but vast stores of sarcasm. Her rolling eyes having completed their downward arc, she looked up with childish contempt, sparing not even Berangere from this callous appraisal. "Find water, if there's any to be had. Kiera, go with her."
Kiera bristled at this, so that her narrowing eyes, contracting nostrils, and hollowing cheeks gave her face a look of looming verticality, like the downward flash of a hammer from the nail's point of view. "You do not command me, your grace."
"I want to talk to Berangere. Alone."
"As I said..."
"If I don't command you, she does. Unless you don't want to talk, Berangere."
"Of course I do."
While the willies in Berangere's stomach fluttered even more agitatedly than the unrelenting pain of her broken arm, she bore under the tension Loren created for the reassuring gratitude that welled up when she heard her old Loren talking. "If you would, Kiera. We would appreciate it."
"Very well. Though I am a warrior, not a hunter, I will find something to refresh your highness."
Lorth now turned to Loren. "My lady..."
"What? Surely you have no objections? There's nothing strange in being with my best friend, is there? If it's strange, we've been strange our entire lives."
When Lorth's upper lip twitched, it revealed his yellowed fangs. "Very well." As he turned about, his wolfish transitional shape gave a comical approximation of a puppy whirling in excitement. He shook his head left and right. "Did you see where Raoka went?
"I sent her for water." Loren's tone was so exaggeratedly patient that it might summon dark thoughts in a priest. "Must I repeat your orders as well?
If Lorth was angry, there was no sign aside from the vessel in his forehead that swelled blue as he pursed his lips, nodded, melted into wolf form, then padded away on all fours.
When they were alone, Berangere scooted beside Loren. "What secret was so important that you offended our protectors?"
Loren's haughty face crumpled into her underlying misery, and she moaned,"do I need a secret to sit with my friend?"
"Of course not, Loren. But I want to hear what you have to say."
"Get us out of here, Berangere."
When Berangere said nothing, Loren wrung her hands, rocked back and forth, and muffled her cries by clamping her lips so that only sputters blubbered out.
"One way or another, we're out of the Sargan Vos tomorrow." When Berangere clapped Loren's shoulder with her good arm, she couldn't suppress the wince as her slung arm brushed against her friend. "And on our way to one of two fairy tale castles. I'm hoping we choose the right dictator, as I can't be certain my unknown parents in Ephremia are any better than the Queen of Alsantia."
"Not out of the Sargan Vos, Berangere. Out of this crazy world. Bring me home!"
Berangere clutched Loren tight. Didn't Loren remember how they left Draden? On a bus, fleeing not only an ogress, werewolves, and talking animals, but policemen terrorized by the fantastic. Even if they returned to Earth, they couldn't return to their life in Draden. Maybe Loren just needed to hear it. "When we do go back, what will we do? We're too young to get jobs, Loren. Go to an orphanage, then school?"
"Maybe there's another world, Berangere."
When Berangere froze, her arm clasped to Loren seemed a rigid, unfamiliar thing, and not a part of her own body. "What do you mean, Loren."
"There can't only be two worlds. We'll go to one like Draden, but where the Alsantians never came to Earth."
"If there are other worlds, Loren, what makes you think it's like flipping through a catalog? And what would we do with our counterparts?"
"They could take our lives here, Berangere. You know how often we wished we were free. We could pretend how wonderful it is to be free in Alsantia, and what a world of fun they're missing out on in the Mansion, and when they look into the portal in curiosity, we'll push them through!"
As Berangere heard Loren conspire against their alternate selves, her blood chilled, and she extracted her arm from Loren. "That's a thought. Let's put a pin in that. Are you feeling relaxed?"
"Not at all."
"Could you try? Just a little."
"What do you want me to See?"
"The ogress. Failing that, whatever beast the werewolves are happy to scent. Also, the Zalgyne that may or may not be coming to rescue us."
"When I look for uncertainties, I feel like I don't know where to start, and that doubt then contaminates my gift. Perhaps if I start with the ogress. I know not only that she exists, but that she's likely still in the Sargan Vos."
"From there, Loren, let your Seeing branch to to the unknown entity and the hypothetical Zalgyne. Since one was smelled and the other is highly probable, think of them as facts."
Loren laid down on the matted chips; though earth and stone were worked in with the wood, the desert was spongy and yielding, so that when Berangere laid beside her, she closed her eyes in relief and felt the ache pass from her bones into the ground. As Berangere lingered there, her weary body engaged its own inward sight, conscious only of the redness of her inner eyelids, the dull throb of her broken arm resting on her thump-thumping heart, and the tingling of the soles of her feet. She listened to this symphony of exhaustion until it droned one snoring syllable, when she was shaken with such force that the chips under her back and shoulders rippled.
"Berangere! Berangere!"
"What?" she grumbled. "Watch the arm."
"I saw them, Berangere!"
"Who did you see, Loren!"
"I saw all of them! Lucien and Chiyo and Conrad and Aito—the ogress and Vieno—and the Zalgynes. I saw a bunch of those."
"All at once?"
"No, it was like seeing a mirror dimly through a window, so that I couldn't be sure where these images stood in relation to each other, or when they were."
"I thought your Seeing might be clearer in Alsantia, given that's where you're from."
"If it's where we were born, we're strangers here now."
"Native born but alien grown, you mean."
"Transplanted twice. While my seeing was larger and stronger, more muscular, if that's possible, it's more sluggish to my command than the wispy energies of Earth. It makes me think Earth might be older than Alsantia."
"It might be," said Berangere, feigning an interest. While she was fascinated by this strange world, and liked learning its histories and qualities, right now she was focused on the dream world of Loren's Seeing. "Can't you tell me what you saw?"
"I'll try. It's all stuck together."
"You described it as a mirror through a window. Maybe close your eyes and imagine lifting one transparency from the others."
Loren squeezed her eyelids shut, exhaled forcefully through her nose, then said, "that didn't work, Bear. But stepping into the window did." While her lips were even, her voice was honeyed with excitement.
"Like the Holy Foyer."
"I remember now."
While Berangere waited, Loren's eyes and mouth remained closed.
"Aren't you going to tell me?"
"Yes." Loren's leery voice betrayed the uncertainty of this proposition. "How do I start? While I see these visions now, they entangle my words, as if they fear the light of speech."
"Speaking of they, the monsters will be back any minute."
Loren's brow creased, and she stammered, as if with great effort, "f-first I saw the Zalgynes."
"How many?"
"I can't be sure. A handful? More than two. A count is impossible when each is an identical blur, and I might count the speed images of one Zalgyne for several."
"Are they here?"
"Yes. I saw not only the Sargan Vos, but many Ashflowers drawn to the vibrating wings of the Zalgynes."
"That's why we haven't seen many of those monsters. Why don't the Zalgynes simply fly over the Ashflowers?"
"They do! When they buzz the Sargan Vos, it blows back chipped stone and wood in gigantic waves!"
"That's good news, then." Since Loren sounded hopeful, Berangere masked her disappointment in a happy face and injected sunshine into her voice, but her heart and guts sank into a sad, dark puddle.
"Why are you doing that?"
"Doing what?"
"You're lilting."
When Berangere raised her eyes, she could not stop the skeptical soaring of her eyebrows. "When does this happen, Loren?"
"What do you mean? I see it happening now."
"Even if this was happening on the other end of this desert, we should hear the rustling of the chips, see the Sargan Vos scattering in waves, or at least smell the dust cloud. Maybe you saw the future."
"But if we're still lost in the future, Bear—that's morbid! You think they're looking for our bodies!"
"You're jumping to conclusions. It's more likely that Kiera or the werewolves conduct us safely from the Sargan Vos prior to the Zalgynes' arrival." The lie bit Berangere as it slithered out of her mouth. "Why not describe the other part of the vision? The part about our friends."
"There was a gate, Bear. A gate in the Sargan Vos."
"They were here? In the Sargan Vos?"
"With strides as long as a house, Ashflowers walked counterclockwise around the gate, which fountained blue light that blasted the swirling desert from its edge."
"Maybe you were dreaming, Loren. First the Sargan Vos swelled in massive waves, and now it's blasted. It sounds like you're mad at this place."
Loren continued as if she hadn't heard, and had only stopped for breath. "As the Ashflowers tightened their roving circle, Lucien, Aito, Akachi, and Conrad dropped into the glowing pit, then faces I didn't know: a pock-scarred boy--the worst acne I've ever seen--with a twisted nose, a white scar, black hair, and big, bearish hands tied in front; and a girl of such unearthly beauty that I also believed myself asleep, for she could be no product of the real world, but a creation of my dream world. As I thought this, her attention flicked over me, and I flickered awake in my vision, remembering that I was no ghost, but a living spectator of a moment past or present. Then I awoke to this miserable desert, still awaiting rescue."
Loren unknotted her crossed legs, rose to a squat, then grabbed a handful of chips, which she cast, one by one, as far as she could throw. Pausing with the fourth chip wound up behind her ear, she added, "and there was a raccoon, Bear, twice as big as those on Earth."
Berangere was no longer curious to meet talking animals after her poor first impression of ogres and werewolves. Even the cat in the library she would be hard pressed to describe as good, when arrogant was more fitting, and lippy the first thing to come to mind. She had never been helped with such great reluctance, or such a sarcastic send-off. On the other hand, if Kiera was a model Ephremian, Berangere would be glad to reach her birthplace.
This was when Berangere realized that when she felt home calling, it wasn't Earth. By a strange substitution wrought by Kiera's reverence, she felt the great meaning of her arrival in Ephremia. She wasn't simply traveling there—her heart was becoming Ephremian in the journey. Although their path through sky and desert had unraveled in the wreckage of the Zalgyne and the rubble of the Sargan Vos, she preferred finding an uncertain footing in Loren's dreams to the anxiety of returning to the feeble reality, the sickly world, on the other side of the gate. While it was heartening to imagine going somewhere, it was discouraging to envisage going nowhere, and from that moment, Earth was a void, and she clung to the idea of Ephremia.
"Even if there is a desert gate, Loren, we don't know how to get there, and we don't know if the Zalgynes fly yesterday, today, or tomorrow. I was hoping for something more useful."
"What do we do? Wait for the werewolves to get hungry?"
Berangere felt a chill in her stomach.
"When that happens, they'll eat us Ephremians. While Lorth and Raoka serve the Queen, they worship your mother, so you're in no danger."
"Us Ephremians? What am I, Bear?"
Hearing the crunching scatter of wood chips long before they saw anyone, both girls jumped to their feet, looked fretfully left, right, behind them, and to the shifting ridge of dunes. When Loren reached by instinct for Berangere's bound and slung arm, but missed and brushed her ribs, Berangere turned about, not only to offer her the other hand, but so that in facing both ways, they could better observe any danger.
Kiera sprinted towards them, holding a finger to her lips. While Berangere tamped down the ponderous anxieties that came to mind with the force of hallucinations—flesh-eating animals or Ashflowers converging on their location—when Kiera smacked aside Loren's hand and dragged Berangere forcefully and rapidly around the dune, Berangere vented these monstrous fears. If Elderlich lectures had laid these terrors in larval form, they had molted in the Sargan Vos, shedding their skins and creepy-crawly legs only to bristle with meshing claws and overshadowing wings. In her fear's mouth, she glimpsed its consuming passion—whether her friend's skin was true or false, and whether she was fox or girl, Loren was the heart and tongue of her panic.
"Loren!" Though she hollered and hollered, Kiera dragged her faster.
"Stop that!" Kiera gripped Berangere's good hand fiercer. "Your highness."
"Bear!" Loren panted between shouts. "Kiera!" The panting jetted fiercer. "Stop!" Gasping consumed Loren, who had been a paler, fainter girl since that night on the Alsantian shore. A ghost might have had more appetite for breakfast--the second Loren had skipped--and more breath. When the stale desert air overcame Loren, her steps trembled, then died, and she settled to her knees.
"If you don't stop pulling, your highness," Kiera said through her gritted teeth, "I might break your other arm. Completely by accident, of course."
"Let me go!"
"I have my orders, and they don't include the fox."
"I won't go!"
"You will. You have a responsibility to your people. She has expectations from hers, as well."
While Berangere's idea of home had changed from the bleak urban wilderness of Draden to the hospitable unknown of Ephremia, the idea of not only the Alsantian supercontinent but irreconcilable political differences parting Loren from Berangere reordered these naive assumptions in an eye-blink. If Ephremia was not Loren's dwelling-place, Berangere could never rest there. Planting her feet, she thrashed shoulders, waist, and head, screaming at the pain in her dangling limb, so that when Kiera's white-knuckled grip slacked in shock at her berserk princess, Berangere broke free and scrambled back to Loren, where the first wave of wood and stone chips smacked her in the backside and spilled her across the smaller girl.
When The Zalgynes buzzed back, fountaining wood chips furrowed the chipped soil down to the packed earth and stone. The fluttering metal locust stopped to hover above Berangere's head, then touched the crumbling desert with brassy insectoid legs that buckled under the segmented aircraft.
Berangere couldn't hear Kiera's shout over the sonorous drumming of the gigantic dragonfly wings, but when the rapid fluttering flickered to a stop, the Ephremian bellowed, "--not ours!" There was the staccato of Kiera's boots, then a backwards flood of chips swamping Loren and Berangere away from the landed Zalgyne, which looked, now that it was eerily idle, as pensive and predatorial as a real insect.
When the hatch opened, they fell out in twos, each clad in gleaming armor head to toe; as even their faces were masked with glinting visors, it was less like they were mustered forth to wage war than hatched by an insidious, verminous purpose.
When Kiera's momentum carried her into the first warrior, he crashed into his comrade, knocking both on their sides, and sending Kiera hurtling so far back that the two girls rolled aside to avoid being sandwiched to the ground.
While the Queen's soldiers were mind-bogglingly fast, Kiera was even quicker, so that they looked less like earthly combatants than like battling demons and angels. One drew his sword and lunged in one lightning slash that Kiera only evaded by leaping higher than she was tall; when another sliced at her dangling feet as they fell to earth, one foot landed on the flat of his blade and the other kicked so hard that sparks flew from his impacted visor; in the instantaneity of the moment, Kiera seemed to walk along his sword to deliver a resounding stomp on his helmet, spring back, then whirl midair to land on her feet.
"Die, Ephremian dog!" snarled another, raising his sword to smite Kiera from behind, but without turning, she cracked her elbow into his chest, and in the layered crunch, both breastplate and sternum folded under the impact.
It was odd. Kiera was no longer buffeted by the blows to her strange Ephremian armor. Berangere couldn't understand why—there was no difference in her stance or footing.
"Berangere, run!" shouted Kiera. As more Alsantians filed out from the Zalgyne, she now stood between the girls and a dozen armored warriors. Not only was there no 'your highness,' but Kiera's frantic agitation seemed out of place for a servant. When the warriors charged en masse, Kiera backpedaled while parrying each stroke at such speed that those not knocked spinning had their points diverted into loose soil and friendly armor.
Although this awesome sight brought a glimmer of hope to Berangere, horror seeped in--a thick inhalation she could not exhale, but crammed in tremoring breaths until her chest tightened painfully--for Kiera could not long fight off so many blindingly fast soldiers.
Having grabbed Loren's hand--this time in earnest, like it was the hand of her best friend, and not the image of an enchantment--Berangere ran full steam ahead, neither pulling nor yanking, but dashing forward and trusting Loren would have the good sense not to be dragged all the way around a dune.
"Bear!" When Berangere ignored the plaintive cry, Loren said, "Bear, she'll be killed!"
"We can't do anything."
"We can't leave her!"
"Just run, Loren."
As they dashed over the chipped wood and earth, they heard the far-off stammering buzz of Zalgynes, the pound of stomping Ashflowers, and a third sound, a whirring hum Berangere might have missed if she was less frantic, but in her alarmed state of mind identified at once.
"Do you hear that, Loren?"
"It's the paint gateway!"
"Only if we went in a complete circle. But maybe it's the gate you saw."
At first, only three Ashflowers peeked flower-fringed heads over the central horizon, but as they stomped on, that row widened more and more, until the marching line stretched from one end of the horizon to the other, then past it.
Berangere pulled Loren right, around and behind a dune. While the heaped wood and stone would provide no protection against the Ashflower advance, Berangere hoped it might block them from view. Stupid, she told herself; despite the black clusters in the seeds massed in their heads, those gigantic flowers are all mouth and legs, and no doubt blind. If it knew their location, it was by vibration or some vegetal equivalent to smell or hearing.
"Did Kiera make it, Bear?"
"I hope so. Do we go inside, Loren."
"Inside where?" Loren said, with a sharp intake of breath. "In the Ashflowers.'
"No, Loren. Your vision. Did we enter the gateway?"
"I don't often See myself, Bear. Once I saw my paws...I mean, my feet, but otherwise, I See what I would if I was there."
"Did you see me, Loren?"
"No, Bear."
"Kiera? The werewolves?"
"No and no."
"Your mother?"
Loren struggled to speak during a long, smothering pause, then exhaled a choked, "no, Bear."
"Would you tell me if you had?"
"No, Bear. Why call her my mother? Call her Vieno."
"That might not be her real name, Loren."
"She might not be my real mother, Bear. The only thing you can know about liars is that they lie, Bear. She lied for years about who we were and where we were born. We believed we were orphans, Bear!"
"Lying isn't all we know of Vieno, Loren. To be fair, she's a decent baker. I like her gluten free granola bars."
A savage snarl tore a jagged grin in Loren's face. "No, I didn't See her, Bear."
"Okay, then," said Berangere.
"Only Akachi, Aito, Lucien, Chiyo, Conrad, the beautiful boy, and the ugly teenager."
Berangere heard it that time. "Where was Michel?"
"She wasn't there, Bear. I didn't See why."
A chill settled in Bearangere's stomach. Either Michel was dead, or Akachi had succeeded in doing what Berangere feared to think. Was Michel also a talking animal in human skin? If Akachi was in her place, would she leave the fox girl behind? Loren, she told herself--no matter what Loren was, the who was crystal clear--this was Loren, her best friend.
"If we're not there, did we get taken by a Zalgyne?"
"I don't think so, Bear. Maybe we went ahead of them, or just after."
"Or that's a vision of tomorrow, Loren. Or next week. You don't know when! Which makes our choices the same: Zalgyne or Ashflower! I know what I want for my ride."
"You mean to surrender! To this evil queen?"
"No, Loren. We have to board the right Zalgyne."
Having figured this out minutes before sharing it with Loren, Berangere was already leading them towards the distinctive whir of a Zalgyne. Although as loud as a buzzsaw, it was nearly drowned out by the advancing wave of Ashflowers, whose trembling stride sent humming tremors through the chipped desert soil.
So focused was Berangere on the convergence of their prophecied rescuers with these overshadowing devourers that she was dumbstruck by the ogress rounding a nearby dune, trailed by Vieno, whose fox plume was now in abundant display, and ruffled to a fluffy fulness. Otherwise, Vieno looked very human, although her face was harder than stone.
"That might be difficult with one arm broken, and the other lacking the hand that had the effrontery to touch my daughter."