Nina Berry: Othersphere

“So that’s why my wolf form is larger than a real wolf,” London said. “It comes from Othersphere, so it’s bigger.”

Morfael nodded. “And even your wolf form here is smaller than the form you would have if you traveled to Othersphere. When shadow travels through the veil, as your wolf form does, its size and power are diminished.”

“Oh, wow, so in Othersphere I could be an eagle as big as—what?” Arnaldo asked.

“It depends on the individual,” Morfael said. “But your eagle form there would perhaps be one hundred percent larger than it is here.”

Arnaldo raised his straight eyebrows, and his jaw dropped.

“A hundred percent larger!” November exclaimed. “You mean in my rat form, there I could be as big as . . . a German shepherd?”

Morfael considered her calmly. “Very probably, yes.”

“Shit, let’s go now!” She slapped her open hand down on the table. When Morfael glared at the swear word, she smiled, showing all her little teeth. “Sorry. But can you imagine the look on people’s faces if I pranced along the streets of Berkeley looking like that ?”

“Could you take us there now?” London asked Morfael. “The sooner we get Amaris out of Othersphere, the better.”

He looked around at all of our expectant faces, and finally said, “I cannot go there with you, no.”

We gaped at him. “But . . . but why not?” I asked.

“In order to bring you through the veil when you were an infant and shield you from shadow until you were sixteen, I had to sever my tie to Othersphere forever and transfer your own connection to that world into the Shadow Blade. If I go back, I will die there.”

I stared at him. He’d never told me exactly what the Shadow Blade was before. It had started off in my life as my back brace. But when I no longer needed the brace, Caleb had pulled forth its shadow form—a knife which cut through anything that had never been alive. “You transferred what into the Shadow Blade?”

Morfael took a deep breath, as if exercising some patience. It was as if he expected me to just know things I had no way of knowing. “I severed your connection to Othersphere when I brought you here in order to let you grow up as a normal humdrum human, and to hide you from those in Othersphere who wished you harm. I had to put those vibrations somewhere. So I formed them into the Blade and attached it to you via shadow.” He looked around at all of us staring at him blankly, trying to work it out. “It’s all quite simple.”

“So this—” I pulled the Blade out of its scabbard and felt its reassurance rush through me like a sweet ocean breeze. “This is what connects me to Othersphere now.”

“Without it, you would be like any other shifter,” he said. “And before you ask me why I didn’t just destroy it and make you like the rest of the otherkin—such a thing is not my decision to make.”

I sheathed the Blade, nodding. Morfael wasn’t much on sharing information, but he also let me make my own decisions. And as someone who had been adopted, I’d always longed to know more about my birth parents, about the world I came from. A little over a month ago I’d learned I was born in Othersphere. The last thing I wanted was to sever that connection now. I wanted to understand it better, and if possible to go there. I’d glimpsed my birth mother three times now. Perhaps if I got to know her, and her world better, I’d know myself better, too.

“So you’re saying ties to Othersphere can be severed,” Caleb said.

Lazar was also looking very interested in the answer. They were callers of shadow, though Lazar had been raised by the Tribunal to refer to himself as an objurer. The skills were the same—to conjure forth a person or object’s “shadow”—whatever they were connected to in Othersphere. Only a few people had that connection—the shifters, each with their preferred animal form. Objects had a more random shadow form; I’d seen Caleb pull a whole range of white marble mountains out of a small red desert rock once. The effort had made him pass out. Since then, he’d learned a lot about how to control and conserve his power. Callers could also push shadow forms back to Othersphere, as Ximon had started to do when I was hanging by my tiger claws from his helicopter. It made for uneasy relations between most callers and shifters.

“So you cut yourself off from Othersphere’s vibration?” Lazar asked Morfael.

Morfael gave him a small nod. “Shadow walkers attune themselves to the worlds they visit. The vibration becomes a part of them. To shield Dez while I was here, I had to sever my own connection to that world forever. If I walked through the veil between this world and Othersphere, I would cease to exist.”

“You wouldn’t be much use to us that way,” I said, smiling at him.

“What about that rope Ximon wrapped around Amaris?” Caleb asked. “It seemed to vibrate on both our world and Othersphere’s frequency.”

“It is twine made of the stuff between worlds.” Morfael’s voice was dry, making his extraordinary words sound normal. “It, like me, can move between worlds, and no doubt eased Amaris’s transition into Othersphere.”

“Otherwise, she would have bounced off the window between the worlds, like I did,” Caleb said. “I figured it was something like that.”

“But you could open a window and we could go through,” London said to Morfael. “Sounds like Dez doesn’t need any help to get there, but the rest of us need something like that rope Ximon wrapped around Amaris.”

“I could open a window to Othersphere under the right conditions,” Morfael answered. “With twine between the worlds, the rest of you could travel through. After that, finding her would be up to you.” He tapped his staff once on the ground for emphasis.

“But then what?” Caleb held both hands with the palms up. “How do we know where to find her? Ximon could be hiding her anywhere.”

“This is Amaris we’re talking about,” I said. “We can’t just leave her there.”

“Of course not,” Lazar said. “Which means we have to find Ximon and make him tell us where she is.”

“And see if he’s got more of that rope stuff we can use,” Caleb chimed in. For once he and Lazar seemed to be on the same page.

And having any kind of plan always made me feel better. “So we have to track down Ximon,” I said.

Next to me, Lazar moved uneasily. He interlaced his fingers and gripped till the knuckles were white. “I might be able to help with that.”

I pulled away from him a little to look him in the eye. “You know where Ximon is?”

Lazar looked down at his hands. “I can’t say for sure. But I know all the safe houses we have in the area. . . .”

“ What ?” Caleb rose to his feet, concussion forgotten as his fists clenched. “You’ve known where the Tribunal has their safe houses all this time, and it only just now occurred to you to tell us?”

Lazar flinched a little, but looked Caleb right in the eye. “Ximon knows I know about these places,” he said. “It’s unlikely he’ll spend time at any of them. But it could be somewhere to start.”

“You should’ve told us you knew this stuff the first day you came to live with us,” November said, tossing the empty bag of chips on the coffee table with a flick of her hand. “And you know it.”

“There could be otherkin living right nearby, in danger from the objurers in those safe houses!” Caleb took two steps toward Lazar. “I always said you couldn’t be trusted.”

Lazar got to his feet, his body taut. “If I’d told you before, you would’ve told your shifter council, and they would have slaughtered all the objurers, and their families, living in those places.”