We are parked at a picnic grounds by the highway when Bran finally finds us. Shane hasn't let us out of the house all day and we're itching to stretch our legs on the pavement. The sparse grass was flooded this morning and I bet there's some good mud left.
When I hear Bran coming, I slide around Shane and bolt out the door, calling his name. Brother follows me, stopping short as Bran swings me up in the air and sets me back down. He's happy to see us.
"You're finally here," I tell him.
He smiles at me. "You've gotten big since I saw you last."
There's a woman leaning back on Bran's car, smile friendly but half-hidden behind long hair. I smile back, warily because she's made Brother nervous, and reach back to take his hand. Her eyes are strange. I can't remember what color they are unless I'm looking at them.
"Ah," Bran says, "Jordan, these are the twins."
She comes closer to me and I let her shake my hand. She doesn't smell like a woman, exactly, or like a human, but Bran's scent is all over her and if he trusts her she must be OK.
Shane is behind us and he's angry but he mostly wants to get us back in the house. I tell him he's a worry wart and he cuffs me. Jerk. I whine at him a little but take Brother's hand and pull him back inside to our abandoned coloring. I used to break the crayons before I learned how to hold them gently, so now they're all in little pieces. Brother watches me, his presence warm against my side. I draw for him, since he can't do it himself.
Their voices rise outside. Shane doesn't like Miss Jordan, but he eventually lets her in anyway.
Bran likes our pictures even though they're all full of black squiggles and he answers questions. Shane never answers our questions, he just tells me to shut up. I whisper to Brother that Shane's a big grouch and Bran's much more fun. Miss Jordan turns out to be nice, too, though Brother is still shy around her. She keeps touching Bran and I touch Brother more while I talk to them, so he won't be scared.
"Is Miss Jordan your Brother, Bran?"
They look at me strangely until heat creeps up my face. Miss Jordan starts snickering. She turns her face away from Bran and leans closer to him.
"But you-" I start to say, but Shane cuffs me again and tells me not to ask stupid questions. I pout at him to make him feel bad, but whisper to Brother that it didn't hurt, once Shane's back is turned. He's really a great big softie once you get to know him.
With Shane safely out of arm's reach, I ask, "Why do you call us twins if we don't look alike?"
They both answer at once.
Bran says, "You were... born at the same time."
Miss Jordan says, "You have the same eyes."
After that, Bran starts showing us what the black squiggles on the paper are, and then it's dark out, and Shane's rattling around the cabinets looking for food. And then I remember the thing I have to ask about.
"Bran! Shane said that you could give Brother a name, because he doesn't have one and it's not fair and Shane wouldn't help until you got here."
Bran sits up a little straighter, nearly dislodging Miss Jordan from his shoulder. He looks over at Shane who glares at him.
"Do you have a name, now?" he asks, gently.
"Yup." I say, proudly, "It's Monkey."
Miss Jordan cracks up.
"That's what Shane always calls me," I mutter defensively. I stick out my tongue at her and squeeze Brother's hand under the table.
Bran is smiling too, a little. "That's just a nick name," he tells me.
"Oh." I frown, look at Brother, look at Shane. "Sha~ane." I whine. I know just how to pitch my voice to make him wince like that. "No fair!"
"Why don't you just name yourself?" Miss Jordan asks.
I think hard about it and glare at her when she starts giggling again, which makes her laugh harder. For a second I'm afraid she's going to try to hug me or something, but she buries her face behind Bran instead.
"It's too hard." I twist around in my seat, again. "Sha~~ane! You have to do it. And do it right this time!"
Shane starts to snap at me, but Bran rises and ushers him outside. Their voices are too low to hear. Miss Jordan looks at us, a small smile playing around her lips.
"What are you?" she asks, quietly, as if speaking to herself.
We ignore her to try to hear what Bran and Shane are saying, but all I can make out is that Shane is annoyed. I could have guessed that.
When they come back inside, Shane goes right back to the cabinets. Bran clears his throat.
Shane glares at him then looks at me.
"Your name is Kiran," he says, and his cold, pale eyes melt just a little.
I dive across the trailer to hug him, press my face against him and breathe in. He nearly looses his balance as he tries to pull me off him. I think Miss Jordan is laughing again.
"Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou! Wait. What about Brother?" I fling myself back into the booth to him, touch his pale skin and dark hair. His eyes are golden and bottomless.
"Kiran," Bran says, taking me by the shoulders so I look him straight in the eyes. "You have to name your brother by yourself. And you have to promise that you will never, ever tell anyone else what his name is. Not even Shane, or Jordan or me. It has to be a secret, just for the two of you. Ok?"
I nod and promise for both of us. Bran's smile comes back, and he shows me what squiggles mean my name. Bran's kind of scary when he's too serious, I whisper to Brother.
I have to name him something perfect and wonderful so I spend a long time thinking about it. In the quietest part of the night, when I'm sure Shane is sound asleep, I whisper it to him, and remind him that it's our secret. The faint light of the streetlamps is leaking in around the blinds. There are no cars on the road. The ground here is solid and deep and still. Slowly, very slowly, Brother's eyes focus on me. He sees me. I hug him close and touch his face and whisper his name to him over and over.
Dust
Kiran means dust or thread or sunlight. I knew it was his name even before I set eyes on him, pulled him squirming and balling from the vat in that sterile room. I knew it back when he was just another annoying voice whispering at the back of my skull. I know his brother's name, too, though that doesn't matter. The monkey probably won't get it right anyway.
They are wrapped around each other in their bunk like they are every morning and half the time besides. Kiran feigns sleep. His twin's dull eyes track my movements mindlessly. They never really sleep, or eat, and at first it was a trial getting him to understand that I needed to sometimes. By now he's gotten very good at pretending. He thinks he has me fooled but I can always tell when his attention is on me.
They need a haircut, especially Kiran. Last time I tried, I only got the front of his head before he ran off. I should make Bran do it this time.
Speaking of Bran, where the hell is he? I wanted to be on the road hours ago. I pace the cab for the umpteenth time. Sometimes I really wish I smoked. Finally, I open the door, squinting against the morning sun and the chill, dry breeze. There is a tall, longhaired man lounging against the Oldsmobile, feet ringed with cigarette butts. Bran's dark head is lolling against the passenger's side window, eyes shut, glasses askew. I swear under my breath. I expected this kind of irresponsibility from the succubus but not from Bran. Who knows how long it will be until he wakes up.
A slow grin spreads across its face as it watches me. I realize I've been standing in the doorway fuming silently for some minutes.
"Good morning, Miss Jordan!" chirps Kiran, waving from around my legs.
The dumbfounded look on its face is almost satisfying, until I remember whose fault it is that we haven't left yet. If I believed in God I'd be thanking him- or her- that neither of them project. It's bad enough with the kid muttering in the back of my skull every time he gets excited.
"Can you drive?" I growl at it.
"Sure." Its male voice is deep, cocksure. Grating.
"Good. We're leaving."
I slam back into the camper, the twins scrambling out of my way. The old box groans into life, and I pull it back onto the road. Kiran is waving to someone out the back window, making faces against the glass. It must be following us. I indulge in a long-suffering sigh.
The roads out here are so straight I practically don't have to steer, the land a hypnotic cadence of identical dun hills stair-stepping up out of the plains. It's a silent place, baked hard and unwelcoming under the pitiless sun. There are few people, more dead than living, and not many others. Not much to have to listen to other than what I'm hauling around in the back. It's featureless in a way that makes everything want to move on.
The color of the dirt reminds me of the fossilized 70's curtains that had been left in my shop when I took it over. I think back on pleasant hours of reading my paper in the dusty, varnish-scented interior, chasing teenagers out with a venomous glare or my broom. Dibrova's thugs probably trashed it when they came looking for them. Not that I'd been enjoying it much by the end, what with Bran off who-knows-where and some stupid monkey blubbering to himself in the back of my mind. Finding Feng Long on his desk, cold face half-bruised with the blood settled there, entrails spread across his paperwork.
Regret is a useless emotion.
Kiran has been too quiet for the past few hours. He hasn't been projecting anything but that doesn't mean he's being good. I just know when I go back there it will be a god-awful mess. I'm putting it off. My stomach growls a little, reminding me I haven't eaten since the can of soup I split with Bran last night. I pick at the ancient bagel sitting on the other seat, but it's rock hard, inedible.
The Oldmobile pulls up along side the camper, that demon smirking up at me from the passenger's side window. All I can see of Bran is his hand on its leather-clad thigh. How can it stand wearing leather pants in this heat? This miserable crate has no A/C. The hot air coming in the windows prickles in my sweaty, close-cropped hair. Bran pulls around me and takes the next exit, following the signs to a concrete-bound row of chain restaurants and gas stations. I follow him into a plaza and gather my wits to scold the monkey for whatever he's done to the back.
But Kiran is simply lying tangled with his brother, whispering to him, as if they haven't moved since this morning. Brother's enormous yellow eyes are fixed on him. Focused. I frown at them, then at the dingy seats, tiny counter and cracked paneling. I go outside.
Bran is annoyingly nonchalant. Only he would have the balls to disappear for weeks 'misleading' our pursuers, come back with a succubus in tow, sleep with it, and then pretend like nothing was amiss. Bastard's always been like this.
The camper throws off barely enough shade to contain the three of us. We need groceries, and gas, and I'm running low on money. I tell Bran we need to start selling some of the things we brought with us, but the demon swears it can triple whatever we give it.
"How?" I ask it.
"A professional never reveals his secrets."
Bran adds, "Poker."
I resist the urge to bury my face in my palms.
"Come on," I snap at Bran, "Have your pet watch the kids."
I duck the demon's swing, but it manages to get a hold of my shirt. The whisper lingers in my ear even after Bran pulls us apart.
"Jealous?"
The grocery store feels odd until I realize the ceilings are too low. It must have been something else at one time. Bran pushes the cart around, searching for the canned goods.
"They've gotten big," he starts.
"They still don't eat or sleep." I tell him.
"You're not feeling unusually tired or picking up anything odd around them?"
I shake my head. "No. Nothing."
His eyes narrow as he thinks of something that amuses him.
"You know, they'll be hitting puberty in a couple of weeks."
When I'm done swearing, I ask, "Shouldn't their growth rate start slowing down? They'll be dead in a year or two if they keep aging like this."
"A true homunculus shouldn't grow at all."
Paper towels are on sale. I grab two roles.
"You'll have to look at the research. I can't even tell what language it's in. Something European."
"Curiouser and curiouser," he murmurs.
If that demon doesn't stop hitting on me I swear I'll kill it. Bran's busy with the notes, forgetting even the cigarette left smoldering between his fingers. It's gotten bored with trying to get his attention. My thoughts go to the revolver secreted under the driver's seat. Maybe a few well-placed bullets will improve my evening. My trigger finger twitches.
Bran says, abruptly, "Jordan, you can take the car."
Maybe I'll spare him.
The incubus smiles and dips his hand into Bran's pocket. He turns his face into its kiss. I flick my paper higher, focus on an article.
"What are they doing?" Kiran asks.
I cover his eyes and don't let him go until the screen door slams.
"It's Romanian, unless I miss my guess."
I lower the paper slightly and raise my eyebrows to show I'm listening. Page B3 is too heavily crayoned to be legible.
"I can't read much of it, but the figures are interesting in and of themselves," he continues, "Our guesses were close. But-"
"But?" I prompt.
"There's still nothing that would explain Kiran."
It's very late when the Olds returns. Bran rises at its familiar rattle and goes outside. Through my open window I can hear them talking quietly. The soft cadence of their conversation and the familiar scent of tobacco lull me until-
"When I was 8, I killed my little sister."
I roll my eyes. This again.
"What?"
"She was always tagging along, annoying me. We were on top of the jungle gym. I pushed her. She fell."
There is a silence in which I imagine them balanced against the car, hands touching lightly.
"It was an accident," Jordan says.
"No. Because I- For one second I really wanted her to die. And she did." His voice drops lower. "My parents put me up for adoption."
"And that's when you met him?"
He doesn't reply.
"Are all prophecies self-fulfilling?" she asks him, a challenge in a whisper. And then she says something that might be "Once, I killed a man with my bare hands."
If they say more it is too quiet for me to hear. A car door opens and shuts.
The next morning, she hands me a wad of cash.
"More than tripled it," she smirks.
"I didn't give you any money."
"I took it from your wallet."
"Do you know how much your balls would be worth on the black market?" I growl.
I have to suppress my smirk as her eyes widen. She whirls on Bran. "That's the kind of business you bastards were in?"
"Actually," he says, benign smile sharpening to an edge when he looks at me, "we mostly dealt in books and antiques. And information."
"Just like you to keep your lovers in the dark," I murmur.
"Just like you to keep your friends at arm's length," he shoots back.
Jordan looks back and forth between us, caught between amusement and indignation. Finally, she plucks her cigarettes from the table and stomps outside.
The kids stir in their bunk.
Bran hands me a plate of scrambled eggs.
"We know each other far too well," he says.
The Integral Components
The landscape changes as we drive over the crest of the mountains. When the peaks and canyons rear back enough to give us a view it is dense with green. We keep the windows rolled down to let the cool breeze in and the smoke out. The wind carries the scent of resin.
Jordan drives while I continue trying to decipher the notes. Dr. Urzica apparently got his start in genetics then turned to alchemy out of a strange combination of boredom and ambition. The technology's all new, its foundation in familiar principles is sound but barely recognizable. The man must be some kind of genius. But there's something that just doesn't add up; I have the feeling that I've missed something vitally important, somewhere.
The shadows lengthen into evening behind us. Jordan squints against the glare even behind sunglasses and the flip-down shade. Ahead of us, the camper soldiers on ponderously into the darkness. I turn on the dome light.
I ignore the flashing lights behind us, the car slowing. I don't bother to look up until I hear Jordan purr, "What seems to be the trouble, officer."
"License and registration, ma'am?" he blushes. A weak one. I plaster a mild look across my face and dig through the glove box for the papers. Jordan wiggles just so, extracting her wallet from her back pocket. The cop's breath speeds minutely. His flashlight is pointing directly at her cleavage.
He is back and saying "Step out of the car please, ma'am," in far too little time to have run the numbers. Jordan winks at me and flows gracefully through the door. Shane will take the next exit and wait for us to catch up. I return to the notes.
"Someone reported your car stolen." He tells me later, slipping back into the driver's seat and starting the engine. "He won't be doing anything about it for a while, though."
"Well done." My fingers absently trace a stain on the seat near his hip. "But it's kind of a shame. I think I'll miss this car."
"God you're kinky." He breathes and his teeth scrape my Adam's apple.
We ditch the Oldsmobile behind an abandoned warehouse. Jordan, Shane and I drive continuously for two whole days, stopping only at gas stations. Kiran is more subdued that usual, picking up on our urgency and staying well out of the way.
Living in each other's pockets proves less difficult that I'd expected. Shane seems to have accepted that Jordan isn't going anywhere and has settled into the habit of ignoring her except for the occasional acidic barb. I just knew he'd warm up to her. She's good at keeping the kids occupied, playing with them or having loud arguments with Kiran. This leaves me to the notes and yelling at them helps Shane's temper immensely. She seems to get a kick out of acting maternal and somehow always gets Kiran to help clean up the messes they make.
The mobile home is too small for five people, really. Jordan and I share the bunk, Shane sleeps in the front seat as usual, probably with one hand on his gun. The boys sit up at the table, heads bent together, somehow drawing in the near-darkness, or curl together on the floor. Some nights, when I lay awake listening, it sounds like there are two whispers, answering each other.
Brother is like a photocopy of Kiran with the contrast up too high, his features too sharp and all in shades of grey. Their eyes gleam like highly polished brass when the light hits them right. Lately Brother is present in a way he wasn't before he was named. His blankness slips a little more each day.
Kiran's voice has started breaking, though he's still not growing as fast as Brother is. Brother grows over three inches in a week, and we have to buy them new clothes again. The woman at the checkout counter mistakes Jordan and I for their parents. Fortunately Jordan refrains from laughing until we're outside. She calls me Dear and Dad for the rest of the day. Kiran thinks it's funny and joins in. Even Shane is amused, though he hides it by growling that I should cut their hair again from behind his paper. Kiran likes his hair short now and we have to cut it every few days. He insists Brother likes his long, so I humor him and leave it. He and Jordan braid it elaborately, giggling together.
Urzica's notes frustrate me to no end. If only I had had time to bring more of my books.
"I just don't understand. Where are they getting the energy to grow this fast?" I complain, my voice deliberately light.
Kiran gives me an exasperated look. "Why would I need more energy? There's always so much of it around."
"Divine intervention?" Jordan jokes.
Shane rolls his eyes. We've been over this several times, over the ingredients list and the diagrams and the statistics. Most of the components are exotic, all of them arcane, some highly illegal. Apparently, even Urzica wasn't sure exactly what his new technology would produce. We can guess what Dibrova wanted it to produce.
People died to create them, were killed for their knowledge, their property or their bodies. Some of them were my friends.
I had wanted to trash the lab, destroy the research, maybe kill Urzica if we came across him. Maybe kill Dibrova. But then Shane had reached into the artificial womb and pulled out a child.
"Get the other one," he had ordered, wrapping the baby in a discarded lab coat, "We're going."
So, I'd extracted Brother from the device, disconnecting him from wires and tubes, the thick solution stinging my hands with tiny, rhythmic jolts of electricity. It was immediately obvious he had been built, though the marks of his assemblage had faded within days.
As for Kiran. Well. From the notes no one had been expecting him.
Alchemical constructs shouldn't have souls, whatever that means. But how does one tell the difference between soul and consciousness or emotion or intelligence? Kiran started talking in full sentences on the fifth day after we took him. He had looked about nine months old, then. There's no way he could have picked up all that vocabulary from Shane and I in such a short time.
"Kiran, what's the first thing you remember?" I ask him.
He frowns a little. His round face is losing its chubbiness.
"I remember being sad because I knew someone could hear me, but they wouldn't come. And before that I remember my stomach feeling weird and the smell of meat cooking and footsteps."
I mull this over, looking again at the list of ingredients. Shane's translations are scrawled messily in beside the items listed in Chinese characters. My eyes linger on the phrase 'monkey king heart.'
Two towns later I convince Shane to stop for more than just long enough for Jordan to feed. The two of us check into a motel. It's not the worst I've ever stayed in but it's close. And overpriced. Not that I care much. Jordan will go out and win the money back later.
Alone together, her eyes on me wake that strange pull and the disconnected floating sensation that I got when our gazes first locked. I let it wash through me; let her draw me towards one of the beds with the wet tangle of her tongue. I resist the beginning of the trance and pull back, undress her slowly. She is vibrating like a violin string, lust and impatience pinging off every surface.
Time slips forward and I am on my back across the bed and she's above me, breathing on me, waiting for me. My hands run up the downy softness of her thighs, my tongue follows. She gasps against my groin, fastens her mouth at the lower edge of my birthmark, which is thick and textured and the color of red wine.
"Like an old scab," she'd said when she first saw it.
I am surrounded in the scent of her, saline and musk on my pallet. She cries out and bites at my stomach, making my muscles jump, my cock twitching against her soft, cool cheek. I moan into her and then she is straddling me, sliding down around me and my mouth longs to be full with her again. She leans down to fill it, my taste on her tongue, her hard nipples under my fingers. My hips snap up into her and she loses her rhythm, bouncing raggedly, gasping my name. She yowls like an animal as she comes, back arched, head thrown back and the hot flow of energy leaving me makes me shudder over and over.
I fight the weight of my eyelids to watch her change, bones altering, jaw squaring, flesh flowing into differently familiar lines. His smile brushes my lips with a slick hint of tongue but I am sliding into sleep and can't return it.
Skuratov is waiting for us in an all-night diner a few hundred miles later. I'm glad he had the sense to run. He might be able to help me with the notes. He is subdued during dinner. His eyes keep wandering to the darkness outside the picture windows. He pays for our meal despite our protests, asks to see them.
The parking lot is shadowy beyond the pooled light of the streetlamps. Jordan lounges on the camper's rusted step, smoking. She is wary of this stranger; her relaxation becomes tightly controlled.
I touch her shoulder, give her a reassuring look, call the boys out. Skuratov goes rigid at the sight of them. Kiran is forward, friendly, shakes his hand. Brother hangs back a bit, a hint of distrust under his usual blankness.
"Fascinating," Skuratov murmurs. "It's only been what, three months?"
I nod. "Their development has been quite rapid."
"I need your help." He turns, looks up at me from under a great weight of worry. "He's threatening to give her to Dr. Urzica."
"What are you talking about?" I am genuinely confused. "No one could force her to do something she didn't want to do."
Shane snorts. "She wouldn't die if they killed her," he adds. "I'm sure she's fine."
"I- Please. Just give me the experiments."
Shane and Jordan draw back toward the boys, placing their bodies between them and potential danger. Shane's hand is probably slipping under the back of his shirt, reaching for the gun he may or may not have on him. I can feel the lines of my face hardening.
"I can't do that." I tell him softly.
Skuratov's hopeful expression crumbles. He was always too gentle, a little too wet behind the ears to be involved with someone like Oleg Dibrova. That's why I was surprised when he betrayed them, helped us break in and steal the research. That's why I'm surprised when he plunges a knife into my abdomen.
"Then," he whispers, "Please die."
With a rattling viper's hiss, Jordan leaps on him, twists his head around with a brutal, wet crunch. His eyes go wide with surprise, his limp weight slides down my body, dislodging the knife in nauseating jerks. Suddenly there are dark-clothed men everywhere.
One of them comes at Jordan from behind but I am there, seeing his moves before he makes them, seeing how to turn them against him. He sails neatly over my shoulder even as I turn to the next. Every movement I make drains the heat from my limbs.
Someone shouts, "Freeze."
One of them has Brother, black gun barrel against his tousled head. Shane grabs Kiran to hold him still.
"You." He motions to Kiran, "Come along quietly or I'll kill him."
Kiran cries out in wordless rage or distress, slips from Shane's grasp, starts forward. Faster than the eye can follow, Brother has disarmed the man holding him, breaking his arm with a neat flick of his wrist and leaving him in a pain-wracked heap. He paces slowly across the parking lot towards Kiran, face taking on an actual expression. His brow creases and his lips quirk upwards; he looks as if he's trying to remember something wonderful or horrible. He strikes a man who doesn't get out of his way fast enough, sends him flying to the ground, ribs staved in.
The children come together, stop just short of touching. We are transfixed, watching them.
Brother says, "Kiran," and smiles radiantly. His voice breaks on the second syllable.
Their heads bend together, his unnatural grayish hair falling around their faces in a concealing curtain.
I realize that I am still standing and a wave of pain drives me to my knees. Jordan is there at once, but I can barely feel her hands on me.
Brother jerks, plucks something small and shining from his shoulder. As one, they turn toward something. Kiran's face is a mask of rage, Brother's is icy and implacable.
They disappear. Things begin happening.
It is a struggle to pay attention with Jordan trying to get me to do something or other. The familiar timbre of Shane's revolver crashes in my head again and again. How strange. He seems to be shooting the men that are already down.
I've lost track of the boys.
It's cold.
For a long time I see shapes, but do not recognize them.
I want my mother until someone touches me and I remember.
I am aware of being moved. It hurts.
Shane Shane Shane Shane. My best friend, only friend. We pinky-swore. Where?
I have to make breakfast. Someone is holding me down and I am fighting them.
My dreams are stalked by a rattling hiss.
"I prefer my meals willing," it says, once.
"Do it before I change my mind."
No, call me big brother. Your hands are warm. They chase the pain away.
There is light wavering before my eyes. I watch it for some time before I realize it is water glimmering in the sun, out of focus because I'm not wearing my glasses. My hand becomes aware of the silken hair it is tangled in only when I try to move it. I am lying in a snarl of cloth, damp from the ground below. Jordan's weight is warm against my side.
"So, you're not dead." Shane is perched on a mossy rock with his crayoned paper, tiny reading glasses probably balanced at the tip of his nose. I squint but can't make out his features.
"Apparently not." My voice is thick. Talking hurts. My muscles seem to have been replaced with lead weights. "Where are we?" I ask.
"In the woods. Near a lake."
"You don't know."
He frowns. Jordan stirs, his hand creeping across my chest and recoiling from the edge of my bandages. I manage to lift my hand to his. Our fingers curl together.
"The boys?" I ask.
"They weren't hurt. Brother's-" he hesitates, "There's someone there now. He started eating. And talking."
My mind tries to dredge up the notes, to correlate this new information with the facts I've gleaned from them. Focus slips away like dry sand through a sieve. If breathing didn't ache I'd really want a cigarette. I look down at Jordan, my head lolling to the side since it's too heavy to lift. He is sleeping, face pale and drawn.
"How long has it been since he last-?"
Shane hunches a little lower behind his paper.
"Last night," he says. His tone denies its own defensiveness.
"Shane."
Is he blushing?
"Thank you," I tell him.
He relaxes minutely, folds his paper shut, sighs, runs a hand through his hair.
"Do you ever get the feeling that someone somewhere is having a really good laugh at your expense?" he asks, face tipping toward the sun-dappled blur above.
Jordan's eyes flutter and he smiles up at me sleepily. Somewhere in the distance the boys are laughing and shouting.
"No," I answer.
Petals and Wind
The lake is good for swimming, though Shane and Miss Jordan yell that we'll get hypothermia if we stay in too long. They only use it to wash hurriedly and they shiver for a long time afterward.
Kiran is fascinated by Shane's tattoos, which cover his arms like sleeves of whirling color. I asked him what the point of them was, but he didn't answer. My glare was the only thing that stopped him hitting one or both of us. He's really got to learn better.
Bran sat up by himself this morning. Miss Jordan was really happy. She's been so worried.
Shane says we have to leave here soon, but I don't want to. The woods here are deep, deep green with lots of places to hide and climb. Kiran helps me find food when I get too hungry between meals. We find a whole field of berries so I bring some back to the others.
"You're not eating things you find in the woods, are you?" Bran asks, gently. He's good at getting his way because he always sounds like he knows what's best.
"It's ok. Kiran knows which ones are good."
Kiran nods proudly. "I smell them," he explains.
"Brother-" Bran starts.
I interrupt him. "My name is Jadan," I say.
He and Shane look alarmed. I roll my eyes.
"It's not." I tell them. No one but Kiran will ever know my real name. The idea of anyone else knowing scares me.
"Kiran and Jadan," Miss Jordan says, "Has a certain ring." He smiles at me so I know he knows that I took his advice. I smile back to show I understand.
We eat the berries even though they're sour, but I'm still hungry when they're all gone. I hope Bran will be well enough to cook soon. Shane makes weird food.
Kiran wants to hang around and bug Shane all afternoon and besides he needs to be near Bran so he can help him. I don't mind that he's not helping me anymore. I can take care of myself now.
I climb the ridge our cave is in. The rocks at the top are warm from the sun, so I sit on them and watch the leaves dance and the clouds flow across the sky. I remember other trees, pink ones, and being lonely. They didn't leave me behind this time, I think, but none of that makes sense. Maybe I dreamed it, like that strange woman and her husband with the funny mustache.
When Kiran finds me, he folds himself over my back and rests his chin on my shoulder. He whispers my name.
"Look," he says, opening his grubby palm to show me the salamander squirming there.
"Let's go put it in Miss Jordan's hair," I snicker.
His grin is wide and mischievous and all for me. "Awesome!"
