Shift (The Pandorma Adventures Book 1) (18 page)

“Same to you guys,” I say.

She gets up to leave but tells me reassuringly, “We’ll meet up soon, you’ll see.”

I hope so,
I think as I watch her leave. Dread settles in my stomach as she disappears from view. This was happening—we were heading in different directions and we were going to put an end to Xavier and Medusa’s war once and for all.

Chapter 13

“Lissa.”

I slowly open my eyes and look up at Ryan.

“Cobalt wants to speak with us,” he says.

“Okay,” I mumble and shoo him away from my face. He sits back and watches me expectantly. He’s not going to let me get a few extra minutes of sleep. I pull myself up and follow him to Cobalt’s cave.

Cobalt’s dark orange tail flicks impatiently, her scowl deepening when she catches sight of us.

“Punctuality. Something you both should learn.”

I hold back a sigh. We’re only a minute or so late. There’s no pleasing this cat. I turn my gaze to Cobalt’s right side, where Cuven usually places himself, but he’s not there.
Strange.
He’s always around, even after he’s done with our training he sticks close by. If not to us then to Cobalt.

“Where’s Cuven?” I ask.

Ryan surreptitiously looks around the cave as Cobalt flicks an ear dismissively and says, “He was let go.”

My heart starts beating faster. How could Cuven have been dismissed? He might’ve been gruff most of the time but I’d grown rather fond of him. Especially when I found out he was giving us more training then he was supposed to. Cobalt must have found out and decided to get rid of him.

“Where is he?” I ask firmly but she ignores me.

“You guys must leave now. Synth has a pack of things for you, he has also made twenty more arrows. Head north and be quick.” Cobalt instructs as she’s leaving.

There’s a bundle of nerves in my stomach and Cuven being gone only makes my stomach twist more. Ryan and I look at each other, an indecipherable message in his dark eyes.
I wonder
if he’s nervous too.
If he is, there isn’t a trace of it.

I start walking out, but Ryan stops me.

“Lissa,” he says.

I turn back around.

“We’ll be okay.”

I straighten up and look him in the eye. “I know,” I say steadily.

* * * *

“Ready?” Ryan asks.

“Ready!” Shiver squeals and I nod.

To Shiver this just seems to be a big adventure. I’m not even sure if she knows how dangerous it could be.

“You have the pack?” I ask as I slide off the rock I’d been sitting on.

“Yep,” he responds and hands me the backpack I brought. Ryan puts on the quiver then slides the sword into a sheath.

“Alright.” Ryan nods his head, perhaps encouraging himself, then he starts through the forest, Shiver and me at his side.

Our footsteps are silent except for the occasional snap of a twig or crunch of dirt.

“How come your quiver is green?” I ask.

“It’s made from some kind of strong leaf that’s super sticky.”

“Do you know what’s in the pack?”

“Water, food, and two fur coats,” Ryan lists automatically.

“Oh.” We continue to hike in silence. A silence that starts to eat at me. So I ask, “Is something wrong?”

Ryan stops and looks at me. The look on his face makes my breath catch in my chest.

“I know you promised Darklily that you’d help her, but did you ever think that maybe we shouldn’t be doing this?” Ryan asks.

This isn’t what I expected him to say and I stumble over how to answer. Before I can say anything, Cuven steps in our path.

“You’re okay!” I exclaim.

“Of course I am,” he growls. “I need you guys to listen closely. Whatever you do, do not attack Medusa or Xavier directly. I have trained you well but they are experienced killers and it would take them only seconds to kill you both. If you’re going to put an end to this war you need to disable their army.”

“How?” Ryan asks.

Cuven flicks his tail irritably. “You’ll have to figure that part out yourself. You need to move quickly. If Medusa finds out what you’re up to she’ll make sure to put an end to it.” Cuven dips his head to us then ducks back into the shadows.

* * * *

The section of mountain that we cross isn’t as high or as extensive as the segment Trevor, Shiver, and I had traversed weeks ago, so it only takes us a day and half the night. When we get closer to the snowy terrain Ryan stops and pulls out a coat from the backpack. It is made entirely of rich brown fur. He hands the other one to me.

The coat is made of five pieces, reaching down to just below his hip. The ends of the coat and sleeves are uneven in places. I look at one of the sleeves more closely. The fur pieces are firmly fused together so it is very difficult to tell where one piece ends and another begins. Ryan turns a sleeve inside out.

“Ah, useful on so many levels,” he says.

The nameless sticky leaves are holding the fur pieces together. Testing the leaves’ strength I tug the ends in opposite directions. They don’t budge.

“Are you warm?”

“Yes. Parts of the inside are double furred. You should put yours on.”

“Uh . . . have you wondered which animals these were made out of?” I’m not ecstatic to put on a coat made of some animal’s fur that was cleaned by some other animal, even if it will keep me warm.

“Probably bear,” Shiver says. “Do I get one?”

Ryan digs around in the backpack but comes up emptyhanded. “Doesn’t look like you do.”

“Last time she kept warm in my fur. When it gets colder I can just shift and keep you warm, Shiver.”

“Okay,” she chirps.

“Don’t over think and just slip it on,” Ryan says.

With reservation I slip the coat over my head. It is very warm and soft, but that doesn’t alleviate my uncertainty.

* * * *

I stare up at the packed snow above us, Ryan’s gentle breathing barely audible. If it weren’t for my heightened hearing I don’t think I’d be able to hear him at all. Shiver is curled next to him, snoring softly.

I’d shifted into a polar bear hours earlier and constructed a den with Ryan’s help. It’s probably the sloppiest igloo ever, but it hasn’t caved in on us yet so it doesn’t matter.

Our igloo isn’t very big so we are only inches apart from each other. I can feel the heat emanating from Ryan even through his jacket, my own being off. I’ve been making assumptions about what kind of fur our coats might be made out of, if only to keep my mind entertained on something besides my haunting dream.

Terrified I had lurched awake—shaking with fear because I’d seen my father dead, again. It is safe to say that I’m totally petrified. To dream about it once is fine but to keep dreaming about it? It’s really starting to get to me. My thoughts churn until this cave suddenly seems too small and stuffy. We’ve made a small opening to let in fresh air, but I tear through it to get outside. The biting cold has a relieving effect on my brain and slowly my nerves start to settle. I can see faint light north of us. Sunrise. I reach into our cave, grab my coat and sit in the freezing snow. I watch the sun rise higher up, letting the assurance of knowing it will always rise, comfort and lull the dream away from me.

I feel Ryan’s presence before I see him. I have cleared away pounds of snow to find hard earth underneath. And against all common sense I tried to start a fire. The meat that had been packed for us has grown rock hard, taking forever to thaw or chew or even break away from another piece.

“Nothing?” he asks, sliding down into the hole and crouching next to me.

I throw the sticks over my shoulder and climb out of the depression; Ryan stands. “It was destined to fail from the start.”

“At least you tried.”

“And what good is that doing us?” Ryan opens his mouth, but I cut him off, “Don’t answer that. I don’t want some wise, encouraging answer.”

Ryan chuckles. “I was only going to say that it takes a lot of determination to do something just because you hope it will work. Even if you know it won’t.”

“That is exactly the kind of answer I told you not to give.”

He smiles. “Let's wake Shiver and get out of here.”

Ryan reaches his hand toward me. For me to hold . . . I can’t help holding my breath. I take it, a small, strange smile passes across his lips before he begins leading me away, his hand as cold as mine.

I can very faintly hear the hushed gurgle of flowing water. We’re at the edge of a lake, though it’s hard to tell. Snow has completely covered the top. If it weren’t for a nearby icing over hole we stumbled across, we never even would’ve known there was a lake beneath our feet. Ryan jabs his sword down and there’s a splintering thud. The snow isn’t very deep but the ice sounds extremely thick. Ryan shrugs and walks a ways onto the ice. Except for a few creaks the ice is silent.

“Well if it can hold you it can hold me,” I joke.

“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that.”

I tip my head. “But you did.”

Ryan laughs then says, “We should steer clear of the middle.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. It could be—” Ryan realizes that I’m teasing and stops. He bends over, clumps up a lot of snow and throws it at me. I’m out of the way even before it has left his hand. Shiver squeals as it grazes across her back, leaving clumps on her fur.

“Whoops. Sorry Shiver.”

“That’s cooold!” she cries, hopping around.

“Nice throw, but you forgot that I have the swiftness and flexibility of an animal. Which means—”

A snowball strikes my shoulder and snow sprays across my face.

“Ryan! That was cold!” I grab a bunch of snow and throw it at him. It falls short and lands a few feet in front of him.

“Didn’t Cuven teach you to throw better?” Ryan taunts.

Polar bear.
I turn around and start shoveling snow towards Ryan. I hear him sputter before yelling; “Alright I surrender!”

I stop digging,
Lissa,
I turn and give him a satisfied smirk, wiping my hands I say, “Was that better?”

Ryan comes closer. “You had an unfair advantage.”

“So do you. You have a stronger arm and better throwing skills.”

“So true,” Shiver agrees.

“Thank you.” Ryan curls his arm to show his muscles, but the coat hinders me from seeing anything. I laugh.

“Well I’m sure you saw plenty of my muscle in our training sessions,” he revises.

I frown with pretend confusion. “I’m sure I would have. If I had taken the time to observe your arm muscles during our training,” I add after a pause.

Ryan snorts and we move on.

It turns out that we can’t avoid the middle of the lake. A deep, wide stream runs on either side of the lake, which makes it more dangerous to go around. Flowing water means thinner ice. So instead we carefully pick a spot between the middle and the mouths of the stream. Ryan insists that I cross first. I’m fine until I’m halfway across, then the ice starts making shattering sounds and I move faster.
That was close.
I breathe a sigh of relief.

Shiver hops across next. Ryan moves a couple feet away from the path I’d taken and makes his way over.

“Lissa catch.” Ryan tosses his bow, the sword and the quiver.

I catch the bow but the sword and quiver land in the snow. A few of the arrows fall and when I reach for one I see the faint outline of a print. I lean over to examine it. I frown. It looks like the print of a cat. A very large cat.
I wonder—

A sharp yell cuts off my thoughts. I spin around just as Ryan is disappearing into a hole in the ice. Shiver lets out a cry of distress and races over to the hole. My jaw drops and for a second I’m frozen in place before throwing off the backpack and racing toward the hole.
Polar bear.
I grab a breath as I leap and dive into the water, ice crashing around me. I blink rapidly until my vision clears then look around. The lake is so large I can’t see either side of it or the bottom, just swirling murky water. Nothing.
No!

The current isn’t strong and I let it carry me downstream while pressing forward with strong paddles.
Where is he?
The lake narrows until I can see the rocky, branch-strewn bottom and silt-covered sides.

There!
His jacket is snagged on a log wedged between two rocks. I furiously kick out toward him. Grabbing as much of his coat in my jaws as I can I yank it away, there’s a muffled rip as it comes free. I let out a bunch of bubbles when I see that Ryan isn’t in it. The coat swirls away with the current. Panic growing, I let the current carry me again, taking care not to hit any of the boulders. I’m running out of oxygen.

Ryan!
I catch a glimpse of his figure. It takes every ounce of strength I have to kick out toward him. His leg is caught between two large rocks. Bubbles escape from his mouth and he stops struggling to free himself.
No.
My own supply of air and strength is rapidly dwindling. I stop myself on the boulder behind him. I swim down so I am between the two boulders. With all my strength I shove my shoulder against the boulder. The rock sluggishly moves and I push harder. Ryan comes free and the current tries to take him but I make a wild grab and latch my teeth onto his boot.