The Shapeshifter Chronicles Read online

  One moment the second man was lying on the mosses, his upper body submerged. The next, he had been yanked into the pool with a mighty splash. He flailed in the silty spring water while something fey and sinuous wound about the man. A smack, a gulp, and the water stilled.

  Brea had the sick knowledge that he would not rise again.

  Carrig scrambled to his feet, looking into the spring with wide, fearful eyes. The leader’s face grew pale, but neither of them made any move to go to their comrade’s aid.

  Not that they could have helped him. The power of mortal men was of little use when the spirits of a place took their revenge.

  “I held him tight, I swear it,” Carrig said. “Something pulled him under. You saw it.”

  “Aye,” the black-haired man said. “Let’s away from this foul place.”

  Brea gathered all her courage and briefly closed her eyes in a prayer of supplication. Her heart cried out to the spring and its guardians for succor, for mercy. This was her moment. Now, before the leader tightened his grip and they towed her away.

  “Look!” she cried, pointing into the waters.

  There was nothing to be seen—the drowned man had disappeared entirely, along with the water creature who had taken him. But it was distraction enough. The bandit holding her leaned forward, his grip slackening as he peered into the water.

  Brea wrenched out of his grasp, took two steps, and leaped into the pool.

  She let herself sink, expelling her precious air in a long stream of bubbles, a string of pearls reaching back toward the pale surface of the water. Dappled light sifted through the waters, though shadows gathered at the pool’s edge. Her lungs went slack, then began to burn. She forced herself not to rise. Not to take a desperate, futile breath. The men waited up there for her, but she would never return.

  Something cool brushed her fingers, and she turned herself about in the water, her long, dark hair swirling past her face.

  It was the silver scale, coming as readily to her hand as it had eluded the brigand’s. She smiled, tasting the clear, cool water against her teeth, and brought the scale to her heart.

  Mother, I call upon your blood running salty in my veins. I call upon the ancient spirits of this watery haven. I call upon the hawthorn tree bound with wishes and the pale stars hidden behind the sunlit sky.

  Take this human body and give it fins. Let me breathe water instead of air. Carry me away from the coarse hands of mortal men.

  Her chest was full of coals, but she would not ascend back to the daylit world. Brea clenched her cold fingers, fighting to remain still. Submerged. Warm salt escaped her eyes and floated away, diluted to nothing. At last she could bear it no more, and drew in a great lungful of water.

  As if waiting for that surrender, her body began to change. Her arms pulled in to her sides, her legs fused together. Her eyes shifted, her mouth pursed, the blood in her veins cooled even as her heartbeat surged. Liquid fire scalded every cell of her body as she transformed.

  The surface of the spring shivered. A fey breeze stirred the wishing cloths tied to the hawthorn tree.

  A heartbeat passed. A year, a day.

  The girl-that-was flicked her tail and followed the shining current down and away. A thread of magic called her into the wild waters. Called her into the star-speckled, unchanging twilight far from any mortal shore. Called her home.

  A Word from Anthea Sharp

  Waterborne is set in my USA Today bestselling world of Feyland, which has been described as “Ready Player One with faeries.” The series combines high-tech computer gaming with ancient faerie lore—though clearly this tale falls more on the Celtic fantasy side of things. You can find out more about Brea, including what happens to her after her transformation, in my book Royal. Discover the entire Feyland series at my website: https://antheasharp.com/the-feyland-series/

  I’m delighted to have a story in this anthology, and to be working again with the visionary anthologist Samuel Peralta. If you haven’t already checked out our groundbreaking collaboration, Chronicle Worlds: Feyland, please do! It’s another great project from the Future Chronicles, featuring a dozen stories by some of the top authors in the field, all set in the world of Feyland.

  In real life, I dwell in the Pacific Northwest, where I write, hang out in virtual worlds, play the fiddle with my Celtic band Fiddlehead, and spend time with family.

  Find out about my books at https://antheasharp.com and join my mailing list to stay on top of all the news and current releases – plus get a bonus free short story when you sign up at http://eepurl.com/1qtFb

  Of Bats and Atomic Bombs

  by Thomas Robins

  PRIDE KILLED MY FATHER.

  When I was three years old, my father told me I could have a quarter when I learned to put on my shoes. Weeks went by. I remember screaming every time one of my parents took over as I tried to put my shoes on heel first. I wanted to do it and they were keeping me from my quarter.

  I got my quarter. Looking back, I doubt I properly earned it, but my mother wanted so badly for the Quarter for Shoes Episode to be over she found a way to give me my prize. I loved the way it looked, the way it cooled my hand when I picked it up, the way my thumbnail went bump-bump-bump when I ran it along the edge.

  I took it everywhere. Except when I didn’t. When I found it missing, I’d scream. Luckily for me, my parents had usually remembered to grab it on the way out of the house. At least, I thought it was lucky. My parents thought it was lucky I couldn’t read the date to know I’d been handed a different coin. If I’d discovered the ruse, it would have been the worst treachery I could have imagined. I forgive them, though. I’d have done the same thing in their shoes.

  One evening, when I was five, my father drove me a town over to rent a movie from the Video Hut. I ran straight to the kids’ section so I could stake a claim on one of my favorite movies before Dad could decide we should watch something we hadn’t seen two hundred times already. I don’t remember what movie I picked, but I remember pulling the generic brown container from behind the box so I could have it—at least for two nights. My father paid for my rental along with a few other movies. As he got change he asked, “Did you bring your quarter?”

  My panicked face told him all he needed to know. He gave me “my” quarter and I pushed it to the bottom of my jeans pocket. Safe. Secure. Mine.

  That night, we were heading back home when my father pulled off the street into a closed drive-in burger place. He put the car in park and held his breath as he gripped the steering wheel. I watched him breathe slowly. Deliberately. He put the car back in gear and pulled up to a car-side telephone booth. He dug in his pocket for a moment, then held his hand out. “Give me your quarter.”

  “No.” My hand reflexively went into my pocket and put a death grip around my personal artifact.

  “Give it here. I think I’m having a heart attack,” he said, straining his words.

  “No. It’s mine,” I said.

  He looked at me with pleading eyes. “Come on, I’ll get you another one. I need to call your mother.”

  “Dad, I earned it. It’s my special quarter and it’s mine.”

  He eyed me for a moment more, put the car in gear, and started driving again. I suppose he was heading to the hospital, forty-five minutes away, or at least home to get mother’s opinion before racking up emergency room bills. Twenty minutes after he started driving, we rolled off the road into a corn field. By the time the car stopped rolling, he had stopped breathing. I got out of the car and followed the road until I found a house. We called paramedics, but he was long dead by the time they arrived.

  I felt his death was my fault for a long time—that somehow I had killed him by not giving him my prized quarter. I don’t think that anymore. I think pride killed him. He was too proud to pry the quarter out of his self-centered son’s hands. My hands. He was too proud to force it from me so he could make a call to save his life and be in my life for years more. His pride killed him. My lif
e became marginally easier when I figured out my father’s death was his fault, not mine.

  That’s how my father died. At least, that is the story I tell myself. And the one I tell others. It’s a sad story, one that gets me sympathy, or at least pity for the death of my dad.

  The problem is, I lied about two things.

  The fateful drive home didn’t happen the same night as the trip to the Video Hut. Dad had his heart attack when I was twelve. I was nearly a teenager when I held back twenty-five cents and my father died for it. So yeah, I blamed myself for months, until I realized he was the adult, and he should have found a way to take take the coin from me. But I don’t want people to think badly of me, so I lie.

  The other thing I lied about: my father didn’t die of pride, he died of cowardice. He was too much of a coward to hit me across the jaw and take what he needed to survive.

  A year after his death, Mom and I stood by his gravestone. The dirt covering his grave had green grass growing on it, but the dent in the ground showed the burial was more recent than the plots around it. That’s the first time I told my mom, told anyone, about the quarter, and about the stop at a phone booth; no one else knew about that but me.

  I was thirteen and staring at my father’s grave the only time I said it out loud. “Dad died because he was a coward.” I shouldn’t have expected her to understand. I did. She didn’t.

  “Let’s go,” was all she said. We got in the car and my mother whipped out of the cemetery. It was mad driving. Sharp turns. My seat pushed my back as she accelerated and my seatbelt pressed into my chest as she braked. I expected to be grounded forever. In a way, that’s what happened. She dropped me off at the county sheriff’s station. I heard the word “abandonment” and “neglect” a lot the next few days. I never saw her again.

  I was in a temporary bedroom while my social worker met with my pseudo-parents in the kitchen. I pressed my ear against the air vent to hear their conversation. Turns out I was “free for adoption” because my mother “signed her rights away.” I also heard clearly when the foster parents said they were not interested in adopting someone my age. It was the same with the next family, and the next. And the next. They were all nice people, but the social worker’s quest to get me adopted had me passed around more than if she’d just accepted that no one would want an abandoned teenager.

  Almost no one. I did find a place while in one of many mandatory meetings with the school counselor. He kept pressing me to go to college, said my grades were good enough for a tech school. All the brochures had kids walking on campus in their designer clothes and designer smiles. It wasn’t me.

  Out of obstinance, I grabbed some pamphlets that looked like they'd been purposefully pushed to the back of the display. I held one up to Mr. Rodriguez. “I want to join the military,” I told him.

  “You? The military? No, you don’t want that. They’d tear you down until anything that is you is gone, so they can build you into something else.”

  I’d suggested the military to get under his skin, but his response was the most beautiful poetry I’d ever heard. To be torn apart from my life and built as a new person, free of my past, is exactly what I wanted.

  They didn’t change me, though. I wanted them to. I wanted boot camp to take me apart piece by piece and reassemble another person in my place. Instead, I took the test. I signed the forms. I went to recruit training. They couldn’t push me enough. Penalize me enough. Punish me enough to wash off the lingering guilt of losing my dad. And my mom.

  The end of training was near, and all the shaved heads were excited for a little R&R before being sent on assignment. I had nowhere to go. I asked for a meeting with Sergeant Phillips.

  “How ‘bout I take my leave here and clean the place up for the next newbs? I’ll work for my food, I promise.” Truth is, I had no idea what I would do if he said no.

  He reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a faded green file folder. A stack of labels, layer over layer, was at the top. Each layer held the name of a new recruit who had come through this camp before me—all except the top label. The name on the top position was my own. SANDERS, TRENT. He flipped it open and started reciting my history as if I didn’t know it.

  “Father dead at twelve. Mother abandoned you. Played the foster game but never got a home. Not bright. Not dumb. Nowhere to go, and even if you went, no one to miss you.” He peered up at me and said, “We have a name for people like you, son.”

  “Loser?”

  “Expendable.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “That too.”

  “You can stay put until you’re assigned, but I’m sending your name to our experimental division. They like people like you, people no one would miss.”

  There was nothing unfriendly in his offer, he was just stating a fact about my life. In turn, I answered with my own truth. “No one will.”

  Two weeks later I found myself in a room with eleven other guys. All of us were too young to sense the danger incumbent with the three-inch stack of paperwork we were signing. Too young to realize that asking us to change into dressing gowns before giving us the paperwork made us vulnerable, made us think giving ourselves over to be lab mice was a forgone conclusion. Made the paperwork a technicality to get through as quickly as possible.

  It’s funny that, as a child, I didn’t know the value of money. I would have given up a dollar bill for two pennies because two things are better than one. With experience, buying and selling, earning and budgeting, we learn to respect money in a way we couldn’t as children. Time is the same. When we’ve lived long enough, we grow to understand how precious life is. We watch people grow old, struggle against inevitability, and die. In turn, we start to tend to the limited gift of time we have left. Sitting in that room, each of us signed away the majority of our lives with a stroke of a pen because we weren’t old enough to know better.

  I lied about something else: It’s not funny at all.

  One by one we went into a small exam room. “We’re going to start with a physical,” Nurse Gretchen said, and started poking and prodding in all the places you don’t want to be poked and prodded. I can’t tell you the number of physicals I’d had in the previous six months so it was nothing new.

  “You look good,” she finally said.

  “Thanks,” I replied. She gave a courtesy smirk at the joke and started writing in a file.

  “Not even a laugh? Guess I need to be worried about what you guys are going to do to me.”

  This time, I didn’t even get a smirk. She kept writing in a crisp, new file. My name was clearly written on the original manila tab. The outside of the file had been custom imprinted too.

  DRJ

  Project #12

  Before I continue, I want you to imagine that in the next hour you will suddenly lose something precious to you. Something like your sight, or your hearing. Perhaps a loved one you thought in good health suddenly passes away. Perhaps you can even imagine this from experience. If you knew this life-changing thing was about to happen, you’d be doing something entirely different right now. But you don’t know, and there’s the rub. In a few years, you’ll look back to the time in your life the event happened and you can color it with all the emotions of your loss, but the truth is, until the second it happens, you have no idea the rest of your life is about to change and become irrevocably shaded by your new reality.

  So when I tell you about the singular moment that changed my life, forgive me if I am more emotional than you about it. I can pinpoint the moment my life was changed, and I feel sick when I remember it. I wince when I think of it, and many times I will go into a full-blown panic attack as I replay the event in my mind. My reaction is because I know, I know, if I had gotten up and left a second earlier, things would be different now.

  It was an injection. A simple needle of fluid pushed into my veins like so many inoculations I’d had before. Only this one contained the juice that would change me, change all twelve of us.

  “You can put
your clothes on. See you in a few days,” Gretchen told me. So easy. So nonchalant. I did as she said and wondered what would happen now. Truth is, nothing happened that day. Or the next. Or the next. All of us thought it was a pretty sweet gig; we got to work out, watch TV, and get a paycheck just for getting physicals every few days.

  Six months into the routine, things changed. We were all called to attention. A young wild-eyed man in a lab coat walked in front of us for inspection. He paused for ten minutes before each of us, but never checked our uniforms. He only looked at our faces, stared into our eyes. When he reached the end of the row, he gave his instructions.

  “Let’s start with number five. He’s the biggest,” the man said.

  “Yes, Dr. Jupiter,” the nurse replied, and started scribbling on a legal pad.

  I could count. I was the fifth one in line.

  “Trent, please come with me. Everyone else is relieved,” Nurse Gretchen announced, not appreciating how true her words were.

  We made our way through a hallway filled with doors marked DRJ Restricted. Each had a number, and we stopped at door eight. Dr. Jupiter typed a long string of numbers into a security lock, at least twenty digits long, and we walked in. It looked like a full university laboratory had been crammed into one room. There was a window showing a darkened room and a door to the left. The door was steel and the window had metal laced through it.

  “What’s that for?” I said. I wasn’t sure what bothered me more—having the secure room next to us, or that the reinforced glass had an obvious crack winding its way from top to bottom.

  “We never know the side effects,” the doctor said without looking at me.