Chapter Three

Watching Ambrosia walk away was awful, especially when she wasn’t just going to the human world to buy us treats. She headed in the opposite direction where Hermes always delivered her orders to her once every hundred years or so. I wondered if she got a letter from him about her retirement. How did that work, anyway? Did she send a letter to whoever was the boss of this whole thing and tell him she wanted to leave us, or had something else happened?

            Clutching onto the sleeve of Gale’s jacket, I tried not to cry as she left us. She lasted longer than most. It was silly to hope that she would stay with us forever, but I had wanted her to. As the youngest, it was hard to relate to any of my siblings sometimes. Even Gale had moments where he saw me as a pest. Ambrosia always listened to me with a gentle smile on her aged face. It was like she understood how I felt. Maybe she was a younger sister once too.

            She disappeared from view and Hermes stepped out of the white mist that separated us from whatever was on the other side. He smiled as he jogged over, a bag strapped over his shoulder as always. Hermes straightened his hat, the tips of his dark brown curls peeking out from under the brim, and flashed us all a smile. His green eyes lit up like they always did as he took us in. He looked younger than Alexon, whom I was guessing was about…

            I had no idea. Everyone I was ever around looked the same for hundreds of years, but Ambrosia told me it wasn’t that way in the human world.

            Hermes held out an envelope and flashed another smile at our new guardian. “Burn these when you’re done,” he warned. The bite in his tone didn’t match the pleasant smile on his face. It never did when guardians first came. He made sure to threaten them in the nicest way possible.

            Alexon nodded absently, looking at the heavy yellow envelope in his hands. Leaning over, I tried to read the barely legible words scrawled over the front. They were pretty and intricate, but I didn’t understand why anyone would want to write something someone had to strain their eyes to read.

            “Thank you,” Alexon replied, flashing a smile of his own at the messenger.

            In the next instant, Hermes was gone just as suddenly as he appeared in front of us. Alexon flipped the envelope over in his hands and read the words on the back written in bold, jagged lettering. He jerked it away from my face before I could read them, his own completely expressionless.

            Studying the side of his face with the scar, I informed him that he was starting to grow fur. He gave me a disgruntled look and rubbed his hand along the side of his face, frowning slightly. Since he didn’t seem all that concerned, it was obviously a normal thing…

            “How old are you?” I questioned curiously, peering up at his face.

            Arching a brow, he asked, “How old do I look?”

            This was a bad question to ask. Even my siblings weren’t trying to jump into the conversation. Scrunching my brow in concentration, I looked him over, trying to decide. How did humans age?

            Deciding to guess at it, I replied uncertainly, “Three hundred?”

            His jaw dropped and he recoiled like I just slapped him. For the life of me I couldn’t understand his reaction, three hundred was very young…it was the same amount of years Ambrosia had been with us. Wouldn’t the people dictating who got to be guardians pick someone who was born around the same time that our guardian was instated so they could train them?

            Clearing his throat, he gave me a harsh look. Surprised and more than a little scared, I clung to Gale, pressing my face against his shoulder. “I’m twenty-eight,” he responded hotly, his actions rough as he walked toward where I was standing with my brother. “How old are you?”

            It took a lot of thought. How many hundreds did it take to make a thousand? And how many years had there been since I woke up here next to Gale? I couldn’t remember, so I did the only thing that made sense...

            I closed my eyes and liquefied myself.

            One moment I was standing there looking as humanlike as I ever did, and the next I was a blob of water crashing to the ground in a puddle. Parts of me splashed onto the blue pants that covered half of Alexon’s big, black boots. The rest of me was hidden in the folds of my silvery-blue dress that fell to the ground the moment I changed.

            Getting momentum to roll away from someone is next to impossible when you are nothing more than a puddle stuck in the valley between two hills, but it gets easier when you have a brother willing to help you with a few heavy gusts of wind.

            Before I knew it, I was at the creek. A little bit of my supply was lost on slopes and our new guardian’s clothes, but I was mostly intact. Rolling into the water, I manifested my more solid form and curled my legs up against my chest to hide the expanse of my exposed bluish skin. One of our guardians told me I looked like a corpse. She then went on to explain that that was a dead body. I hadn’t been able to look at myself for nearly a century afterwards.

            A bird flew over my head, following a formation that was nearly gone by the time it took off the ground. I felt a little like that bird. Like something had gone on without me and now I was trying to catch up. Unlike that bird, I would never be fast enough to reunite with whatever it was that I lost. He would rejoin his flock while I sat here in the creek with little fish swimming around me as I watched our little world go by as it always did, barely big enough to contain all of us.

            After a few minutes, I really wanted to go for a swim, but the lake had some kind of ward around it that kept me from entering. The last time I tried I wound up in a puddle on the ground for a very long time before I could find my bearings again and recreate myself. That was the only time I ever tried swimming in the lake. After that I spent most of my time drifting along in the creek or swimming in the river on the opposite end of the forest.

            The end where our new guardian was at this moment…

            With going back out of the question, I let myself fall apart in a splash that made enough noise that someone on the other side of the trees would have heard me. There wasn’t anyone there. I would have heard someone approaching or felt their eyes watching me.

            Somewhere in the distance, a stampede started. I felt the ground shake underneath thundering hooves. They ran across the creek; across me. Being stepped on was an interesting sensation. It didn’t hurt like Ambrosia and so many others before her first assumed. To be honest, it was more of a tickling, stirring sensation that left me dazed as to which way was up, much the same as I felt when I was trying to get into that lake except it didn’t last nearly as long.

            By the way the wind whistled overhead, it was easy to guess what had caused the animals to flee. That and the fact that riding on that heavy wind was my brother. Ambrosia bought me something called a boogie board on one of her trips to the human world, but I had no use for it and Gale had taken it when I told him how bad I felt about not having a need for her gift. Now he flew overhead using it as a horseless chariot, arching over the sky on wind that felt almost Arctic from its intensity.

            He looked down at the spot I usually was, but even Gale could not find me among the small oasis I blended with. Without pausing, he continued on in pursuit of his prey, obviously playing a game since I knew for a fact he could have caught them by now. How cruel he was to make them believe they had a fighting chance.

            The wind sent me crashing against the shore, but still I stayed where I was, more than content to spend the remainder of the day drifting along the creek in peace. Losing myself in the soft babble the water made as it fell over the pebbles and the gentle tug as I was carried downstream, I tried to let go of all of the negativity that I felt just a few moments ago. It was moments, wasn’t it? It was so easy to lose track of time when I was in this state.

            A song caught my attention on the bank and I listened intently, but I couldn’t put a name to the tune, meaning it was a human song. The voice that sang it was gruff and off key, but it was still nice to hear something new. I came to a stop when I reached a boulder that was big enough for me to hide behind.

            Reforming myself, I walked in a half crouch until I was certain that no one could see me. When I peeked over the rock, I saw the strangest thing; the portal to the human world was open and music that sounded like some kind of wailing animal drifted through into ours.

            Creeping closer but still keeping myself hidden behind a bush, I stared through the portal at the indecently dressed women and the men who sat in strange, backless chairs drinking liquid the color of tree sap. In the midst of all of it was Alexon talking to a group of ruffians. One of them slapped his shoulder none too gently and laughed loud enough that I could hear it over the odd, ear-splitting music.

            A blonde woman sauntered up, batting her lashes at our guardian. He offered her a closed-mouth smile that looked more polite than anything else and turned back to the rough-looking group of men. There were three of them that I could see, all of them with the markings Alexon declared tattoos scrawled over parts of their exposed skin.

            Even though the portal was open, no one seemed to notice that there was a forest in their mead hall. They talked and chattered while the group of men on stage played strange instruments that I couldn’t recall ever seeing before today.

            Taking a step out of the cover of the forest, I walked closer to the portal, awed by what I saw on the other side. My hand reached out, fingers outstretched with the want to see more of this alien realm.

            Just when I was getting close enough to go through, Alexon’s eyes moved to where I was and he scowled again, bidding the men adieu. With a gulp, I moved back away from the opening as he stormed toward me, his eyes darkening the closer he got.

            When he was through, the portal shut quickly with a little popping noise and he stood before me, crossing his muscular arms over his chest. He looked like he wanted to hurt me. My mind darted back to when the man hurt Spectra. When we found them, he was on top of her and looked like he was trying to eat her face while she struggled underneath him. He was our first and last male human guardian. Our main overseers (whom I once heard Hermes refer to as gods) never sent another one until now.

            “I’m sorry,” I hurried to say, backing up toward the bush. He eyed me, scowl deepening.

            Harshly, he asked me, “Did you plan on going through there naked?” Looking down at myself, I frowned. What was wrong with being naked? Most of the women I saw were just a few scraps of thin material away from it. “Plus, there’s no way you’d fit in, look at you.” He gestured to my body, eyes raking over me with a snarl painted on his lips, and I knew what he was referring to. My skin tone, my hair, my eyes…everything.

            Tears jumped into my eyes, an unwelcome reaction to the truth of his words. Turning my head away from him so he wouldn’t see my response, I backed away, sidestepping towards the creek. Towards safety. The waters never judged. They let anyone in. My feet hit the pebbled bottom one after another, sliding across the slick floor.

            “Where are you going?” he demanded, walking forward brusquely.

            Making the mistake of looking at him, I saw the anger drain from his face as the first tear slid unbidden from my eye. With a wobbly smile I closed my eyes and, for the second time since meeting this man, fell into a puddle, making my way back upstream like some salmon going to spawn.

            “Wait!” he shouted, but I was already gone.

            Not even a second later I heard Gale’s light voice explain, “She’s very sensitive.”