A Mischief in the Woodwork - By Harper Alexander Page 0,73

and gone somewhere far away in his eyes. Some place of hate that did not exist in Manor Dorn? Some place far away simply to escape the reality of his close proximity to these things? He had left her alone thus far, though. Probably because he could never touch such a thing.

She was at peace on her cot, her covers fallen off of one shoulder, her hair sprung across the pillow. I knelt tentatively beside her, considering. Was this a violation I was about to partake in? Did the ability mean I was privileged, or ought I to treat it like a responsibility, a test, and practice discretion?

I had naught the answers, of course, to anything, and so I settled on going through with the experiment. I reached out, and very gently gripped her shoulder.

*

Discretion was not something dead to me, and so I did nothing with the things that I gleaned from Ombri that night. I told no one what I now knew, and it helped with the notion of violation. Her secrets were safe with me. I had done what I needed to investigate what I had brought into our midst, and now things could continue to develop naturally.

I by no means knew everything about her, but I had seen traces of where she came from and who she had been conditioned to be. I was left intrigued, for some of the glimpses I had certainly never expected and could not explain, but as far as I could glean I had at least not drawn something terrible after me by springing her from the prison-world and bringing her here.

When things began to come back to her and a meeting of sorts formed in the room to hear of it, my mind wandered. It was hard to say if it was because of the matching visions that came to me with her story or if it was because I felt a little guilty for already knowing, perhaps unworthy to hear it. I listened along with the others, but was not fully present.

“When the mischief got bad,” the girl said, “the masters removed themselves as best as they could from the infection. They retreated into hiding to preserve themselves, letting the brunt of survival fall to us.”

“They could never be the ones to face the infection head-on,” someone else said in understanding. “That fell to the slaves.”

“Better to compromise you,” someone else said.

“To me, less supervision meant...freedom,” Ombri said. “A chance to get away. So I ran away to the city. I survived there.”

“You lived in the city?”

She nodded. “I survived many shifts. At first, that's all I did – survive them. Then I got a feel for them. I began to ride them.”

“What do you mean 'ride' them?”

“I was good at it. It became like a...sport. I started to call myself 'Shifter'.”

For whose benefit? I wondered in a moment of lucidity. If she was out there all alone, there was no means to document 'calling' oneself anything. But I didn't know how long she lived out there, I reminded myself. One could grow very lonely out there, and begin to question their own motives for survival if they did not glorify their existence somehow.

But 'Shifter' she had been, and worthy of the title. My visions of such could attest to that. I had seen her, in my mind, riding the destructive evolution of the city like a dancer who could walk on water. Like a sport it had been, surfing the movement, always coming out on top.

“And how did you come to be in the snow?” someone prompted.

“A shift put me there,” Ombri responded. “It caught me sleeping, and I couldn't recover in time. I did try, but... this one was a wild stallion. It was not to be trifled with. I rode it, and fell from its back, and it slammed the door in my face.”

*

For the second time, I dreamed of elephants. They assaulted me, and I was forced to throw my hands up in defense, which brought on the visions as my fingers were pummeled by violent, leathery flesh. Two of the great creatures herded me into the city, causing shifts with their quaking steps. I fell to my knees, my hands hitting the ground, jarring the secrets of Dar'on through me. The elephants reared up and came down, one after the other, to pin my wings to the ground.

The shuffle of glossy feathers fell around me, free at my shoulders. They strained to a rest,