CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Beyond the Rainbow

EVERYTHING.

For the first time, April’s mind was wide open, letting every bit of Arthur’s consciousness into her own, a torrent that poured through the beautiful black flower and into her brain, bringing her . . .

Everything.

His senses, yes, flooding and keen and immediate. April was blind to her immediate surroundings, but she didn’t care. She could see what Arthur could see, and his sight was nothing short of astonishing. World altering. The colors! Shades her brain couldn’t name, new hues beyond the rainbow.

Arthur stood atop a workbench in Brian’s workshop, and through his eyes April had an extraordinary view, both panoramic and telescopic at once—the smallest details were drawn with a clarity she could hardly process. Across the room, on a box of cheesy crackers, she could read the ingredients: whey protein, cheese cultures, salt. At her feet—Arthur’s feet—was a pair of pliers, and the textured grip on the handles was so vivid it looked like a geometrically precise mountain range.

But it was far more than vision—those feet, just for starters. Now April knew what it truly meant to be passerine. As Arthur walked, she could feel his feet mirrored inside her own, the way they curled up when he took a step and pressed flat again when they hit the floor. Her thighs and neck pulsed with purpose as he walked. She felt his beak as if it were her own, smooth and strong and terribly toothless. So convincing was the illusion that she actually had to run a finger through her mouth, to assure herself that her teeth were still there.

“It’s incredible,” she whispered.

“I fixed it,” said Brian. “I did it.”

April managed to stagger to her feet, remembering her own muscles. She fought to regain her sight, and discovered she could force Arthur’s vision to fade until it was like a faint reflection on glass. Brian stood before her, gangly and dumbfounded.

“You did do it,” she told him. “You more than fixed it. I can . . . see. I can feel. I can . . . everything.” She laughed messily, snorting back her tears. “This is what I was missing. This is what was gone. All this time.”

“If you could explain, please, Keeper,” Mr. Meister said. “It happened so fast, I could not catch it all.”

She tried to explain. “It was only emotions before,” she said. “I know that now. I mean . . . I think maybe I was good at it, figuring out what certain emotions meant. It was detective work. But now!” She hiccupped another sloppy laugh, and just then Arthur spotted a dirty scrap of canvas on the floor in the next room. She saw it, so keenly she could have counted the fibers, then felt the swell of curiosity from Arthur. A stab of intention. She leaned down—no, he leaned down; she was only feeling his movements in her muscles, a sensation she would have to learn to ignore. He plucked the canvas deftly from the ground. Oily bitterness between her toothless jaws. A pungent sting.

“Oh, god, that’s terrible,” she said, thankful that birds didn’t have very many taste buds. “Why would you want that in your mouth?”

“You’re sensing what Arthur senses,” Horace said. “Right now. You can . . . taste what he tastes.”

April nodded. “Yes, and I can see what he sees. Hear what he hears. He hears you, Horace. I can hear you twice.” She broke into girlish laughter as her own voice echoed in her head. “I can hear myself! You probably think I’m crazy, don’t you?” And then a new sensation crackled through the synapses of her brain, shocking and familiar, freezing her. She processed it, tears welling in her eyes, and then she whirled and wrapped Brian in a fierce embrace. “Thank you,” she murmured sloppily into his shoulder.

“It’s cool,” Brian said. “It’s good.” He patted her awkwardly on the back, but she didn’t care if it was awkward. She clung to him, sobbing and laughing, hardly able to believe it.

Because another new realm made itself known to her now too, one beyond senses, a realm she hadn’t even thought to imagine.

Memory.

The sound of her own voice in Arthur’s ears had triggered it. “Don’t you?” And with those words a memory blossomed inside her—not her own memory, but Arthur’s—a memory of the day she’d released him from the pen at Doc Durbin’s house. The oppressive confines of the cage. Her own crooked face, leaning down, offering a delicious chunk of brown food. The wire mesh of the door. Dontchoo? Hope and gratitude. Glorious freedom. The scene flared bright and true, as real as any recollection of her own, and then faded. She tried to relive it again, but couldn’t quite grab hold. It wasn’t a video she could replay, but more like a messy collage, a shifting jumble of sensation and emotion. She understood that she couldn’t force it, any more than she could force a cloud into a specific shape.

She let go of Brian. It was almost too much, all these new oceans of awareness. Her head throbbed dully—in a good way, not a bad way, but still she was glad Arthur was the only animal nearby. “Thank you,” she said again, and again: “Thank you.”

Mr. Meister cleared his throat. “I must thank you too, Keeper,” he said to Brian. “With all the years I have on me, rarely do I witness something I have never seen before. But reconnecting a daktan—truly a remarkable accomplishment.”

Brian untangled himself from April. “Wait . . . this was the first time you’ve seen someone do that?”

“Indeed.”

“But you told me it could be done. I figured you were speaking from experience.”

Mr. Meister nodded. “Yes. I was speaking from my experience with you.” He stepped past Brian, leaving him open-mouthed, and leaned in close to April.

“My congratulations, Keeper,” Mr. Meister said.

“Thank you,” April replied vaguely. The old man was hazy, seen through the glass of Arthur’s sight in the other room. She was finding it hard to resist the raven’s magnificent vision.

Mr. Meister seemed to notice. “Your eyes,” he said. “Am I right in thinking that you are concentrating on Arthur?”

“Partly, yes. He’s on one of Brian’s workbenches.” April shifted her weight from foot to foot. “I can feel it under him—it’s slippery. He’s got a piece of wire and he’s bending it. Just for fun.” She frowned and spread her mouth wide, then ran a finger across the tops of her teeth again. “Beaks feel weird. I had no idea.”

Abruptly Arthur let out a series of alien-sounding calls, like knocking on wood—tok, tok, tok. “Whoa!” April cried, clutching her throat, as the calls seemed to rattle inside her own voice box. Then she laughed. “I’m sorry, this is kind of overwhelming. I’m being ridiculous right now.”

“Not ridiculous at all, under the circumstances,” Mr. Meister said. “Your Tan’ji is whole again. At last you can take a deep breath, yes? You can open your eyes all the way, flex your muscles to the fullest. You are, if I may say it, your complete self.”

“My complete self,” April repeated. She pulled back from Arthur and focused on the old man’s face. “I suppose I owe you one now.”

Mr. Meister waved this off with a look of disgust. “A crude suggestion.”

“You did me this favor, though. This . . . incredible favor.”

“We do not do favors. We do what is best. If you want to repay us, repay us with silence about what has transpired here this evening. There are some secrets that must never see the light of day.”

April looked at Brian. He shrugged, holding out his pale arms, and said, “Literally.”

“I won’t tell anyone,” April said, wondering if this truly meant what she thought it meant. Did Brian really never leave the Warren? And maybe it was the heavy joy of the vine’s power unleashed that made her say what she said next, or maybe it was a sense of belonging that she couldn’t quite explain—or maybe it was the sight of pale, skinny Brian standing there, having just given her the greatest gift of her life, standing there making who knew what sacrifices in the name of this war she didn’t fully understand. Where had he come from? What had he left behind? Isabel’s words returned to her: “You are Tan’ji now. Things can’t be the way they were.”

“I’m going to join you,” she blurted out. “If that’s still okay.”

Brian beamed. Mr. Meister took a deep breath and smiled and said, “Far more than okay.”

April turned to Horace and Chloe. She knew Horace wanted her to stay—that was obvious—but Chloe was another story. “My brother is the only family I have, and I think I’m about to leave him,” April said. She looked pointedly at Chloe. “It would help to know that I’m going somewhere I’ll be welcome, at least.”

Chloe rolled her eyes. “Look, it’s fine,” she growled. “We’re all Tan’ji. We all have the same enemy. So just be here already.”

“Thank you,” April said. She stepped forward and held out her hand, not even sure why she was doing it, but knowing—for some strange reason—that it was this fierce girl’s respect she wanted most of all.

Reluctantly, Chloe took the offered hand and gave it a single shake, muttering, “Sometimes I think I should just keep my mouth shut.”

“I often feel the same,” Mr. Meister said with an enigmatic twinkle, and then clapped his hands together before Chloe could react. “Excellent,” he said. “Come, we have much to discuss. Tomorrow Beck will take April home so she can make arrangements with her family. I’ll arrange for an escort.” He swept past them, out into Brian’s workshop, leaving them to follow.

As April entered the workshop, she got a shock that froze her in her tracks—the sight of herself, through Arthur’s eyes. It was both unspeakably horrible and indescribably wonderful. The bad part was how glaring her flaws were. The pimples on her chin and high on her forehead looked actually like pizza. Her hair, unwashed for a few days now, looked as greasy as meat. But her eyes glowed, dazzling her, lit with flecks of color that didn’t exist in the human world.

Arthur cooed at her, discordant and gargling. For a moment she thought maybe he could sense the change in the vine, but no—the connection remained a one-way street. She was a listener, not a talker, and that was just the way she liked it. She walked over to him where he stood on the workbench and knelt down close. She caught a glimpse of the vine, with the newly attached flower, gazing both into his eyes and through them at her own. Her irises were sculptures made of string and sand. Colors beyond the rainbow. Reflections within reflections. She stared so long she almost forgot it was herself she was looking at. “I wish you all could see yourselves this way,” she murmured.

“By the Loom,” Mr. Meister said, “very few will ever have the chance.”

April stood, blinking the spectacle away. “What do you mean?”

Mr. Meister tugged at his vest. “Empaths are not uncommon. However, in my experience, most are quite weak and—at least from our perspective—not particularly useful. They are able to sense the location and basic disposition of living creatures, but little else. Historically speaking, in fact, most empaths used their power for hunting.” He shook his head wonderingly. “Your instrument, however—if you’ll allow me the pun—seems to be quite a different animal. I have never heard of anything like the sensory precision you’re experiencing. Part of this is due to the instrument itself, no doubt. But part of it must be due to you.”

“Well, I don’t know about any of that,” said April, feeling suddenly self-conscious. She let Arthur nip lightly at her fingertip, marveling at the sensation of toothlessly biting herself—which probably wasn’t helping her self-consciousness much. She tucked her hands into her pockets. “I just wish it had a name. Everyone else’s instruments have such cool names.”

“Not all Tan’ji have names,” said Mr. Meister. “Nonetheless, yours certainly deserves one. Who better to name it than yourself?”

“Me?” April said. “No, I can’t name it. That would be like . . .”

“Naming your own hand,” Chloe said.

“Exactly.”

Arthur squawked amiably and fluffed out all his feathers, ballooning briefly to twice his size. April had to practically bite her tongue to keep from crying out—it was like the worst case of goose bumps ever. Arthur shuffled across the workbench and picked up a washer with his beak. After a brief burst of curious mischief, he tossed it over the edge, where it hit the floor and began to roll. Everyone’s heads turned to follow it—everyone’s but April’s, that is.

“You guys would not believe how well I can see,” she murmured, watching the washer flash and wobble and fall through Arthur’s eyes. “How well he can see. It’s like binoculars on steroids.”

“The Ravenvine,” Brian said suddenly. Now everybody turned to look at him. “What?” he said. “April doesn’t want to name her Tan’ji. So who better than the guy who fixed it?”

“The Ravenvine,” April murmured. “That’s actually . . . pretty good.”

Arthur opened his beak wide and bobbed his head, his throat pulsing. “Purtygud,” he cawed. “Purtygud purtygud.”

“See?” Brian said. “Even the bird likes it. And since when did a bird ever steer a Warden wrong?”