Chapter 15: Oh, Oops

Stepping forward with no hesitance at all, I headed for the turning stone.

“Where are you going?” Kegan asked, glancing in the direction I was heading.  “Wait — no!”

Her parents caught on a second later.

“No!”

“Lisette, no!”

Too late.  I was already brushing the stone with the edge of my sleeve.  I shifted to half-form, and the turning stone helpfully disappeared inside me.

“Of all the stupid —!” Kegan’s mom shouted.

“You do realize that was the trap, right?!” Kegan’s dad yelled.

“I came here to untaint a very special tainted turning stone,” I said.  “Now I have.  Don’t worry, I’m not gonna let it go until we’re in a place to contain it.  Let’s go look for the hostages.”

I tried to take a step forward, and couldn’t.  My arm was stuck in midair, in the same position it had been in when I’d brushed my sleeve against the turning stone.  I yanked harder, but no.  I was stuck.  It was almost like the turning stone was refusing to budge from its spot, even though it was now trapped inside me.

“Okay, maybe you go look for the hostages,” I said, trying to seem totally cool and not worried at all.

“Lisette!” Kegan screamed.

“What in the world is a blue turning stone?” her dad muttered, swiping the screen of his phone.  “No hits on Ghoulgle . . . oh, there’s one . . . no, that’s a fantasy book . . .”

“I really hope,” Kegan’s mom said darkly, “you’re going to be able to live to regret that.”

“I thought it through,” I said defensively.  “There’s nowhere to hide hostages here, except maybe underground or inside the hill.  There was no sign of an entrance, just the blue turning stone.  They wouldn’t have left it out in plain sight if there was a way to rescue the hostages without it.  And we’ve only got a few minutes left, so there was no point in wasting time arguing.”

I wrenched my arm again, but it wouldn’t move.

“We have twenty-four minutes,” Kegan’s father said testily.  “We could have spent one of those minutes discussing things.  Besides, nothing has changed, aside from your being stuck.”

“Yeah, that’s weird,” I agreed.  “I’ll let go of it, and we’ll see if it works if I come at it from a different angle.”

“No —!” Kegan’s mom said.

Too late.  As I shifted back to human, I felt a rush of energy go through me.  It wasn’t unpleasant — in fact, it reminded me of a sugar rush after eating a candy bar.

The turning stone dropped from its spot and rolled down the hill to the ground, slowly swirling from blue to green.

“Lisette!” Kegan gasped.

I looked up and took a step backwards.  All around us, where there had been nothing, there were now murky images appearing.

“What in the world . . .?” Kegan’s mother murmured.

“What the —?” Kegan’s dad said.

“What?” Georgie asked from Kegan’s pocket.  “Can I see?”

“Shh!  No!” Kegan hissed.

But a gnat-sized speck flew out of her pocket and hovered in midair anyway.

Tiny houses blurred into view all around us.  They were made out of logs and only tall enough to have one story.  There was an oddly gigantic haystack off to the side.

People blurred in around us, too.  There were women with long dresses down to their ankles, men with tall boots, and the children were wearing similarly old-fashioned —

One of the children saw us and screamed.

The adults saw us, and there was a stampede of desperate screams and stampedes for the turning stone.

“What have you done?!” one of the men shouted, grabbing Kegan’s dad by the shirt.  “What have you done?!”

He had a strange accent that I couldn’t place.

“What have we done?” Kegan’s dad asked, gasping for breath while being shaken.  “I don’t know what just happened!”

“The stone!” one of the women shrieked in an accent that was just as thick, picking up the turning stone with her bare hands.  It was now entirely green.  “They stole it!”

“We didn’t steal it.  It’s right there,” I said.  “And, um, wasn’t it tainted?”

“Tainted?!” the man holding Kegan’s dad’s shirt screamed.  He let go of the shirt and rounded on me.  “Don’t you know that tainted turning stones are pink?!”

“So . . . does that mean you’re not hostages?”

“Hostages?!”  The man’s face turned bright red.

“That wasn’t a no.”

“NO!”

“Okay, that was one.”

Phooey.  I’d been really looking forward to being the hero again.  Now it looked like I’d just messed things up instead.

I didn’t have any choice, I reminded myself.  If I hadn’t come, Rodrigo would have gotten hostages up here for real, and everything would have gone the same way.

Rodrigo was such a jerk.

Come to think of it, maybe I needed to be a little bit less predictable.

“I’m sorry,” I said, because I was.  “We were just told there were hostages here, so we came to rescue them.  Are there?”

“No,” the man in front of me snarled.  “There are not.  Who told you lies about us?  Who knew we were here?”

“A bad person called Rodrigo,” I said.  “Do you know him?”

Blank stares met the name.

A silver-haired man with a long silver beard moved through the crowd and pushed aside the angry man in front of us.  He looked about eighty, and for some reason, he reminded me of my grandfather.  “If they’re telling the truth, one of us must have told that man where we are.  Are you telling the truth?” he added sharply.

“I never lie!” I shot back.

The man stared at me for a long moment, and little hairs rose at the back of my neck.  I had the distinct impression that I was standing in front of a dangerous predator.  Did he have some power to read minds, or something?

Well, if he did, he would see that I was telling the truth.  I met his gaze and refused to flinch.

The silver-haired man broke our stare and looked back to the others gathered behind him.  “I believe she’s telling the truth.  We will have to find the traitor once the stone is mended.  We cannot have an incident like this repeated.”

Grim nods came from all the adults.  A curious child peeked at me from behind his mother’s skirt.

I waved, hoping the tension was over now.

Maybe now they would explain what was going on, why they all had weird accents and dressed in clothes that looked like they wanted to put on a performance of the first Thanksgiving.

Was this a living history museum, like Plymermaid Plantation?  Was it a Renaissance fair?  Were they LARPing?  But if it was one of those things, why had they hidden it?

I didn’t wonder how.  I knew how.  It was obvious they had been hidden with illusion, which meant someone here was either a rakshasa or had a power similar to theirs.

“Which one of you touched the stone?” the silver-haired man demanded, turning around to face again.

For some reason, the way he was speaking, minus the accent, reminded me of Georgie’s grandfather now, even though Georgie’s grandpa and my grandpa had totally different personalities.  Why was this guy reminding me of both of them?

What did our two grandpas have in common, other than being clan leaders?

. . . Oh.  Duh.

The silver-haired man was acting like a clan leader.

If that was true, everyone here was part of the same clan, which would make sense in a tiny village.  Maybe they were like Georgie’s werevulture clan had been a few decades ago.  Maybe they were hiding to protect their safety.

Maybe they were werevultures!

“Are you werevultures?!” I burst out.

The silver-haired man’s eyes barely flickered.  “We don’t answer questions about our species.  Who touched the stone?”

“Why do you want to know?” Kegan’s mother demanded.

“You’re the ones who stole from us,” the man said coolly.  “You’re the ones who’ll be answering the questions.  Who touched the stone?”

“If we took something, I assure you, it was unintentional, and we’ll return it,” Kegan’s dad said quickly.

“Yes, I assure you, you will,” the man who was probably a clan leader said flatly.  “Who touched the stone?”

I looked around nervously.  Kegan’s parents were on edge.  Kegan shifted in place uneasily.  The gnat-sized speck by her shoulder zoomed off into the crowd.

Should I answer? I wonder.

“We need to know why you’re asking,” Kegan’s mother said.

The silver-haired man said, very flatly, “If you tell us the truth, we will only have to kill one of you.  If you don’t tell us who did it, we will have to kill all of you.”

Kegan gasped.

I gaped at the man in horror.

Kegan’s mother’s eyes went dark.

Kegan’s father’s face turned bright red.

“How dare you threaten us?” Kegan’s father snarled.

An ugly murmur swept throughout the crowd, and several other men stepped threateningly forward.

The clan leader held up a hand to stop them.

“It is not a threat,” he said.  “It is a simple statement of fact.  In order to replace what has been stolen, it will require the life of the one who took it.  I’m not happy about that fact, but it is a fact, not something which can be negotiated.  And if what was stolen is not returned, many more people will die.  That is also a fact.”

My mouth felt dry.  So this was Rodrigo’s trap.  Of course he’d known I’d try to untaint a turning stone if he called it “tainted.”  There was no way I’d leave something I thought was tainted alone.

And he must have known my shifting that blue turning stone inside me would work exactly the same way as touching it.

And he must have known that would result in . . . whatever I had accidentally done.

And he must have realized I wouldn’t be able just to run away if innocent people’s lives were at stake.

“Can you at least tell us what we took?” Kegan’s dad asked.

The clan leader’s eyes were hard.  “No.”

“It was me,” I said, raising my hand.  “I touched the stone.”

“No, it was me!” Kegan’s parents both said simultaneously.

“No, it wasn’t, you guys!  It was that hiker guy who ran away right before we got here!” Kegan yelled.  “Remember?!”

Really smooth, Kegan.  If I hadn’t been so terrified, I would’ve giggled at her ridiculously obvious lie.

Nobody laughed.

“I’m sorry,” the silver-haired man said, looking at me.  There was pity in his eyes.  “I really am.  But it has to be returned.  You understand why.”

“I — I do,” I said.  I swallowed.  “I get that.  I’m willing, and all.  But I’m the only member of my species.  If I don’t turn someone before I die, my whole species will go extinct, and my species is the only one that can stop the bad guys.  If — if you have someone here who’ll volunteer, I can do it right now, so that you don’t have to let me out of your sight.  I promise, I won’t try to escape.  I just have to turn somebody first.”

To my humiliation, my voice cracked.  I wanted to sound cool and noble and heroic, and instead, I sounded pathetic.  What a way to die.

There was silence.  Nobody answered.

I could feel my breathing get faster and faster.  My heart was pounding so loudly, I could hear it in my ears.

“That sounds reasonable,” the clan leader said.  “You have my permission to use our turning stone.  If one person volunteers, you may turn them.  If that person winds up becoming your species, yours will perpetuate.  If that person does not, they will remain with us, as planned.  Do you agree?”

“But . . .” I faltered.

But that’s not what I’m asking!  The chances are seventy percent they’ll wind up your species, and only thirty percent they’ll wind up mine!  I asked to ACTUALLY perpetuate my species, not to TRY!

“We don’t have to make a compromise,” the clan leader said.  “You’re the one in the wrong.  I could easily kill you right now.  What I am offering you now is the most I will give you.  Do you accept?”

My mind raced.  Did I accept?  What if the turning went wrong, like Georgie’s had?  It wasn’t guaranteed to turn out how I wanted it to, no matter how desperate I was.  Besides, I didn’t even know for sure if my dying was necessary!  Maybe there was some way to fix this that they hadn’t even thought of, and if they just told us what had happened, we could find some other way!

A bug whizzed past my face, and I realized an instant later that the speck was probably not a gnat, it was Georgie.

Then his voice whispered in my ear, “Don’t worry, they can’t actually kill you.  They’re acting all scary, but we can run from them easily.  I checked.  They’re all fauns.  They all have goat hooves.”

My throat constricted.  I answered before I could stop myself.

“THEY’RE ALL BAOBHAN SITHS?!”