Page 14

Chapter 14

RICKY

I think Jason was too in shock for the next several minutes to do more than follow his father’s lead. He, Bo, remained human looking, while Jason didn’t seem capable yet and was still in tree form, as we were brought through the monster realm woods to a nearby encampment. A village. Actually, the coolest freaking village I’d ever seen.

The kappa kingdom had been miraculous, all crystal and water, but this was equally beautiful like some high fantasy city for elves. Their homes were built into the trees, built out of the trees, as if they had manipulated the trees to grow doors and windows and bridges from one to the next, all the way from the forest floor to the treetops.

There were even more of these monsters to fill the village, of all ages, shapes, and varying colors of tree bark and flowers in their antlers. As scared as I had been to have so many of them converging on us without warning, being among them in a peaceful, homelike setting, put me immediately at ease.

“Don’t let them take you anywhere alone,” Jensen Senior whispered to his son.

At least I didn’t think he was stupid enough to try something.

Hopefully.

“Mr. Jensen? Colt?”

As we neared the seeming center of the village, another human was suddenly running toward us.

“Ellen?” Colt exclaimed.

She raced right up to them, hugging Colt and his father. That must be Ellen Moyer, the most recent to have gone missing. I knew not only from her name, but because the shirt she wore was red and black plaid like the piece of fabric we found that first night, only where it was torn, new fabric had been weaved in to fix it, not plaid but still reddish fibers.

“More?” someone else said, and from where Ellen had appeared came four more humans. Meaning five in total, the exact number reported missing. And they all looked perfectly safe, clean, and healthy.

“There is usually a different protocol when someone new arrives.” Bo turned to us. “But may I speak with you alone, Jason?”

“Ricky too,” Jason said, keeping his hold on me. He hadn’t let me stray from his side the whole way.

“Of course. You will be taken care of,” Bo said to the Jensens.

“What does that mean?” Jensen Senior growled.

“Oh can it, Mark, these people are friendly,” someone else said, but I didn’t get to hear anything else of the exchange, because Bo led me and Jason into one of the buildings at the base of a nearby tree.

Maybe instead of an elven village, it was also like a hobbit hole. Within the hollowed-out tree home, it was cozy and warm. Everything was made out of the available natural materials, but that still meant seating, blankets, books, even art on the walls. The door had been tall enough that Jason hadn’t needed to duck, and everything was a little oversized to accommodate how big this species was, making human Bo look a little diminutive in his own… home, I assumed?

When he’d turned human, he hadn’t been left naked. He wore a simple shirt and trousers like villager garb from a Renaissance fair.

“How do I, um… be me again?” Jason asked once we were alone with Bo. Though Bo had gestured for us to sit, Jason hadn’t moved far from inside the door, still holding tight to me. “It feels different than when I’ve looked like this at home.”

“Being here, your body wants to retain its form that is most connected to nature,” Bo explained. “But the principles are the same. However you willed yourself to look human before, you still can. You might just need a little boost.” He smiled and came back toward us. Jason tensed a little but let his father press a hand to his chest.

Slowly, Jason’s form wilted, shrinking and shifting back to how he had been before we got sucked into the monster realm. He reached up to hold his father’s hand to his chest and looked down at himself. “My clothes came back.”

They had. I hadn’t registered that his already torn clothing hadn’t simply torn more when he transformed at our arrival. They had somehow disappeared into him? Transformed with him? I wasn’t sure which, but now that he was human, his tatters were back.

“Oh, Jason.” Bo chuckled. “I have so many questions for you. You look so much like your mother.”

“She always says I look like you.” Jason was clearly still in partial shock, but he let go of Bo’s hand and said, “My questions first. That day in the woods, one of these things took you? Turned you into one of them? Which one—”

“Jason, I didn’t need to be turned into anything. I got sucked home. I was born here.”

“What…?”

Again, Bo gestured for us to sit. This time, we did, with Bo in a chair and us on something like a sofa, while Jason clung to my hand still like he couldn’t handle this if our skin stopped touching.

Jason shook his head. “You… you were a monster all along, and you never told Mom?”

“I wanted to. Every time I thought I’d finally gotten up the nerve, she’d say I love you for the first time. Or propose. Did you know your mother asked me to marry her ?”

“Yeah. Because she told me . She told me everything. You didn’t even tell her the truth about what you were after she had me?”

Bo did look a lot like Jason, his hair a little longer, his face a little more aged and covered in scruff, but his eyes especially were so much the same, bright blue, and deeply haunted. “Everything about the pregnancy was so normal by human standards. I thought, maybe, because I was human when we… were together, maybe you wouldn’t be like me at all. Maybe you’d just be human. And I didn’t know then if I’d ever get the chance to see home again. Your world didn’t know about mine. I know it does now from our recent visitors, but at the time, it all would have been so much more alien to her, to everyone. So I thought… maybe I’ll be human too. I was so afraid I’d lose her if I told her and showed her the truth.”

“I guess I can… understand that.” Jason glanced at me.

I squeezed his hand.

“But now there are official portals.” Jason turned back with a scowl. “Stable ones. You never tried to come home to us? Why would you, when this is your real home—”

“ No ,” Bo said with an assertive lean toward Jason. “My real home is wherever you and your mother are. I did try to find a way back. The unstable portal on this side, even when it was active, never allowed me to pass back through. I tried. It was what brought me to the human realm originally, but completely by accident. I never knew how, and I could never recreate the conditions that made it work both directions. When it acts up on this side, it only causes a shock to anyone who nears it. I promise, I promise you I tried.” He reached for Jason’s other hand, and Jason let him take it.

“How, um, did you learn to look human at all?” Jason asked.

“I was in those woods, hiding what I was, watching people from the trees, for several weeks before I was able to take human form and blend in.”

“But you had a social security number. A past.”

“Boris Bosco was a real man once. He died, alone, without friends or family. Since he had no one to mourn him, I took over his life. My name is Bo, just not Boris. It’s Bodhi. It seemed like fate when I found his body, complete with ID and the keys to his home. I vowed to make the most of my new life, for his sake and mine. But it didn’t feel like a life until I met your mother.

“I tried everything to get home to you both, Please believe that. But while our part of the woods here is safe, everything surrounding this village is very dangerous. Anyone who has ventured too far out never returns. I still tried. I thought perhaps there were other portals, stable ones that I could find out there. But I never got far. That’s how this happened.”

He retracted his hand from holding Jason’s and turned that arm in the light. It was slightly discolored from his other arm. The veins beneath his skin that should have been bluish-purple were green with protrusions like some of his branching vine parts were beneath the skin too.

“You lost an arm and formed your own prosthetic?” I asked with a bounce in my seat. Those were my first words to Jason’s father and sounded maybe a bit too excited given the somber mood.

“Replacement more than prosthetic,” Bo explained, “given the materials are all living.”

“ Wow . Sorry.” I added in an aside to Jason.

He cracked a smile at me.

“If others from the village hadn’t found me that day, I would have perished,” Bo continued. “I still scouted as often as I could, tried to find some way through the dangers to another land, another portal, anywhere. Our forest is vast but leaving it has proven impossible. It’s more often that others seek us out to escape what is beyond our borders. The unstable portal has been active from time to time, but we can never predict when, and it never lets anyone through from this side. I have spent every waking moment these years away from you hoping to find some way, any way back to you.”

“And now we’ve both left Mom alone.” Jason stared at his lap.

“She is well?” Bo asked.

“She’s amazing. Most of the time. She never got over you. She never stopped believing you didn’t mean to leave us.”

“I didn’t. I never would have. But I had to protect you from getting pulled in. You were so young. What if it hadn’t sent you to our people? What if you’d ended up in some other part of this realm? I didn’t think, I just stepped between you and the portal to be sure it couldn’t take you too.”

“Everyone is always trying to protect me,” Jason muttered.

I squeezed his hand again. “Because you’re always trying to protect us.”

He smiled wider at that, but then his eyes popped to saucers. “Shit, I haven’t even introduced you. This is Ricky, um… Dad . He’s my boyfriend.”

“A pleasure to meet you, son.” Bo extended his extremely cool replacement hand to me.

I shook it, the scientist in me unable to not wonder how it worked. It was warm, and the skin felt like, well, skin . I catalogued for later to remember to pay attention to how it looked in tree form.

“Dad?” Jason shifted to sit taller. “I don’t really know how I ended up like this. Before my form that looks like yours, I had other ones. I was bitten by three different animals, and after each time, I turned into a monstrous version of them, and the first transformation for each, I couldn’t control it.”

Bo looked contemplative. “Perhaps because you are the first half-human of our kind.”

“Which is, um, what?” I asked.

Jason’s eyes went saucer-mode again, like he couldn’t believe he hadn’t asked for the name himself yet.

“We are leshy ,” Bo said. “I know I could not have been the first of our kind to end up in your realm, because I discovered mythologies around that name. Not all accurate, but proof that we had been in your forests before. We are… part of forests. We are nature and beast and sentience in one. You, being half human, could not have found it easy to balance that.”

“Yeah, balance isn't my best skill,” Jason said.

“You will learn to control it. I am certain of that. Your body was simply confused, because it is every animal and part of all nature as much as it is human. Eventually, you should be able to transform into nearly anything you wish, regardless of if it bites you,” he finished with a chuckle.

Jason chuckled too. But then the emotions he had been trying so hard to suppress started to bubble up. It was like his smile melted into a mournful snarl, and he started sobbing.

“Jason…” Bo beckoned to him, and Jason launched off the sofa into his father’s arm, tearing his hand from my grasp.

I didn’t mind, because Jason needed this. They both did.

I definitely felt like an interloper now, even if Jason had needed me at the start.

“I’m going to give you two a minute, okay?” I said.

They both nodded but didn’t let each other go.

I slipped outside and was almost immediately confronted by one of the other leshy.

“Will you please calm the others? They are eager for an update from their home realm, much as we try to explain to them that it might not be good news.”

“Oh, uh… sure! Of course.” I followed her to where the other humans were gathered around a fountain like a central point in a town square. I realized along the way that she was the same older female leshy who’d first tried to speak to us—and who Jason had blasted back.

The humans seemed to be arguing, mostly everyone else against Mr. Jensen, no surprise there, while Colt was chatting quietly to Ellen, who looked about the same age as him.

“Finally!” A woman, maybe close to fifty, turned to me with hands on her hips. “Mark is no help at all. He thought these people were turning humans into monsters of all inane ideas, and now everything’s in chaos back home. Is that true?”

“It wasn’t great when we left.” I passed Jensen a hard stare.

He had no comeback.

“But if we can make it back, others seeing that you’re all okay could be a huge game changer. And you are…?” I asked the woman.

“June Mulligan,” she said.

“The first to go missing. Some thought that maybe you’d just left your husband.”

“I had!” she affirmed. “I didn’t want him catching wise and following me, so ahead of time, I moved the car to a spot no one else could easily find. Then I snuck through the woods when I was ready to make a break for it. Imagine my surprise when I ended up here?”

“Do you really think we can make it home?” one of the other missing people asked.

“I’m part of the research team that’s been studying the phenomenon,” I said. “We’ve learned a lot. There must be a way. But there’s still so much we don’t know. If I had my scanner…”

A familiar sensation traveled through me, and I looked up at the sky. It was a very different sky from back home, but I knew this feeling.

“There’s a storm coming.”

“Yes,” the female leshy who’d led me there said. “You are attuned to such things as a human?”

“A gift, I’ve been told. Back home when we left, it was already storming. That’s how we got sucked in. The weather patterns don’t match exactly between locations. Meaning they’re unlikely identical at any given time. And because storms cause a boost in electromagnet activity… a matching storm here might be exactly what we need!”

I bolted back toward Bo’s home.

“What do you mean?” June called after me.

“Just meet me back at the portal! I’m getting Jason and Bo!”

If we made it home, they’d have all the time in the world to catch up.

As I burst back into the house, I saw that Bo had given Jason a change of clothes similar to his own, and they were laughing now, with their tears mostly dried.

“Sorry!” I panted, as they stared at me. “I think I know how to get everyone back through the portal, but we don’t have much time.”

They looked at each other, then at me again, and then leapt up to join me outside. Kudos to Bo for not pausing to consider bringing anything with him, but I was glad they trusted me enough to not make me explain.

I recapped as much as I could on our way back to the portal, where everyone was waiting like I’d asked, amid the same group of leshy we first encountered. Already the portal was sparking and growing more than after we’d come through it, proving the approaching storm was indeed affecting it.

“I am uncertain,” Bo said. “I have tried to pass through during storms before. During every conceivable condition.”

“But you couldn’t have known if it was also storming on the other side,” I countered. “All those years ago when you were first brought to our realm, it was a fluke that it was storming in both places. It was, right?”

“Yes, it was.”

“Pure chance that all the right conditions lined up. We think the reason our side has been acting up more lately is because of the man-made portal in use not far away. But here, you’re not as close to this side’s official portal. At least I’m guessing you’re not. This area looks different enough that I’m pretty sure.”

“Okay…” Jason blinked as if he was trying to compute it all. “That explains why it’s less possible to cross over from this side to ours, but you think matching storms will fix that?”

“It’s worth a try. The only thing that still concerns me is keeping the portal open long enough for everyone to get through. The man-made portal balances the elements around it, but we don’t even fully understand how. Without my scanner, I don’t know what the levels are like here right now. Whatever they are, we need to make them more balanced, calm things, um… shit, I don’t know how to explain it. It’s just something I feel.”

“We can do what you ask.” It was the older female leshy again.

“You can?”

“We are this forest. We can harmonize the elements around the fissure. At least long enough to test your theory.”

There was lightning above, thunder, and the first of mild sprinkles.

The portal flashed and began to open.

“No time like the present,” I said.

The female leshy called to those who had come with us to surround the portal, and they did so, digging their vines into the ground, while the humans huddled around me, Jason, and Bo.

“Um, random aside,” Jason said to the female leshy, “you speak English normally?”

“No,” she answered. “We speak, and those we speak to understand.”

“That is wildly cool. It must be how that wolf could understand me.”

“Jason,” Bo interjected, “this is the leader of our tribe. My mother, Irina.”

“Your… meaning she’s my… ah, crap. I vine-punched my grandma? Uh hey there. Sorry about that. I’m Jason.” He hesitated for a moment and then extended a hand.

Her larger, tree-like hand closed around his for a gentle shake. “Your energy is tumultuous but strong. You are connected to the flora and fauna of your home realm just like our people are connected to ours. I can sense it. I wish I was going to have more time with you, Jason, but I know you do not belong here.” She said it just as much to Bo.

“Thank you, Mother,” Bo said.

“If this works,” I chimed in, “we’ll be able to stabilize the portal for good eventually, allowing travel back and forth. You will see each other again.”

More lightning and thunder and rain erupted. We were going to be soaked by the time we got back. If we got back.

Bo embraced his mother, and Jason let her pull him in too with a swipe of her vines.

The portal was widening but seeming more and more stable as the storm raged and the air around us became oddly still. There wasn’t a pull this time, because the energy was being balanced by however the leshy communed with the land.

Whether Jensen liked that we were his saviors didn’t matter, because everyone else was with us.

“Almost.” I held up a hand for everyone to wait on my signal. “ Almost …”

A brighter shock of lightning cracked the sky with deafening thunder, and Irina, Jason’s grandmother—wow, that was cool—joined the circle of other leshy, sending her vines into the ground to further stabilize the surrounding elements. Suddenly, everything was eerily silent, and I could feel the prickle up the back of my neck and down my arms the same way being in the portal room felt. Right then, all the errant static around the portal in front of us calmed.

“Now!”