Skylark by Meagan Spooner

Author:Meagan Spooner
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Young Adult, Fantasy
ISBN: 9780761388654
Publisher: Carolrhoda Lab
Published: 2012-04-21T17:08:44+00:00

Chapter 19

His voice was quiet and a little rough, but very human. How long since I’d heard another person speak, who wasn’t a machine or a ghost or a dream?

Oren—it could have been the name of any of my classmates back in the city. And yet it took only one look at him, the finely muscled shoulders, the wild eyes, the ill-kempt hair and dirty skin, to know he could never be mistaken for one of them.

“You said it isn’t safe,” I managed. “Is it the shadow people?”

“If you must talk,” he said in a low voice, “talk while you’re moving.”

The pace he set was even more grueling than it had been before. Perhaps he knew that I couldn’t really talk if I was moving so fast I could barely breathe. Every now and then he’d dig in his pocket for that strip of smoked meat and tear a mouthful off with his teeth, causing me to shudder and look away.

He didn’t stop often, and when he did stop he never spoke, just tossed me the canteen of water and moved away to scan the woods around us. During one of these breaks, the pixie hovered closer. “You should’ve eaten the meat he offered.”

“A machine is giving me advice on how to make friends?” I gritted my teeth, closing my eyes. “Just don’t talk to me. Why are you even still following me?”

The pixie said nothing, but I heard the sound of its wings darting away from me again. After a few moments I cracked an eyelid briefly to see it sitting on a nearby shrub, its back to me, unconcerned.

The machine had said it brought the boy to me. How else would he have found me, just in time to prevent me from drowning? Or worse—being attacked by the shadow people? The shape it had changed into, just before the water closed over my head, was long and slim, built for speed.

Could it have really been trying to help me?

I watched it, where it sat looking for all the world as if it was sulking. I felt something in me relent a little.

“Nix,” I muttered, closing my eyes again and leaning back against a tree.

The pixie buzzed, sounding almost quizzical.

“Nixies. They were these creatures from mythology. I remember reading about them. Shapeshifters.”

“Yes?”

“Well, you said you couldn’t name yourself. Will that do?”

Silence but for the breeze stirring the leaves overhead, and the tiny noise of the pixie’s mechanisms.

“That will do.”

I took a long, slow breath, trying to marshal my strength. I knew Oren would be back soon, ready to move again.

“You know, in stories, shapeshifters are never to be trusted.”

“No,” agreed the pixie calmly, and returned to its meticulous grooming.

•  •  •

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