Through all of this Jill’s screams continued, and she had to be held back from hurling herself off the dock and into the deep. Mary grabbed her and with a physical force she rarely displayed, she pushed Jill back against a boathouse, slapping her across the face.
“Let him go!” Mary yelled at her. “Jix’s journey is not yours. He is nothing but a mewling beast bound for the center of the earth now. Is that what you truly want? To go down with him? Have you forgotten that you are a skinjacker on the verge of changing the world? Yes, mourn your loss, but don’t throw yourself away!”
And for the first time in both life and in afterlife, Jackin’ Jill crumbled to the ground in tears.
Mary now turned to the others who were all frightened and confused. She spoke commandingly, but lovingly. “Today, we have witnessed something horrible . . . but I believe we have also witnessed the hand of judgment . . . because I have reason to believe Jix was selling us into slavery to a foreign king.”
“That’s not true,” wailed Jill, but her voice was weak, and her objection ignored.
“Sadly now, we’ll never know for sure,” Mary told her children, “but from this moment on, I pledge to you to protect you from such evil designs. Our path is, and has always been, to the west. We will not lose our way again.”
Mary had them all hold a minute of silence for the souls lost to gravity, and when the minute was over, she called Moose forward. Moose had been given a special task to take his mind off of Squirrel. He now presented to Mary six Afterlights he had gathered from the crowd. Four boys, two girls. They were all Greensouls, products of the Great Awakening. They varied in ages. The youngest was nine and the oldest was fifteen. Mary smiled at them once they were gathered.
“You may not have realized this,” she told the six of them, “but you are very, very special. All Afterlights are special, of course, but you have a purpose and a destiny that makes you more important than you could possibly imagine.”
The youngest boy raised his hand as if he were in a classroom. “Does it have to do with the way we get stuck inside living people?” he asked.
Mary smiled and the warmth of her smile seemed to light the overcast day as brightly as the sun. “You are skinjackers, and part of an elite team now. Milos, Moose, and Jill will show you how to use your powers.” But when Mary turned to Jill, Jill was gone. Mary searched the dock and the living world beyond it, but she was nowhere—and Mary wondered if perhaps she was too harsh on the poor girl. Surely she would realize that Mary had her best interests at heart, and return. Regardless, Mary could not allow this to distract her. There was still one more thing to be done.
“Little Richard,” she called, looking for him in the crowd. “Will you come here, please?”
Little Richard pushed his way through the crowd, his bank now jangling with coins Mary had asked him to gather from all the Greensouls.
“You lost many friends today, didn’t you?”
The boy nodded.
“I want you to close your eyes, make a wish for them . . . and once you’ve made your wish, kiss the bank, and hand it to me.”
Little Richard did as he was told. He made a silent wish, kissed the bank, and put it in Mary’s hands.
Then she cast the piggybank full of all the Greensouls’ coins into the sea.
CHAPTER 33
Creature Discomforts
Jix had plunged to the bottom of the bay. He had seen the others helplessly disappear into the ocean floor beneath him. There was nothing he could do to save them, but he knew he might be able to save himself. It would take split-second timing, the sum of his skills as a skinjacker and the largest amount of luck he had known. He knew it was his only chance. As he fell, nearing the ocean floor, he spread out his arms wide and kept his eyes open for something alive, but there was nothing.
Then, just at the moment of impact on the ocean floor, he felt it: a sea slug not much larger than his finger, squirming in the mud. He leaped toward it, bringing his arms together and squeezing his spirit in upon itself like a collapsing sun, until he found the primitive nervous system of the slug and invaded it, flooding its tiny consciousness with his soul.
Darkness. Numbness, an emptiness of all thought and feeling, and absolutely no sense of time. It was the hardest thing he ever had to bear, to hold his full consciousness in the primitive flesh of a tiny spineless creature. But he did it. He did it long enough to sense a passing crab and he quickly leaped into that. Jix’s consciousness was so great that he killed the sea slug the moment he left it.
Now he was held in the exoskeleton of the crab and it felt no better than the slug. But he had some sensory awareness now. There was a fish swimming by him. He could feel it on his antennae. And so he leaped to that. Again, the crab died from the weight and loss of his consciousness.
Now inside the fish, he swam away from the school and, seeing a large shape moving in front of him, he leaped directly inside its mouth and found himself inhabiting a harbor seal. The seal was able to hold his spirit without dying, and at last, he had enough familiar senses to navigate his way to the surface.
When he broke surface, he looked around with the eyes of the seal. Mary and all her children were long gone, as he suspected. This desperate journey through small creatures had taken him much longer than it seemed, for those creatures were unable to comprehend something as complex as time. He had no clue if this was even the same day.
There was a challenge before him now, and although he lived for challenge, he needed to truly prepare himself this time. So he swam close to shore, leaped from the seal to a human, then skinjacked his way all the way to the Corpus Christi Zoo.
There, he furjacked himself the most majestic jaguar he could find, releasing it out into a stormy twilight.
The smells, the sights, and sounds of life through the senses of the cat rejuvenated him, and brought him back to his true self. Independent. Alert. Knowing his needs and knowing how to meet them.
He killed a deer in the nearby woods and ate its sweet meat, relishing every bite. Then, when he was full and satisfied, he rested and took stock of his entire situation. His existence had always been comfortable, he had always held a clear picture of himself, his duties, and his place in a world. He saw that world as a place so full of turning gears he had no hope of comprehending how things fit together, so why even try?
Now things were different, however. Now he wasn’t just looking out from inside of the clockwork. Instead, he was actually seeing the final motion of the escapement—the ticking hands of the clock itself.