Everfound (Skinjacker 3)

Punishment and Crime

It was decided that sending Jill down to the center of the earth was much too kind a fate for her. Punishment for treason, Mary decided, should include far more suffering than that. As a skinjacker, Jill could experience pain while in a living body, but physical torture was far too barbaric for Mary’s taste. Then it occurred to her that true punishment could only come if Jill was forced to linger within an undesirable host long enough to permanently bond with it.

Standing in the crossed gazebo, with her entire cumulus of Afterlights filling the park around her, a jury of twelve announced their verdict, without the messy inconvenience of an actual trial. Then Mary pronounced the sentence.

“Jackin’ Jill, you have been found guilty of treason and high crimes against the universe,” she proclaimed. “Your punishment is to be bound to the body of a pig for the rest of your natural days.”

Through all of it, Jill had said nothing either in defense or in objection. Primarily because she had been gagged.

A suitable pig was found on a nearby farm. An animal that would neither be slaughtered nor die anytime soon. It was the farm’s prize breeding sow. Three times a year the sow was bred with a healthy male pig, producing sizable litters—and were Mary not bringing the world to a much-needed end, it would live and breed for at least another eight years. The sow had become so fat, it couldn’t support its own weight, so it barely moved anymore.

With Mary present to witness, the skinjackers hurled Jill into the pig, and surrounded it. Each time she tried to escape, they hurled her back in until she was too exhausted to peel out anymore. After a day, when it was clear that Jill was bound to the sow for the rest of the animal’s days, they left her there alone, except for the male pigs in the next pen, longing for the day they got to keep her company.

After Jill’s sentence was carried out, Mary brought her remaining skinjackers together for a solemn meeting in the café that had crossed. Rotsie was not with them, because Mary had already sent him off in search of Allie’s body. Sparkles was appointed the temporary leader of the skinjackers, because she had been the head of her cheer squad, and some leadership experience was better than none at all.

In the café they sipped the last of the crossed coffee, and shared a piece of cherry pie that had also crossed. There was a sense of despair among them—the accusations Jill had made had clearly chipped away at their confidence. Mary knew a decision had to be made. She had done her best to shield them from the difficult work ahead. Perhaps that had been wrong. Perhaps her skinjackers needed to know the full extent of what they had been called on to do. She couldn’t deny that she feared this moment . . . because although she had unshakable faith in herself, she did not have such faith in those around her. Jill had turned on her—she couldn’t assume that everyone would share her vision.

Before Mary could speak, The Pet raised his hand like a good schoolboy, and asked, “Is it true the things that Jill said? That you did those things on purpose?”

Mary sighed. She would not lie to them. “A traitor like Jill will say anything to cast blame away from herself,” she said, “including the twisting of a noble act into something despicable.” They waited for more, clearly not satisfied with the answer. Well, it was time they got a glimpse of the larger picture. “Prepare yourselves for what I’m about to tell you. It is neither pleasant nor pretty, but it will lead to things more wonderful than you can imagine.”

“Tell us,” said Sparkles. “We can take it.”

Mary steeled herself and told them as plainly as she could. “The living world will soon be coming to an end.”

There. She had said it out loud for the first time, and she found there was magic in saying it, for now that it was out in the open, it made it more real.

Then, to Mary’s amazement, The Pet said, “I knew it!”

It caught Mary by surprise . . . but then she realized that she shouldn’t be surprised at all—for hadn’t the living world trained them for its own eventual demise? Didn’t the living world speak of Armageddon and grand cataclysms in everything from sermons to the silver screen? Now her skinjackers focused on her with such intensity that Mary actually felt her own afterglow begin to burn brighter.

“You have been chosen to be the shining heralds of a new world.”

They didn’t bat an eye at this, either, for didn’t every soul long to believe that he or she was singled out for a special divine purpose?

“You will be asked to do things that frighten you—things that will test your resolve—but I know you have the courage to do all the things you are called to do.”

They began to puff up with pride, for didn’t every soul long to believe that they had courage to face the most difficult of tests?

Mary’s afterglow now pulsated with searing purpose, and she realized something remarkable! Mary always believed that her ability to gather and galvanize others was the result of refined charm and grace, but it was more than that: It was a power, every bit as potent as her brother’s! While Mikey had the mystical power to repel anyone, Mary had a mystical ability to attract!

Now that she truly understood it, she was able to focus the scorching radiance of her soul and reach out with it. Tendrils of silver light now touched the afterglows of her skinjackers, bonding with them, gripping them, making their energy just an extension of her own, thereby turning their doubts into conviction. She didn’t persuade them, she didn’t force them. She didn’t need to. Why would they need persuasion when they suddenly found their own beliefs were secretly replaced by Mary’s?

“We’ll do what we have to do, right, everyone?” said Sparkles, and everyone agreed.

Mary smiled at them, and they soaked in her joy as if her beaming smile were the life-giving rays of the sun. Mary knew there would be no stopping her now. The western pull to her mysterious destination was stronger than ever, and she knew they would reach it soon. It seemed to Mary that every blow levied against her served only to further her cause. Jill’s betrayal hadn’t crippled Mary—instead it forced her hand, making her reveal her full plan to her skinjackers—leaving them bound to her spirit, and to her cause. And with Allie out there as an ever-present danger, rather than demoralizing Mary, it simply made her speed up her timetable. Thanks to Allie things would be moving much more quickly now.

Everything was aligning to lay a golden path before Mary now—a path she was ready to take, without looking back. The living world’s end would be swift. Although she wasn’t quite sure how, she knew there were many, many ways to bring about sudden, sweeping destruction. It was winter now; the living would have to enjoy their frostbitten fields and bone-chilling winds . . . because their world would never see the spring.

“Gather the others,” she told them. “We leave now, and we don’t rest until we reach our destination.”

“What’s our destination?” SoSo asked.

“Anywhere I say it is,” Mary told him, and all of them agreed to follow, none of them knowing that any choice they had in the matter was snuffed the moment they were touched by Mary’s beautiful tentacles of light.

CHAPTER 42

Sense and Sensibility and Skinjackers