Everwild (Skinjacker 2)

"What about Allie?" Mikey asked. "What happened to Allie?"

They told him that a girl fitting her description was taken hostage by another Afterlight--a tall, dark-haired boy with strange speckled eyes. By the time word came down that the bridge had been blown, and that an Everlost train had taken Mary's followers across the river, Mikey knew he was too late. Allie would be a prisoner on that train, and the train was long gone.

Mikey raced to the bridge, and although it was solid beneath his feet, he was not a steam engine. No matter what form he changed himself into, he could not overcome the wind. He couldn't cross that bridge to rescue Allie.

And at the moment of the disaster, a bubble surfaced on the chocolate-covered floor of the Jungle Room, jarred into being by the rumble of the blast. The bubble rose to the surface, searching for consciousness, and settled back down again, unable to find it.

Chapter 40 The Changeling and the Golem

Mikey McGill had certain realities to face.

Allie was gone, the bridge was uncrossable, and Nick had disappeared into a vortex. Were it not for his own selfish intervention, Allie might have arrived in time to save Nick--and maybe she wouldn't have been taken hostage. Had Mikey not been so captivated by his own misery, perhaps she would have been here with him right now, instead of on a train heading west.

Now he had a choice. He could rage in fury at his own pigheaded stupidity, and wallow in self-loathing--that would certainly be the easy, familiar thing to do--or, he could, for once, choose to do something useful.

Later that night, he returned to his minions, and called them to him one by one. He then carefully rearranged their distorted, twisted faces, bringing them back to normal, and, when he could, made them a little better-looking than when they started.

"I release you from my service, now and forever," he told them. "Now go home."

They lingered just long enough to be sure he really meant it, then they headed back for Nashville.

Once they were gone, Mikey made his way back to Graceland, where the dozen or so of Nick's Afterlights still kept a vigil, not knowing what to do. Mikey told them to go as well.

"We can't just leave," they said.

"Yes, you can," Mikey told them. "Go back to wherever you came from. Tell stories to your friends about the Ogre, only don't call him that. Call him by his name. Nick."

Reluctantly they left. Then, after they had all gone, Mikey turned and strode straight into the vortex.

Mikey began to feel the effects of it right away--a shifting inside of himself like the rumbling stomach of the living, but this feeling was all over his body. He followed the overpowering smell of chocolate to the Jungle Room where a layer of the stuff, about an inch thick, covered the entire floor.

Even before he stepped into the room, he began to change. He grew fingers from his knees, and nostrils in his armpits. The fingers turned to flowers and his eyes slid down to his elbows. He had no control over what Graceland was doing to him and he could see what it had already done to Nick. He had no idea whether a vortex was a living thing, or just a thing, but he knew he couldn't fight it, and so he didn't try. He gave in, letting it turn him into a creature in constant flux. He had a mission here, and as long as he could remember that mission, the vortex could not destroy him.

He got down on his knees and began to work. When his arms turned to tentacles, he used them. When they turned to flippers he used them. When he had no appendages at all, he waited until he sprouted something new. He worked, training his mind entirely on his task. It took more than an hour, and when he emerged, he was wholly unrecognizable. Changes came so quickly now, he did not become any one thing entirely before changing to something else. Yet somehow he made it out the front door rolling, squirming, crawling--and he pulled with him a very heavy trash can--since the vortex existed in both worlds, he was able to pull it like any other Everlost artifact. It said "recyclables only," but he had removed the cans and bottles it had held, and now it was full of rich, creamy fudge--the kind that melts in your mouth--but he had no intentions of eating it.

Now that he was out on the porch, beyond the outer edge of the vortex, he sat down trying to slow the changes that swept through his body. He was changing once each second, but he concentrated, trying to make each form last, until the changes were coming once every five seconds. Then he took control, defining the changes as they came, choosing the forms he would assume.

Only one problem remained now. He could no longer remember his original form. Was he a creature with arms or with wings? Did he walk on all fours or did he have eight legs? Was he a creature more at home in water than land? Did he have a tail?

He found that trying to remember himself was impossible, so he tried to remember someone else. Her. Allie. Allie ... He could see her face clearly in his mind, then tried to see himself through her eyes. It was by finding her that Mikey found himself.

One by one he pushed forth arms and legs, drew in any stray horns, and made his unsightly spider spinneret shrink into standard human hind-quarters. By and by he became who he was the irascible, short-tempered, imperfect, but occasionally heroic Mikey McGill.

Once he was done, and he was sure his form would stick, he dragged the trash can from Graceland, and found a deadspot on the stone path of a nearby park. It was late now-- long past midnight, but he did not care about the time. He webbed his fingers, effectively turning his hands into shovels, and began to scoop out the fudge, creating a pile on the ground. The stuff had hardened in the cool night to be the consistency of clay. That made it easier to work with. From the lump before him, he began to fashion a figure. A head, shoulders, a torso, arms, and legs. If he could rearrange the features of other Afterlights, surely he could shape an entire being from scratch as long as he had the raw materials.

There is an ancient story about a rabbi who, desperate to protect his village from destroyers, created a man out of earthen clay. He put into it all the care, all the hope, all the faith that he could muster. He danced around it, called on the secret name of God, and thus willed his clay creation to life, and it walked the earth. A golem. A creature not quite alive, but not quite dead.

Mikey was no rabbi, did absolutely no dancing, and rather than mud, he worked in a mixture of sugar, butter, and the brown ground powder of a rainforest bean--but like his sister, Mikey had a will that could move the universe.

When he was done, the chocolate golem was not much to look at. Its shape was roughly human, but it was little more than a mound on the ground. Its face had no features, but Mikey hoped that wouldn't matter.

It was early dawn now. The sun was threatening the eastern horizon. Newsboys in the living world were hurling papers featuring headlines about the destruction of the Union Avenue Bridge.

Mikey put the finishing touches on the golem. He scraped a line for its mouth; and above it, pressed his thumbs in, creating indentations for its eyes; then beneath the eyes, he shaped a small bump of a nose. He poked two holes for ears, and then put his lips close to one of the holes and whispered

"Wake up ..."

A moment passed. Then a moment more. And then two eyelids rose, revealing a pair of eyes that were the same shade of brown. The golem blinked, then blinked again.