And then I pushed them down, shoving them out away from my feet.
A sound, like marbles hitting sandstone.
I opened my eyes.
Scud, I’d scratched the stone in front of me, leaving gouges in it.
“Shadow-walker,” Juno said. “It seems the meditation has worked.”
It seemed it had. “Let me try that again,” I said.
Juno read to me from his meditations, and each time I aimed with the strange shards of nowhere the grooves in the sandstone grew deeper, until I was cutting deep gashes no wider than my index finger.
“Do you have more of those meditations in your books?” I asked.
“Many more,” Juno said. “Entire volumes, in fact.”
If Stoff decided to pull us home, maybe I could use that knowledge as an excuse to stay, at least until Alanik and I could learn more about how to use our powers. We were the best weapons the DDF had right now, but we needed more training. A lot more.
“Thank you, Juno,” I said.
“It has been my pleasure, shadow-walker.”
It was strange for him to call me that, since I didn’t walk anywhere. I wondered if he had a meditation in his book that could teach me to hyperjump.
“Let’s try it again,” I said, walking over to a fresh section of the cliff. “I want to see how deep I can make the shards—”
I slipped into the nowhere, and immediately a voice entered my mind. We hear you, it said.
Scud. Was that the delvers? It didn’t feel terrifying, but—
Help us! it said. We hear you.
They didn’t sound menacing. They sounded…desperate. Scared.
I don’t know how to help you, I said.
“Is something wrong?” Juno asked.
“I can hear someone,” I said. “Someone asking for my help.”
Jorgen? a voice said. I recognized that one.
Gran-Gran! Was she awake now? You have your powers back?
I… What?
Your powers, I said. Are you awake? Did they disappear while you were asleep somehow?
Not a lot of time, Gran-Gran said. Hard to concentrate, but you need to…help us…
Her voice faded, and while I called her name again into the nowhere, she didn’t respond.
Jorgen, Alanik said. We need you at the medical tent. You need to see this.
She sounded urgent, so I didn’t ask questions. “Excuse me,” I said to Juno. “I want to learn more, but my people need me.”
“Of course,” Juno said.
I called to Snuggles, who was waiting again in my ship. She appeared in my arms. “Take me to Alanik,” I said, sending Snuggles a picture.
“Alanik!” Snuggles said.
Juno, the cliff, and the melting remains of the sunset all disappeared.
Eleven
Snuggles and I passed by the eyes and jumped to the front of the medical tent, where the medtechs had loaded Cobb and Gran-Gran onto stretchers. Nedd and Arturo each stood at the foot of one of the stretchers, with Kel and Winnow at the heads. I sent Snuggles immediately back to Boomslug in my ship.
“What’s wrong?” I asked Alanik.
“We started moving them over to the ship,” Winnow said, indicating to where the transport shuttle was waiting down by the water. “But as we took them farther from the tent, they started to deteriorate.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Blood pressure dropped,” Kel said. “Heart rates became irregular. What’s strange is that it happened to both of them at more or less the same time.”
“Why would that happen?” I asked.
“I can’t explain it,” Kel said. “Even weirder is they stabilized as soon as we brought them back here.”
“It’s like they don’t want to be away from here,” Winnow said. “We wanted to load them in the ship first so we wouldn’t jostle them when we hyperjump—”
“If their condition is linked to this place then we definitely can’t hyperjump them,” I said. “But why would it matter if they’re here?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Winnow said. “But my professional judgment is that we don’t move a patient if moving changes their condition for the worse.”
“Can you treat them here?”
Winnow nodded. “We may need to go home for some equipment. But for the moment we can get them comfortable.”
“Thank you,” I said.
Arturo stepped up beside me. “What do you think is going on?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. I slipped into the nowhere, listening, but the only cytonic I felt nearby was Alanik. “Gran-Gran’s powers still seem to be gone. But I heard her in the nowhere.”