Second Nature (60 page)

"Lean back and relax," Nella said. Her voice was now soft and soothing, all traces of her former hostility toward Jorie gone.

Jorie leaned her head back against the couch.

Nella watched her closely. "Relax your body," she said.

Easier said than done. Being in a room with three predatory shape-shifters, sitting next to the most hostile one with your eyes closed wasn't a very relaxing activity. The tension didn't dissipate from Jorie's body.

"Relax," Nella murmured. "No one will harm you in any way. Griffin will make sure of that, right, Griffin?"

"Right," Griffin rumbled forcefully, letting it serve not only as an encouragement for Jorie but also a warning to her mother.

Finally, most of the tension left Jorie's body.

"Now envision yourself strolling through the forest on a warm spring day," Nella said. "Imagine the sunshine on your skin, the scent of freshly growing grass and the first blooming flowers, and the gentle twittering of the birds in the trees above you."

Automatically, Griffin closed her eyes too. A faint memory of her grandfather testing her in the same way came to her, but she brushed it away to focus on the present. She imagined strolling through the forest side by side with Jorie. The image came easily since it was the mental picture that Jorie's scent always evoked. Had Nella chosen that image because it was the way Jorie smelled to her too?

"Can you see it?" Nella asked.

"Yes," Jorie murmured. Griffin heard the smile in her voice. "It's nice."

"Good. Allow the images to flow through your mind as you relax deeper and deeper." Nella's voice had an almost hypnotic quality now.

Griffin felt her body get heavier, knew she was close to giving in to her own exhaustion.
No!
Her eyes shot open. She was here to watch Jorie, to protect her, not to fall asleep.

"Then," Nella continued, "just as you fall asleep, focus on one of the details you can see in the forest and imagine yourself jumping into the image."

Jorie didn't answer this time. She lay with her eyes closed, her chest moving softly with her slow breaths.

"What now?" Griffin whispered. Awe filled her as she watched Jorie.

Nella smoothly got up. "Now we let her sleep — and dream."

*  *  *

Loud noises pulsated around Jorie. She tried to move, tried to make out where they were coming from, but her vision was hazy and she couldn't move. Only gradually did the world around her sharpen, and she could make out the details of the forest.

The heaviness lifted from her body. She could move again and started to stroll through the forest. Her fingertips trailed over ferns and green leaves.

The birds above her fell silent.

Someone was walking behind her. "Wait up, girl," she heard him grumble. "My old bones can't move as fast as yours."

The voice was familiar.

She turned to wait for the old man until they were walking side by side as if they had done it a hundred times before. Maybe they had. From time to time, she felt his large hand on her shoulder when he helped her duck under low-hanging branches or climb over a fallen tree.

"Almost there," he said after a while.

She turned to ask him what "there" was.

"Pay attention!" the old man said. "You're walking right into..."

Something slid along her face as she turned back around to look into the direction she was going.

"...a spiderweb," the old man finished his sentence.

"Ew." She closed her eyes and tried to brush the clinging cobwebs off her face. The sound of the wind rustling through the trees and the old man's voice grew dimmer. The forest faded around her.

With a jerk, Jorie opened her eyes and found herself back on the couch in Nella Westmore's cabin.

"Close your eyes again," came Nella's now gentle voice.

Jorie wanted to look around and make sure Griffin was still there, but she did as Nella told her.

"Don't move. Relax again. Now tell me about your dream," Nella said.

"I was —"

"Use present tense," Nella interrupted. "Describe it as if you were still experiencing it."

The images from her dream flickered around Jorie, soothing her. "I'm walking through the forest. It's spring, and the birds are singing, just like you described."

"What else did you see? Did the images change? Did you find yourself in another location?" Nella asked.

"No." The forest filled Jorie's mind.

"No?" There was a frown in Nella's voice, but then she moved on. "Was there someone there with you?"

"An old man is walking with me," Jorie said, again feeling his large, warm hand on her shoulder. "We know each other."

"Who is he?" Nella asked.

Jorie tried to remember a name. It lurked somewhere in the back of her mind, but she couldn't grasp it. "I don't know," she said.

"Do you remember anything else?" Nella asked.

Jorie shook her head. Exhaustion trickled through her blood like lead. She wanted to keep her eyes closed and go back to sleep, but even more than that, she wanted to know what was going on. Reluctantly, she opened her eyes and sat up.

Nella was now standing, and Brian was leaning against the far wall, but Griffin was still sitting on the other end of the couch. Her eyes met Jorie's and then squeezed shut in a catlike smile of encouragement. "And?" Griffin asked, expectantly looking up at her mother. "What does the dream mean?"

"I don't think it has any meaning at all," Nella said. Disappointment and relief warred with each other on her face. Maybe a part of her had hoped that Jorie was indeed a dream seer and that her skills would save Griffin's life. "She just dreamed about the image that I used to get her into the dream. For a true dream seer, that's just the starting point. The dream itself takes place in other locations. I think she just dreamed about whatever was on her mind when she fell asleep, and her imagination made up the old man."

Jorie nodded. It sounded plausible. She often dreamed about the things she thought about while she fell asleep, sometimes even about characters from her novels.

Only Griffin didn't seem ready to believe in the simple explanation. "The old man... was he Wrasa?" she asked.

She really wants to believe that I'm some kind of dream seer, connected to the Wrasa in some way. Yes, I had some very unusual dreams in the past, but with my overactive imagination, that's to be expected, isn't it?
She wasn't ready to believe she was a shaman or prophet to a species of shape-shifters. "I don't know," Jorie said. The old man had looked like a normal human. "I don't think so. I got the feeling he was a relative or friend of mine, so he was probably human."

"Hmm." Griffin rubbed her ear. "And dream seers... they don't always have precognitive dreams, do they? Sometimes, they dream about things that are just meaningless and coincidental too, right?"

"Yes," her mother said. "And sometimes, even people who are not dream seers have dreams that might look like the dreams of a maharsi — even though they aren't." When she looked down at Griffin, a hint of sympathy glittered in her eyes.

"I'm sorry," Jorie said, gently touching Griffin's forearm. She knew Griffin had hoped that her being a dream seer was the explanation. "Maybe I would have had another dream or seen more details, but I think I woke myself up when I walked into the spiderweb."

Griffin's head jerked around. Her pupils widened. "You walked into a spiderweb?"

"Yes. Even though the old man tried to warn me." Jorie rubbed her face, where she could still feel the sticky strands of the spiderweb.

Griffin moved closer. Warmth penetrated Jorie's leg as Griffin's knee touched hers. "The old man from your dream... what did he look like?" Griffin asked breathlessly.

The image was slowly coaxed from Jorie's memory. "He had a gray beard and tanned, leathery skin as if he spent a lot of time outside. He was very, very tall, but I think that's distorted. I think in the dream I was a little smaller than I really am." A sudden thought occurred to her. "Maybe I was a child in my dream." She opened her eyes and studied Griffin, who looked deep in thought.

A quick glance passed between Nella and Brian. They didn't believe her dreams held any meaning.

"He was taking you somewhere," Griffin said. It was a statement, not a question.

"Yes, but that doesn't make much sense. What place of interest could there be in the middle of the forest?" Jorie shook her head. It had just been a dream, not the meaningful prophecy that Griffin wanted to see in it.

"And he repeatedly told you to slow down and wait for him because his old bones couldn't move as fast as yours," Griffin said.

Her breath caught, and she felt herself starting to tremble — or maybe it was Griffin who trembled next to her. "Now who's the dream seer," she joked shakily. "How do you know what he said to me?" Had Griffin somehow built a connection and shared her dream?

"Because he didn't say it to you. He said it to me." Griffin looked up and met her mother's gaze. "Remember the day Grandfather took me to one of the sacred spots in the forest to test any dream-seeing potential I might have? I walked right into a spiderweb because I was too nervous to pay much attention to where I was going."

"How?" Jorie rasped. "How is that possible? You... you sent me that dream?"

"No," Griffin said. "I don't have the skills for that. My grandfather tested my dream-seeing abilities on that day. He said an amoeba has more potential than I do." Bitterness laced her voice. Her grandfather's frank words had hurt the young Griffin.

Jorie pressed her knee tighter against Griffin's. "Then why did I dream about something from your past? How is that possible?" She had only just started to come to terms with learning that shape-shifters existed. Finding out that she might have a few supernatural skills on her own was too much to digest. "I thought dream seers have visions about the future and didn't dream about the past?"

Griffin looked at her mother, deferring to her since Nella knew more about the dream-seeing skills that her father had possessed.

Even though Nella hadn't been shy about voicing her thoughts before, she now needed a few seconds to formulate an answer. "For the most part, maharsi sought wisdom about the future, but they could also see things from the past or other locations in the present."

"And you think I dreamed about something that happened while Griffin was a child?" Jorie asked. Her mind was in an uproar, searching for other, more reasonable explanations. "Why would I dream about that? Why didn't I see the predator who chased me in my other dream?" She looked at Griffin and Brian, then finally back at Nella, who seemed to be most qualified when it came to answering questions about dream seers.

"I don't know," Nella said. "I'm not a dream seer, and I'm still not convinced that you're one either, but my father used to say that dream seeing is like turning on the radio — if you don't know how to find the right station, you have no choice but to listen to whatever is playing. To have any control over what you're listening to, you have to learn how to tune in to the frequency of the right program."

It sounded like some science fiction movie about telepaths. "So it's like... telepathy?" Jorie asked. Had she seen a sequence of Griffin's childhood because she had caught a stray memory from Griffin?

Nella shook her head. "I don't know. It just... is. The need to describe things in scientific terms, to understand how something works right down to the last little detail is a human need. We Wrasa don't try to dissect how dream seeing works. We just accept that it does."

Frustration shot up in Jorie and made her want to shout.
Well, excuse me for wanting to know what the hell is going on with me!

"Then you should also accept that Jorie is a maharsi... or at least could be one," Griffin said.

"One dream doesn't make a dream seer, Griffin," Nella said. "If she really were, do you know what that would mean? What kind of consequences it would have?"

The seriousness in her voice made Jorie's breath catch. She wasn't sure she wanted to know.

Griffin, however, nodded. "It would mean that we can't keep detesting and in some cases even killing humans. They have the potential to be our allies and a part of our culture. My decision not to kill Jorie might be exactly what we need to save our kind," she said passionately.

A heavy weight landed on Jorie's shoulders. She wasn't ready to take on that much responsibility or believe that her overactive imagination was really some weird ability that she, as a human, shouldn't even have.

"Save our kind?" Nella snorted. "If anything, the human will destroy us!"

"We don't need humans for that — we're doing a fine job all on our own," Griffin said. "We're hiding our existence, and it forces us to neglect our language and our traditions. We're slowly losing our identity and our honor. We're forgetting who we once were, and we're killing humans because we're starting to get paranoid and —"

"Not that I don't agree," Jorie interrupted when she couldn't stand to listen to Griffin's enthusiastic argument anymore. "But don't you think you're jumping the gun just a little? I had one dream about your grandfather, but that doesn't make me the Wrasa's next great prophet and savior."

While being a dream seer might be the only thing that could save her from certain death, it wasn't easy to accept something that she had tried to ignore and deny all her life. How had she suddenly gone from hunted enemy to quasi-religious icon within just a few hours? It left her with a feeling of emotional whiplash.

Griffin gripped Jorie's hands with both of hers, grounding Jorie. "It's not just one dream, Jorie. You had a lot of these dreams, and I'm sure there will be more. You're just learning to use your skills." She looked at Nella with eagerness. "We could try it again. Try to get her back into a dream."

"No," Jorie said.

A challenging smirk settled onto Griffin's features. "You're not afraid, are you?"