Chapter Text
The clearing Phil steps into is wide and open, the moonlight reflecting off the unbroken layer of snow on the ground nearly blinding him for a moment. He knows where he is instantly, though he couldn’t say how. He also knows he’s never been here before, but that it’s close to a place he’s become very familiar with in the past few weeks.
With a sigh he turns to look to either side of him, sliding his hands first into his coat, then trouser pockets, just to make sure. But no, Adra isn’t with him in this dream either. It should feel wrong, should have him doubled over in pain in the snow, but instead there is nothing. Not even a loud, insistent nothingness, pulling at the centre of him until he feels completely hollow. It is an ordinary nothingness. An itch he forgot the urge to scratch, the breath going in and out of his lungs unquestioned.
He scans the edge of the clearing quickly, trying to find a break in the trees, or any indication of what direction that awful warehouse might be in. If he’s going to have these dreams, he might as well try to put them to use. Find more clues, figure out exactly where they are. But the trees are large and tightly packed along the edge of the clearing, allowing Phil no glimpse of light save the small window of the sky above. When he looks back up at the moon, full and nearly perfectly centred in the slice of sky he can see, a dark blur darts across it.
A bat, he tells himself. It’s just a bat. He’s seen hundreds of bats in his life. Sure, they had been smaller, and had never felt so distinctly human, so distinctly daemon, but if it is a daemon, that means there’s someone else here. Phil doesn’t want anyone else to be here.
It could be Adra, but aside from the fact that he’s never taken on the form of a bat in Phil’s memory, it simply doesn’t feel like him. Phil would know. Even with as distant and inscrutable as Adra’s been acting recently, Phil could always recognise his other half. His soul.
Phil turns back to the centre of the clearing and there’s a tree there now that he’s pretty sure didn’t exist before. He feels a similar sort of nondescript emptiness, this time taking up the spot where fear should be clutching at his body, as he moves closer to it. There’s a dark form hanging from one of the branches, alone on its section of the tree and clearly highlighted against the bright white background. At least the dream has decided not to be cryptic tonight.
Phil knows it’s the bat he saw. The daemon. He scans the edge of the clearing again, sure there must be someone else here, but he sees no one. The trees are just far enough away to be too far a distance between this daemon and its human, so unless the human has figured out how to be invisible, it’s just the two of them.
The daemon is alone, just as he is. This, at least, feels odd. Wrong. More wrong still, though not registering as such in his dream state, is his urge to touch it. As he gets closer he can see some of its features coming into focus. This daemon has taken the form of the biggest bat he’s ever seen, hanging upside down on the branch, big and brown and fuzzy in a way that’s just begging Phil to reach out and stroke and cuddle. Maybe Adra’s absence is finally starting to wear on dream Phil. Maybe he’s losing his mind, losing all sense of proper decorum and his own previously held boundaries.
He’s close enough now to touch, if he wants, and he still does want, contrary to every remaining shred of sense left in him telling him it’s not right. He has no idea who this daemon is, who their human is, but his hand is reaching out anyway, fingers waving slightly in the cool night air as if in anticipation of the softness of the fur. He’d always preferred it when Adra took on forms with particularly velvety fur, and the bat’s looks as soft as the chinchilla Adra had been on several occasions.
With a suddenness that startles Phil into a half stumble, hand snapping back to his side immediately, the strange daemon’s eyes.
“Behind you!” they shout.
Phil feels frozen in place as a hand grabs his shoulder, grasp heavy and hot.
“Phil!” the bat daemon shouts, and Phil wonders if he should be concerned that they know his name, but then he hears his name again, this time from behind him. “Phil! Get up!”
He bolts upright, head crashing into something hard and objecting. Claws dig into the flesh of his thigh for a moment and he’s scrambling for something to defend himself with until Adra’s head, large and ringed with a tufted mane, presses against his own, a deep, rumbling roar from the back of his throat rattling Phil into stillness.
Right. Dream. It had been a dream, and now he’s awake. With a throbbing head and an irate brother who’s rubbing at his own forehead. They hadn’t fought physically in years, but a small part of Phil delights at having gotten a punch in, so to speak. Adra’s claws extend again, pressing into the soft flesh of Phil’s thigh.
“We’re leaving in an hour and the boat’s nearly packed. Get up and get dressed so you can at least pretend to be helpful.”
Martyn’s already walking out the door before Phil can properly pull himself from the sticky molasses grasp of his dream, but he watches with clear eyes as Hebe trails behind with an apologetic second glance, her chubby, whiskered face far too adorable to stay mad at for long. No matter how stuffy and serious Martyn’s become in the past few months since starting to work for their father’s shipping company, his softer, sillier side is always betrayed in the playful wriggling of his river otter daemon. Still, even with the softening effect of Hebe, the changes Phil’s seen in his brother have only made Phil dread all the more the maturing he was supposed to be getting around to any day now.
Phil groans and flops over onto his belly as Adra’s big head prods at his back. He’d managed to forget in the excitement of his dream that most of the men of his town are setting out on a rescue mission this morning, and that he’s a part of it, as hard to believe as that might be.
“Five more minutes.”
“We’re already late,” Adra responds in his best stern tone, shifting into a woodpecker and tapping rapidly on the headboard right above Phil’s head.
“Yeah but I need to try to figure out the dream before I forget it, don’t I? And stop that, mum’ll kill us if you make any more holes in the furniture.”
“Fine, but only five minutes. I’m counting.” Adra, suddenly a lion top of him again, lays his heavy head onto the small of Phil’s back, as if physically holding him to his proposed task.
With nothing better to do and his overly responsible daemon staring him down, Phil takes a moment to sift through the dream again, trying to let the details wash over him one more time as they slowly slip from his mind. Had there been anything useful? Anything new that might help in their search for this place?
The thing about prophetic dreams—if you want to call them that; it’s a bit of a strong word for dreams that tend to vaguely warn at events an average of 12 hours in advance—is they’re just as surreal and uninterpretable as normal dreams. At least Phil’s are. His grandmother had always spoken of hers with more certainty, but she’d had years to figure the whole thing out by the time Phil met her. Mostly he’d just had a handful of years of mildly prophetic dreams warning him when the milk was about to go off or that he was going to get a zit, until all of a sudden the fate of several missing children was resting upon his ability to locate a nondescript abandoned warehouse he’d only seen in odd, disjointed flashes.
These dreams, of course, have been different. For one, they’ve been happening for over three weeks now, nearly every night. The first had happened about four days before the first child had disappeared. Or been taken, it would seem. They’ve become his new norm. Put on his pjs, brush his teeth, go to bed with a deep sense of dread dragging down on his lungs, finally fall into a fitful sleep and visit a warehouse situated on the banks of a river just past a fork and sitting on a hill surrounded by a thick ring of trees. Most nights Phil’s subconscious, or presentience, or whatever it was that took the reins in these situations, brought him to a room with one then two then four kids Phil recognised from around his small town. All around the age of 10 or 11, all huddled in narrow beds under thin sheets. All missing from their homes.
Once he’d realised who it was in his dreams and that they were really happening—at least they probably were—it had taken him an hour and a half to tell anyone. Well, in actual fact he’d never told anyone himself. Adra had been the one, huffing and pacing, glaring at Phil for his hesitancy, who had finally left the sanctuary of their bedroom and gone to find his mum’s daemon, a capybara named Belenus, shifting into a small garter snake to wrap around Belenus’ neck and whisper in his ear.
There had been a flurry of activity after that. Phil’s dad had clapped him on the back hard enough to send Phil staggering into the kitchen table before he rushed out the door to call a meeting in the town hall. His mum had bustled around the kitchen, taking breakfast off the stove and handing Phil a lukewarm mug of coffee, then hurried back up to her room to change. Adra had stayed loosely coiled around Belenus’ neck, so Phil followed after, the reluctant caboose on that strange, fitful train. Martyn watched all of this with a skeptical eye, saying nothing though the judgement was clear in his gaze. Phil knows Martyn would have said something sooner, come up with a plan right away.
Phil had been delivered to the front of the hall, still in his pajamas, Adra dragging the loose material down as he climbed up Phil’s side as a red panda before shifting into a red squirrel to perch on his shoulder. Only after a reproachful look from Phil though, and even then it was less than ideal, as they tried to avoid shifting in front of others. It could have been worse, but a red panda wasn’t exactly his subtlest form in the crowd of dog and cat and mice and rabbit daemons.
If Phil had been a daemon, he would have shifted into a mouse, or a brown moth blending into the wood walls behind him. Maybe even a flea. Something with wings to fly away. But he wasn’t of course. What he was instead was human, the son of the most powerful, richest man in their small but lively town, and inheritor of their family’s penchant for second sight. And all that came along with it.
But instead Adra had taken on a form that was bright and large and uncommon, standing in front of the crowd and drawing even more attention to them than necessary. Phil had been questioned for what felt like hours, until images from the dreams had been dragged from the furthest depths of his memory, or possibly his imagination. No one wanted to listen to that theory though, least of all the parents of the missing children. Phil understood, he did, but it didn’t make it any more likely that the vision of a fork in the river coerced out of Phil’s hazy recollections was the same fork three or four days’ journey north of here that Paul Baker swore up and down it had to be.
Or that if it was, they’d manage to navigate from there to the building where the children were. Or that they’d be able to get them out. Or that they’d still be there. Somehow it felt worse to lead the town on a wild goose chase than just not try at all.
He’d never been a fan of false hope.
Phil’s dragged jarringly back into the present by the slight sting of claws pressing lightly into the skin above his shoulder blades.
“It’s been eight minutes,” Adra growls close in his ear. He changes into a mouse to wriggle his way under Phil’s chest before shifting again, back to a lion so Phil is displaced off the bed, hanging half off his back.
“I thought you didn’t want to go either. I thought we’d agreed we should stay as far away from that horrible place as possible.” Phil rolls back onto the bed and tugs the covers over his head. Neither of them can pinpoint it exactly, but something about even thinking about what they’d unanimously dubbed ‘that horrible place’ feels off. A chill seeps through them when they talk about it, numbing the link between them. Phil privately thinks it might have to do with the fact that Adra’s never actually there in the dreams, though he can see all of it.
There’s a screech and a yank, and then Phil’s watching as Adra, now a sparrowhawk, flies to the other side of the room with his duvet. Phil sticks out his tongue and throws an arm over his eyes.
“I don’t. But we agreed to, and anyway, we should help.”
Phil feels a whoosh of air over his face and watches as Adra flies back to the end of his bed, perching on the left post and peering at Phil with a piercing gaze. His blue-grey and orange feathers catch in the light of the rising sun, glowing with a beautiful brightness. With a groan, Phil flops back over, burying his face in the pillow.
There were several months when they were younger, maybe eleven or twelve, when Adra had gone through a phase of only taking the form of birds, anything from a house sparrow to a toucan or flamingo. He’d particularly loved flying, and Phil had loved getting to experience that swooping joy in his gut just as much as Adra had. Until Martyn pointed out, trying to be helpful Phil was sure, that most birds made Phil’s…difference particularly obvious.
A small furry body wriggles back under his arm, staying put this time, and Phil looks down to see the chubby, obscenely cute face of a pika staring back at him. He sighs and rolls back over, drawing Adra to the centre of his chest and holding him there, accepting the apology, or perhaps as an apology of his own. Their usually effortless silent communication has gotten a bit muddied recently.
“We have to get up.” His voice always rises in pitch a bit when he takes on smaller mammal forms like this, sounding less confrontational, more timorous.
“I know.”
“We have to do this.”
“I know.”
“It’ll be okay.”
Phil lets Adra’s words, small and trembling as they are, hang between them as he finally gets out of bed, dropping Adra on top of his dresser. He leans into the mundane tasks, the ones he does every morning, feeling himself settle in his body as he shoves his limbs into his clothes, brushes his teeth, and arranges his hair.
When he gets to the kitchen he lets his mother dote on him, bringing him coffee and a pastry and settles warm hands on his head and his shoulders and his back. He remembers for a moment the dream, the scorching grip on his shoulder such a contrast to the light, warm touch of his mother. He looks over at Adra, curled up with his eyes closed on top of Belenus’ back. He feels the familiar ache in his chest open up again, thinking back to the days when he used to curl up in a pile with them, his mum curled around all of them.
“It will all be alright, darling,” his mum says above him, voice clearer and steadier than Adra’s earlier this morning. “Your brother will take care of you. You’ll stay on the boat; they just need you to find that horrible place.”
That horrible place. She calls it that too, and he can’t remember if she picked it up from him, or if she started calling it that on her own. He still remembers so clearly the first dream he’d had about it, three weeks ago now. He’d woken shivering uncontrollably, unable to shake an overwhelming sense of dread and desperation he’d gotten from the place. It was something he hadn’t done in years, but before he’d processed it, Phil had found himself in his parents’ bed, his father grumbling and getting up to go sleep in Phil’s bed, while Phil had pressed his trembling body into the steadiness of his mother’s arms.
The images and other pieces of information had come back slowly. The long, dark hallways that echoed horribly with the sharp clacking of purposeful footsteps that Phil knew weren’t his own. The stale smell to the air, belonging to the old life of the building—a warehouse by the looks of it—and the heavy stench of fear in the air. Adra hadn’t been with him—a realisation that hit him like a punch in the gut once he remembered, but that he knows had felt normal in the dream—but if he had, Phil knew his hackles would have been raised. Or maybe not, since Phil knew he should feel cold in that hard, empty place, but when he ran his hand over his arms he didn’t find a single goosepimple.
It had been a week of that, returning to that horrible place every night then scrambling into his parents’ bed. Falling asleep to a hand soothing circles into his back and waking up to a gentle, cautious voice trying to help him pluck some sort of sense from the dreams. Growing up, he slowly realised that while his mum talking him down from nightmares was normal, spending thirty minutes inspecting every small detail he could manage to remember from them wasn’t. He’d told her this once, and she had said his dreams made him special. One day they could make a difference to someone, if he just learned to pull them apart and put them back together in the right order.
Then, just as she had predicted, as the children had gone missing from his town they had showed up one by one in his dreams. Only when he realized the significance, he had considered pretending they had never happened. Until Adra told. And everything went to shit.
His mum finally takes his empty plate and his cold coffee from in front of him with a small nudge to his back. He’s been sitting here too long, too lost in his own thoughts as always.
It’s time to get up. Only he can’t seem to move his feet.
Phil knows that he’s overly cautious. Cowardly. Selfish. He likes comfort; he likes familiarity; he likes his routines. One small change can throw him off for days, weeks even. He is a hard worker, sometimes too much so, but he’s also prone to getting lost in his own head, and would rather be left alone to wander there for hours at a time.
None of these things make him a good candidate for joining a search and rescue mission that is likely very dangerous and very definitely poorly planned. They’re going in mostly blind, with just the visions of Phil’s second sight, for whatever those are worth.
Phil doesn’t think it’s much, but no one seems to agree with him. Even Adra.
It takes a kiss planted on the top of his hand and another pastry tucked in his jacket pocket before Phil finally gets up, shouldering the bag he’d packed the night before. Martyn had warned him to pack lightly, perhaps because he was known for always having the most luggage on their family trips. But for once he had heeded this advice, packing like the reluctant traveler he was. His bag was the bag of someone who didn’t fully believe they were actually going on a trip. But now here he was, with just three extra shirts, enough underwear and socks for six days, and two books to last him however long it took to find this unknown place. It was a protest, but one that would only harm him in the end.
His specialty.
Adra had been the one who talked him into adding a second book, pestering and knocking at every wooden surface in their room with his sharp beak until Phil had slipped his well worn copy of The Hobbit into the bag on top of The Shining, muttering the whole time that he wasn’t going to need a second book.
Even with the two books his pack is light, but it feels as if it could drag him to the floor as he trudges through town, avoiding his usual shortcuts to the docks. The familiar sight of his father’s smallest cargo boat is still in front of him before he knows it. His dad’s there of course, even though he’s not coming. He’d wanted to, but it had been decided that it was best to send a small, inconspicuous group, and Nigel Lester didn’t go out on a lot of cargo hauls anymore. It wasn’t likely that anyone was watching, but it didn’t hurt to be cautious.
Even before the children had gone missing, tensions between neighbors had been high in Phil’s town. For as long as he could remember, actually. Phil’s parents had told him once that it had really started, as far as they could recall, with the introduction of a group called the League of St. Alexander at the local school. The group had encouraged children to report their parents for saying or doing anything that went against the Holy Church. Phil had been too young to ever get the chance to join before it had been disbanded at his school, but he doesn’t think he would have wanted to join. His family isn’t the type to say much against the Magisterium anyway, but he can’t imagine wanting to rat them out even if they did. In fact, if anyone in their family were going to get reported it would probably be him.
Now his dad claps Phil on the back, shooting him a proud grin that just adds more weight to his load. Then he’s pointing at some crate to his right and by the time Phil processes his request that Phil bring it onto the boat, he’s gone.
He can feel his breaths quickening, and the weight of Adra settled across his shoulders as a red panda, heavy and sure, but mostly he can feel that peculiar sensation of his feet sinking into the solid ground beneath him as if it were molasses. The air thickens to a similar texture around him, pressing in close, crowded with the buzz of words and bangs and thumps and shouts, traveling slower to him through the viscous panic.
By the time Martyn’s words get through to him, he doesn’t know how long he’s been repeating them.
“Phil! Get a move on,” Martyn grunts as he shoves his way past, knocking Phil roughly with his shoulder. “We haven’t got time for daydreaming. Load that box on the boat or get out of the way.”
Phil glares after his brother, then glances back down at the box in front of him. It’s technically not too heavy for him to pick up, but he very much doubts he’s going to be able to get it all the way to the boat, and into whatever dank, dark, claustrophobic corner it’s meant to be tucked into. Still, he knows it wasn’t meant as an actual choice.
He’s expected to move this box. He’s expected to get on the boat. He’s expected to take part in this doomed rescue mission. Failure to do so is not an option.
“Well come on, pouting about it isn’t going to do us any good,” Adra says, voice deepening as he shifts into a gorilla. As he leans forward to take one end of the crate, Phil catches a flash of silver on his back.
“Your back,” Phil hisses, “you have to change.” He whips his head to the left, then right, taking in the bustle around him. All of the people who might see.
“No one will know,” Adra replies impatiently, rattling the box. “Come on.”
“I don’t care which one of you moves it,” Martyn says as he walks by again, holding a large pile of blankets, “but it needs to go on the boat. Now. Come on Phil, if Adra’s helping, so can you.”
“See?” Adra shoves the box a bit closer to Phil as he glares.
“Change,” Phil insists. Adra huffs, but shifts into a brown bear, scraping his claws against the wood of the box as he grabs it again and lifts it by himself.
Phil follows along quickly, feeling stupid for his empty arms, but having no choice but to stay a few paces behind his daemon. They get a few odd looks as they find a place to set the cargo down, but for the most part the crew is made up of men from his town, people he’d grown up around who know him well enough by now to not be surprised by much.
Adra had probably been right. It’s not like it’s a secret. Not a very well kept one anyway.
Phil can feel Adra’s breath hot on the back of his neck, still in bear form despite the narrow deck passageway. He shifts back to a red panda, finally, as they approach Phil’s father standing near the stern speaking in hushed tones to Jack Davies, the captain for this mission.
The weight and warmth of his furry body draped across Phil’s shoulders is a welcome barrier against the icy wind blowing in off the water. Phil tries to focus on that as he makes his way to the little closet Martyn had pointed out as his room.
Phil had grown up around and on boats, but had spent most of his time coming up with excuses to stay as far away from them as possible. His friends always teased him about how sea sick he got, pointing out how it was hilarious that the son of the owner of the largest cargo shipping company in Northern England couldn’t even last a full minute on a boat without throwing up. It wasn’t quite as funny when you’re the one heaving over the side of the boat.
They’d learned ways to cope, forms Adra could take that would lessen his queasiness and lessen Phil’s in the process, when to lay low and when to get fresh air, but Phil knows he’ll spend the first few days at least pretty miserable.
Knowing that if he leaves he’ll be roped into more box carrying, or worse, doomed attempts at planning, he throws his bag onto the floor and himself onto the narrow bed.
It’s still early enough and Phil’s gotten into bad enough habits that he falls asleep easily, especially with Adra as a warm lump of fur settled up against his side. Apparently he’d reached his nagging quota for the day.
He’s roused by a soft knock at his door and blinks his eyes blearily, reaching around for his glasses that he must have knocked off in his sleep at some point.
“Who is it?” he calls, hoping the sleep still thick in his throat isn’t too obvious.
“Martyn.”
Phil sighs, taking a few breaths to steel himself for another lecture before responding. “Come in.”
Martyn’s got a tense grin on his face when he gets the door open, balancing a cup in his other hand and a box under his chin.
“Did Cornelia send you?”
Cornelia and his brother have only been dating a couple of months now, but Phil already teases Martyn that she’s Phil’s favourite member of the family. It would be a very Cornelia move to send Martyn to check in on Phil.
“No. Can’t a brother come check up on his brother?”
Phil feels a small prick of guilt at the sincerity in his voice. “Sorry I didn’t help with anything else earlier. I laid down for a second and I must have fallen asleep.”
“It’s fine Phil. I know the first few days on a boat are rough for you, even on the river. I brought you some tea and sea sickness patches.” Martyn sets the tea down on his bedside table and sits down on the only other surface in the room, a trunk set against the far wall. Phil knows he shouldn’t complain about his tiny room though. At least it’s private. If it wasn’t his dad’s boat he’d likely be sharing with at least three other people.
“Thanks.”
Martyn doesn’t respond immediately and Phil turns his attention to their daemons chattering easily in the corner. Adra’s always gotten along with Hebe, even when Martyn and Phil occasionally clashed growing up and he often took on the form of an otter with her once Hebe had settled. Mostly Phil thinks it’s sweet, but today it grates on his already frayed nerves. He can feel the edges of a headache starting to sidle into his brain and takes a sip of the tea.
Martyn always makes it just like their mum does.
“I’m sorry I was so short this morning. And for the past few days too. I’ve just been…nervous. This is the first thing I’ve been given a chance to lead. I want to do well.” He pauses, scraping a clump of mud off the bottom of his shoe against the edge of the chest. “I want to keep you safe. Mum made me promise.”
“Of course she did. I’m her favourite.”
Martyn’s stiff smile instantly softens as he leans back and lets out a loud laugh. Hebe and Adra tussle on the floor, Hebe coming out on top and sitting firmly on top of Adra’s wiggling body.
“No, because you’re the baby, and I have to protect you. And I will.” His voice is serious again, and Phil wants to duck out of the entire conversation. He’s never wanted any of this responsibility; Martyn’s welcome to all of it.
“Fine.”
“You’re not going anywhere near this place. You’re going to stay on the boat with Cornelia and enough of the crew to run the boat if we don’t come back—”
“Martyn—”
“No, listen to me for one second, then I’ll leave you alone. I know that’s all you want these days. You won’t be in danger. You’ll find the building, then your job will be done. I know you don’t want to be here, but it’s important. You know Nana would have done it.”
It’s a low blow, and Phil knows Martyn knows it. Adra nips Hebe sharply on the leg and she chirps as she clambers off him.
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
“And I appreciate that. We all do, especially the parents—”
“Alright, that’s enough. I can’t exactly escape at this point. You’ve got me here, no need to guilt me or flatter me anymore.”
“I’m not flattering you. It’s important. You’re important. We need your help to—”
“Find the old warehouse a little past the fork, to the left and up a bit from the bank on a hill, fourth window from the right on the second floor,” Phil intones. “I know.”
“I’m just saying you could have a role in this community, an important role, if you weren’t so stubborn and reclusive—”
“And maybe if you weren’t so obedient and eager to please, you could see a life outside the one Dad’s planned for us.”
“That’s not why I’m doing this, Phil. But of course, if something doesn’t fit into your narrow view of how things are, it can’t be true, right?”
Adra’s at the edge of his consciousness suddenly, scrabbling sharp claws against the border of it and he leans forward with his mind, letting Adra’s thoughts in. He’s angry and distracted though, so it doesn’t come through as a clear thought, just a jumble of Cornelia and warmth but also fear and distrust and otherness and Phil shoves the complicated ball of anxiety tangled in it aside and plucks out the lowest hanging fruit.
“Or to impress a pretty girl. Cornelia asked you to do this, didn’t she?” He throws a significant look over to Hebe and Adra, no longer chatting.
Martyn looks shocked for a moment, then glances back at Hebe and Adra. He holds Hebe’s gaze for a moment before he growls and turns back to Phil.
“Would you quit it with that creepy mind meld shit you two do? As if you weren’t weird enough to begin with.”
The room goes still for a moment before Adra surges forward, standing between them suddenly in one of his loudest forms. A larger than life lion with his impossible to miss mane. Martyn looks down at him, then back up into Phil’s eyes. He looks geniuniely sorry, at least.
“Phil, I didn’t mean—”
“Yes you did. You don’t have to lie to me anymore. I may be the baby but I’m not a little kid.”
“You know I think you’re weird, but I didn’t—not for those reasons. You’re just—you’re Phil. You’re a weirdo.”
“Right.” His voice sounds strange to his own ears, thicker and deeper than normal.
“Shit, I’m making it worse. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. You know I love you.”
“As long as I’m not being too obviously abnormal.”
Martyn sighs heavily and Phil’s gripped with a sudden urge to lunge forward and shove the exasperated air back into his brother’s lungs. This isn’t his to sigh over. He’s not the one walking around with a scarlet letter on his back. Or a silver billboard on his daemon’s. Or an advertisement of it wrapped around his neck. Adra shakes his head, his mane snapping around his face.
“I know I haven’t always been the best about…supporting you. I was only trying to keep you safe. That’s all I want, Phil. For you to be happy and safe. Don’t forget to put on a patch before you fall asleep again, okay?”
With those last weary words he’s out the door, and it should be what Phil wanted, but if he felt he could, he’d go chasing after Martyn. Adra keeps glancing between him and the door, but he feels glued to the spot again and he knows he won’t.
“I didn’t tell you about Cornelia for you to throw it in his face you know,” Adra snaps finally. “I was trying to get you to calm down. What’s even the point of us being able to communicate wordlessly if you misinterpret it so badly?”
Phil winces, but Adra doesn’t seem to notice in his restless pacing around the small room, so Phil falls back onto the bed, deciding all forms of communication are off limits for a while.
The wordless communication had been something they discovered they could do around the age of six. Well, maybe that’s an oversimplification. It was something they discovered they had the capacity for then, but it took years of practice and refinement to get it to where they are now, able to exchange fairly complex ideas and even a few words without speaking aloud. Phil can’t fully remember what it was like before they’d developed this ability, but from his fuzzy memories and observing others, he thinks probably most people can only feel the emotions of their daemons, a swell of happiness or fear or longing, but not the underlying thoughts.
For the most part, he tries to conceal this ability, but his family has noticed. It’s just another thing to set him apart, after all. He thinks it probably comes along with the second sight, supposedly caused or made possible by Adra being male. Being wrong.
No one’s ever used that word outside of schoolyard bullies, but they don’t need to. The rest of their words speak the truth clearly enough.
Maybe he should be glad Martyn called him a weirdo. He’s preferred the honesty to the brave faces and fake smiles his family had piled on him for years for about as long as he can remember, but he’s come to appreciate it with a new and surprising desperation. It hadn’t taken him all that long to figure out who he was, how he was different, the ways his family saw it and shied away from it, even if they loved him. The way it affected them. His grandmother had been the same, revered within the family and their community, but also avoided. Nearly always on her own, off in some corner with her lizard daemon, Astraea. She had been the only one who hadn’t treated him like that, but he’d been too afraid of her at the time to appreciate it, and then she’d passed away and Phil was all alone in his weirdness again.
When she was still alive, before Phil turned seven, he would often go over to sit near her despite his fear, reading one of his animal books at the foot of her favorite armchair. He was equal parts terrified and obsessed with her, and though they shared several links—daemons of the same sex as themselves, the supposedly prophetic dreams—they rarely spoke. She and Astraea seemed to be able to communicate effortlessly without words, which is what made Phil first consider it.
She had been married, at least, but Phil had never met his grandfather, who had died two years before Phil had been born, and she never spoke of him with her rare words. His mum had told him that they’d loved each other very much, but Phil had seen photos and something about them looked different to him, even at a young age. They didn’t stand as close as the other couples in the pictures. The distance terrified him.
Restless and desperate for a distraction, Phil reaches into his bag to retrieve his book, picking up where he left off and stubbornly reading fifty pages, though he doesn’t absorb a single word of it. He finishes his tea, even though it’s gone cold by now, and pointedly doesn’t put on a seasickness patch. He’s not on the sea anyway; it’s absurd that he gets so nauseated. His stomach doesn’t listen to this logic, unfortunately, and he has to make a quick dash to the side of the boat several times over the next few hours.
Adra responds to his self-destructive protest by shifting into a squirrel monkey, the form that seems to make their nausea the worst, until they finally drag themselves back to the bed for the fifth time and Phil relents and fumbles in the now dim light to peel off a patch and stick it on his wrist.
Adra snuffles an obvious ‘I told you so,’ into his skin as he worms his way under the covers as a long tailed macaque, his form least susceptible to motion sickness. It can’t be past five or six, but it’s dark and he’s exhausted and grumpy, and sleep seems like the best possible thing at the moment, so he closes his eyes and leans reluctantly into Adra’s warmth.
When Phil opens his eyes the next morning all he can see is a haze of bright gold. It would be alarming if it weren’t the way he woke up most mornings these days. Phil’s not sure if Adra shifts in his sleep or does it purposefully, but more often than not he wakes to a lion glued to his side or pressing down on his chest.
He can’t particularly blame Adra. It had been a favourite form of both of theirs when they were growing up, what Phil had boasted to friends when they were young and speculating about what their daemons would settle as. Someone brave and strong who stood up for what they believed in. Back when that had felt like something he could be. Before it was pointed out to him what else it would say about him. Before Adra’s lion form had grown a mane.
Now Phil doesn’t want him to take that form in front of anyone else, and Adra doesn’t. Mostly. Phil’s learned to live with his family seeing it. It had felt terrifying at first, but he almost completely believes they don’t mind.
Phil passes a tentative, conciliatory hand through the coarse fur of Adra’s mane. He snorts and shifts beneath Phil, rolling over to cover more of him with his body, more of his face with his mane.
Phil has a character in his head, who Adra would be if he were a she. Susan, he’d named her at age five, young enough to think of a name for a daemon like Susan, old enough to start to notice the whispers, the second, lingering looks. He was still just starting to wrap his head around being himself, being themselves, a distinct person in the world, separate from others. Perhaps more separate then he ever could have imagined.
Now, past their otherness in relation to the rest of the world, Phil’s been grappling with the growing gap between them. How they can have such different opinions on what form Adra should take and who can see. How they can be different at all, if they’re two parts of a whole. Both separate from each other and a persistent, aching sameness Phil doesn’t quite know how to reconcile.
It’s not something he’s ever told Adra about, or ever would, but he thinks Adra knows all the same. In that unique knowing–not–knowing way that exists between a person and their daemon. Some things you just know. Some things the two of them know particularly well.
Martyn leaves him alone over the next two days, and Phil manages to avoid almost everyone else on the ship. He spends the most time with Bernie, the cook who serves him his 4 am coffee and 11 pm sandwiches with a wry smile, otherwise spending long hours in his room or on deck when no one else is around, shivering in the cold night air and staring up at the sky full of stars.
The only person he can’t avoid is Cornelia, who seems to have an uncanny knack for tracking him down and finds him at least once a day to check in on him and bring him food and what she calls ‘some much needed company.’ He calls it harrassment, but not to her face, and he does appreciate the chance to get some light interaction with someone who he actually likes. He loves Martyn of course, but he doesn’t like him very much at the moment, and the rest of the crew are practically strangers to him.
On their fourth day on the boat Cornelia finds him a little before sunset. They’d gotten to the fork in the river earlier that afternoon and had been moving very slowly ever since then, all hands on deck scanning the banks of the river as much as possible without seeming suspicious. Phil had been included in the all hands for once, and he was grumpy and prickly after hours of staring at endless foliage.
He’d been trying to enjoy his thirty minute break before being summoned back up to the deck, but Cornelia had followed him, cheerfully ignoring all of his less than subtle hints that he wanted to be alone. They’d been sitting in complete silence now for ten minutes, aside from the sounds of Adra and Bragi, her great crested grebe daemon, chatting in low tones across the room, which was fine with Phil. A little quiet is what he’d wanted anyway. Just ideally alone.
“I didn’t ask him to do this, you know,” she says out of nowhere. “Your brother,” she adds when he doesn’t reply. “I told him it was a stupid idea and we should get a better idea of what we’re charging into before we tried raiding the lair of a bunch of kidnappers. But he is doing this for me, in theory. Do you know why?”
Phil shakes his head, unsure of where this is going or why she wanted to talk about this now.
“I don’t think I have to tell you that your town isn’t too big on change or differences?”
He feels the prick of the words like an attack, even though he knows better to expect that from Cornelia. “I’m not—”
“I know you went away to school, but you didn’t go that far. You should know the rest of the world isn’t like this. I mean, some of it is, and some of it’s worse, but a lot of it is better too. Anyway, I meant that a lot of your lovely neighbors aren’t that keen on me coming out of nowhere and trying to become a part of your community.
“I had no idea—”
“It’s fine. It could be a lot worse. I’m white and I speak English and am generally what they think of as a respectable person. They’ve just been a little slow to warm up to me. And I’ve been considering moving on and Martyn doesn’t want me to and he thought it might help if he did something stupidly heroic. He thought if they liked him better they might like me better too.”
“He’s an idiot.”
“He is. But a very sweet idiot.”
“I guess.”
“I know he hasn’t always been the best at it, but he’s just trying to be a good brother to you. He’s still learning how to do that, I think.”
“So it’s my job to deal with it?”
“No. And yes. You could leave if you want, but if you want to keep him in your life you will have to let him figure it out.”
“I’m tired of it, Corn.”
Adra’s been edging closer to them through this conversation, a lion now and carrying Bragi on his back. This is the closest he’s ever come to discussing it outright with Cornelia. With anyone for that matter. He doesn’t talk about it, doesn’t let the obvious difference be given the weight of spoken words, and certainly doesn’t talk about how he feels about it all. But he knows Adra wants to, wants him to.
“I know. People are dicks. Did you know I’m supposed to be the one taking care of the children once we rescue them? I’ve never watched a child in my life, but of course I’m the only woman they could get to come along, so I must be the most qualified.” She rolls her eyes and Phil laughs, just a little bit. She turns her sharp blue eyes on him then, leveling him with a grave look. “But there are a lot of people out there who think better of you than you want to let them, you know.”
It feels like a bucket of water she’s poured over his lap and asked him to hold. He doesn’t know what to do with it, how to collect it and make sense of it and keep it from running down his legs and through the floorboards. Of course he knows people love him. He’s so lucky to have the family he has, and he doesn’t often forget that. But he never forgets that they aren’t like him, either. Not entirely. That there will always be this thing between them, and at some point it might get too big.
He opens his mouth to respond, but can’t get any words to come out. Cornelia reaches out and takes his hand, rubbing circles into his palm, and Phil tries to feel it, feel just that motion while he watches Bragi run his beak through Adra’s mane.
He’s just about gotten his breathing even again when the door to his room slams open to reveal a panting, wild-eyed Martyn.
“Phil, come on, we think we’ve found the building! It matches the description you gave us, but we need you to come take a look.”
The dread is instant when he spots the building, and it must show on his face, or perhaps in Adra’s posture, because he doesn’t even need to say anything. The crew springs to life around him, bringing the boat up to shore several metres past the looming building in a conveniently located inlet.
Phil can’t pick out any of the individual conversations or actions, but somehow he’s swept back to his room with Cornelia after a quick conversation about everyone staying safe. He can’t help but think Martyn is doing anything but staying safe, and he desperately wants to cling to his wrist, wants Adra to take the form of an eagle and scoop Hebe up and carry her as far away from this terrible, terrible place as possible, dragging Phil and Martyn with them.
He doesn’t, of course, and then he’s back in his room with Cornelia and she’s telling him everything will be alright while she paces in tight circles around the small space. It feels like years pass, like Phil should be checking his hair for greys, before there’s anything more than pacing and breathing and ‘they’re going to be fine,’ but then there’s a sudden flurry of commotion outside the door and Cornelia is summoned without so much as a word to Phil about what’s happened.
He’s just about made up his mind to go out and investigate when there’s a thump on his door. When he opens it Martyn’s there, completely intact and looking triumphant if also a little harried.
“Phil, this is Dan,” he says, stepping aside to reveal a tall, shaking boy who looks to be a couple of years younger than himself leaning against one of the crew. Phil’s eyes sweep over him quickly, searching for something he can’t find. Adra shifts into a beetle, buzzing noisily in the air beside his head, darting to and fro in agitation. “We need you to keep an eye on him while we get the kids settled.”
It becomes clear that Dan is having trouble standing on his own as Martyn moves into the small cabin, dragging Dan along behind him. Phil, with little other choice, helps Martyn heft Dan over to his bed—the only bed—where he collapses onto the pillow, mumbling something too quiet to understand.
As the boy shifts restlessly, Phil takes a moment to look at him a little closer. He looks exhausted and thin, face alarmingly pale save for the deep pouches of purple beneath his eyes. Adra, meanwhile, has shifted into a sugar glider, wrapping his webbed limbs tightly around Phil’s neck. His breaths come quick and hot on Phil’s skin and Phil nearly shoos him off, until it finally clicks in Phil’s mind what’s missing.
“Where’s his daemon?”
Martyn pauses for a beat that seems to stretch on forever, hand reflexively stroking at the fur on Hebe’s back. She spends far more time on the ground than in Martyn’s arms, at least in front of Phil and it hits him with a sudden sick twist that all of them are in some sort of close contact with their daemon. All except Dan. Adra snuggles in closer to the crook of his neck.
“We’re not sure.”