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‘I’ll leave you three to it,’ said Grandma X. ‘You can practise in the garden. Try not to destroy anything, particularly yourselves.’
She kissed both troubletwisters on the head, then hurried out of the kitchen. Muments later, they heard the firing up of the Hillman Minx, and the twins were alone with their temporary tutor.
‘Finished your breakfast?’ he asked. ‘Let’s do as she says and go outside.’
They went to stand under the Douglas fir, which, despite the battering it had received in recent times, was still standing tall and true. The morning was both sunny and cool at the same time. A thin breeze wound round the house, whistling in the eaves.
They stood in a triangle. Custer faced the twins with his hands in the pockets of his brown suede trousers. Grey hairs poked out of the V of his open collar.
‘You have seen my other face,’ he said in a solemn voice. ‘You know that I can change my shape.’
They nodded.
‘You’re a . . . were-cat?’ said Jack.
‘A shapeshifter,’ Custer corrected him. ‘There are many different kinds of shapeshifters, and some of them you will have heard of, such as vampires, lycanthropes, berserkers, selkies, naga, kitsune. Although the stories told about them are mostly false, all these legendary beings have a basis in fact.’
‘Where there’s smoke there’s fire,’ said Jaide.
‘Exactly. The fire in this case is us, the Wardens. We use our shapeshifting abilities only for good, and only to fight The Evil.’
‘The Evil can change its shape too,’ said Jack, who had seen it adopt the appearance of a person at least once.
Custer shook his head. ‘The Evil can only pretend. It takes the creatures it possesses and blends them in unnatural ways in order to create the appearance of another being. But it’s just an act. It has no true shape. Only humans can be shapeshifters.’
An idea occurred to Jaide in a sudden flash. ‘Could the Monster of Portland be a shapeshifter?’
‘The what?’ asked Custer.
‘The Monster of Portland,’ repeated Jaide. ‘Uh, this creature people see around here, and we saw its skin . . . at least we think it was its skin.’
Custer frowned, as if he didn’t know what the troubletwisters were talking about. But it was not an entirely convincing frown.
‘Only Wardens can be shapeshifters,’ said Custer. ‘And . . . sometimes if The Evil captures a troubletwister with that Gift, then that part of The Evil will retain the ability. Until the Warden is fully subsumed and forgets he or she was ever human. Now please, troubletwisters, let’s stick to the subject.’
The twins exchanged a glance. Custer was hiding something too – that was very clear. His protestation that the monster didn’t exist only made them more certain than ever that it did.
But they didn’t want to make Custer mad. His claws were showing again, and his teeth looked longer than they had before.
‘All right,’ said Jaide.
‘Sorry,’ added Jack.
‘Thank you. Now why should we be able to do what The Evil cannot? The answer is simple. We all possess something that our enemy lacks, something it desires greatly, but cannot ever have. That is our inner nature, our selves, our souls. Where The Evil is a being of hunger and appetite that can never be filled – empty, heartless, cold – we are filled to the brim with life, and it is this life that gives us the edge. You see, shapeshifting isn’t only about shape. It’s about understanding one’s nature, which one must do before appearing as anything else – and one must first have a nature before one can understand it.’
Here Custer lost the twins, who were less interested in the theory than what they could do with it.
‘So does that mean we could be shapeshifters too?’ asked Jack.
‘Maybe, if your Gift allows it.’
‘How will we know?’ asked Jaide.
‘That’s partly why I’m here,’ he told them. ‘I will test you, and hopefully teach you a thing or two about yourselves in the process.’
He reached into the pocket of his coat and brought out a familiar deck of cards. Familiar to the troubletwisters anyway, though they would have puzzled anyone else. They were made of gold, were very heavy and did not have any of the usual illustrations.
‘Grandma’s cards,’ said Jaide.
‘No,’ replied Custer. ‘This is my own deck. The cards are essentially the same, though I do not use them in exactly the same way. Your grandmother’s Gifts are primarily governed by the moon and stars – she is a strong diviner, among other things. My Gifts are primarily of the water and the air, of living things and movement – I do not have the deep skills of divination. But the cards may answer to either of you in different ways, and that will . . . perhaps . . . tell me something about your Gifts and how they are developing.’
Custer placed the cards on one of the exposed roots of the tree. There was a flat section of the root, almost like a small table, that might have been made for the cards. It had space for the deck, with room next to it to lay cards out flat, face up.
‘Jaide,’ he said. ‘Take the five topmost cards and place them in a cross, like a compass, with the last card at the centre.’
Jaide picked up the first card. It was cool, and even heavier than she remembered. It was also blank, showing only the sheen of hammered gold.
‘It’s blank,’ she said, showing it to the others.
‘Put it down next to the deck,’ said Custer. ‘Now the others. No . . . wait a moment, Jack. I’ll tell you when it’s your turn.’
Jaide put down her cards. As her fingers left the last one, something moved across the gold, so swiftly she couldn’t be sure what she’d seen. It might have been a cloud, or a wave, or just some irregular shape . . .
‘Good,’ said Custer, who had been watching intently. With a swift motion, he scooped up the five cards and placed them to one side, face down. ‘Jack, you can try now.’
Jack took his first card. It didn’t show a symbol or the even sheen of blank gold. Instead it was completely shadowed and dark, staying that way for at least a second before the gold came shining through, like the sun banishing the night. The next four cards he dealt were completely blank.
‘What does this mean?’ asked Jack, sitting back and scratching his head.
‘It is a divination technique,’ Custer explained. ‘The Fivefold Path reveals certain things about your Gifts – specifically, the Gift you might have, the Gift you want to have, the Gift you shouldn’t have, the Gift you need to have and the Gift you can’t ever have.’
‘But the cards didn’t show anything,’ said Jaide.
‘Because your natures are still not set. Which means anything might happen to your Gifts, depending on the influences that come to bear.’
‘What kind of influences?’ asked Jack.
Custer waved the question away. ‘I think we’ll leave the cards for now. Please, both of you sit down with your backs against this wonderful tree. No, on opposite sides.’
The twins had automatically sat down together. But Custer moved them apart. To Jaide he gave the exercise of imagining herself floating as in an endless sky, alone and weightless, while Jack was to picture himself in cool, comfortable darkness.
‘Let your true self step forward,’ he told them, touching them lightly on the crown of their heads. ‘You might be surprised who you see.’
Nothing happened for a good long while, except that the ground got far less comfortable and the supposedly soft needles that grew straight out of the trunk of the tree weren’t all tha
t soft when you were leaning against them.
Jack wondered if Jaide was as distracted as he was. He couldn’t see what sitting around doing nothing at all was going to accomplish. Perhaps if he could change into a tiger or something by the end of the day, it might be worth it, but he couldn’t imagine that happening. Custer wasn’t actually teaching them anything. He figured that all the talk of selves and souls and Gifts was just mumbo-jumbo designed to keep them out of Grandma X’s hair.
You were foolish to try to resist us, said a ghostly voice from his memory. Your inner self wants to join us . . .
Be quiet, Jack told the voice, but it kept on talking.
Surrender. We know you want to give in.
He hugged himself and squeezed his eyes tightly shut.
Please don’t let that be my inner self, he thought fearfully, all his criticisms of Custer forgotten.
Jaide was having no less a trying time. Her imaginary skies were full of odd currents of thought that unbalanced her. She couldn’t stop thinking about things no matter how she tried. First of all, she blamed her mother for leaving them alone in Portland, then Grandma X for not believing them, then Kleo, again, for not letting them help.
She kept hearing that hissing voice in her mind.
Nobody asked you to come. This is cat business! My business! Stay out of it!
No one wanted her help, Jaide thought bitterly. Grandma X, Kleo, their own father . . . no one realised that she could be very helpful, that she could do great things if only they’d let her.
Hot, moist air blew in her face. She blinked, startled, and opened her eyes.
She was face to face with a sabretoothed tiger, Custer in his animal form. His eyes stared at her unblinkingly, but she could barely take her eyes off his massive fangs. They were just an inch or two from her. With one bite, he could snap her head clean off.
Instead of biting her, he sniffed once, nodded, then turned and padded round the tree to where Jack was sitting with his hands clenched tightly in his lap.
