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Jaide followed, suddenly afraid for her brother, although she didn’t know why.
Custer sniffed him too, then bent and nudged him in the chest, like a giant version of Ari.
‘What –?’ Jack’s eyes flickered open. He stared at Custer in confusion, then Jaide. ‘Why are you interrupting me? I thought this was the exercise.’
‘It was,’ said Custer. His voice came out deep and resonant from his tiger’s barrel chest. ‘And you have seen your doubts. You know yourself better now, and it’s up to you whether you reveal that knowledge or keep it to yourself. What matters is how you use this knowledge to make yourself stronger.’
The twins studied each other, wondering what the other had experienced during the meditation. Neither volunteered anything.
After a short silence, Custer said, ‘All right, time to show me what you have learned already.’
He bade them sit on either side of him and do as he commanded. They started small: Jaide conjured a breeze barely strong enough to tip over a fallen leaf; Jack made his hand vanish into the tree’s shadow. Slowly the tasks became more complex and the commands more frequent, until the garden was awash with whirling winds and shadows, and the twins no longer had time to think about what, precisely, they were doing. As a result, more and more frequently their attempts to obey Custer went awry.
‘Eddy – here! Shade – there!’
Custer prowled back and forth between them, pointing and snapping orders. They hadn’t noticed him change back into human form. They heard only his voice – and it was a voice that brooked no disagreement. Under the gaze of those odd yellow eyes, they tried their best to do everything he said.
Inevitably, perhaps, it all went wrong.
In the middle of calling up a pair of tiny twisters, Jaide felt something inside her snap like a rubber band. The twisters reared up like snakes, coiling round each other and tying themselves into a tight knot. Then they vanished, and nothing Jaide could do would bring them back.
Jack fared no better. His shadows suddenly took on a life of their own, as though they had become twisters of air, just like his sister could create. He struggled to bring them back under his command, but they danced round him like mad dervishes, straining to be set free.
Then he too felt an odd breaking sensation inside him. As his Gift dissolved and fell away, he cried out in dismay.
Jaide was too deep in her own crisis to hear him. She waved her hands, commanded under her breath, did everything she had done before – but nothing she did would bring her Gift back.
Then, without warning, it all returned, and more. Wind swirled around her, kicking up dust and pine needles – and shadows too, as though she had inherited Jack’s Gift along with hers, in one wild, untamable mix.
‘Cease!’ barked Custer.
Instantly, the mad tangle of shadows and air fell away.
The twins stared at each other, confused and distraught, awaiting an explanation for what had just happened.
All Custer said, however, was, ‘It is time for lunch.’
They went inside, where they found all the ingredients required for sandwiches laid out on the table. Jaide’s appetite was as disturbed as the rest of her. She didn’t immediately dig in like Jack, who felt hungry enough to eat all of it and the table as well. She hung back until Jack had made his usual teetering tower of food, and only decided that she would eat at all because Custer insisted.
‘Using your Gift is no different from working any other part of your mind or body,’ he said. ‘It takes energy, and that energy must be restored. Fail to take sustenance, and your Gift will either wither – or it will consume you by degrees, until there is nothing left.’
The latter thought was so horrible that Jaide forced herself to make a ham and cheese sandwich and eat it all down.
Custer ate only greens and a tomato, with half a piece of buttered bread. Still he said nothing about what had happened to them in the garden. Jack and Jaide didn’t ask either, until Jack was halfway through his sandwich and able to think about something other than food.
‘My Gifts aren’t gone for good, are they?’ he asked.
‘Most likely they will return,’ said Custer, not very reassuringly. ‘How long that will take, though, I cannot tell you.’
‘I think I have Jack’s Gift as well as mine now,’ Jaide confessed. ‘And I think for a while he had mine. How is that possible? How can our Gifts move like that?’
‘You are twins,’ Custer said. ‘You are connected. Furthermore, you are still unsure of who you are. You think you understand your Gifts, but in truth you have barely been introduced to them. They are changeable and fickle. Until you understand yourselves, you cannot understand them.’
‘You did this to us,’ said Jack, feeling a flash of sudden resentment. ‘You made us doubt ourselves, and now our Gifts have gone mad.’
‘Is this the first time you have felt like this?’ Custer asked them.
The twins lowered their eyes, remembering the attack of the moths, when their Gifts had seemed to reverse their effects, and the duel with the candles, when they had become weirdly entangled. Their Gifts had been playing up already, and they hadn’t realised what was going on.
‘Doubt is one of the many weapons The Evil will use against you,’ said Custer. ‘You can be sure of that. Learn to resist now, or fall later.’
Jaide’s appetite had gone again, but she forced herself to keep eating. If what Custer said was true, their Gifts might not settle for ages, and she might end up being a Shadow Walker instead of Jack. She didn’t like that thought. Her brief experiences of flying in the embrace of the wind had been so exhilarating, and at the same time so terrifying, that she had never felt quite so alive. She couldn’t imagine never doing it again.
The thought was too dismaying. She had to change the subject.
‘Do you know what an excision is, Custer?’
Custer frowned again, this time genuinely.
‘I recall that it is a bit of . . . leftover Evil,’ he said slowly. ‘A remnant or relict that remains when wards are re-established. Why do you ask?’
‘We think there’s one loose in Portland,’ said Jaide eagerly. ‘We have to –’
‘Do nothing!’ instructed Custer firmly. ‘Such things are weak and fade of their own accord. They cannot survive without a connection to the greater mass of The Evil.’
‘But it wasn’t weak, not last night at the sawmill’ said Jaide. ‘The Evil took over thousands of moths. Thousands!’
Custer did not answer immediately. He simply looked at them, shifting his gaze from Jaide to Jack and back again, as if he was searching for something that was not immediately obvious.
‘Moths have simple minds,’ he said finally. ‘Even a fading excision of The Evil could probably manage a few thousand moths. Nevertheless, I will mention the matter to your grandmother. But you need to keep out of it. Your Gifts are in a perilous state. Control is the most important thing for you to learn now. When you have mastered yourselves and your Gifts, then you can begin the great work ahead of you, and go forth against The Evil.’
Jack thought of his father with Custer on a brand-new island in the Pacific, fighting sharks and giant birds possessed by The Evil. That did make their fears about Portland and the excision seem very small, even if it didn’t dispel them entirely. It wasn’t just the moths; there was also the strange feeling they’d had of being watched, and the mysterious skin they had found on the building site.
‘But what about the giant snake skin or whatever it was we found?’ she asked. ‘It isn’t just moths!’
‘I said you should stay out of it,’ instructed Custer firmly. ‘If your assistance is required, I am sure you will be asked for it.’
Jaide went white and felt tears starting in her eyes. Jack shifted uneasily next to her, wanting to help, but unsure of what he could do.
Deep inside Jaide, humiliation fought against anger. This was the second time her help had been refused, her good deeds re
jected. First Kleo hissed at her to go away, and now Custer was telling her much the same thing.
Stupid cats! thought Jaide. Anger had won over the feelings of humiliation and hurt. Big and little! They don’t know when they need help! Well, they’re going to get it anyway.
‘If you’ve finished,’ said Custer, indicating their empty plates, ‘I suggest we resume.’
Without argument, but without much enthusiasm either, the twins followed him back out into the garden.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
All Aboard the Red Rocket!
Custer worked with them for another two hours, but wasn’t able to return their Gifts to their former state. Jaide had both Jack’s and her own tangled up in an unruly mess, while Jack had nothing. Both found it frustrating, and behind his bluff, impassive manner they sensed Custer felt the same. Of course, he wasn’t the one whose Gifts were in revolt, so they reserved their sympathy entirely for themselves.
In the course of their travails, they witnessed his transformation from human to sabretooth and back more than once. It was both fascinating and unnerving, the way his teeth and bones stretched, warping his muscles and twisting his skin into new patterns and shapes, and he absorbed his clothes and shoes and everything into his body too, to become tiger hide. It was clearly something that required a great deal of skill and exertion, for Custer was invariably out of breath when he finished each transformation.
‘Will we ever learn to do that?’ Jack asked the last time Custer turned back into his human form.
‘I don’t know. Your Gifts are in a state of flux and your journey to self-discovery has hardly begun. It is sometimes possible to turn incipient Gifts in a particular direction, given hard work and the right influences.’
Jack decided to take that as a yes. He would give anything to change into something as powerful as a tiger – a panther, perhaps, or a wolf . . .
Jaide imagined flying high over the world on the broad wings of an eagle, and wished she didn’t have to wait. Why was everything to do with being a Warden hard? Even when their Gifts were working, nothing went as planned.
She was so deep in thought that she didn’t notice the miniature vortex that skidded through the shadow of the fir, disappeared behind the trunk, then returned with a ginger tom tangled up in its heart.
