Shatterskin Read online

  Suzanne had told me I couldn’t bring anything other than what I was wearing through the portal. Everything else would dissolve in the transfer. What I needed would be provided for me.

  What she had neglected to tell me was that I would arrive in different clothes. I ran my hands over whatever it was that was covering my legs. They felt almost like the leggings I wore in the winter and looked like the ones that woman by the tree had been wearing.

  However, they felt completely different from anything I had worn before. These leggings were still soft like winter leggings, but much stronger. They were as tight as my skin but so lightweight that if I hadn’t seen that I was wearing them, I would have thought I had nothing on. Scary thought, that. The shirt was the same material as the leggings. Close to my body, but soft and comfortable.

  As a reader of strange stories, I wondered if I was caught up in a dream, like in one of my books. Ones where people ended up in bodies that weren’t theirs. Because not only were the clothes weird, so was I. Older. Not twelve anymore. The tight clothing proved that. Not me. At least not the me that lived on Earth.

  “Well, you always said you were older than your Earth age, little one,” the taunting voice I had first heard said. “You were right about that anyway. Everything else, well, we’ll see.”

  “Not going anywhere until you show yourself, and explain what’s happening,” I answered and sat down in a huff. The strange body and clothing would have to wait. Maybe I didn’t look like me, but I felt like me. That would have to be enough for now.

  As I sat down, I ended up on a rock again, even though I had not noticed it. Where did it come from? Was it a rock? It looked like one. At the moment I had more pressing problems than figuring out if it was a rock, or how it got behind me, because the laughter started again. I stood, hands clenched at my side. I was sick of the taunting, and the not knowing.

  “She is kinda pretty when she’s angry isn’t she?”

  “Humph. For a human I guess.”

  “Human? Pretty? What the ziffer? Who are you? Come out now and show yourself,” I demanded. I was too angry to demand to know where all the z swear words were coming from. It was just one more strange thing going on.

  “Or else? What are you going to do, little one? Fight? You haven’t seen us yet. You don’t have the advantage in this. If I were you, and luckily I’m not, I would shut up and do what you’re told to do.

  “This is our world, not yours.”

  With those words, everything stopped. It was as if everything around me sucked in a breath of air and held it, waiting for something terrible to happen.

  The ground shook. Lady flew beside me and sat there, cocking her head, looking for danger.

  The release of the breath was a wind so intense I had to grab a branch of a tree that happened to be nearby to keep from following the leaves and bits of things I had never seen before that were blowing past me.

  “Sorry, sorry, so sorry. I’ll not do it again,” squeaked the voice that was taunting me seconds before.

  “You’re right. You won’t,” roared the wind. “Now show yourself to her and do your job. Take care of her!”

  Four

  What happened next scared me so much I thought that my hair might pop out of my head. Like quills. You know, porcupines. Maybe they did, because I shut my eyes so fast I wouldn’t have seen it happen. That confirmed it. Basically, I’m a coward.

  I guess I was harboring a belief that I was some kind of hotshot because on earth I had gifts. Gifts people called paranormal. Here, so far, I had nothing. Things were happening that I had no control over. Including swearing strange words and wearing clothes that looked like they belonged to some cat woman. I was no longer a little girl. I thought that would be cool. I was wrong.

  So far this traveling to another dimension was turning out to be something I wished I had never decided to do. Nothing about it was fun. At all.

  After cowering behind my hands for a few moments, I took a peek between my fingers. Yep. They were still there. Two of them. What they were, I wasn’t sure. It would require me to look at them.

  When no one shoved anything at me or ran me over, or even spoke mean words, I gathered up a tiny bit of courage and opened one eye. Supposedly keeping the other eye shut would make me safer?

  I opened, closed, opened, closed, but nothing changed. They were still there. Not moving and not smiling either. One of them had a face that reminded me of a piece of bark. The other one was standing behind it, so I could only see a tiny hand and foot.

  Perhaps the tiny one was afraid of me. That thought emboldened me enough to open both my eyes while taking the miniature precaution of stepping back and trying to hide behind Lady. She wasn’t there. Again. She had deserted me. Nice.

  It felt as if an eternity passed while I stared at two little, maybe people, standing in front of me. They stared back at me before the grumpy, bark faced one cleared its throat and said, “Sorry, sorry, so sorry.” The taunter.

  Now I had to decide. Was I going to taunt back, or make friends?

  I took a quick look around me. No friends. Right. Could use a few. I gathered up the remnant of what had passed as courage just the day before and demanded with great authority, “Who are you?”

  The thought cloud over grumpy’s head was almost visible. He thought I was a joke. He was right. But the voice that came with the wind told him to take care of me. Wait. What kind of “take care of?” It must be the other kind because if it were to get rid of me, it would have been as easy as flicking a finger and I probably would have died of fright.

  Instead, he just stood there like a lump of wood. He even looked like wood. Like a stump of wood with arms and legs covered in some weird green material that almost made him look like an elf. Almost. He was too wide and gnarly. He didn’t fit my version of an elf anyway.

  The head that belonged to the tiny hands and feet popped out behind grumpy and smiled at me. It was a real smile. I couldn’t help myself. I had to smile back. I doubted if the two of them were related.

  This one had a face as smooth and open as a rose petal. She stepped forward and extended a hand. Upside down. Did she want to shake hands, or was I supposed to kiss it?

  She laughed and said, “Like this,” as she put her hand out and Mr. Wood Face covered it with his hand sliding them off of each other like a handshake from the seventies. I expected them to wiggle their fingers after that, but maybe they didn’t know that part. Or Wood Head’s fingers didn’t move.

  I extended my hand, and she covered it. We slid back, and I wiggled my fingers.

  Flower Girl laughed, and Wood Head said, “Humpf.”

  “I’m Hannah,” I said, and then pointing at where Lady had just flown, “and that’s Lady somewhere out there.”

  “Oh, we know who you are Earth person,” Woody said. “We are supposed to get you to where you are going.”

  “Could we at least start with names? And then you could tell me where I am and then where we are going. And why.”

  When Grumpy Wood Face grunted, Flower Girl cuffed him on the back of his head. “Cut it out, Frank.”

  I didn’t hear what she said next because I started laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe. Frank? Not something exciting or even appropriate to what he looked like? Frank?

  “Sorry, sorry, so sorry,” I said parroting Grumpy Wood Head who was really Frank. It was too much. Who could be afraid of a Frank? The laughter felt good to me, but when I looked at my two new friends, I was embarrassed.

  Frank had turned his back to me, and little Flower Girl had her arm around his back whispering something.

  “No really, I am sorry. That was so mean. I think it was a release from all of this.”

  When they turned around I could see that they weren’t sad, they were laughing, too.

  �
��It’s a joke? Is he not Frank? Or what?”

  “No, we’re sorry.” Flower Girl said. “We’ve been teasing you all along. No, his name isn’t Frank. He is Ruta, and my name is Beru. Ruta doesn’t like change much, and you are bringing it. Me, I love it. Which is probably why we were both chosen to guide you.”

  “Ruta and Beru suit you both. But I don’t know anything. Who chose you? And where are you taking me?”

  Beru answered me. “It’s best you find out as we travel. We’ve stayed too long here. Some powers don’t want you here. We tried to do our best to keep it a secret, but by now it will be known that a portal opened, and you have returned. We have a long journey ahead of us.”

  “Returned? I can’t have returned. I’ve never been here.”

  Beru and Ruta exchanged glances. “Perhaps we have said too much,” Beru said.

  I screamed as a gut-wrenching shrieking sound in the distance made the ground beneath my feet jump.

  “Go now,” Ruta grunted and headed into the forest. He didn’t need to tell me twice. I wasn’t interested in meeting whatever caused that sound. I had heard about sonic booms. Maybe that’s what this was, except it was pitched so high it sounded like a giant scratching his fingernails across the sky.

  It wasn’t courage that had me following a lump of wood and a flower into the forest. It was fear.

  Five

  Ruta moved through the woods faster than I thought possible. Beru was even quicker. She kept circling back behind me and then running ahead of Ruta, and then coming back to me. I was running faster than I had ever run before, so how she was doing that was a mystery.

  There was no path as far as I could see. Ruta and Beru just ran, and things moved out of their way. Or at least I thought that was what was happening. I didn’t see any movement. Instead, there was an opening wherever Ruta went, and I followed Ruta through it.

  After what felt like two days but was probably less than an hour, I couldn’t run anymore. I tripped over my foot and fell flat on my face again for the second time in one day. I hoped it would be the last. Ruta had kept on running, but the next time Beru circled back she found me lying on the ground trying to breathe.

  She clicked her fingers together, and a moment later Ruta was there.

  “I don’t think she can go on right now, Ruta. Let’s stay here. We’re far enough from the clearing, and we can hide here until Hannah rests. Your friend has told us how much energy it takes to come through that portal. You need to rest.”

  When Ruta turned his grumpy stern face to me, I burst into tears as I mumbled, “Thank you Beru, and I’m sorry, Ruta.”

  I caught a look pass between them, and I swear I saw Ruta’s block face soften. I was too tired to ask what friend they were talking about.

  When Beru placed a mound of leaves under my head and covered me with some mysterious cloth she pulled out of her pocket, I fell asleep within seconds. The last thing I heard before entering emptiness was Suzanne’s voice saying it was safe, for now. That was enough for me. Suzanne hadn’t deserted me.

  *******

  I woke up lying on my back gazing up at a sky filled with stars. I didn’t remember falling asleep in a clearing. In fact, I was sure that we were deep into a forest when we stopped. But those stars sure looked good to me. They looked just like the stars I would see when I lay on my back in our backyard. I’m not good with naming stars, but I did recognize the Big Dipper. It was a comfort to know that I was still on Earth, even though they called it Erda. It looked like home.

  Home. My mom, Ben, my dad, and my friends Johnny and Sarah. I missed them all so much, and I had only been gone a day. How was I going to survive this?

  When we had talked about dimension traveling, Johnny and Sarah were supposed to come with me. At least I had planned it that way. Johnny and I would discover the mysteries of this new dimension together with Sarah watching over us to make sure all was well, just like she always did.

  Sarah was the wise woman everyone went to in my hometown when they had questions about something or a problem they couldn’t solve. Perhaps she knew how to help because she was older. But then I knew old people who weren’t so wise.

  Sarah was going to come with us because her husband, Leif, had traveled to this dimension a few years before and had stayed. She wanted to be with him, so I had envisioned that for the most part, I would have Johnny all to myself.

  It didn’t work out that way at all. Right after I was given the green light to dimension travel, I learned that Johnny had to stay behind. He was needed where he was. Because I believed I wouldn’t be gone long, I rationalized that it might work out for the best. He would miss me, and I would grow up enough for him to stop thinking of me as a little girl.

  Now that I was in the middle of some strange forest with two weird little people and Suzanne had told me that I couldn’t go home for a long time, I realized how stupid that romantic notion had been.

  As for Sarah, the woman who wanted to be with her husband, well, she didn’t come either. I didn’t know she wasn’t going through the portal with me. She was standing beside me as if she was coming.

  At the very last moment, Sarah had stepped away whispering that she would meet me there. I started to ask how she was going to do that when Suzanne began to yell go, go, at me and I leaped in trusting all would be well.

  Sure. All was well. I lay there now in a well of self-pity for a few moments until I realized that I was hungry and I smelled something cooking.

  I sat up and saw Suzanne sitting cross-legged in front of a fire along with Ruta and Beru. Ruta looked very uncomfortable.

  That was something I could understand. If I looked like a stump, I would not be comfortable around a fire either. On the other hand, I had no idea what a comfortable Ruta would look like. Neither of my two guides appeared to be eating.

  It was Suzanne who was eating. She was holding what looked like a monster mushroom wrapped in leaves and happily taking huge bites out of it.

  She looked at me and gestured at another mushroom waiting by the fire. I took it to mean it was mine and wasted no time in reaching for it. As my hand touched the food, I remembered my manners and asked Ruta and Beru if it was for them. The faces they made assured me that it wasn’t.

  It was most likely because I was so hungry that the wrap was the most delicious thing I ever ate. While munching away on it, I asked Ruta and Beru what they would eat. They mumbled an answer. Instead of asking what they said, I let it go. I’d find out soon enough. Now I needed to know about the shriek I had heard earlier, and where we were going. If I was going to be afraid, at least I should know what was scaring me.

  “Oh. Not necessarily,” Beru said.

  “Not necessarily what?” I asked.

  “Sometimes knowing is even more frightening. And in this case. I think that might be true.”

  Wow. Beru read my mind. I used to be able to do that. I wondered if it would come back to me. I looked at Ruta and Suzanne for confirmation. Suzanne nodded in agreement with Beru’s words.

  Oh, zounds! What had I gotten myself into?

  Six

  Suzanne with the spiky hair, leggings, and red tunic smiled at me, and I could feel my blood pressure going down. I had seen her do this before when my Earth friends and I were afraid. She would appear out of nowhere, and we would immediately feel calmer and prepared to face whatever danger was in front of us.

  I had no idea how she did it. I knew it was one of her many abilities, most of which I hadn’t seen yet. Seeing her smile, and feeling the result, made me wonder if she was the Suzanne I knew.

  Or was the Suzanne I met in the Earth dimension another Suzanne, or an illusion? Could there be two of her? Could there be two of me? How did that work?

  It didn’t surprise me that Suzanne knew what I was thinking. What surprised me was that she deci
ded to answer my unspoken question.

  “Dimension traveling is tricky. You might find another version of yourself when you enter a dimension because most dimensions are the same with only slight variations.

  “On the other hand, if the person you are has already died in the dimension you are traveling to, you would not meet yourself. On top of that, not everyone exists in every dimension. However, you never know until you arrive if the being that is you also exists there.

  “Think of all the trillions of decisions made each day that could spin a universe off into a new future. If your parents never met, you would most likely not show up in that dimension.”

  “What do you mean, ‘most likely?’” I asked Suzanne.

  “Just that. No one knows precisely how this works. The thing to remember is that if something happens in one dimension, it is possible that it happens in another one, but in a different way.”

  “Since there is a Ruta and a Beru in Erda, a version of them could also exist in what we call the Earth?” I asked.

  “This one’s easy, because I know there is. I’ve met them.”

  I took a moment to ponder that. If Suzanne had met them, had I?

  The Earth that I had left less than a day ago had already started to feel more like a dream than a reality. Is that how it worked? Maybe it was designed that way to keep people from moving back and forth between dimensions unwittingly causing havoc.

  If where you came from started to feel more like a dream, it forced you into being present. If you forgot that you had lived somewhere else before, or thought it was a dream, then the desire to return wouldn’t be there, or it would fade away.

  On the other hand, maybe some people never forgot. That would be me.