The driver gave her a smile and handed back some of the paper and some coins. “There. You gave me way too much, honey. You gotta be careful about that.” She hesitated, and then said, “You must be from the cult, huh?”
“Cult?” Cela asked, confused.
“Yeah. I’ve been driving this route for ten years and I’m not stupid. Young people keep turning up here, no idea what a phone is or how money works. I know there’s some kind ofback-to-the-land group around here somewhere, but nobody’ll tell me what’s going on. You’re not Amish, are you? You guys don’t dress like Amish.”
Cela shook her head wordlessly. She had never heard the word before and had no idea what it meant.
“I don’t suppose you’ll tell me where you’re from.”
She had a sudden wild urge to do so. Why not? They had thrown her out because her babies weren’t proper griffin shifters. Her mate had abandoned her. She owed them nothing anymore. She started to open her mouth.
Underneath her sleeve and poncho, her arm, which had almost stopped hurting, flared abruptly with a bolt of sharp pain. It wrung a gasp out of her. No other sound would emerge from her mouth.
“You okay, ma’am?”
Cela managed to close her mouth. She swallowed. Then cautiously, she nodded.
The tattoo was ruined forever with the exile mark ... but it still worked. She was unable to speak to outsiders of the island or of her people’s existence. She had heard of this effect, but because she’d never been off the island, she had never felt the magic in use before.
With anyone who already knew about griffins, she could speak normally. But the tattoo would prevent her from revealing their existence in any way. She couldn’t speak of it, she couldn’t hint of it, she couldn’t even shift in front of strangers.
Cela’s throat felt like a giant fist was squeezing it, and her eyes prickled hotly with tears.
This was the life ahead of her. A life of endless secrecy, having to hide what she was, struggling to survive in the human world without even being able to tell them what was wrong. She would be an exile among humans and an outcast from her own kind.
Then she swallowed down the salty weight of her tears and straightened her back.
And for my children, I would do it all over again. I could never have made a different choice.
“So ... where you going?” the bus driver asked.
“Autumn Grove,” she said promptly.
“You know which route that is?”
She shook her head. She hadn’t realized there was more than one.
The driver took a small booklet out of a stack of them, and handed it to her. “Technically these are a buck, but tell you what—you keep it. Just find the place you need to go and mark it on the map, okay? I’ll tell you which buses to take to get there, and how much you’ll need to pay.”
“Thank you,” Cela said politely. The booklet looked similar to the one she had, but not quite the same. Perhaps it was newer? She resolved to study it once she sat down.
“Have you eaten, hon?” the driver asked. “Do you need me to take you somewhere you can get something to eat?” She glanced back into the empty bus. “No one out here this late. I won’t tell if you won’t.”
Cela’s eyes prickled again, but for different reasons this time. The world had kind people in it, after all. This human woman had been more welcoming to her than her own people. Maybe her life in the outside world wouldn’t be a total disaster, she thought.
“No, thank you,” she said. “I have something to eat with me. Just take me wherever you’re going next. I—I’ll look at the map and you can point out which buses to take next?”
Her voice rose on a nervous question. The driver nodded, and Cela went and sat down, clutching the booklet in a damp fist.
The babies had remained quiet throughout the conversation, and it occurred to her as she settled into the seat that,with the rain and darkness and the cloak, the lady probably hadn’t even realized that she had them with her.
Babies she would need to provide for and raise in a world she knew nothing about.
The new world loomed ahead of her, huge and impossibly alien. She hoped this mysterious Tyr would be able to help her, because otherwise, she could not imagine what she was going to do.
TYR
“Well, kids,”Tyr said, spreading his arms, “what do you think of Dad’s new place?”
