03. Secarin, Inhibitors & Treason...

In the millennium since mutants first began appearing in Lothoria, there had only ever been three mutant abilities. All of their rules and limits had been established and heavily documented. Neither empathy nor telepathy was supposed to work on more than a handful of people at a time. An empath could not be a telepath, a telepath could not be an empath and no telekinetic could move anything heavier than a large wagon. In a thousand years of history, what Taryn called willing had never even been thought of. It wasn’t supposed to exist.

But Taryn was easily overwhelmed by the minds of everyone she shared space with, whether it was a class of two dozen or a village circle of two hundred. She was weeks away from being able to lift the cabin. And she could untie her restraints with a thought. Something was wrong with her. And now that her parents knew it, they didn’t want her anymore.

Taryn ran deeper into the forest. One hand still clutched the restraint, the other rose occasionally to wipe the tears from her cheeks that fell fresh whenever one of her parents’ thoughts crept up to twist the knife in her heart. She ran until she reached the pond near the cabin; where she’d learned to swim and where she’d hoped to teach Nayt when he was old enough. Her family picnicked there; it was where she came to dream and read in secret. It was where she had her lessons with her father; where he taught her how to be and she learned to control what she was. This was where she and her mother set the Glow Blossoms adrift when they were ready to bloom. Much of her life had been lived here and she choked out a sob at the thought that she would lose it all.

It was a pitiful sound and she forced it to die quickly. This was the third time she’d cried in under an hour. She had not been raised to cry at her problems, she reminded herself. If she didn’t master her sorrow now it could come back to weaken her later. So she sat on the wet grass and gathered all the desires she had to whine and sob and moan and shake and she buried them in the truth that tears would not save her; she had to save herself. She dried her face on her sleeve and shut her mouth. She would control her grief from now on.

Taryn sensed her parents’ approach before she heard them trekking through the forest behind her. Her stomach clenched. Her heart hammered a wild rhythm. She shut her eyes to block out their minds as she tried and failed not to think about why they might have come after her. She didn’t dare think they had come to invite her back.

They sat on either side of her, so close that she was cooked in the warmth of their bodies.

Taryn kept her eyes on the water. She moved her fingers to guide the flowers floating in the pond in a dancing figure-eight. Focusing on the complicated mechanics of keeping the floating emeralds from colliding helped her to ignore them. For a long time no one said anything, only sat there and watched. But Taryn became increasingly aware of the silence. It made the soft noises of movement on the pond sound like crashing waves. She got flustered and quit.

Her parents continued in silence. Taryn let herself feel their growing anxiety and impatience: they were waiting for her to speak. But she couldn’t say what she wanted to say; that she wanted to stay. She needed to understand, first, why they needed her to go if she had any hope of convincing them that they were wrong. She couldn’t allow herself to become emotional. She had to be composed, in control. She couldn’t look at them.

“Where’s Nayt?” Not what she’d meant to ask but it was what escaped her nervous lips.

“Down for a nap,” came Mama’s reply. “He’s had an… exhausting day.”

In other words, Taryn thought, they wanted to keep him away from her.

“Taryn,” Mama said, “my love.” Her mother pleaded without words for Taryn to look at her. She didn’t. “We’re so sorry,” she finally sighed.

“Why?” Taryn asked suspiciously.

“You were upset when you left,” Papa put in. “We’re sorry if we scared you.”

“You must promise never to run off like that again, love. I was terrified you would hurt yourself.”

Taryn’s forced composure slipped in a moment of confusion. For all the unwanted information her abilities awarded her, they never helped her to understand the phenomenon of conflicted adult emotions. She didn’t understand how infidelity justified hatred for a loved one or how retaliation brought shame and guilt to the originally wronged person. She didn’t understand how her parents could worry about any harm she would bring to herself in the same space of thought that they decided they didn’t care enough about her to keep her. She could feel it, but she did not understand why they were so worried that she’d run away.

And what did Mama mean by “again?”

“Here,” her mother said. “Can you move this?”

Taryn saw the peach in her mother’s palm, dancing at the edge of her vision. It was a ploy to get her to turn her head and look. She gave it a darting glance. “It’s too heavy.”

The hand withdrew.

“I guess this won’t work anymore.” Her father chuckled and Taryn let him take the restraints from her.

“It hasn’t worked for a while,” Taryn snapped. Now she was confused and irritated. What did her mother care how strong her willing was if she didn’t want Taryn to remain long enough to track her growth? Why were they avoiding the real issue? “Why are you afraid of me?”

“No one here is afraid of you,” Papa said slowly, carefully.

“Then, why do you want me to leave?” Taryn fought hard to keep the wail out of her voice.

“We don’t want you to leave,” Papa said.

“Is that what you thought?” Mama sounded relieved and amused as she put an arm around her.

Taryn stiffened. An hour ago she would have laughed as she squirmed her way out of that touch. Now she wanted to hold on, to believe in what it really was: a desire to protect and nurture; an assurance that as long as she was in these arms no harm could ever come to her; an act of love. But her mother didn’t love her. She never had. “What’s happening?” she whispered, her voice thick with emotion.

“Sweetheart? You’re shaking.”

With effort, Taryn pulled away. “At the cabin you wanted me to leave. Now you’re clinging to me as if you’re afraid I will. Why are you doing this to me?”

“What are you talking about?” Papa asked. He touched her to make her look at him and she felt real confusion in him. “Doing what?”

“After you saw… what I did, you wanted me to go,” Taryn choked the words out. “You didn’t want me to live with you anymore.”

“Taryn, no.” They shook their heads.

“Yes,” Taryn affirmed.

“You must have misunderstood,” Papa said. “We –”

“Don’t lie to me!” Taryn yelled and stood to put some distance between them. Their confusion and concern were forcing her to give up her calm focus and she needed it to get the answers she needed. “I felt it! You called me a curse. You said that I needed to be fixed. You didn’t want me because I was too dangerous and you couldn’t control me anymore. And you looked at me like… like that!” Their fearful gapes had returned. This time, Taryn steeled herself against it and used it to fortify her resolve to understand what had happened in the cabin. “Now you’re here, pretending it never happened and I want an explanation. I demand an explanation.”

They said nothing, just stared at her with their wide eyed terror. Frustrated and angry, Taryn turned to leave again. And froze.

She saw that dozens of blades of grass and fallen leaves and small twigs floated in the air around her. Something brushed her cheek. She reached up and pulled a bug away. It crawled on and clung to her finger before it rose and joined the maelstrom. The storm of debris calmed as she watched it. As she calmed. Still she asked, “Am I doing this?”

“There’s a whole trail of this leading back to the cabin,” Papa said. “It’s how we found you.”

Taryn blinked and the debris fell free of her will. She saw the trail her father had spoken of; a thick line of swept dirt riddled with leaves pulled from nearby bushes and rimmed with upturned pebbles that formed a clear path to Taryn’s feet. She jumped back, shocked. She was always in control of her abilities. When she was awake, at least. But she had been unaware doing this.

Something is wrong with me, Taryn thought. She had to see whatever she wanted to move before she could command it. If she could not see it, if she could not study its dimensions and know its exact location, she could not move it. But this had happened behind her, outside her field of vision, beyond her focus. A fifth anomaly, Taryn thought. Another reason for her parents to hate her.

She felt a hand grope her shoulder, turn her, and lift her head. She saw her eyes looking back at her. “No.” Taryn squeezed her eyes shut and turned her head away. “Why do you keep doing this to me?”

“It’s the only way I know you’ll trust what I tell you,” Mama said. “Look at me.”

Taryn did. Her mother smiled. “You are not a curse.”

“I heard you – ”

“You are the greatest treasure of my life – of both our lives. You made us a family, something we had both been without. We do not want you to go,” Mama said, her fingers in Taryn’s hair, tucking a braid behind her ear.

“But I heard – ”

“You are the little queen of my heart, pure and perfect. I don’t want you to go.”

Her mother had said it twice now, exactly what Taryn wanted to hear. And she began to believe she had misunderstood what she’d heard before. But it was not enough to completely dissolve her fear of abandonment. “But I still make you afraid.” Taryn spoke softly, afraid of being heard, afraid that her words would be confirmed. And rightly so, for her mother gave no objections and offered no denial. Taryn pulled away from her. “What’s wrong with me?”

“There is nothing wrong with you,” Papa said.

“Then what were you so afraid of at the cabin?”

Her father looked at her mother. Her mother fidgeted, nervously wringing her hands in her lap before answering. “When people get frightened, excited, or stressed their bodies produce something called adrenaline. It does all kinds of things to the body, to make it ready to deal with the stressor. But something unusual happens in mutants. Instead of adrenaline, your body produces something called secarin.”

“Is that what’s wrong with me?”

“No,” Papa answered. “That’s normal for a mutant. Secarin is where your abilities come from.”

“The concentration of secarin in the body is indicative of the progression of the mutation,” Mama continued. “Whenever a new ability presents itself, or even when your abilities become stronger, it’s because the secarin has developed a new mutation – it’s evolved. These evolutions cause the concentration of secarin to rise and fall erratically as your body learns how to perfect the new mutation without compromising any of the old ones.”

“That’s what makes new abilities come and go,” Papa interjected.

“When the concentration finally stabilizes again, you’ll always have more secarin than when you started.”

“But…” Taryn prompted.

Her mother sighed. “Different abilities come from different mutations. The mutation for telepathy was always thought to be easier to achieve than the one for empathy. That’s why empathy is a very rare ability. It is a much more… complex mutation. And since they have never appeared together, it was always assumed that the two mutations could not survive in the same environment. It was always assumed that they would destroy each other. But you,” her mother finally looked at her and Taryn could see the pain in her eyes. “You have disproved this belief. We don’t know if it means you’re evolving as a mutant or devolving.”

“What does that mean?” Taryn understood that evolving meant growth, new abilities, good things. She understood that devolving was the opposite of evolving, but she hadn’t heard anything that explained their fears.

“Think of it like your training,” Papa said. “When we first started, all you had was your moving and all you learned was bare-handed combat forms. We’ll let your empathy be staff forms and telepathy, sword forms. New abilities are supposed to add to your skill set, complement them, like the staff does with combat. Or a sword does with combat. But you can’t use a staff with a sword. They’ll get in each other’s way and you won’t be able to do anything perfectly. That’s what’s happening with you. We’re worried that the more you evolve, the more ‘weapons’ you acquire, the harder it will be for you to control them.”

This, Taryn understood. With a sword and staff, she had no room for any other weapons – she shouldn’t be able to will. And even if she learned to use the staff one-handed, there would be a range of things she couldn’t do. Nor could she be as adept in her combat skills. This translated to her empathy and telepathy working against each other, as she’d been experiencing all week, and interfering with her control over her moving – which she’d experienced a few minutes ago.

But Taryn could will. And she could learn to control her reading and empathy together. Then her control over her moving or willing wouldn’t be in question. Taryn said none of this. She still waited to hear the bad.

“No one has ever mutated so much in so short a time. Your body could become overwhelmed by the changes and… We don’t know if it’s possible for a mutant to have too much secarin or what that theoretical amount would be. It could become toxic and… you might…” Her mother didn’t want to finish.

“I could die.” That was bad. Taryn suddenly felt very itchy. She imagined the secarin as a thick green liquid, building up in her, swelling her body like a plumb grape before finally oozing out of any hole it could find, slowly and painfully draining her life away. Or maybe she would explode from it. Taryn didn’t want to know how it would happen.

“Your secarin isn’t… normal,” Mama said carefully. “It makes you different. There is nothing wrong with being different, but we have nothing to compare you with. We don’t know what to expect and that’s what scares us.”

Taryn was the only one in the world like her. That scared her too. It used to be enough to know that even though she was the only mutant in Damville, she wasn’t the only mutant in the kingdom. She may never meet others but she knew they were out there. That knowledge kept her from feeling like she was some sort of bizarre creature that needed to be kept hidden from the rest of the world. But knowing that she was the only one of her kind made her feel… alone. “Can you fix me?”

“There is nothing to fix.” Her father spoke to her mother before turning to Taryn. “There is nothing wrong with you.”

Taryn didn’t believe that. Neither did her mother. But neither of them objected and Taryn didn’t want to think about it anymore. There were more secrets her parents kept from her.

Taryn sat down between them. Her mother put an arm around her, kissed her forehead, and smiled at her. “So,” Taryn asked tentatively, “what did you mean when you said – thought – that I couldn’t stay here?”

Her father answered this time, before her mother got a chance to. “We were worried that we wouldn’t be able to hide your abilities from everyone else and we would all have to leave. Not just you.”

“Why?” Taryn posed this question to her mother. Her father was obviously the one who wanted the secrets to remain so. The adults stared and had another of their silent discussions. Taryn heard a few snippets. “Tell me what?” she asked.

“Alright, this is going to be a serious problem. We need to find a way to control it.” Mama said.

“That isn’t an answer.”

Her mother smiled and nudged Taryn’s arm. “You’re a mutant, Taryn.”

“I know that.”

A squeeze this time. “The LAAMP requires all mutants to be registered so that they, and all the citizens of Lothoria, are made aware of how many mutants are in the kingdom, and where they live.”

“The Lothorian Administration for the Assimilation of Mutant Persons,” Papa said, noting Taryn’s confusion, “is the Royal Administration responsible for passing, enforcing, and defending the laws concerning mutants.”

“Oh.” Taryn blinked. “But I’m not supposed to tell anyone what I am.”

“No.”

“So you want me to disobey the King’s law?” Laws, like rules, existed for a reason.

“The law isn’t perfect.”

“And just because something is legal, doesn’t make it right,” Papa added.

“Then why is it a law?”

“The LAAMP thinks that mutations are a sickness. They think that secarin poisons the mind and makes mutants violent. Registration is necessary for the protection of other citizens.”

“That’s silly. How could anyone believe that?”

“Because almost every mutant in recorded history has proven themselves to be lovers of cruelty,” her mother answered.

Taryn froze. Slowly, she removed her mother’s arm from around her. She studied the woman carefully. Sadness stared back at her, along with guilt, anger, and pity. And hatred, buried deep beneath it all but still there. Now, Taryn understood. Lovers of cruelty; creatures of darkness; unlovable and unloving. It was exactly how the villains of her favorite stories were described. Lovers of cruelty whose crimes usually began with torturing animals. The natural enemy of Lothor Kings and all of humanity. Taryn hated them too. “You think I’m a skin-changer,” Taryn accused.

“No,” came her father’s angry reply. “Of course not.”

No denial from her mother, only stiffness and averted eyes.

“You think that if I keep using my abilities, I’ll become like those other mutants,” Taryn said, drawing from what she knew of the skin-changer. “I did not catch that squirrel to torture it. I swear I only wanted to play with it and feed it and love it for a few weeks. Then I would have let it go. And Nayt really did get up and walk on his own. I did not move him.” Taryn touched her mother’s cheek and turned her face it toward her. “You will not lose me to an evil spirit.”

“No,” her mother said, trying to smile, to make light of her tears and reassure her daughter. “You –”

“I’m different,” Taryn declared. “You said it yourself. I’ve never hurt anyone. I never want to and I never will.”

Her mother took a deep, shaky breath and spoke softly. “As your condition progresses, you won’t be able to stop yourself.”

“Yes, I will.” There were no good skin-changers. Taryn knew that. Evil was in their very nature. But she was nothing like them. “I am a Sil-Tain, and a mutant to boot. Nothing is impossible for me.”

“Alright,” Mama said. And smiled, even though she knew that Taryn knew she didn’t believe it. But she wanted to. So Taryn vowed to make it true – to prove her mother wrong.

“And we have to tell the village about me.”

“No!” her parents answered together.

“You want me to follow your rules, even if I don’t understand them. Doesn’t that mean we should obey the law, even if it’s not perfect?”

“Taryn, no one can know the truth about you.”

Papa’s tone discouraged any argument but Taryn couldn’t let it go. “But wouldn’t you be punished if anyone ever did find out about me?” Taryn imagined that breaking the King’s laws would have crueler punishments than breaking rules.

“It’s nothing compared to what they’d do to you,” Mama said.

“What do you mean?” Her parents shared another look. “What else are you keeping from me?”

Mama looked away and Papa cleared his throat nervously.

Taryn shrugged. “I’m going to find out eventually.” She used her hands to start in on the Glow Blossoms again, this time making them dip into and leap from the water, twirling them so they’d shower drops back into the pond.

Papa sighed and pulled the long black case from his pocket. His hand hovered over it before he opened it and placed it in Taryn’s lap. Something glinted within. Taryn let the flowers rest and picked up the case. She saw a glass tube filled with a lemon-yellow liquid. On one end of the tube was a needle, the other, two metal loops. Her mother tensed beside her and Taryn knew the liquid wasn’t lemon juice. “What is this?” Taryn asked.

“It’s an inhibitor.” Mama’s jaw was clenched and she gave her husband an evil look.

He ignored it. “The Seat wanted to find a way to heal mutant abilities. But their… scientists” – her father said that word with disgust – “couldn’t find a way to do it perfectly. They created a temporary inhibitor instead of a permanent cure.”

“It reacts with your secarin and makes it so that you are unable to use your abilities for a few hours. All registered mutants are required to take it.”

“But you said you couldn’t fix me.” Taryn stared at the liquid, already imagining what her life would be, what it should have been, if she were registered. “This can make me normal.”

“No, it won’t.” Mama shut the case and took it from Taryn.

“Of course it will!” Taryn persisted angrily. “I wouldn’t have to worry about being discovered if people already knew about me. I won’t have to hear or feel anything from anyone unless I wanted to. I wouldn’t have to run away all the time. I could play with the other children. I could have friends!”

“This,” her father said and held up her restraints, “ties your hands down. But the inhibitor would be like cutting your arms off. You would never get to use your abilities, even out here.”

Taryn thought about that. “What if I pretend to take the inhibitors?” She still wouldn’t be able to use her abilities near others. But this way she could at least have some semblance of a normal childhood.

Her parents shared another look and Taryn lost her patience. “No more secret discussions. Just tell me everything! Please!”

“As your father said, secarin research has never been a perfect science. And with all that’s been happening with your secarin, there is no guarantee that you’d react to inhibitors at all. If you did… Inhibitors will take your abilities, but they will also make you very sick. Even after the inhibiting effects have worn off you would be too tired and weak to do anything. And that’s the best that could be hoped for. Some mutants don’t respond as well.”

Meaning, Taryn thought angrily, it could be worse.

“And inhibition only applies to new mutants. No one will see your abilities and believe that you’ve only just mutated. The LAAMP have decided that one year, uninhibited, is all it takes for a mutant to be… irredeemable.”

Taryn almost didn’t want to ask. If her father wanted it kept from her, there had to be a good reason. But she needed to know what would happen to her if anyone ever found out what she was. “What happens to the irredeemable mutants?”

“They would take you, love, and lock you away,” her mother said quietly. “They would try to fix you.”

Something in her mother’s tone made Taryn think that these mutant prisons were nothing like what she could imagine. When she tried to listen to her mother’s thoughts for clarity, she heard nothing. But her father’s thoughts yielded hazy flashes of blood on metal, fire, and unending darkness. Everything he’d heard about these prisons told him that the hooded jailers could not hope to fix mutants. But they would try.

“Do you understand now, why we can’t tell anyone about you?” her mother asked.

“But that’s…” Taryn would have asked why such a place even existed, but then she remembered the skin-changers. If the stories were true and skin-changers were another name for mutants… No, even then it was still wrong. A quick death was better than that slow torture. And Taryn wasn’t inherently evil. She didn’t believe that every other mutant in the kingdom was – the differences between herself and other mutants couldn’t be that great. For them to be forced to poison themselves, or stolen from their lives to be tortured, to never use their abilities. It rankled. “That’s… It’s just wrong!”

“It’s the law.”

“Well it ought to be changed.”

Papa grinned. “There are plenty of people who would agree with you, but none willing to say so out loud.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s treason,” her mother answered. “Mutant registration and inhibition are essential to the peace and security of the kingdom. The last time someone tried to repeal those laws, the queen was killed and the Prince lost. Both at the hands of uninhibited mutant. His Majesty will not forgive after so little time and he will never forget.”

Rebels had killed the queen and stolen the Prince for some still unknown purpose. That much Taryn had known – it had all happened in her lifetime. But she had never known that mutant rebels were responsible. “That doesn’t mean every mutant has to be punished. It’s not fair. Lothor Kings are supposed to be the defenders of all things good and just, no matter what. How could he justify this?”

“Because he’s a feeble minded fool,” her father spat, “who rules with his heart instead of his head. And even then he’s often deplorably inadequate.”

“Then he shouldn’t be King.”

“No,” Mama said.

“I agree with you, Taryn. Someone should do something.”

“No!” her mother yelled. “If you’re going to be plotting treason then your lessons will stop right now.”

“No.” Taryn chided herself for speaking so soon. No matter what her father said, she still believed that Lothor Kings were descended from gods. They could not be afflicted with the weaknesses of humanity. The mystical powers may have faded over the centuries but the standards had to have remained. The current King betrayed that belief, but he was still a Lothor. “No one is plotting treason.”

“I know you aren’t. But you,” her mother turned to her father. “I thought you had moved past this.”

“I am past it.”

“Then this has to stop. You can’t stay angry with him for something he isn’t responsible for. And I will not let you talk our daughter into getting herself killed for your misguided vengeance.”

“The man refuses to listen to reason. Someone needs to beat some sense into him.”

“Well it won’t be her. And it can’t be you.” Mama draped a protective arm around Taryn. “You can’t leave us,” she added softly.

“Please, don’t be mad at each other,” Taryn pleaded. “We’re not plotting treason,” she said to her father. “And Papa isn’t leaving.”

Whatever grievance her father had with the King, whatever it was that made him discredit the ability of Lothor Kings to rule and guffaw at the beliefs of the Mystics pained him still. He wanted retribution. But now Taryn shared in her mother’s determination to keep him from acting out in anger. They needed to take his mind off it. “What are we going to tell Ms. Elah?”

“Well, we’re going to tell her that you thought it’d be amusing to copy your classmates’ assignments,” her mother said.

“But I didn’t – ” Taryn began.

“It’s the only thing she’ll believe,” Mama said. “Apart from you being a telepath. We’ll tell her you’ve become something of a trickster these past few weeks and now that it’s spread to your schoolwork we’ll be teaching you at home until the phase has passed.”

“So we’re breaking laws and lying now?” But it was all for her, Taryn reminded herself. Her earlier fear of abandonment now seemed silly, now that she knew how much her parents cared for her safety.

“This is the only law you are allowed to break and the only lie you are allowed to tell, until we say otherwise. Do you understand?” The look her mother gave her was a familiar one; it dared her to disobey and held a promise of punishment. Even though her parents had lost their only real form of punishment, Taryn was still able to conjure the fear it had instilled in her.

“Yes.”

“Good.” Her mother smiled. It was chilling how easily her mood shifted.

“I have to rewrite the assignment and apologize to Ms. Elah.”

“Oh, no, sweetheart,” Mama said. “You don’t have to.”

“We have to make the lie believable. She would expect you to make me do it over and apologize if it were a prank.”

“Okay,” Mama said after considering it. “Your father will go with you, then,” her mother looked pointedly at him. “Since he isn’t good for much else.”

“Excellent,” Papa said with a grin. “This way we’ll be left alone to work out our treasonous plots.” When her mother gave him a nasty look, he quickly recanted. “I was only joking,” he said, then whispered to Taryn, “Maybe.”

Taryn suppressed her laugh when her mother turned her attentions to her.

“Is there anything else you haven’t told us about your abilities? Anything at all?” she asked. “And don’t you dare lie to me again.”

“No,” Taryn said. “I only kept it secret because you were keeping secrets.” There were still secrets, but none that Taryn wished to know. “But now you know everything I know about my abilities.” Taryn knew there would be more inquisitions later. Her mother would want to know details of when the ability first presented itself, what Taryn had been doing and thinking at that moment, how strong it had been, how strong it became over time, et cetera, et cetera.

“Will you tell me if anything else happens?”

“Yes.”

“I’m serious, Taryn. I don’t want you to spare my feelings. We need to know about these things.”

“I promise,” Taryn said. “No more secrets.”

“Now that’s all behind us,” Papa stood and held his hands out to help Taryn and her mother up. “The monkey and I will clear up this path. We can’t let anyone find it.”

Her mother’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Don’t stay too long. She needs to eat.” Another pause, another conversation of minor expressions. Then she smiled at Taryn and left her alone with her father.

Taryn pushed dirt over the paved space around her and patted it down with her feet. She scattered brushwood and pebbles over it and moved along to tend another patch of the path but her father grabbed her arm and turned her to face him.

“Skin-changers,” he said. “Where did you learn that word?”

Taryn swallowed. She’d been so concerned with convincing her mother she’d forgotten that her father was there to hear every word. Her mother was already out of sight and beyond empathetic range. She would not be returning to save her. “Uh, I don’t know. Maybe I heard it.”

He didn’t believe her. Taryn succumbed to shame under his gaze and looked away.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“I’m a Sil-Tain.” Just saying it made her stand straighter; chin up, chest out.

“That’s what you are. You can’t change that any more than you can change the fact that you are a mutant. Who you are is defined by the choices you make. Lying to your mother and I, running from your teacher; those are the actions of a weakling and a coward. What do you know of weakness, Taryn?”

“Nothing,” Taryn mumbled. “I have no right to be so afflicted.” There is no room for weakness in greatness.

“And of cowardice?”

“Cowards are slaves to their fears. And I must be my own master.”

“Tell me how you know so much about skin-changers.”

Taryn thought running from Ms. Elah had been a strategic move to avoid uncomfortable questions. But he had made his point. Here and now, at least, she could ask the questions that would have been too much for her mother. She reached into her tunic to pick out her battered copy of ‘Primus.’ There was no fancy cover to protect it, only a bit of string and some cracking residue to keep the pages bound together. Printed on the first page was a fading image of the First, a shining sword raised overhead and the carcass of the dragon Morn underfoot. The children’s book told the story of how the young god descended from the heavens and destroyed all the dragons and their eggs. Morn had been the last great dragon and favorite pet of the evil skin-changers. In later volumes, the First traveled to a fairy kingdom for a bride, lost his magic sword and defeated the brutal skin-changer army to be named King of Lothoria.

Papa took the thin pamphlet from her and tossed it to the water. Taryn scowled and caught it before it hit and brought it back into her hands.

“Where did you get that?” he asked heatedly.

“Some travelers’ kids,” she responded in kind. “They let me keep it.”

“Why did you want to keep it?”

Taryn said nothing. Not from fear, but from choice. She didn’t want to answer and she chose not to let him intimidate her.

“What have I told you about these stories?”

“There are no gods and the Lothor Kings have no power,” Taryn recited. Definitely a treasonous mantra. “But –”

“No. No buts. If the Lothors had any power your uncles would be alive.”

Taryn didn’t have any uncles. She stopped herself from blurting that out. That was exactly his point, she realized. Before Nayt, theirs had always been a family of three. Taryn knew nothing of doting grandparents or wayward uncles, of lonely aunts or distant cousins. Neither of her parents ever spoke of anyone beyond the village and Taryn had always assumed it was because of her, that they had to abandon their lives in order to hide what she was. Now, she wondered: Had her uncles done something? Who had her father been before she came screaming into his world?

“The skin-changers are supposed to be mutants, aren’t they?”

“They aren’t real. And mutants are nothing like them.”

“But Mama thinks –”

“Your mother doesn’t know what she thinks. There are no wolf-men, there are no fairies. The Lothor Kings have never had any power. Nothing in this book is true.”

The wolf-men and fairies were in the second book of the series. Taryn hadn’t read it yet but she looked forward to it. At least, she used to. The thrill was gone when she thought of the skin-changers as mutants, when her thoughts of them reminded her of Mama’s thoughts of her. “But the LAAMP thinks it is and the King obviously does. It’s why no one talks about mutants.” The skin-changers knew when they were being discussed, (Taryn mentally cringed as she realized that power was oddly similar to telepathy) and took such discussions as an invitation to make their presence known. And to show too much of an interest in them was to risk becoming one. “I’ll never meet another mutant.” And there was probably no one who could teach her to control her abilities because they were either suppressing theirs with inhibitors or hiding, like she was.

“But the kingdom isn’t lost,” he said, bending to gather fistfuls of debris to scatter. “I’ve met plenty of people who know mutants aren’t evil, and even more mutants who’ve proven it. You’ll meet them one day, when you’re ready, and we’ll change the world together. In the meantime, you shouldn’t read those lies. They will confuse you.”

Taryn frowned. Her whole life Papa had been teaching her and training her. When she’d asked ‘what for?’ he’d responded with ‘greatness.’ When she’d asked ‘how?’ he would smile and tell her she would know when she was ready. She’d always taken that to mean he didn’t know, that greatness was simply expected of her and it was up to her to decide how to achieve it. But now she knew that he had a plan. He’d always had a plan.

“But it can’t all be lies,” Taryn said, clutching the thin booklet to her chest. She was conflicted. She didn’t want to be a rebel. She didn’t want to take up arms with her father’s secret allies and war with her King. Lothoria was nothing without Lothor Kings. But she knew she wasn’t evil. And if everything else her father said was true, what choice did she have if the King refused to listen? “What about magic?” She was thinking of the First’s enchanted armor and charmed sword, of the Lost Tomes and the Hidden City. All of these relics had been the goal of centuries of adventures. They were still out there to reclaim. “We can use it to remind the King of who he’s supposed to be and what he’s come from.” She certainly didn’t think the First would approve of one of his descendants allowing injustice to reign in his kingdom.

Her father sighed. “You can think of yourself as a kind of magic. You have the power to change your own fate. To save yourself and make this world into something you can be proud of.”

Taryn sighed. He’d always taught her not to rely on anyone – or anything – else to solve her problems. It was pointless for her to suggest otherwise. She tucked the book back into her shirt and joined her father as he bent to his work. “Can we still start my sword training today?”

“No. The restraints are useless now.” He picked those up and threw them in the water. “So your sword training will be put off for two weeks.” He raised a brow, waiting for her to protest. She wanted to but she didn’t. She knew what would happen if she did.

He smiled. “Until then, we’ll work on getting your new ability to standard. You were moving peaches before you could even stand.” He waved a hand over the path.

Taryn grimaced. She just knew she would be ‘perfecting her stances’ while trying to will her training doll to run through her forms. And he would deny her meals and rest until she performed to his satisfaction. Taryn hated the brutality of her training, but it worked. Since they’d started, the only times she’d ever lost control of her moving were when she’s eaten that honey cake (which she was now forbidden to have) and one night, a year ago, when a nightmare had sent her into a thrashing fit. The threat of that happening again hadn’t abated, but they’d alleviated themselves of that worry by storing anything that could be moved into locked closets and hidden panels built into her room, nailing down her bed, and tucking her into bed so tightly that she couldn’t move her limbs. They couldn’t seal everything in the world so Taryn needed that same mastery of her willing.

“If it isn’t hard,” Taryn recited. “It isn’t worth the effort.”

Her father smiled as he hugged her against his side. “That’s my Chunky Monkey.”

Then he dumped a handful of dirt and leaves on her head and ran as she hunted him down to do the same. They both laughed.