Slipping Away Read online

  Slipping Away

  Sylvia Johnson

  1

  There is a beauty in the deep woods that many appreciate. The quiet my less woodsy friends experience is serene, and the trees around them grow tall and proud, wearing their green like ceremonial garb, brought out for special occasions. My friends talk about the dim peacefulness of the forest, and the beauty of the sunlight filtering through the leaves.

  My experience of the woods is different. I have spent a lot of time in the forest, and the silence, so appreciated by my friends, is actually a symptom of apprehension. Silence is a reminder that the serene retreats of a wild forest are dangerous places. Usually, silence is a sign that somewhere, sometime, and probably soon, nature’s deadlier children are about to exercise their right to live.

  I look back at the times I have been through, at the things I have done, and I wonder how I got to where I am today. I have survived what some people might name hell. We have a different name for it; we call it war.

  It began with the creation of a super-virus at the hands of some anonymous person. The story later was that he or she was part of a terrorist group, but back then, with that tense political situation, all the governments were looking to lay blame.

  While the world leaders were all at each others' throats, the virus swept the globe and killed four in every five people, somehow overcoming all attempts to block it, and all attempts to treat it. The plague settled in, and no population was untouched. In the space of a single decade, the great cities of the old society were reduced to nothing but relics of a bygone era that no one had time for. A semi-tribal society sprang up from the remnants. That was about when I was born, one of the first generation to be born after the plague. And that was also when it was discovered that the virus didn't leave the survivors. You see, where my parent's generation was universally scarred by the virus, their progeny were changed by it. The virus had somehow fused with the DNA of the various species it affected, and it had also fused the DNA of various species together.

  The day all hell broke loose again seemed like a normal day to me. I spent that day hunting for tradeables in the old city, and helping a friend check fishing traps at the same time. Except there was nothing in the one I was at.

  "Drat!"

  "Eh, that one never has much anyhow," came a voice from off to one side. I looked over to see Muffy, my sahagin friend, standing nearby with a string of fish dangling idly from one gold-scaled hand. He lazily pulled a lump of salt out of a blue leather pouch at his waist, tied to his pants by a cord, with the other hand. I couldn't tell what kind of fish he was holding, but Muffy spent better than half his time in the water, and he knew which hybrids were typically safe to eat.

  "Still worth trying," I replied grumpily. "You never know, there might be a new species or something in there."

  Muffy shrugged scale-flecked shoulders, running past me as I grabbed my quiver and buckled it on my back again. "Whatever, Nyx!" he called back at me over his shoulder. "We know the virus changed all but one in a thousand of the children born to the survivors. If it's still around, we'll keep mutating until everything looks the same, or everything looks different!"

  "Therefore let us eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die!" called a new voice cheerfully. I turned to see a wolf boy and a half dragonfly fairy boy walking casually out of a building. The wolf boy was sorting through an armful of cans, tossing punctured or crushed ones off to the side, and putting the good ones in a bag. The fairy was the one who had called out to me, his resonant voice enunciating and rolling through the tones of the quote he had pulled out of memory. Tiberius, the fairy, had chitin armor across his back, and plates on his upper arms and shoulders, and a pair of wings that flipped to his back when he wasn't using them. Two symmetrical plates just above his eyes, which replaced his eyebrows, helped protect his eyes from hits, since he could angle his face to catch them on the chitin. He had sandy brown hair, tanned copper skin, and a crush on Pandora, which I used to keep him under my thumb, both through blackmail and through favors. Tiberius also had a collection of quotes from all sorts of sources, and he used them to talk people into things, and to talk himself out of trouble. Half of them, he didn't even remember where he got them, though, as I suspected was the case here.

  "Kinda short-sighted, doncha think?" I replied. "What if the virus doesn't mutate second generation kids? What if it was only the survivors of the actual plague that had hybrid kids?" Turning to Arlin and Tiberius, I added, "Didja find anything good in there?"

  "Nope!" Arlin replied. Arlin was as comely as myself, with a lot of the same features. His hair and fur were brindled gray and black, eerily following nearly the same patterns as mine. His tail was also a match for a wolf's, and he had wolf ears perched on his head about where mine are. Arlin wasn't nearly as fast as my family, and his reflexes were just enough slower that I could pound him most of the time, but he also had massive amounts of stamina. Unless Arlin had to push himself really, really hard, he didn't get tired. Ever. He could only sprint for a minute, and it was not as fast as mine, and he couldn't climb trees much better than a normal human, but he could lope at about seven miles an hour, for the better part of a day, and then eat, fall asleep, and do it again the next day. "Old grocery," he continued. "Coupla basic canned goods, but the shelves were all picked over already, just the useless stuff left. The mobs probly got it when the old government fell."

  "If it's useless, why'd ya bring it?" Muffy asked.

  "It's all exotic," Arlin replied. "I found some canned sugarcane, there's gotta be someone'll trade for that. Maybe one of the bakers or someone."

  "Not enough," I replied. "We got up before dawn to try and find some good stuff. Let's go a little farther into the city."

  "Are you sure?" Muffy asked, looking warily around a corner.

  "What's the matter? The little minnow scared a big bad shark might attack?" Tiberius taunted.

  Arlin grinned as the last of his cans tumbled into his sack, yipping mockingly at Muffy.

  "Well, you can never tell what might be around the streets downtown," Muffy replied, a little nervous. "I mean, I know the really nasty stuff only comes out after dark, but sometimes stuff wakes up early."

  "Oh, c'mon, Muffy," I replied scornfully. "It's not like we can't handle ourselves. Between my bow and Arlin's pipe, I think we've got ourselves covered."

  "Uh, Nyx…"

  "Hang on a sec, Arlin, I'll talk him 'round," Tiberius muttered, my sharp ears catching the tones that were too quiet for Muffy to hear at this distance.

  "Nyx, we really might wanna…" Arlin started again.

  "So, are you gonna come with us, little minnow?"

  "Guys," Arlin said, the warning in his tone catching our attention, "do you wanna test that theory we can look out for ourselves?"

  "Be happy to test it," Tiberius replied, looking arrogantly over at Arlin. Then, catching sight of Arlin's tail, which was bristling, he added, "Why?"

  "Because if we don't get moving fast, you're gonna get that chance," Arlin replied, pointing over to a street to my left, his right, where I heard faint whuffling noises. Once my attention was on the street, and my ears perked at it, I realized that the noises belonged to something fairly large and heavy. A second later, I started edging away from the street, Muffy staying beside me, as I heard something being knocked over in the alley, heard what sounded like a heavy claw scraping at the rotten concrete beside a building. The others were all looking at me, waiting for my assessment, and I gulped.

  "Sounds heavy," I muttered to them when Muffy and I reached Arlin and Tiberius. "And I think I heard it knock open one of those trash cans, the ones that have been rusted shut for years."

  "Then you think, maybe, we oughtta back off?" Tiberius ask
ed, not so tough now that there was a real threat. Looking around, I realized that none of us were. We could all take down nasties if we had to, but we usually did it with traps, or ranged weaponry, and we usually had a wall between us and the nasty, or we hid up trees until a better moment. The only problem was, the trees in the middle of the city had been much slower to grow than anywhere else, because of all the concrete. They wouldn't do us much good when it came to hiding.

  "Let's back off," I agreed. "If things get nasty, Tiberius, you take Muffy to the top of a stable skyscraper, and come back for-"

  I didn't manage to finish my sentence before the hidden menace came out of the alley, looked around at us, and charged. Tiberius, who had been opening his mouth to argue with me even as I finished my statement, took one look at the alligator-mouth, supported on something roughly the size of a polar-bear and sporting nasty claws to match its teeth, and dashed to Muffy instead. His initial jump took them both all of three feet in the air, but Tiberius's dragonfly wings were quick enough to get them both a good ten feet up before the gator-bear cross reached us, and it ignored them in favor of the easier prey that had dodged to either side of it on the ground.

  I hadn't bothered to nock an arrow, knowing it wouldn't do much against something big enough to make the noises I had been hearing, so my initial reaction was to hiss as the thing swung around to meet me. It was quick, but too slow for my cat reflexes as it went to take a swipe at me. I yowled a battle cry as I leaped straight up and over the striking paw, landing on the gator head, just below the eyes, which immediately focused on me. I had automatically dug in with all my claws as soon as I landed, and I was already halfway through a leap the would land me on it's back when a lead pipe appeared out of nowhere to smash into an ear. Arlin wasn't as quick as me in a fight, but he had a fair amount of strength, and he'd been learning to use bludgeoning weapons from a martial arts enthusiast in town. The blow got the gator-bear's attention. The consequent spin, when my claws were already half-unhooked for the next leap, sent me flying fifteen feet up and ten feet over, straight through a window into a building.

  As the glass shattered, I was already rolling to my feet, nocking an arrow to the bow I had somehow held onto throughout the scuffle. As Arlin parried claws with the pipe and dodged around the thing to whack at it's head, I coolly took aim, thankful that Arlin didn't tire easily. Less than thirty seconds after I had crashed through the window, I sent an arrow zipping down into the eye of the gator-bear that had put me up there.

  As the gator-bear flopped down into the street, I calmly unstrung my bow, calling out, "I wonder what gator meat tastes like?"

  Arlin shouted back up, "Is that why it took you so long to put it down? I thought it was delight in your unexpected flying lesson. After all, maybe now you can chase the birds out of the trees!"

  "I have Tiberius for that!" I replied, laughing, as I looked around.

  "You gonna come down, kitty, or do we need to fish you outta the tree?" Tiberius had gotten back just in time to launch that last quip at me as I disappeared into the building.

  "Hold on a sec," I called back. "I think I found what we came for."

  I heard a moment's pause as Tiberius dropped Muffy on the ground and they all considered that statement. A second later, Tiberius's wings hummed loudly again, and then he was standing in the window, looking around the dimness for me. I was busy investigating a locked cabinet, the wood panelling that formed a door rotted straight through in places.

  "Get out of the light," I told him playfully. "Come take a look. Is this what I think it is?"

  Tiberius grabbed one of the little plastic bottles, remarkably well-preserved, with even some of the tag still readable.

  "Hy-dro-co-done," he read. Grabbing another one, he added, "Pen-trexyl?"

  I grabbed a few more bottles and took them over to the light. After a few moments of deciphering, I looked up at Tiberius. "This is old world medicine… the good stuff!"

  Tiberius looked over at me, his eyes lighting up. "I wonder what the Alchemist will trade us for this?"

  ----------------------

  The Alchemist traded us each two tubes of his para-potion, good for paralyzing most animals, that normally lasted for about a week each. He promised another six tubes each if we could bring back the rest of the medications we'd described. He also slipped me three tubes of his special conditioner, good for three washings, when the boys weren't looking, since they all thought the conditioner was a waste of time. They were very typical boys that way, preferring to avoid baths whenever possible. I was a tomboy, and game for any tricks they proposed, but I was still girl enough to admit I liked a bath when I could get one, and the panther in me despised feeling dirty when I knew I could get clean.

  To avoid the boys teasing me, I slipped away from them before dinner that night, wandering out to the forest in search of a spring my sister Pandora and I liked to use when it was warm- and it was definitely warm that night. I paused, panting, when I had climbed out of the refreshing water after my bath and shaken myself mostly dry, to study my reflection. While I was at it, I pulled an old brush from before the plague out of my bag to brush out my fur while it dried. I was shorter than most humans of my age, only four foot two at twelve years old. I had a narrow face, mostly panther, with green cat's eyes that always startled people, a flatter version of a cat's muzzle covered with black fur, and proper fangs that showed whenever I grinned, again often startling people. My black hair tumbled down my back in a wild and unruly mane, partly covering my very cat-shaped ears and also covering the bare patch of truly human skin that ran from the bottom of my hair to just underneath my shoulder blades. The only other patches of truly human skin anywhere on my body were the palms of my hands, which were shaped human but were otherwise covered with fur. My fingernails were truly cat claws, a match for a large cat's. Although the fur on my breasts and down my torso were finer than anywhere else on my body, it still covered me almost as well as a shirt would, so grown-ups were less insistent on my wearing clothes except when it got cold. My spine was mostly human, and I was often more comfortable standing like a human would, but my legs were much more feline than human, from the much higher knees to the reversed joint that would be an ankle in a human, fully a foot and a half above the thick, heavy toes I walked on. The configuration allowed me to drop to all fours and run like a cat would, also allowing for immense bursts of speed if I felt like running. I also had a tail, exactly like a cat's, covered in black fur, sleek and untufted. I wavered back and forth between love of my tail- because it helped me keep my balance and was extremely useful for distracting an unwary newcomer, and irritation with it, because it was always getting tugged in fights and whipping around just a little too fast when I was angry or nervous, knocking things (and sometimes people) over and getting me into trouble. Most of the time, I kept it tucked around a leg at gatherings, and over time I had gotten used to being wary of it, but it still got me in trouble sometimes. Just last week my father had been scolding me for my part in pranking old Mrs. Dunwoody, one of the town clerics in charge of the stores, when my tail whipped around and thumped one of Mama's new vases off the table. Obviously, I was grounded for the next few days, a fact I had used to bully Tiberius and the others into coming with me that morning, since it was Tiberius's idea, and Arlin's fault we'd gotten caught. When three of us were involved, the fourth ALWAYS came along, to show that they were up for it, so with Tiberius and Arlin backing me, Muffy was more of a side note.

  "Whatcha doin'?"

  Arlin’s voice came from off to one side of the clearing, and I yowled my surprise and outrage as my reflexive check of the surrounding sent my newly brushed and dried self right back into the stream.

  "Arlin!" I hissed at him when I resurfaced a moment later. "Stupid, caper-brained ninny! You KNOW not to sneak up on people like that! What if I'd thought you were an bear-wolf, or a panger?!"

  For answer, Arlin sniggered and pointed to my hunting bow and daggers on the ground beside hi
m. "Wait till I tell Tiberius and Muffy you had a bath, Nyx!" he taunted me disdainfully.

  Annoyed, I hauled myself out of the stream and threw myself at him with a loud growl. Together, we rolled through the leaves and plants on the forest floor, and it took me a few minutes to get Arlin to yip, "Okay!"

  Finished thumping Arlin, I returned to the stream to clean myself off again. I had just wash the mess off me when Tiberius showed up. Seeing him, I looked around warily for Muffy, the last member of our party, and sighed with relief not to see him.

  "Your mother says, Campfire's about to start and if you wanna dance with Pandora's troupe you'd better get your hiny back home now. Her words, not mine," Tiberius added with a wickedly mischievous smile. As I groaned and looked away, embarrassed by Mama's choice of words, he continued, "She says you have twenty minutes. What have you been up to?"

  "I was trying to get myself presentable," I replied, glowering at Arlin, "until this puppy showed up."

  "Oh, does kitty need a bath?" Arlin replied, as I finished brushing out my hair a second time. He looked at Tiberius, who immediately caught on to his idea.

  "Here, let us help you," Tiberius said, starting for me at the same time as Arlin lunged my direction. I didn't have time to thump them and clean myself off again, so I leaped straight up, grabbing a tree branch and swinging myself over their heads, almost like Lora, the monkey girl, and landing beside my weapons on the other side of them. I had grabbed up the belt with the daggers, my quiver, and my unstrung bow and turned my head to throw a taunt at my friends when I was pulled up short by the sight of a squirrel-mouse, crouched at the side of the clearing. It was unusual for one not to run at the amount of noise me and the boys had made, and I was startled enough to see it sitting there and watching us that my taunt caught in my throat.

  "What's that doing?" I asked instead.

  "What's what doing?" Arlin asked. Pausing at disentangling himself from Tiberius, who he had crashed into when I leaped over him, he blinked at me.