Cast off his human skin? Bek was not sure what he was being told, but it didn’t matter. He couldn’t dismiss out of hand any offer that might save Truls. “What do you want me to do?” he asked.
Give us permission to make him one of us.
Bek shook his head quickly. “I can’t do that. I have to ask him if that’s what he wants. I don’t have the right—“
He cannot hear you. He is lost in his sickness. He will die before he can give you an answer. There is no time. You must decide for him.
“Why do you need my permission?” Bek was suddenly frantic. “What difference does it make what I say?”
The whispers and movement stopped, and the night went completely still. Bek froze in place and held his breath like a man about to jump from a very high place.
A human must make this choice. It is his human side we would destroy. There is no one else but you. You said you were his friend. You said you would give up your life for him and he would give up his life for you. Should we make a place in the world for him? You must decide.
Bek exhaled sharply. “You have to tell me what will become of him. If I tell you to do this, whatever it is, if I give you my permission, what will become of Truls?”
There was a long pause.
He will become one with us, a part of us.
Bek stared. “What does that mean?”
We are one. We are a community. No one of us lives apart from the others. He would be joined.
Bek felt every bit a boy in that instant, a boy who had ventured out into the world and gotten himself into such trouble that he would never see home again. He closed his eyes and shook his head. He couldn’t do this. He was being asked to save Truls, but he was also being asked to change him irrevocably. By saving Truls, he would transform him into something else completely—a communal creature, no longer separate and apart, but a part of a whole. What would that be like? Would Truls want this, even to save his life? How could Bek possibly know?
He stood there, adrift in a sea of profound uncertainty, knowing he was being offered the only choice available and hating that it was his to make. Truls Rohk had never been at peace in the world. He had been an outcast all his life with few friends and no family or home. He was an aberration created through forbidden breeding, a freak of nature that had never belonged. What place there was for him, he had made for himself. Maybe he would be better off changed into one of the spirit creatures, a part of a family and community at last. Maybe he would be happier.
But maybe not.
Bek wanted Truls to live—wanted it desperately—but not if the price was too high. How could he measure that?
Tell us your decision.
Bek closed his eyes. A chance at life was worth any price, too precious to give up for any reason. He could not know how this would turn out, he could not determine what Truls Rohk would do if he were able. He could do for Truls only what Bek would want done for himself in the same situation. He could fall back only on what he believed to be right.
“Save him,” he said quietly.
There was a sudden rush of movement from the shape-shifters, an odd hissing that turned into a sigh. The wall of bodies that had gathered about him opened, and the darkness cleared to reveal the fire still blazing in front of his sister.
Go back to her. Sit with her and wait. When morning comes, take her and go into the mountains. You will find what you are looking for there. Do not fear for your safety. Do not worry about those who follow. They shall not pass.
Dark forms changed into the bristling monsters he had seen once before, terrible apparitions that could smash a life with barely a thought, things that existed in nightmares. They hovered close for an instant, their smell washing over him, their raw presence reinforcing the promise they had made.