Call Spirits in Your Past **Book Two**

Chapter 56 (Tuesday)

"It's not true," Dryda said. She said it to the walls and the pipes and the dust. "It's not true."

Dryda? It was Ana this time. Where did you go? Verspri and Kwayo are panicking that you ran away and--

Dryda tuned her out. Easy as flicking off a light switch, almost. "It's not true," she whispered again, and this time a tear traced its way down her wooden cheek. She swiped it away, rolling onto her side.

She came face to face with a small bat hanging from a thin, coppery pipe. When it didn't move, she asked, "you wouldn't happen to be Kwayo, would you?" the bat stared at her, screeched, and fluttered away.

"Well, good then," she said after it. "I didn't want to talk to you either."

The bat screeched again, and she recalled a voice, singing a lullaby to her and Cetnaru. Their mother, perhaps, or a girl putting them to bed while mother worked.

Cetnaru laughed, "two, two," because the lullaby words were English so Cetnaru replied in English, even though he didn't know the word for "again."

It...it couldn't be true, could it? Kwayo as a mouse, sending thoughts of a conversation between an Erit and a headmaster.

That laughter; the words "true, true," the hitch in the headmaster's voice. Dryda would recognize her baby brother's laughter anywhere--but in the grown headmaster of this school?

It had been easy to put off at first. Just a strange coincidence.

But...

Emotions warred within her: last night's dream of Cetnaru's laughter playing in her head, the crackle of the voice on the radio when the brown-eyed man summoned the robot lizard to capture them. Did Cetnaru remember her? Could he...could he be here, too?

But as the headmaster of this evil school?

Dryda told her heart it grasped for meaningless straws, her baby brother couldn't be the headmaster of an entire school. But that laughter. The voice over the radio when they were captured yesterday.

Yet...if he were. Just to pretend. He could have powers like her, maybe he could shapeshift to look like other people. Maybe he had classes here, and helped out the real headmaster.

So maybe if she'd come to this school, they could have stuck together, and Dryda could've helped him...

Except that was why Cetnaru couldn't be here. How could he have come here? Dryda was the one who got letters from strange schools because of her powers. He'd been six.

"It's not true," she whispered, closing her eyes on the space where the bat had hung. Did she mean the words for her heart that believed Cetnaru was here, or did she mean them for the piece of her recoiling at her baby brother as the evil headmaster? "It's not true," she repeated.

"It doesn't have to be."

Dryda startled, sitting up. How had anybody found her? She'd replaced the ceiling tile. Nobody else could climb up here, not before she heard them, except maybe Kwayo or a small Bella.

"Whatever it is, it doesn't have to be true," the voice said again.

Dryda slowly turned. A shadow shifted on the dusty panels. "Hello?" she whispered.

"Let's begin it this way," the voice said, and a figure stepped closer. He had olive-dark skin, and rich, earthy eyes. "Late at night, there's a tiger in the moon, there's a liar in the stars."

Dryda carefully crawled sideways, until a wide vent separated the two of them. His eyes never left her. She swallowed, but her mouth had gone dry.

"Let's begin it with the first time we danced."

This man looked older than twenty, but she knew his accent. "I'm sorry," she said nervously, "are you...the headmaster here?"

He smiled, sadly. "There's an English teacher on the staff who practices her poems on me. I remembered a few lines. I thought they were fitting, once I saw you were here," he blinked, a tear flashing in his eye.

"Ce...Cetnaru?" she whispered.

"Hi, Dryda." Slowly, he began to shrink. Not like Bella becoming a mini version of herself, no, he shrunk because he aged younger, his legs and spine shortening, the angles of his face softening. He stood on the ceiling panels a twelve year old boy, then eight, skin paler, arms lifted to his sides. "There were two letters," he stopped around age six. Dryda blinked at how aged he sounded, even with this little kid's voice.

"I thought they were both for me," Dryda said. "You weren't even in school yet."

"They were for you," his voice hardened. "They were, but when you left somebody still had to go with them. They nearly tore the place apart, thinking that Father and Mother were hiding you. She begged them to leave us alone, so they took me instead," he aged rapidly back to his twenty something year old self, thumping to his knees. "She let them take me instead."

"I'm so sorry," Dryda whispered, shivering. "I didn't..." I wasn't there. I didn't know.

She shuffled to the edge of the vent. "Do...do you remember, there was a lullaby. Mother sang it, or one of the girls Mother paid to watch us. Do you remember that?"

Cetnaru's eyebrows furrowed, and he aged down, perhaps ten. His face disappeared behind the vent. "I don't know."

"The sun is sinking," Dryda softly sang, hugging her knees, "sleep is sinking, tomorrow will be a prettier day..." she trailed off. "I think that's how it went."

Cetnaru crawled around to her, hands dusty. "I don't remember any lullabies," he shrunk slightly smaller, approximately age seven. "I remember climbing into bed beside you with Daddy yelling in the front room and a chair breaking, or maybe a plate. Your bed was the safest place I felt."

Dryda reached out with hesitant fingers, brushing his shoulder. He tensed under her touch. "How did you end up the headmaster here?"

"I'm not the headmaster," he muttered, gaze distant through the dark. Dryda's lungs ached with relief. "There's a...thing in charge here. I don't know how to..." he shuddered, and Dryda carefully pulled him into a side hug. "When it knew about my powers it decided I was a good human headmaster," Dryda nibbled her lip, chest constricting. "I was just a kid, easy to guide. But it's awful. It's worse than Daddy. I have to do what it says, otherwise..."

Dryda swallowed. "But you found me."

"I had to, when you got discovered, I had to come, even though--" he gasped.

"I can barely believe it's you," she whispered, still hugging him carefully. "That you're actually here. I'll get you out, I promise."

He gasped again, skin rippling; pieces of his arms went soft as a baby and others went rough and old. Dryda pulled back sharply. "Something's...something's happening to it," he said.

She squirmed from the sensation of Cetnaru's bubbling arms. "What?"

His eyes flashed white. "Take me to the teleporter, Dryda," he gasped in pain. "Get to--"

Her heart skipped. "Get where?" she heaved aside a ceiling tile with her feet, gray dust billowing in their faces. "Where?" she waved the dust clear, peering down into the silent, tiled hallway, questing a foot out to the uneven bricks she'd climbed up.

"I'll show you," Cetnaru gritted through his teeth, thin eyebrows knit in concentration.

Dryda nodded, balancing her weight between the edge of the ceiling panel and the brick wall. "Okay," she lifted her arms and tugged him closer, fingers shaking. "You're going to be okay, okay? I promise."