One of the Nibe Josharons from Palayta Village had shown Meg something she called a mushroom-cap quilt, named because it was made from about two thousand inch-wide scraps of fabric sewn together to create an intricate art piece of every color imaginable.
At the moment, that’s what Jenny looked like. Head to toe, covered in paint of all colors of the rainbow. And loving every moment of it.
The inside of the art studio buzzed with excitement as all the students hovered by their canvases, splashing paints down as they listened to the teacher. Meg adjusted her grip on her Styrofoam plate and dabbed more yellow onto her brush as she carefully formed the shape of the sunrise she’d been instructed to paint.
Glancing at Jenny’s canvas—well, Meg wasn’t sure what lesson her sister had heard. It didn’t look anything like a sunrise. It looked like the entire array of paint colors had thrown up on the canvas, mottled shades and speckled streaks. But the teacher had said being creative was all right, that they could “follow their bliss” or something ridiculous like that.
Jenny was good at following bliss, apparently.
She coated the canvas with paint, getting most of it on herself, before she dashed away to select more paint from the jars on the wall. She chattered non-stop, incandescent in her joy. It was palpable.
We should have done this a long time ago. Meg sat back from her own painting.
It wasn’t the best. It didn’t look anything like the teacher’s example, but considering that she’d never tried painting anything before, it wasn’t too bad.
Barb had helped her find the place, a studio that taught painting classes for beginners in San Francisco. Jenny wanted to go to school, and Meg was determined to see that happen. But it would take a bit more doing just to be sure Jenny’s real identity couldn’t be traced, or that if it was traced it wouldn’t cause a danger to their family or their secret.
But until then, they could still take classes. Apparently painting courses like this were growing more and more common, and they didn’t require all the information the schools did.
So this wasn’t a perfect solution, but it would do for now.
Jenny laughed brightly, and Meg glanced toward her. She and another girl her age were giggling about something as though they’d been friends for ten years.
Amazing.
Amazing that Jenny could just talk to someone she didn’t know and make a friend.
Oh, it was so dangerous. All it would take was Jenny befriending the wrong person, saying one wrong thing, revealing too many details about their lives in the Andarian Dimension, and it would all be over.
But hadn’t Jenny proved herself?
Meg huffed out a breath and dabbed more yellow on to her brush.
If surviving the ordeal at Centaur Mount wasn’t enough to prove her strength of character, being accepted as an official yodha had to.
Jenny returned to her stool by her canvas with a flourish and commenced flouncing paint everywhere. The harsh overhead lights glimmered in the intricately woven leather bracelet around her right wrist. Complex leather plaits in a pattern reserved only for the yodha bound a large fang into its design.
Judtha of the Yodha had delivered it to Prism Castle himself, along with his student Yosebah. He declared that they had discovered the carcass of the black wolf Jenny had slain with her arrow and that the tribe had decided she deserved to wear it as a show of her strength.
Little Jenny, who sang to flowers and had deep conversations with bread dough while it rose, was a full-fledged, wolf-slaying member of the Yodha.
It boggled the mind.
But the more she thought about it, the less surprising it was. Of their whole family, Jenny was the strongest. She had always had the courage to be herself.
“Look, Meg, look!” Jenny picked up her canvas and displayed the jumbled, wild mess out for Meg to see. Her grin sparkled in the afternoon light.
Yes. The swirling, mismatched chaos of color was all Jenny.
“I see.” Meg grinned. “It’s beautiful.”
And it was.
“I love this!” Jenny set the canvas back on the easel and threw her arms around Meg’s shoulders. “This is the best ever. I love this so much, Meg! And I love you!”
Meg kissed her temple. “I love you too.”
“I got paint on you.” Jenny peeled herself away and brushed at the paint now staining Meg’s clothes. “Wow, I got paint everywhere.”
In the corner of the studio, the television screen mounted on the wall caught Meg’s eye as it started flashing images of strange figures in samurai armor.
Meg scowled at the screen as the image it displayed blurred into focus, a giant figure in brilliant yellow armor. Njano. Jinsoku. The Warlord. Whatever his name had been, he’d stood in the mountain of fire and claimed to have possessed the Andhera.
That made precious little sense.
The Andhera had been something Velanna’s people had created. It had been devised by Celticans. Yet this yellow samurai had appeared in Terran long before he had shown his face in Andaria. Was he like they were, a traveler between worlds? Had he found the Andhera in Andaria and then come to Terran?
Surely that was possible, but why? And hadn’t he said something about bringing Tiron from the north to the south in order to organize the Outcasts? What was that about?
There were so many questions and so few answers.
But what mattered was settled. Barb and Jenny were all right. The Kirana and the Andhera were gone, and it seemed, at least for the time being, that the Centaurs would be calm. The loss of their leader had to be a terrible shock, and even if T’pau could get them riled up enough to attack again, it wouldn’t be the same.
The yellow samurai was a concern. But with any luck, Tiron turning on him had ended whatever aspirations he’d had. Even now, the images the television showed were images from earlier in the month. Apparently the yellow armor had shown up and done some damage to the docks, also to an electrical tower out near the Marin Headlands.
And it hadn’t been alone. Other people in samurai armors had shown up too.
That was something Danny had mentioned. Jim as well. That San Francisco had been plagued with these bizarre sightings for nearly ten years.
It was worrying but not her problem. Terran could deal with its own trouble. She had enough of her own. Between finishing her preparations for the Peregrine Academy and now the cleanup in Andaria from the Andhera’s reign of terror, she didn’t have a moment to spare on some otherworldly armored warrior out to make a mess of somebody’s landscaping.
She dipped her brush into the darker colors that would make up the horizon line of the sunrise she was painting.
What she needed to focus on was healing.
Now that they’d finally completed the traditional ceremonies of laying Tolan to rest, maybe their family could find closure. Maybe Tzaitel would forgive her. And even if she didn’t, maybe they could at least find some kind of common ground like they used to have.
Regardless, she had training to finish, both for Master T’zuman and for Peregrine. She’d become an Andai warrior because Tolan had made her promise. She’d become a Peregrine agent because she needed to stop Phoenix Munroe.
She shook herself and reached to dab the paint onto her canvas.
The room went white.
Instead of a canvas with a half-painted sunrise on it, she stared into a mirror reflection of her own face, silver eyes glimmering coldly, red mouth twisted in a smile that transformed her face into something fearsome.
Meg gasped and startled, the brush slipping against the canvas.
“Meg?” Jenny looked at her.
“I’m okay.” Meg shut her eyes and straightened on the stool. “Just got—dizzy.”
What was that? Where did that come from?
“Oh, Meg.” Jenny appeared over her shoulder.
Meg blinked and looked to her canvas. The brush had smudged an ugly black streak across the horizon where her carefully laid strokes had begun crafting the light of the sun.
“Bother,” Meg mumbled. “That doesn’t look very nice, does it?”
Jenny kissed her cheek. “Paint some flowers over it. No one will know.”
Meg stared at the canvas and pressed her lips together. “Flowers. Always the answer, huh?”
“Always!” Jenny chirped.
Meg leaned back and kissed her cheek. “Wanna help me? You’re better at flowers than I am.”
“Yes!” Jenny snatched up her brushes and her vibrant palette of colors and pulled her stool closer.
Meg smiled as her sister painted a spray of awkward petals over the dark smudge on her canvas. By the time she dolloped the last flourish atop the smudge, there was nothing left of it. Just a charming, albeit random, splotch of flora at the center of her sunrise.
“Love it.” Meg reached over and brushed a strand of blond hair out of Jenny’s face.
“Really?”
“Really, really.” Meg patted her cheek. “Are you hungry? There’s Vietnamese down the street.”
“Yes!” Jenny threw her paint-covered hands in the air.
“Go wash up.” Meg nodded toward the bathroom at the back of the studio. “We’ll get noodles.”
Jenny hugged her again and dashed away, skipping and bouncing like a cheerful rubber ball. Meg turned her eyes back to her canvas. If you didn’t pay too much attention, it simply looked like a bouquet of flowers was floating on the horizon, spreading golden light into the world. But all it would take was a closer look to show the ugly shadowed slash beneath the surface. Jenny’s cheerful flowers could only conceal it, not erase it.
Jenny returned, smelling of generic bathroom soap but no longer painted like a mushroom-cap quilt.
They both stood, and the teacher approached them with a smile. “Beautiful work, ladies.”
“We’re going to get some lunch.” Meg grabbed her bag and slid it over her shoulder. “Can we leave these here to dry?”
“Of course.” The teacher gathered both paintings up and carried them to the counter to dry in the sun.
“Thank you!” Jenny clapped her hands and hooked her arm in Meg’s, dragging her to the door.
They stepped out into the sunlight and walked down the sidewalk to a noodle stand Barb had recommended they try waited for them. Jenny chattered again, happy, cheerful, innocent.
Meg held her arm tighter.
Maybe someday she’d be able to tell Jenny just how much she meant, just how precious she was, but until then, she’d show her. As best as she could, she’d let her actions show her heart, just like Jenny did.
“Do you think they have chicken?” Jenny asked as they jumped into the line.
“Don’t you want to try something more exotic?” Meg asked with a laugh.
Jenny’s eyes sparkled. “I’m awfully fond of chicken, Meg.”