Nell spun on one foot and then stumbled as she tried to place her other foot back down. Her face flushed and she shot me an embarrassed look.
“That’s totally normal,” I said. “Everyone does that at the start.”
“You didn’t,” Nell replied as she tried again.
I froze. “Huh?”
Nell wavered on her legs again, windmilling for a second to stay standing. She paused and then spoke, “When you started doing things as a Wolf. Whenever you moved it was like you’d already practiced it. You were a natural. It made me a little jealous. I feel like my body never does what I tell it to. Isn’t that ironic for a Witch?”
“Okay, supernatural examples aside, when I started dancing it was the same. I had to grow confident in the movements.”
I felt a bit of relief that Nell hadn’t somehow found out about how I first learned to dance. Watching through studio windows like a creep.
I showed her the move again, spinning on one leg slowly. “When you move your body out to the side, your center of gravity is going to be off balance. That’s why I’m extending my leg the other way to counterbalance.”
Nell tried again and only wobbled a little as she spun.
“Nice! See, you’re improving.”
Nell exhaled and wiped the sweat off her brow. “Okay, what’s next?”
“Hmm. Well, what feels right?”
Nell stared at me. “Feels? I was just copying the moves you showed me. What does feeling have to do with it?”
I looked down at my feet. “Ah… I guess nothing at the start. It was just memorization. But even then, moving your body can make you feel a certain way?” I demonstrated a small three step skip. “I think it can go both ways. The body can elicit emotion. Emotion can make the body move. If the feeling is strong enough, you might not even think about it at all.”
The skipping step turned into a full body roll, with one hand flourishing out while the other stayed on my heart.
Nell was watching attentively. She hesitated, then spoke, “Can I see you dance for real?”
I stopped, becoming aware of our surroundings for the first time in a while. We were in the gym on the H.E.S.P. base, the one with the huge obstacle course in the middle. We were the only ones here, a vast space for just the two of us. That didn’t stop me from feeling self-conscious performing in such an open area.
“I’m keeping everyone out, like I said. The Director seems to be a little concerned but it’s not a problem, I-” she stopped and cast her eyes downward. “Sorry.”
“No, it’s not that, it’s just that…” I struggled to find the words. “Nowadays I’m feeling more and more aware of how much I am like my parents. They give and serve and then I would see them at their worst, hollowed out because they couldn’t stop giving when they had nothing left in the tank.”
I bit my lip, trying not to pick at an emotional wound that I felt was healing. “That’s when they made their worst mistakes. For better and for worse, I’m like them. But dance was special. It was the one thing that I clung to as selfishly mine and no one else’s. It’s for me.”
Nell nodded, speaking quickly. “Sorry for asking. I know how you feel about it. And we’re already sharing so much it’s hard to be private. I get that. But it’s just so beautiful in your memories. I wish I could see it just one time in person.”
I grinned. “It’s nothing so sacred. I think it’s more just that I don’t know how to dance in front of other people. Especially for someone who can feel what I feel. But for you? Let’s try.”
Nell sent me a little pulse of joy and stepped back. I settled into a neutral position. Should I turn on some music? It somehow didn’t feel right. I’d just spoken about moving through feeling. Without music influencing that, how did I feel?
I shook my head. That was never how it worked. If I didn’t know, I just needed to start. The feelings would come.
So I started slowly, hands curving in arcs as I stepped forward, then left. The motion tumbled into a wide turn, intentionally unsteady and anxious. I let myself fall, only to roll and kick back up again to my feet. Faster now, I danced, my feet finding purpose and flow. Driving through the anxiety, shoulders finding a hip hop rhythm, I moved. It was energy and fear, but pushing towards something better, something more hopeful.
I breathed heavily as the flow took me deeper. My heart pounded alongside a beat that seemed to boom in the large space and yet was silent to my ears. I felt an attunement to my body that was akin to moments in my past, when danger had been so imminent that I hadn’t had time to appreciate it. Tendons crackled like branches and hair swished like leaves in the wind. Fueled by the air that moved through me. Blood flowed in lurches like a river with music. My mind listened and let it take control.
Then the moment passed and I stumbled to a stop, sweat dripping from the tips of my hair onto the padded floor.
Nell gave me a silent ovation with her emotions.
I smiled so big it kinda hurt. “Thanks,” I said, meeting her shining eyes. “That felt good. Different from what I’ve been doing so much of lately. It felt like building instead of breaking.”
We sat and rested for a few minutes, not saying anything.
“Are you doing okay?” Nell asked.
“Mm.”
The dead faces hadn’t come back since being inside that Organ hideout. But every now and then, something would move in the corner of my eye and my heart would lurch. I didn’t want to worry Nell, didn’t want her to think I was losing my mind.
“Do you want to try another change?” she murmured.
I looked up at the bright lights at the ceiling. “Okay.”
Nell shifted over so she could see my face. Her fingers stretched out, hovering around my cheeks. Little nudges under the skin. Honestly if she had started doing it without telling me, it might have only been recently that I would have picked up on it. My friends were far more perceptive than I was. Or maybe I just wasn’t used to actually looking at what I saw in the mirror.
Nell’s own face was on full display. She had her hair pulled back in a hairband. Usually her dark hair crowded around her features like brambles. That never stopped her eyes from being arresting, the wide whites surrounding dark irises.
“How have the changes been so far?” Nell asked, dropping her hands to her lap.
Heart-pounding. Alien. A big string ball of emotions that felt like it was just beginning to untangle itself and if I pulled too hard, it would tighten into a knot in my throat.
“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “But at least for now, I don’t want you to stop.”
“This might be Organ’s final days,” Nell said, rubbing the back of her hand with a thumb. “From what I’ve picked up from the staff, it sounds like big things are brewing. Do you still want to be a part of it?”
I thought about it. “What would you do if we stepped away from all this?”
Nell looked pensive. “Maybe if things were different, I could be happy as a gardner. I’d grow gardens in unexpected places. With plants that would be useful to people and to nature. But I can’t do that right now. Not while others would act and decide how the world will see Shaping in the coming age. I need to make sure that Organ doesn’t make anyone else do what they made me do. Then maybe one day, I’ll be satisfied with stepping away and growing flowers.”
I nodded. “So we keep fighting. Until things change. Until Organ crumbles.”
“And what if I turned your question back on you?”
I smiled wryly. “It’s bad, isn’t it? That I don’t have an answer for you. Shaping is so important to me. But I don’t know what to do with it. I just keep acting without considering the future. That fact reminds me that I haven’t come very far since before I knew about the world of Shaping. I have so much trouble imagining my future.”
Nell held out her hand, her expression perfectly serious. “No. It’s okay. We’ll figure it out. Just… be here? With me?”
I stared at her hand. There was dirt beneath her fingernails. She couldn’t help herself from digging around when she had the chance, planting seeds around the H.E.S.P. base and making it a little more hers.
I took it. The soft rasp of skin against skin told me all I needed to know. This was better than whatever would have become of my life if I had never met her. I hoped the same was true for her.
After we freshened up, we met at the doors of the gymnasium. Nell used her powers and the green growths that poked out from around the edges of the double doors receded, the door frame creaking as it shifted from being unjammed.
Nell opened it up and came face to face with a towering man. Conrad, the investigator, frowned down at us. Nell matched his hostility with a glare of her own.
“Blockading the gym is highly inadvisable, Ms. Nell. Need I remind you that this facility is home to over a hundred highly trained experts with the knowledge and resources to storm much more secure obstructions than your own work. This is hardly the time to be testing our trust in you like this. What were you doing in there?”
Nell raised her chin. “None of your business.”
Conrad looked like he wanted to say more on the matter, but he held himself back as a vein pulsed at his temple. He spoke sharply, “The Director is asking you to attend a strategy meeting. See to it that you make your way to conference room A.”
“A?” I asked, puzzled. “That’s the huge one. I’ve never seen anyone use it.”
“This matter has surpassed the jurisdiction of solely H.E.S.P., Mr. Harte. The assault on Organ’s headquarters will be a multi-organizational, multi-nation joint effort. See to it you are on your best behaviour. Though I doubt that will suffice.”