Chapter 2
“Wha…?” Shane began, his mind in a whirl. “How? How do you know my name?!” He blurted after a moment, for that was the only question he could think of. Which showed just how far gone in shock he was, since there were far more urgent questions to be answered.
The boy tilted his head to the side a little. “I found out your name from skimming through your thoughts while you slept,” he explained. “Which is how I can speak your strange tongue too,” he went on, answering yet another of Shane’s questions.
“You…read minds?” Shane said, dumbfounded.
“Not all minds, no. But yours…most definitely,” the boy replied with a bright smile. “You are my Lamhulae. Our minds are like this,” he intertwined his slender fingers together in front of him.
“Lam…what is that? Listen, who are you? How did you…change? You WERE a girl last night, weren’t you? I wasn’t just hallucinating that from being too tired and upset?” Shane demanded.
“I was a female of your species last night, yes.” The boy agreed seriously. “It is the first form I took when I came through to this world. I changed,” he set a hand on his own smooth, bare chest, making Shane’s eyes go there as well. He felt suddenly dry-mouthed, and had to gulp for air, “Because this form is what you require. You are a…what is the word? A man who likes other men? A homosexual?”
“Yes, I’m gay,” Shane said numbly. “But you’re actually saying that you somehow turned from a girl to a boy because of ME?! That’s not possible!”
A shake of the light blonde head. “It isn’t possible here, Shane. Not in this rigid world. But my kind can readily change and adapt our forms. In the place that I come from, my people can use our energy to mold and shape ourselves to whatever form we require.”
“You’re shapeshifters,” Shane said, feeling like a man in a dream.
“Not exactly, if I have the concept right. We don’t actually have bodily forms to start out with, actually. We are pure energy.”
“I don’t understand this at all,” Shane said, not liking the way his voice was climbing but unable to help himself. He was so confused! “You’re claiming to come from another world or something? That you’re an alien?”
“No,” the boy replied readily. “Not exactly. I don’t come from another world, Shane. I come from another plane of existence.”
“What?”
“I believe that your people call them ‘dimensions’. My folk live in a green place on a world that is at least a dozen dimensional planes from here. To journey here I had to go through a dimensional rift, which we call the Vortex. I had to be careful and quick, lest the Darklings find me. They would destroy me, rend me to pieces and consume my energy to feed their own.”
“What are Darklings?” Shane couldn’t help but ask, though he felt like he was being bogged down deeper and deeper into a quagmire all the time.
“Beings from a negative dimension who are also aware of the Vortex. They use it to go from world-to-world, culling those with the strongest energy for their food. Most likely they have passed through this place before now. They consider my people to be a gourmet meal,” he added with a sad sigh. “Many of my kind have died when they left our world to start their journey to find their Lamhulae. I was lucky – they didn’t notice my passing.”
“What is this Lam-hull-ay thing?” Shane asked in bewilderment. “You said that I was…”
“You are,” the boy said earnestly. “My Lamhulae. My other. We are meant to be like this,” once more he twined his slender fingers together tightly. “You felt it last night, did you not?”
He held up a hand. “Now, wait a minute,” he said angrily. “Just what are you saying? That whatever that was last night – that it means we’re…” he trailed off, since he really couldn’t think of a word to encompass what had passed between them on the road last night.
The boy squirmed a bit, spreading his hands in front of him. “You are my Lamhulae, Shane. I made the long journey down the planes just to find you. And now that we are one, there is no going back. What is done cannot be undone.”
Shane rubbed at his forehead, where a pounding headache was starting up. “I can barely believe any of this,” he muttered. “All the proof I have is the fact that you seem to be able to speak English when you couldn’t before, and the fact that you looked like a girl last night. But that could have been just me, because I was drop-dead tired, and out of it with worry. Now you’re trying to tell me that we have some kind of weird soulmate thing going on, or something. How am I supposed to believe you?”
The boy’s slender form wilted. “You don’t believe me?” he said, tears forming in the astonishing eyes(in sunlight Shane could see that they were a very light, almost crystalline-blue in color). His lower lip trembled as well. Shane felt as though he’d taken a blow to the gut.
“I didn’t say that I don’t believe you!” he cried desperately. “It’s just…this is all too strange for me! Look at it from my point of view. You’re telling me all of this unbelievable stuff – that you come from another dimension, that you were originally made up of energy, that you formed yourself into a body that would be pleasing to me because we’re somehow connected – Can you see how I would be confused? And that I might not believe you?”
“Yes, I understand. This world of yours is so closed-minded, so rigid in what your people ‘know’ to be true. Of course you’re bewildered.” The boy said, blinking away the tears that he didn’t even seem to be aware were on his lashes. “How I wish that your energy – your soul – could have come to rest somewhere else during the Great Scattering,” he continued in a tone full of regret.
“Great Scattering? What is that?”
“Many eons ago, our kind all dwelled in the same realm. We once had rigid forms like these,” he patted his own chest again, distracting Shane once more, “And we lived on a peaceful green world. But then invaders came – some say that they were Darklings, others that it was an enemy even worse. Whatever the case, our people fled outward and scattered across the dimensions through the Vortex, which was in its infancy at the time. Only a handful were left behind on the mother world, and those that did remain began to practice what you call ‘magic’. They honed their abilities until they reached their apex in the ability to shed their physical forms permanently and dwell as beings of energy."
"Originally they did it as a means to fight back against our enemies, but eventually we took joy in our abilities. But there was a small problem – too few of our people remained to successfully keep our race going for any length of time. While we do not have your problems with heredity, many of us found that our energy simply would not entwine with any of the others'. We were dying out, when one of our kind came up with the idea to use the Vortex to journey to the other dimensional planes in search of those who had fled. To find our Lamhulae, or ‘the other of me’. The one who we could successfully entwine our energy with to form a permanent pairing so that we could survive as a people.”
Shane began to look really alarmed. “Are you talking about…procreation? Because on this world, men can’t have babies,” he told the boy.
“Yes, I know this. But it doesn’t matter. I don’t require this physical form to create a new life. I am a being of energy, after all. I simply needed the catalyst of your energy to form the new being. It will Seed after a time,” he explained.
“Are you saying – that you’re going to have a BABY?!” Shane nearly shrieked.
“I suppose that would be the equivalent on this world,” the boy conceded. “It will detach from me and become a separate being in its own right, eventually. I don’t know exactly when, since each dimension has an effect on the...errr…gestation rate. But we will produce offspring in time.”
“Fuck!” Shane yelled. “What if I don’t want to have offspring?! Especially with some weird thing that claims to be from another dimension? Jesus, I cannot believe this!”
The boy trembled slightly with upset. His eyes fell. “I’m sorry, Shane,” he whispered. “But I cannot undo what is done. Neither the Twining nor the Seeding. Please forgive me.”
Looking at the bent light-gold head, Shane sighed. “No, I’m sorry,” he told the boy. “This is all too much for me to take in at once. Listen, can we take it in dribs and drabs from now on? I can handle one or two surprises at a time, but this is all too overwhelming. How about you just dole out information to me a bit at a time from now on? And we could…umm…get to know each other or something, I guess,” he said in resignation.
The blue eyes rose to his again. “Really? You’re not angry at me, Shane?” the boy asked softly.
He shook his head. “No. Not exactly. I’m kinda upset about all this, but once I get used to it I’m sure I’ll adjust. I hope. Anyway, do you have a name? Something I can call you?”
“Oh, yes,” the boy replied eagerly. “My name doesn’t exactly have an equivalent in your odd language, but you can call me…” he wracked his brain for a moment, “Whistle. I believe that’s the closest word possible.”
“Whistle,” he repeated. “Lord. Okay. Umm, listen. I have to go and see my nephew in the hospital in a bit. Do you want to stay here?”
Whistle looked alarmed. “No, I want to go with you!” he cried, starting toward Shane with his hand outstretched as though to touch him.
He backed up quickly. “Okay, you can come with me! Just don’t touch me,” he said hurriedly.
“Why not? Oh, you don’t have to worry,” the boy said as understanding lit up the blue eyes. “That will not happen again. The Twining is done. See?” he lunged forward so quickly that Shane couldn’t backpedal again, and grabbed his arm.
No electricity this time. Shane took a deep breath of relief. “All right. Whistle, can you make yourself some other clothes with your mind or something? You can’t go out wearing that,” he waved at the gown, which had slid down nearly off the boy’s narrow hips.
Whistle looked down. “Oh. No, I’m afraid not. It took most of my energy to restructure this form to a male version, and the rest…is being used for the Seeding,” he explained.
Being reminded that he’d sort of fathered a child did nothing for Shane’s mood. But he merely took a deep breath and replied: “Okay. I’ll have to buy you some clothes, then. And I need to eat. Do you?”
Whistle considered this. “I believe so,” he agreed. “This physical form will need nourishment just as yours does.”
“All right. Put this on for now,” Shane walked over and fetched his denim jacket off the end of his bed, carrying to over to Whistle. He draped it over the boy’s narrow shoulders, where it hung down nearly to his knees. Slender fingers clutched at it. “After I buy you clothes we’ll eat, then I have to go to the hospital to see my nephew. He got hurt yesterday.”
“A place of sickness,” Whistle murmured, finding the meaning of ‘hospital’ from the thoughts and memories that he’d taken from Shane’s head last night.
“Yeah. It’s where I tried to take you last night at first – because I thought you might have been hurt when you ran across the road in front of my car.”
“Ah,” Whistle said. “I thought that you were trying to leave me.”
“I know you did. Just don’t freak out when we go back there today.”
Whistle smiled brightly. “I won’t Shane, I promise.”
“Come on, then. Keep the jacket pulled closed, please.” Shane directed him.
Whistle nodded and padded barefoot beside him as they left the hotel room. As they approached the elevator, he stopped and eyed it warily. “I do not like that box, Shane,” he said urgently.
He felt his lips twitch. “I know you don’t. But unless we want to walk down five flights of stairs, we need to take the elevator. If it makes you feel better, you can hang onto me again.” He added.
Whistle clutched onto his arm like a limpet, hanging on for dear life. Shane led him onto the elevator and pushed the button for the lobby. He heard small sounds of fear coming from the boy’s throat, and lifted his hand to close it over the back of Whistle’s neck. He felt his body stir to life with a vengeance when he felt the amazingly soft skin there. But his touch really seemed to help; Whistle relaxed a bit and sort of leaned on him instead of clinging to him in terror.
Finally the doors opened, and Whistle leapt out into the lobby. He stood there clutching the jacket around his shoulders as Shane followed him. “It’s okay,” he said to the boy. “We made it. Come on, Whistle.” The blonde fell into step beside him as they made for the front doors. The clerk behind the desk wasn’t the same guy from last night; he didn’t even bother to look up from his paperback book at the two of them.
Shane led the way to his car and got Whistle settled into the passenger’s seat. He had to explain the seat belt to the boy, and finally had to fasten it himself. Then he got behind the wheel and started the engine. Time to take his knocked-up, dimension-traveling, gender-changing ‘guest’ to buy some clothes. Lord, say that five times fast! Shane’s mind had decided to opt out for awhile, until it could process some of the things that Whistle had told him. Shopping for clothes would be a good, mindless task to take his attention away from his incipient mental breakdown.
Go to Next Chapter