IT WAS LATE, but I wasn’t tired. I crawled out my window onto the flat roof. My parents knew I did it, and so long as I didn’t try jumping off or sneaking out, they weren’t too concerned. I liked to be out there with nothing between me and the world. I would watch the cars go by or simply feel the night wind in my hair while listening to the whisper in the trees. All in all communing with nature, I guess. My need to be outdoors made sense now that I knew what I was—even though I didn’t know what that meant. The frustration of not knowing was starting to make me feel ill. I was running a low-grade temperature and having difficulty sitting still. I curled my knees to my chest and laid my cheek on them, feeling sad and a little depressed.
It'd been four days since the tension with Evelyn and things still weren’t the same with her. We tried to ignore what happened, but we both knew the other had a secret, and neither of us knew how to move past it. I wondered what her secret could be. Were there really things I couldn’t tell my best friend? Hell, even if I told her there was no guarantee she'd believe me. I’m not sure I believed me. I was certain there was more to this story, so I crawled back into my room.
I knew my mom would be awake. She was a nurse and had been working a lot of late shifts at the hospital, so she tended to be awake pretty late. I found her curled up on the sofa with a book. I couldn’t help but smile when I recognized the cover of my latest supernatural-related novel by H.P. Mallory—it was one of my favorites. She tucked it behind her with a guilty grin as she noticed me.
I looked like a younger version of my mom. We had the same red-gold hair, though hers had more curl than mine, and the same grey eyes. I wondered if I would look like her when I finally matured. It suddenly occurred to me that perhaps the reason I still looked like a ten year old had something to do with being Gaia. Maybe we matured more slowly. Xander had said demons matured faster than humans. It made sense that I could take longer to mature. I hoped that was it. I really wanted to nail down a timeline on when I could expect to look more like a woman. I didn’t want to be at Evelyn’s wedding in a flower girl’s dress.
Mom raised a questioning brow at me, and I curled up at the other end of the sofa. “Tell me about gaia.” Thanks to Wikipedia, I knew about the Greek goddess, how she arose from Chaos, the primordial universe, and is considered the mother of all the gods. She supposedly created everything without the “sweet union of love.” Not quite sure why they felt the need to throw that gem in. I looked up the entry for Mother Nature and got a blurb about how the early Christians insisted God, not some mythological woman, created nature but that was about it. The only other things I could find were on nature spirits like pixies, dryads, nymphs and sprites.
“What do you want to know?” Mom asked, her face guarded.
“Seriously? How about everything! All this cryptic crap is frustrating and scaring me. I won’t tell a soul, not even Xander, if you don’t want me to, but seriously, Mom, you gotta give me something!”
Mom’s face was hard for a long moment, but she finally gave a single nod of her head in assent. She took a deep breath before she began. “Gaia have been around as long as the earth. When I heard the old stories my grandmother told, I imagined it like Tolkien’s hobbits, all dirt mound houses and plants everywhere.” Idly she toyed with the pendant she always wore, a raw fluorite point with an amethyst flower and peridot butterfly set on the silver wire wrapping it. “But then the Industrial Revolution came, and our isolated retreats were no longer safe. Many of our people lived among the tribes here in the America. As one by one they fell, we began to live with men in their cities. Soon we found our place in the modern world.” She reached up and twisted her hair, her eyes in a place long ago and far away.
“Male and female Gaia are very different. We, the women, have all the nurturing gifts of nature.” My mom pulled the small ivy plant off the coffee table and held it in her lap. She stared at the plant and it began to grow, the vines spreading. One of them reached out and wrapped around my foot, slowly winding up to my ankle. Another one went up and gently tugged a lock of my hair. To say I was stunned might be the understatement of a lifetime. I watched as she uncoiled the vines from me and set the plant on the table, where they still stood up and formed unnatural shapes, spelling out words and making hearts and peace signs. Finally, the plant lay normally, though I suspected it would need to be repotted, as it was now more than twice its original size.
Tons of questions popped up in my head, but I decided to let Mom continue before asking them. I wanted everything she was willing to tell me, and I wanted it now. Fortunately, Mom turned from the plant back to me and continued.
“The men have the more destructive powers of nature: storms and earthquakes. Each man has a different strength. Your father’s is weather. Have you ever noticed our picnics never get rained out?” Mom asked with a smile. “But for us to use our abilities, we need strength. All Otherworlders are alike in that. It’s a give and take. Demon’s get it by feeding off humans. We get it from the Earth herself. When you’re hurt or weak, you need soil and plants. Trees are the best since they have lots of strength to draw from without killing them. When we draw energy, we have to be careful or we could kill what are drawing from. Even soil can be drained. Legend has it that Death Valley wasn’t always a desert. Once it was a lush forest of redwoods until a male Gaia found his village massacred centuries ago. He was so enraged he drank in all the energy around him to cast the wrath of the Earth on them, turning the forest into the desert we know. The earthquakes and volcanic eruptions he brought against his enemies were so great they still plague the west to this day.”
I was completely enthralled by her story—I’d almost forgotten to breathe. I could picture it like a movie. A male Gaia—who looked a lot like the Jolly Green Giant in my head—returned to find all his people gone and lashing back in rage. I wondered if I would have done the same thing, how much remorse I would have felt. I think if it would have brought my family back, I’d sacrifice the whole planet. But just for revenge, I don’t think I could kill even a single plant.
“There’s something else you need to know about Gaia, Lia,” Mom said. All smiles and storytelling were gone from her voice, and I knew this was serious. “We mature differently than other people.” I knew it! “We stay childish longer than humans, then we will suddenly transform. I don’t want to go into it too much tonight, since it’s late. It rarely happens except in spring and summer when the earth is more alive, and around the time we turn sixteen, unless something interferes. So you should be looking for the signs in a few months. But you have to be careful. Exposure to certain things can bring it on suddenly, and that can be painful and dangerous.”
“What kind of things can bring it on?” I asked, a mix of emotions going through me too fast to even begin to identify any of them. “And what kinds of signs should I be looking for? How long before the change will they start?”
“The signs you should look for are unexplained high fevers, strange cravings, and you will start to notice plants reacting to you, wilting strangely or suddenly shifting towards you in a room.” I nodded and thought about the low-grade temperature I was running but dismissed it, since she said high fevers. Besides, I’d had no weird cravings or weird plant antics, so nothing to worry about yet. “The signs generally start to show up a week or two before the change, so you probably don’t need to worry until school’s out.”
The mention of school brought back the conversation I overheard, and it suddenly occurred to me what my parents had been talking about. “You wanted to send me to G-ma’s so I wouldn’t show up changed overnight, didn’t you?”
“I thought you had overheard us. And yes, it gets a little hard to explain. We never want humans looking too closely at us. You have to be careful, Lia. There are humans out there who don’t understand us. They fear what they don’t understand so they do whatever they can to destroy us. The Salem Witch Trials are just one of many examples of what can happen when humans get a glimpse of all the thing
s they think couldn’t be. There are people today, who call themselves hunters, who do nothing but search for us. They will kill you if they figure out what you are.”
That put the fear of God into me. I couldn’t imagine killing anyone because I didn’t understand. Hell, Nate electrocuted me and… The train of thought derailed as several of the things I just learned fell into place like puzzle pieces. Nate said I’d been struck by lightning. Dad could control the weather. Lightning was part of weather. And he had changed drastically over the summer—gotten all manly and made me tingle down to my toes. I knew before I said it, but I wanted my mom to confirm it. “Nathanial Peplow. He’s a gaia, isn’t he?”
My mother’s mouth tightened, but she just nodded, giving me a hard look I didn’t understand. “I know it’s hard, Lia, but you have to try to stay away from him—at least for right now. He is gaia, and he’s very dangerous for you right now. You want to stay away from him as long as you can. Someday it'll make sense, but I won’t talk about it anymore tonight.”
“You never explained what can set my change off sooner than it should be,” I said, desperately trying to keep her talking so I could learn as much as possible. Her features softened, and I knew I had successfully prolonged the conversation.
“You need to avoid any areas where a natural cataclysm has happened recently: a hurricane, a major earthquake, etc. The forces of the earth can waken your slumbering nature, so be careful.” I gave her a definitive nod, since I couldn’t imagine it being an issue. The closest I’d ever been to a natural disaster was the tornadoes that destroyed a huge chunk of the state the previous summer, but it hadn’t really gotten close to us. “Just be careful, Lia. It’s a dangerous world for the humans, and you have so much more to worry about.”
My mom got up and walked to her bedroom, but I stayed on the couch for a long time lost in thought. I couldn’t help but remember Nate’s words, “I had no idea you were so close.” I hadn’t really considered it at the time, but now I couldn’t help but wonder if he knew something more. I decided to corner him at the Halloween party tomorrow and find out.