Jim Gem's Arc

Chapter 2 of 23

Jim needed a safe place to practice his new method. The small green lynx had shown him the way in the clearing, but he still had to prove he could climb from one shape to the next. So he shifted into the lynx again and ran east, into the deep woods, hunting for ground where no one would see him fail. He found a wide clearing ringed by tall pines. Dappled sunlight fell across the grass. Jim held the lynx form and felt the light bones, the quick blood, the low cost of it. He decided to test the layering here. He would grow from the small cat into something larger, one careful step at a time, holding each stage before adding the next. He started small. He let the lynx settle, then reached for the next size up. His shoulders widened. His paws thickened. Fur darkened along his back. He held a shape between cat and wolf, and this time he did not force it. He let it settle, breath by breath, the way the real lynx had taught him. It held. He pushed to the next stage. His spine stretched. His chest deepened toward the wolf he knew well. His legs shook. The old panic rose, the urge to grab the shape fast and hard. He fought it. He slowed his breath and let the wolf come in inches, not all at once. The wolf settled. Jim stood in the grass on four steady legs. He had never linked shapes like this before. He had always jumped, drained himself, and crashed. Now he had climbed. He tried one more layer, reaching past the wolf toward a stag's heavy frame. Antlers pushed from his skull. His weight doubled. That was too far, too soon. His legs buckled. He crashed back into his own body and lay on the grass, panting, sweat cooling on his neck. The dappled sun warmed his face. He had failed the last step. But he had not failed the way he used to. He lay still and counted what had changed. Before today, he could not hold a bear for a single breath. Now he had climbed through three shapes without collapsing between them. The trap had never been the shapes. The trap was the leap. He needed a longer ladder, and more strength to hold each rung. Jim sat up and pressed a hand to his cracked gemstones. They felt warm now, not cold. The dragon was still far off, huge and distant. But he finally had a path to it. He could not build that path here alone, exposed in an open clearing where anyone might wander through. He needed a hidden place and someone he trusted to guard it. One face came to him at once, quiet and still, the way she always went when she watched him change. He rose and turned back toward Mosswood to find Lena.