Page 75 of Shaped to Be Yours

He had no comeback.

“But if we can make it back, others seeing that you’re all okay could be a huge game changer. And you are…?” I asked the woman.

“June Mulligan,” she said.

“The first to go missing. Some thought that maybe you’d just left your husband.”

“I had!” she affirmed. “I didn’t want him catching wise and following me, so ahead of time, I moved the car to a spot no one else could easily find. Then I snuck through the woods when I was ready to make a break for it. Imagine my surprise when I ended up here?”

“Do you really think we can make it home?” one of the other missing people asked.

“I’m part of the research team that’s been studying the phenomenon,” I said. “We’ve learned a lot. There must be a way. But there’s still so much we don’t know. If I had my scanner…”

A familiar sensation traveled through me, and I looked up at the sky. It was a very different sky from back home, but I knew this feeling.

“There’s a storm coming.”

“Yes,” the female leshy who’d led me there said. “You are attuned to such things as a human?”

“A gift, I’ve been told. Back home when we left, it was already storming. That’s how we got sucked in. The weather patterns don’t match exactly between locations. Meaning they’re unlikely identical at any given time. And because storms cause a boost in electromagnet activity… a matching storm here might be exactly what we need!”

I bolted back toward Bo’s home.

“What do you mean?” June called after me.

“Just meet me back at the portal! I’m getting Jason and Bo!”

If we made it home, they’d have all the time in the world to catch up.

As I burst back into the house, I saw that Bo had given Jason a change of clothes similar to his own, and they were laughing now, with their tears mostly dried.

“Sorry!” I panted, as they stared at me. “I think I know how to get everyone back through the portal, but we don’t have much time.”

They looked at each other, then at me again, and then leapt up to join me outside. Kudos to Bo for not pausing to consider bringing anything with him, but I was glad they trusted me enough to not make me explain.

I recapped as much as I could on our way back to the portal, where everyone was waiting like I’d asked, amid the same group of leshy we first encountered. Already the portal was sparking and growing more than after we’d come through it, proving the approaching storm was indeed affecting it.

“I am uncertain,” Bo said. “I have tried to pass through during storms before. During every conceivable condition.”

“But you couldn’t have known if it was also storming on the other side,” I countered. “All those years ago when you were first brought to our realm, it was a fluke that it was storming in both places. It was, right?”

“Yes, it was.”

“Pure chance that all the right conditions lined up. We think the reason our side has been acting up more lately is because of the man-made portal in use not far away. But here, you’re not as close to this side’s official portal. At least I’m guessing you’re not. This area looks different enough that I’m pretty sure.”

“Okay…” Jason blinked as if he was trying to compute it all. “That explains why it’s less possible to cross over from this side to ours, but you think matching storms will fix that?”

“It’s worth a try. The only thing that still concerns me is keeping the portal open long enough for everyone to get through. The man-made portal balances the elements around it, but we don’t even fully understand how. Without my scanner, I don’t know what the levels are like here right now. Whatever they are, we need to make them more balanced, calm things,um… shit, I don’t know how to explain it. It’s just something I feel.”

“We can do what you ask.” It was the older female leshy again.

“You can?”

“We are this forest. We can harmonize the elements around the fissure. At least long enough to test your theory.”

There was lightning above, thunder, and the first of mild sprinkles.

The portal flashed and began to open.

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