She looked out at the unfamiliar landscape flashing past the windows. Sheena had grown up in Central Otago, a land of endless skies and sweeping hills that changed their color by the season—green, then gold, tussocks that moved like an ocean in the wind, parting around the jutting tors of granite that pushed up like islands. Sunlight was sharp there, slicing flat shadows into the mountains and burning your skin wherever it touched.
It was sharp here, too, but the land was different. Ngauruhoe straddled the landscape, its white cape of snow enhancing its classic volcano shape. Where the road cut through the sides of low hills it revealed rich red-brown earth, shot through with layers of black volcanic ash. A strange yearning twisted at Sheena’s heart. She’d lived in New Zealand all of her twenty-three years and spent all but a handful of weeks in the South Island. What was she doing, going halfway across the world, when she hadn’t even explored the country on her own doorstep?
I’m not going forever, she reminded herself. It’s just a trip.
Unless she met her mate.
She swallowed.
Aroha was still talking. “Hey, my shift starts soon, I’d better go. Wait—shit, your mum asked me to remind you about something and I’ve forgotten what it was.”
“Hah, and you don’t even have my excuse.” Sheena’s voice didn’t give away the worry twisting inside her.
“Shut up.” Aroha groaned and smacked herself on the forehead. Sheena grinned at her.
“Do you reckon if you do that enough, you’ll knock loose your inner animal?”
The woman in the next seat gave her a very odd look. Sheena wasn’t worried that she’d revealed the secret existence of shifters—you could get away with a lot, she’d discovered, being a tiny white girl with big eyes and a tendency to squeak when startled. The woman probably thought she was talking metaphorically. Or that it was a sex thing.
She mouthed another ‘Sorry’ at her neighbor and tried to look like the sort of person who wouldn’t be talking about a sex thing over the phone on an InterCity bus.
Aroha made a face. “Like I want some dumb animal inside me telling me what to do. Bad enough having the fam in my business all the—hah! Got it.” She snapped her fingers. “Your mum asked me to tell you to find out what’s happening with Auntie Fiona and Auntie Rena. Remember at Christmas, how they wouldn’t shut up about that building development thing they were doing? Your mum says they’ve gone quiet.”
“Oh, so she’s sending me in to get the latest gossip?” Honestly, the idea of serving up some gossip that wasn’t to do with herself sounded like a nice change.
“Mm. Last she heard, they were approached by some overseas investor. Basically I think she wants you to find out if the aunties are suddenly multi-millionaires in which case they should put some money into doing up Nana’s place.”
“All good,” Sheena said. “I’m getting dropped there, anyway.”
“Cool. Call me when you’re actually overseas, okay?”
Sheena reassured her that she would, both of them knowing full well that either Aroha or one of their parents would call ten minutes before she was due to get on the plane and panic about her having left something behind, and they’d talk then. She tucked her phone into her backpack and stared out across the landscape.
She had her whole future ahead of her. One day, that would include her mate. But Aroha was right: she had so much she wanted to do before then. Like come back here and explore the volcanic landscape. Staring at it wasn’t enough. She wanted to clamber over creek beds, feel the rich soil under her fingernails, chew on the tussock and heather to see if it tasted the same as back home…
I don’t want to fall in another hole, her sheep bleated plaintively. Sheena snorted.
Fall in a hole and see if they’re the same as the holes I fall in back home, she added to her to-do list. She grinned as her sheep bleated in frustration. Don’t worry. We won’t have a chance to fall into anything. We’re only here overnight, and then Fiona and Rena are driving us up to Auckland.
No mud pits, her sheep said firmly.
That’s up to you, isn’t it? I’m not the one who got us into the last one.
The sun was shining through the windows. Outside, the temperature must have been in the single digits, but inside was warm and cozy. Sheena had been up early to catch the bus from Wellington, and those lost hours of sleep were tapping on her shoulder. She closed her eyes. Just for a minute, she told herself.
* * *
“Stop for Sheena Mackay—hey, chickie, wake up!”
Sheena jerked awake. “’s me,” she garbled as the driver called her name again. “Here!” She resisted the urge to raise her hand like she was in school, and jumped up. “I’m awake—sorry, sorry…”
It wasn’t completely a lie. Her sheep was instantly awake, but her human body clung to sleep like King Kong to the Empire State Building. She was halfway down the aisle when she realized she’d forgotten her pack and had to go back for it.
“Sorry!” she burst out again as she grabbed her bag and fumbled it and almost crushed the woman who’d been giving her looks the whole trip.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” the woman snapped in the exact right tone to send panic shooting through her sheep’s extra-nervous system. “Just get a move on, will you!”
Sheena got a move on, sharpish. By the time the world stopped spinning and she began to wonder if her seat neighbor had some sheepdog shifter in her family tree, the bus was a distant speck and Sheena was alone on the side of the road.
The world might have stopped spinning, but her head hadn’t. She bent over, hands on her knees, and waited for the blood to return to her brain.
Well
