Chapter 21

Hayden's disorientation didn't last long. As her mind cleared, she finally realized what Cody had actually done. She stopped abruptly on the trail. She didn't have to grab him, not when his daemon rested on her shoulder. With that exchange, he would feel the tug instantly, just as she did with Liz somewhere in his hands.

Every child tried testing the boundaries of the distance their daemon could travel from them at least once. Now Hayden felt that same sensation, a sudden pain deep in her chest, deeper than any hands could ever reach. It would get much more intense the further away her daemon got, until both human and daemon alike collapsed into unconsciousness.

Cody stopped after only a few steps. "You don't want to go this way? Floaroma is down this trail, a little ways. I think it took me a day last time. Can't fly yet. You could still teleport us."

"I don't know how," she said, only a little annoyed. She'd already told him that at least twice, but he just didn't accept her refusal. Or didn't even understand what refusing meant, maybe. "I can't teleport. Let alone all the way to Kanto—that's a continent away! Maybe if I had an alakazam daemon, and we'd been there before…"

"You're way more powerful than an alakazam," Cody answered, without thinking. He held the little kitten against his arm, the same way Hayden usually did. "I don't think there's anything the two of you can't do together. You can be anywhere in the world, whenever you want. Every region."

"Kinda sounds like what Hunter said about when the mew emperor ruled the world," Liz thought. But then Cody started petting her again, and her thoughts melted into quiet purring. It was infectious, forcing a smile onto Hayden's face, and making her relax. 

She sighed. "Could you be thinking of a different me? In the future? Because you time traveled here?"

Cody started walking again. But he wasn't rushing to their destination anymore. Wherever the trail led, he seemed content to let their travel proceed more naturally. Whatever he wanted her to see in the little town could wait. "If I didn't, they'd catch me by now. Still looking, you know. Nowhere they would follow. Anywhere, everywhere. I can leave before they know I was there, but I still have to get there somewhere. The longer I'm running, the more places are looking for me."

"You escaped," Liz said. "We'll save you sometime, right? And you've been on the run ever since." Her little voice was hard to make out over the steady wind, but Hayden didn't need to hear her. She could still hear her thoughts easily enough.

"They aren't looking for us yet, but they will. We can't change like you do, we can only run away. Hide when they won't find us, or after they gave up. But you aren't there. So we don't go too far." Sierra spoke with similar confidence to Hayden's own pokémon. She kicked her little legs against Hayden's shoulder as she spoke, showing her frustration. Hayden didn't want to leave her own time. 

"Last time I met you, you didn't tell me this much," she said. "You were all… mysterious and wise. Told me bad things would happen but didn't warn me. You never told me I would change."

Cody reached back and took her hand. She let him do it, though this version of him wasn't strong enough to force her. She could've resisted if she wanted to. "I haven't actually… met the old you yet. I want to, but you're harder to find the further back I go. Ahuiliztli was so small before, I can't feel her as easily through time. But the stronger you get, the more time goes by, the easier it is."

"We went back… more than a day," she guessed. "Old me is here, right now. He's back in Shaymin House. We could warn him about what Lady Gracidea is planning!"

Cody and Sierra giggled, at exactly the same moment. The daemon poked at her face, sticking out her tongue. "You really don't know anything about time travel, do you Hadie? What do you think happens if the grown-up you tells the boy you that he should stop and run away? The one who changed his mind never existed, so she can't tell him to change his mind. Same thing happens if you tell someone to do it for you, like us. We know you didn't like it, and suddenly if we tell you to stop to make you feel better, we never learned that you didn't like it. Same problem."

That was the headache starting again. This Cody might be younger and smaller, but he could still bring up all those same strange feelings. His words didn't make any sense, but his confidence was strong. He knew he was telling the truth. "So there's no way to stop what happened to me? Make me… back into who I was?"

Cody hugged her. He had to let go of Liz to do it, letting her float into the air around them. He held on tight, tighter than anyone but family had ever done it before. "Hadie, I'm sorry you're hurting now. But I can't take the pain away from you, or else I'll take the 'you' out of the universe. I want you to exist. And if Hadie never saves us, we couldn't have changed her. It's the same thing. We're so tangled up that I can't change your past, or your future. I'm already part of it."

She nodded tearfully. "I don't… I want to live," she eventually said. "And I want to know why I know you. Even though we've only met—"

Cody stopped her, one finger to her lips. "Careful. The best thing we can do is try to not say things that haven't happened yet. Let me choose. I don't want my whole life spoiled before I live it, do you?"

She grumbled in answer. "You've already been saying things. Like how we can teleport across continents."

Cody grinned. "That's being nice. And true, but. That's like saying I like your hair. I think the pink looks better than the brown you used to have. Is it okay if I say that?" Then he let go. 

Hayden's face went deep red. Liz floated past her, nudging Sierra off her shoulder. They circled in the air overhead, a blur of green and pink. In some ways, it wasn't that different from what Lady Gracidea had told her. Her new self was more useful than the old one. She had a purpose now.

"You actually… you like it?" she asked. She should feel upset, but the anger didn't come. "It's a mess. Not sure what I'm supposed to do with so much. My sister had it braided all nice for me, but it felt weird as a shaymin. Maybe you could help me with it?"

Cody stuck his tongue out. "You think I'd know what to do with it? I'm a boy! I just know what's cute. Anyway… I think one day Sierra and I will be able to fly as easily as we fly through time. But we're never as good at it as you are. Flying is still slower than just blinking across."

Hayden nodded absently. It was hard not to stay relaxed around him. Except for the growing cold. "Too bad I…" She wrapped her arms around her chest, shivering. "It was a warm day when I got out here. Should've brought a coat."

Cody looked away from her. "Right. You're tropical. That's part of the reason I wanted to go to Kanto. There's this little park in the jungle, about… two hundred miles from the coast. There's a shrine nearby that doesn't ask questions when Sierra and I need a place to sleep."

Hayden winced. She should've realized what it meant to have this kid on the run. She'd known plenty of kids in Sunyshore who didn't have a place for themselves—usually sailors' kids. They all turned out the same way, quiet and hopeless. Eventually they just gave up, and no one saw them again.

Hayden wrapped her arms around him, and this time felt no embarrassment from the hug. "Come back to Shaymin House with me. We'll hide you, find a way to… sneak food off. Most of the house is empty anyway, it shouldn't be hard."

Cody pulled away from her, yanking on her arm. His expression turned dark, glaring back the direction they'd come. "You say that like I'd ever want to be trapped in one place, one time. I can't give up seeing everything, just like you can't give up being everything. Besides, I'm pretty sure they would just turn me over. Once the ones hunting me know to come here, I won't be able to see you here again."

"They don't know already?" Hayden asked. "Shaymin House is so big and powerful. They summoned a zapdos here last night, just by asking! Or I guess they will summon him here in a while. I don't know when we are right now."

He giggled again. "Shaymin House would be nothing without you, Hadie. You're the one pulling them up from the brink. Always doing what's expected, not caring about yourself."

He bounded past her, off the trail. "I changed my mind about going to Floaroma. Let's go north instead. Humans don't go that way. We should be safe for a few days."

A few days. "Out here?" she asked, baffled. "No one lives north. No towns, no roads, nothing. Just cold wasteland and dangerous wild pokémon."

"Not to us," Cody said. "Have you ever been attacked by a wild pokémon since you settled? Even one time?" 

We expected them to, she thought. But during that last visit, it hadn't mattered how scared she got. The pokémon didn't just ignore them, they saved her.

"What about… other stuff? Do you just camp out here?"

He nodded again. "We've been outside for a long time. It's not so bad when you can skip the bad weather, and the pokémon aren't dangerous. We've got a camp this way anyway. One of… a lot. We set them up everywhere we go. You probably already know where it is…"

He stopped, watching her expectantly. But Hayden just shook her head, shivering. Liz tucked herself into her shirt again, poking her head slowly up over the collar. She watched from inside, with Hayden's whole body to keep her warm.

Hayden shrugged. "Sorry, we don't know. I know where you found us last time, all cold and wet. But I didn't see a camp there, it was just a clearing with lots of helpful pokémon."

He took her there, through the alpine winds and the constant cold. Rarely in her life had she met someone as eager to be outside exploring as she was. But now she'd met her match. Cody didn't just hike, he lived out here. 

The cold bit through her clothes, making her gradually numb with it. But then they reached the little camp, and suddenly she had somewhere safe.

Cody had built a survival shelter from local materials, a little homemade cabin made from logs, sticks, and branches. It was dug deep into the ground, with a door that could've passed for an open pokémon burrow. 

They were very close to the last place she'd seen Cody, in that hidden copse beside the lake. Yet this was further away from the path, where it was even less likely to be seen from a trail.

So long as no one lit a fire here, it would be completely invisible.

"Deep," Hayden muttered, when they finally stopped there. She squinted into the gloom, and Liz lifted out of her shirt to investigate. She pulled back almost instantly, after barely an inch. "You built all this yourself?"

"My girlfriend helped," Cody declared, patting her shoulder. "She's the strongest pokémon I know. Also helps when you can be… anything."

"We did some of it!" Sierra protested. "Lots of vines. We read a book on knots once, and used that."

Despite the cold, Hayden's face was still bright red. His girlfriend had helped him build it. His girlfriend who could use Transform. "Who's that?" she asked anyway. 

"We can't figure it out either," Sierra said, settling into her arms, where she usually held Liz. Hayden cradled her there reflexively, somehow knowing how to hold her. Those wings and antennae were delicate, she had to avoid touching those. "It might not have happened yet for you. For us it was… sudden. But you see things all weird, instead of in a straight line."

Hayden stuck her tongue out at the little pokémon. "We're the ones who see things weird? You were older than me last time. But we could still tell how… how important you were. How can we remember things that haven't happened yet?"

"Because sooner or later you don't listen to us," Sierra said. "You're too curious for your own good, Hadie. Copy us even once, and your timeline gets all layered like ours. Can't go back and change your mind about it either—it's a singularity. I hope when you do it, you have a really good reason."

Cody emerged from the burrow a few seconds later, holding something triumphantly in both hands. A long coat, a little big for Hayden. It was made of fine pink fabric, only a few shades different from her hair. "There's some more clothes in here too. I think you left it last time we were here."

Hayden handed him his daemon, even gentler than she would've been with Liz. Yet he didn't look afraid—she saw only trust on his face. She took the jacket, and instantly felt better. It was too big for her, but the smell was so familiar—he'd worn it, or maybe a more feminine version of Cody had. It had a little pocket sewn right over the breast, exactly the right height for Liz to zip into.

Not just a pocket, either. Hayden grinned as she felt the warm fleece liner, as satisfying through Liz as it would've been directly against her own fur. More clothes should have pockets like this. It makes so much sense!

"Warm enough yet?" He didn't wait for an answer, zipping the jacket up her front for her, pausing to pat Liz with two fingers. "It's still just morning. It should be ages before anyone notices I'm here. We're a week before I found you, so—they won't know you're missing either. We can do whatever we want!"

Hayden beamed. She was still a little chilly, but she'd get used to it. The jacket helped. "What's my favorite thing to do?" she asked, not really expecting a response. 

Cody took both her hands, meeting her eyes. "Fly! Can we, please? I can't yet, but you were always better in the air than we were."

She looked down at her pocket, expectant. Last night, she had flown Hayden alone in a straight line. Could she carry two humans instead of one?

Liz floated out of her pocket, joining Sierra in the air above them. "We're really new at it," she said. "We'll have to go slow."

Cody didn't react. His fingers tightened on Hayden's, eager. "Go on! There's a valley north of here, filled with wild berries. Let's see if there are any wild shaymin to talk to!"

Was that a bad idea? Hayden didn't even care, so long as she could fly there with Cody.