Chapter 11

Hayden barely registered his next few hours. The servants didn't leave him to his own devices this time—they had him washed and scrubbed clean, dressed in fresh clothes, then under the harsh white light of a doctor's inspection. But whatever they were hoping for, they must not have found it. There was nothing left to bandage, or any bruises. There was no visual sign at all that he'd nearly fallen off a cliff.

"We have new instructions not to allow you beyond the grounds until you've demonstrated mastery over your abilities," one of the house soldiers told him, looking apologetic. "Forgive me, Your Eminence. None of the house protectors would make such impositions on you. It is Lady Gracidea who demands."

He nodded weakly. "Guess I did… make a mess of things on my first day." He sighed, staring out the paper window at the vague outlines of trees. Somewhere in that forest was a girl named Cody, who Hayden already knew despite never meeting before. Now he would be trapped in the grounds, unable to find her. Until he… demonstrated his abilities, whatever that meant.

At least he slept soundly in his new bed. He was tired enough by then that he could've slept on the floor without complaint.

Then came the morning, and Hayden's first real taste of his new life with Shaymin House. He woke early to Christel politely informing him that it was time to get dressed if he wanted to make it to his tutoring in time. He didn't actually care about that teaching, but he dressed anyway. Eleanor would be there, along with her fascinating ditto daemon. Hayden wasn't going to learn to transform from anyone else.

He was probably surrounded with all kinds of incredible things he never would've enjoyed in his past life. The tastes of every food were strange to him, and the clothes they dressed him in even stranger. He walked surrounded by relics of ages long past, depicted in sculpture, painting, and stunning tapestries. How could any of that impress him, when all he wanted to do was go home?

The tutor wasn't terribly impressed with Hayden, in turn. Her perfectly prim gardevoir turned his nose up at Hayden and everything he did. Within the first five minutes, she'd corrected everything from his posture sitting down to the way he occasionally stroked Liz's back when she got agitated.

Her corrections only grew more energetic as the minutes passed. "None of this will do!" she finally exclaimed. "But we cannot waste every hour we have together with your deportment. I will speak to the mistress of the house about remedial classes. We can't hold Eleanor back with such things."

Eleanor was there, all right. She wore a skirt and blouse in a surprisingly modern style, given the old stuff in Hayden's closet. Her daemon didn't imitate anything, remaining as a blob by her side. Yet everything Hayden wasn't doing, she did. She sat up straight, walked with quiet dignity, and made only short, confident answers when the tutor spoke to her.

Now Hayden caught a smug grin from the corner of her lips, so long as Mrs. Boylston wasn't looking. "We'll review your understanding of language and mathematics today. History and natural sciences can wait for another day."

Their classroom was a wide, mostly empty room, with two desks in the center, across the room from each other. Based on the clear division in the floor, Hayden guessed there were separate sections for girls and boys.

Except that there were no children here besides them. How many kids would the family need before a separation like this made sense? Why even bother?

She walked over to Hayden's desk, depositing a large stack of papers on its empty surface. "Begin at the beginning. Leave anything blank you do not understand. Write neatly, as I will be evaluating your penmanship as well."

The tests didn't take that long. After the first few pages he was skipping every question. At least things made a little more sense with the numbers. Liz landed beside his pen, and seemed to understand much of what they saw with an intuitive mastery she easily shared with Hayden.

At least until Mrs. Boylston snapped at them. "It is not polite for daemons to speak in the presence of strangers. If you don't know the name of someone's daemon, yours should not speak where they can hear."

Hayden's hand clenched on the pen. "Am I supposed to treat you like you're some… pet? Why shouldn't you talk?"

He tensed, waiting for the gardevoir to say something—because of course adults couldn't keep their own rules. Even if he didn't, he could still tell the tutor what Hayden was doing.

He didn't react.

"We don't have to do it anywhere else," Liz thought back. She curled up on the edge of his desk, as though she'd decided to nap there. But she kept one eye open, and firmly on the page. "This next one is a circle. Remember what Mom said about cutting circles? There's a number for that…"

And so it went, until eventually they passed anything Liz could intuit, and they pushed the completed stack aside. 

From the frustrated way Mrs. Boylston tapped her shoe against the tile floor, Hayden knew he had found a new way to disappoint her. 

She set them back on the table in front of him a few minutes later, after helping Eleanor with other problems from a frighteningly large textbook.

"Well, Hayden—I will not have good news to give the lady of this house. I see potential here. The way you solved some of these problems is inventive. But from this other section, I can't even imagine. What school did you attend that left you so woefully under-taught?"

He shrugged. "Schools were for rich kids. Sunyshore had one, but my parents didn't have the money. Mom taught me my letters and numbers, made me read with her almost every night. That's more than most of the other kids. They couldn't even read!"

"Don't look too proud of yourself." She folded her arms, scowling down at his sheets. "I should count myself blessed you're not illiterate. We will be hiking uphill with every step. But we're out of time for today. Tomorrow, I'll discover what I already dread about your inadequate understanding of history and science. So we set ourselves the impossible task of forming you into a desirable match. Arceus help me."

She stalked away, and her daemon followed swiftly behind her, leaving the two of them alone in the empty classroom.

Eleanor worked through a perfect routine. She tucked her books into a neat cubby by the wall, set her work pages down beside them. She kept moving stiffly, as though expecting Mrs. Boylston to reappear through the door at any second.

Hayden didn't bother with any of that. He clambered out of his chair, then hurried over to her, grinning. "Hey! Remember what we talked about last night?"

She turned her back on him, lifted her ditto in both arms, and walked away. With that incredibly silly posture, there was no chance she could escape. "I remember demanding to be left alone. I remember trying to explain how unwanted you were in my house. Yet here you are, following me. Please don't follow me to lunch."

He followed her anyway, of course. With no tutor to demand Liz sit still, she circled the air around them both, always keeping the ditto in view. "There's nowhere else for us to learn," Hayden continued. "I may not be noble-born, I didn't go to a fancy school. But we have one thing in common!"

Eleanor stopped in the hall, beside an ancient suit of armor. She turned, and her glare was joined by several distorted reflections. "What could we possibly have in common, kid? You don't even understand what life in the Great Families is like."

He nodded his agreement.

"But we know what it's like not to want to settle when we settled," Liz said, landing in his arms, in the same position as the ditto. "Every day we're stuck is like not being allowed to bathe. It just gets worse and worse, driving us crazy. I bet you know what that's like! Can you teach us, please?"

Eleanor met his eyes for a few, tense seconds. Then she groaned. "Fine, whatever. It's not like you wouldn't see us eventually. But—" She gripped Hayden by the shoulder, tugging him closer. "We show you once. After that, you don't bother us about this ever again. Deal? You get one lesson. And when you realize you're just like everyone else, and you'll be stuck with your one daemon for the rest of your life, you leave Loch and I alone about it. Because what we do is a ditto thing, and you'll never understand."

"Deal," Liz said. "So long as you make it a good lesson. Let me watch from up close. Explain what you're doing, what you're thinking. That's all I need."

How could she be so confident? Despite all they shared, this was one area where Hayden knew almost nothing. He had no idea what it was like to physically change, or use a pokémon move. No matter how many times Liz tried to explain it, it just didn't make sense. All he could do was trust her.

"After lunch," Eleanor said. "Loch doesn't perform well on an empty stomach. Someone had us up half the night hunting through the woods. Really works up an appetite to pretend to be a legendary for that long."

"Harder to be stronger pokémon, got it," Liz said. "Makes sense."

Eleanor groaned louder. "I am not giving you a lesson yet. Just follow me. I can already tell you're not gonna leave us alone. Might as well just have lunch with me."

He did. Hayden couldn't contain his excitement the entire time. He bounced gently up and down with energy, barely even noticing what they were eating. Partly he was fascinated to watch the way the ditto ate, swallowing his food whole and leaving solid lumps in his body. What would that feel like?

"Maybe we can find out," Liz suggested. "Once I learn, I can copy anyone. Even him."

They ate in a private dining room, surrounded by fine tableware and empty chairs covered in sheets. Despite the vast size of Shaymin Manor, it didn't seem like it was getting many visitors. The ballrooms Hayden passed were just as empty and abandoned, and many of the doors were just locked. The house was filled with incredible treasures, but more like a museum than a home.

It was to one of those empty ballrooms that Eleanor took him, when they were finished. She walked them to a wall covered with mirrors. "We don't have much time before our Unity tutor, about an hour. If you can't get it right before then, you leave me alone about it forever, remember?"

"We remember," Hayden said. "And we still agree. We're ready to learn."

Eleanor lowered her ditto gently down onto the ground. "Alright. Not that I expect either of you to make any sense of this. I've talked with unsettled kids before, and they couldn't even do it. Not sure what you think makes you different." 

She started pacing back and forth behind the blob, growing more energetic by the second. She could try to hide it all she wanted, but her passion for the subject radiated from her into the air. "This move is harder to do than anything you've learned before, because it doesn't just depend on your daemon. Loch and I took weeks before we figured it out, but it really should've been obvious." 

She dropped down to one knee beside him, patting his side. Strange that his body could look so gooey, yet didn't stick to anything. "Using a move only affects your daemon, normally. But a transformation needs to affect you too. A person with a different daemon is a different person. If your daemon tries to do all the work, they won't be able to do it. Your mindset matters too. You need to have the flexibility to imagine yourself as someone different, and change when they do. Otherwise, it won't work."

She stood up again, folding her arms. "But you won't do that, because everyone else in the world is solid. You might be more special than me, more valuable than me, more interesting than me, but you're still solid, and you will be forever."

She changed—they both did. The blob shrunk down, his shape reconfiguring to something incredibly familiar, bathed in an ever-present white glow. It faded after a few seconds, leaving behind the pokémon Hayden knew best in the whole world—an eevee.

Eleanor's own features changed with her daemon, albeit far subtler. Her hair turned brown, with white highlights. Her clothes seemed slightly looser, like she'd shrunk an inch. Even her expression—suddenly she was playful, grinning at him. Her eevee crouched with his forelegs up, the obvious sign of a play-fight about to begin. 

But Liz was in the air, out of reach.

"So that's how it's done. Now go ahead, stand there looking frustrated for an hour, then leave us alone."

Ahuiliztli landed in his arms, looking up at him. "It makes so much sense now!" she thought, reaching up towards him with both paws. "Were you watching too? Can you do your part?"

"Do we want her to think we can't?" he asked instead. "She's kinda mean."

Liz's tail curled around his arm. "Maybe. But she's the only ditto around. Think about everything we could learn from her. They might know dozens of moves, maybe hundreds. You know how much easier it is to be something when we have someone to copy first."

"Don't forget," the eevee called from the ground beside them. "I get to learn to copy you, mew! Whether you figure this out or not!"

Eleanor glared down at him. "Like we want to be a kitten anyway." She was lying, though. Eevee were never very good liars.

What would Hayden be like as an eevee? He already knew. He'd be a lot like he was already—curious, mischievous, always getting into places he didn't belong. But he'd also be a good member of the family, dressing up for holidays, doing his chores on time. His parents would be proud of him, and when he got a little older, he'd grow up to be the pokémon they needed—the sylveon who made sure everyone felt loved.

Hayden felt the move the instant it happened, far more powerfully than any move they'd ever used. Eleanor was right—part of that came from him, not just Ahuiliztli. He got a little bigger, a little leaner. But mostly the changes were to his mind. Hayden's confidence waned, and he became suddenly aware of just how much danger he was in.

He had a whole pack of people who loved him and looked out for him, so far away they could do nothing to help. He didn't know anyone here, except for a strange girl in the woods and another one who thought he was annoying. Yet there was so much for him to see, if he could keep out of trouble long enough to explore it. How many rooms were in the big house, how many floors? What relics did the Shaymin keep tucked away?

Of course Liz changed too. It took her longer than when she wasn't settled. But after a few seconds, an eevee hopped out of his arms and onto the floor, tackling Loch to the ground. "You could've picked something harder!" she exclaimed. "We grew up this way!"