The Cloaked: Hidden Hybrid's Choice

“Mya,” my mom called from downstairs, breaking my concentration. I, Mya Mason, was about to leave for UCLA in four weeks. I was partially packed. I was on a full-ride scholarship for volleyball and grades. I graduated top of my class and was the lead setter in the State of California. I was ready for this change. High school was never easy. I never fit in completely. I had my team, but they didn't understand my passions. I loved to read about astrology and home remedies. To be direct, I was a bit weird. I also had an overprotective mother who wouldn't let me off the leash. No sleepovers, no bus rides; I was never left alone unless in school. She even talked the coach into watching every practice. If that wasn't enough, my fire and copper red hair, green eyes, and 6’ 2” height made me stick out in a crowd. The last box I taped shut held nineteen medals and a state championship trophy shaped like a bowling pin that had survived a bad year. I was three seconds from deciding it didn't deserve bubble wrap when my mother yelled up the stairs. “Mya Mason, please get down here!” “I’m coming,” I yelled back. "Mya Mason. Down here. Now." She only used the full name for permission slips and emergencies. I set the tape down, tucked Language of Metal and Mind under my arm, and went down. I came to a halt when I entered the living room. We have a good couch in our living room. Nobody sits on the good couch. The woman on it sat dead center with her ankles crossed and her cane hooked over one knee like she'd paid for the cushion and meant to itemize it. Grey curls. Navy suit that cost more than the car. Small frame, small hands, my mother's face aged forward about forty years. "Hello," I said, looking from her to my mom. They looked identical. Same brownish-gold eyes and small frames. “What is going on?” “My dear, sit down,” the woman said. My mother wrung her hands before motioning to the chair as she sat down on the love seat. I slowly took my seat, still looking at the uncanny resemblance between them. It has always been me and my mom. My dad died before I was born, and my mother had said she was an only child of parents who had died. This woman looked like a version of her future. “Mya,” my mom started, “This is your grandmother.” "You told me they were dead." "We died?" The woman sounded genuinely offended. "That's a bit dramatic." "Really, Mother." My mom, sharp now. "What was I supposed to tell her, given the reason we left?" "Tell her you got knocked up by a dog and left in disgrace." “That wasn't the only reason,” My mother started. “Stop." I was standing. I don't remember choosing to stand. "My father was not a dog. He died. Well, I think he died. Mom?” I mean if her parents were alive, maybe Dad was as well. “Oh, sweetheart, he is dead. His family, on the other hand,” she said. I looked at my mom. That was the first thing to actually get through, and it went through like a fork in a toaster. All those years of it's just us, honey, it's always been just us, and she sat there with her mouth closed while a stranger in a suit handed me a father with relatives. “No, this is too much. I can't deal with this,” I said, starting to get up. “We haven't even started,” the old woman said. “Please sit.” “Honey,” my mom said. “Your great-grandmother has passed away.” “OK. I didn't know she was alive,” I shrugged. “My mother was a very powerful...” “Person,” my mother cut her off. “She was the head of a powerful family, and now your grandmother will take her place. I will be required to come back, and you will also have changes.” My grandmother scoffed at that. “Are we the royalty or something?” I joked. “Am I really a princess of a small country like in a Disney or Hallmark movie?” “Nothing like that,” my mother said. “There are going to be many changes.” "Your great-grandmother passed on Tuesday. She was my mother. Which makes me the crone and guardian of the Starweaver coven, and makes you the reason I'm sitting on a couch I don't like in a house I had to look up on a map." “Mya, there are many changes for you ahead. You will need to pack your stuff, and you will be attending Cloaked University in two weeks. I spoke with the Dean, and they are expecting you.” “Let me stop you right there. I am going to UCLA in four weeks. I have never even heard of Cloaked University. I have a full ride to UCLA. Mom tell her,” I looked to my mom, who looked defeated. Whatever she was trying to figure out she must not like it. “Mya. I’m sorry,” she reached for me. I slapped her hand away. “I won't go. I am 18 and can do what I want.” “Tell her, or I will,” my grandmother said. I spun back to my mother. A tear slid down her face. “I am sorry, but if you do not go with us, you will be hunted and…” “Hunted?” I asked. “Oh my. We are not royalty; we are witches. Well, specifically, we are weavers. The Starweaver family is the only remaining weaver family of the cloaked. We control an element and can weave time.” I laughed, which startled my grandmother. “You want me to believe we are witches. I am a witch like in Harry Potter?” “We don't use wands,” my grandmother shot back. The faucet in the kitchen turned on by itself. I want to be clear that I was looking right at it. The water came out of the sink, rose up in a ribbon, crossed the whole kitchen and the dining room, and settled into the cup on the side table next to Nessa without putting a single drop on the carpet. The air in the room moved like somebody had cracked a window during a storm. My hair lifted off my shoulders. My mom lifted her hand and pulled at nothing, and the nothing came loose. Strings of light, gold and thin, strung through the air like the inside of a piano. She chose two and tugged, and a mirror opened, and in the mirror was the state championship last November: me at the service line, chalk dust in the air, the bench losing its entire mind. I watched my own face, two months younger and completely unbothered, and I swear I heard the whistle. "That's my memory," I said. My voice came out smaller than I wanted. "That's my memory. How are you doing that?" "The Starweavers weave,” Grandmother set the cup down. "Time mostly. My mother could pull a day out of a person and hold it in her hand. Your mother is out of practice and hiding it poorly." "Is this the reason you never let me sleep anywhere, or ride the bus, or be alone for one single hour, was because you were worried?" "I was worried." My mom's eyes were wet now, and she wasn't doing anything about it. "I was worried every day. That's why we didn't leave the state. That's why the coach let me watch your practices. That's why there are no sleepovers." "You could have told me." "Not until my grandmother died. Not until the binding started to fail." “Why?” I asked. “Why such a secret? Why hide us?” “You’re a hybrid and hybrids are feared and killed,” my mother quivered. “No one can know what you are.” “You will come to live at the Starweaver coven and attend Cloaked University. First as a human, but once you meet your match, your powers will be released, and we will be here to help you through it.” “What if I don't go? I can just remain a human, and mom can stay here,” I pleaded to my mom. “With your great-grandmother gone, the bind will wear off at your next birthday. Your powers will be open regardless of match. We need the protection of the coven,” she pleaded back. I sat in silence for what seemed like forever as the two strangers in front of me talked. They were working out where we had been and why we stayed away so long. I was processing what had been told to me. I am a witch with powers that will be woken by a boyfriend or at my next birthday. I was hidden because I was a hybrid. Wait… “I am a hybrid,” I said aloud. “Yes, my dear,” my mother said. “What else am I?” I asked. Both women's golden-brown eyes shot at me. “Why would hybrids be feared and hunted?” I asked. “Humans and cloaked world creatures, or mystics as we like to call ourselves, are not,” my grandmother started. “But when two powerful mystics have a child, the power becomes unbalanced, and the future is shaken. This fear has created hybrids of mystics to be hunted.” "Your father was heir of the Silvercrest pack," Nessa said, brisk, like she was reading a schedule. "You will never say those two words out loud again. You are a witch and a human; that's what you are, that's what you'll be at Cloaked and everywhere else for the rest of your life. But you're half Lycan, and hybrids are feared, and they're hunted, and the ones who get found don't get found twice." "Hunted by who?" "Everyone." She said it plainly. "That's not an answer." "It's the honest one. Humans panic at what they can't explain. Covens panic at power they can't count. Packs panic at blood they can't claim. When two powerful lines mix, the sum comes out wrong, and the future rattles. Your great-grandmother saw it in a weave when you were small. It's why she bound you. It's why she sent your mother away. It's why you're not going to UCLA." The last sentence came out before the rest of it had finished landing in me. "I have a full ride," I said. "I'm the lead setter in the state of California. I've had that scholarship since October." "You'll have another one. Just at Cloaked University and not for Volleyball." "No. You can't just cancel my life." "Your father died trying to change the law on hybrids." My mom's voice cracked on father, the way it always does, and she caught it and kept going anyway. "He wanted mystics to be able to love who they wanted. He wanted hybrids included. They killed him for it in a war that we lost, in three ways, and I ran home pregnant and let my grandmother tell the covens I ran. Now do you understand why I never let you out of my sight?" I did understand. That was the problem. Understanding it meant it was true. Nessa stood up and adjusted her jacket. "Here are the terms, and then I'll leave you to it," she said. "Two weeks of cramming. Five covens, packs, the kinds of mystics, what you can and can't say. Then Cloaked University. You'll live at the coven house, not on campus. You will present as a witch-human hybrid whose powers were bound because they came in too strong for a child. That part is nearly the truth, and nobody will question it. You will stay away from the wolves. Your schedule has already been built to do it." "You built my schedule." "I spoke to the Dean." She glanced at my book on the armchair, and something moved behind her eyes. "Was there something else?" "What happens if I refuse?" "Then the bind comes off at your next birthday with no coven around you and no one to teach you control, in a world where the only interesting thing about you is what your blood is." She let that sit exactly as long as it needed. "Prey is the alternative. The alternative is short." I sat with it. Down the hall, the ceiling fan clicked on its third rotation, over and over, like a metronome for somebody who'd already left the song. "Two weeks," I said. "Two weeks." "Where's Cloaked?" "Connecticut." "Of course it is." My mom went to make tea she doesn't drink, which is what she does when she needs her hands busy. I stayed on the floor with my back against the couch and Language of Metal and Mind open on my knees and read the same sentence eleven times without taking one word of it in. Nineteen medals in a box ten feet away. The trophy with the bad year. I closed the book. "What's a Lycan?" In the kitchen doorway, Nessa went still, and the whole house went still with her: fridge hum, fan click, my mother's hands on the kettle. "Royalty," she said. "The wolves all answer to them, and one day, if we're very lucky, they'll answer you instead. Now get some sleep, dear. You start tomorrow, and you're already behind."