Othersphere by Nina Berry

but his brown eyes took on the same golden sheen. He blinked, taken aback at what he saw, invisible to me. “Thousands of them. Millions . . .”
    Curious, I moved nearer. The rope was a rough brown, like the dark bark of a tree stripped and wound into a cord. The closer I looked, the more variations in color I saw within it, the more alive it seemed. “What does that mean—it has many shadows?” I asked.
    Caleb stopped humming. “With this you could travel to any of the many worlds out there, not just Othersphere.”
    â€œWhy does he have more than one rope, then?” I turned to Ximon. “What were your plans for this length of rope?”
    Ximon didn’t answer me. He had hunched over and lurched closer to the silver bars of his cage. His temples glistened with perspiration. I didn’t like how close I stood to the cage myself now. The pulse from it was irritating my skin. “Ximon?” I said.
    â€œIt’s a lot softer than it looks,” Lazar was saying of the rope. “Here.” He held up a length of it toward me.
    I reached for it automatically. Ximon reeled back away from the silver bars, sweat trickling down his face.
    The rope in my hand did feel soft, like fur, but firmer. I closed my hand around it. It stirred.
    â€œOh!” I dropped the rope, but somehow it had wrapped around my wrist.
    â€œWhat?” Caleb said.
    â€œYou all right?” Lazar asked at the same time.
    I opened my mouth to say yes, to tell them that some kind of warmth was coming from the rope, a reassuring heat, as it were a purring cat.
    But Ximon sucked in a long breath, stood taller, and said, “Ahhh. That’s better.”
    His voice rumbled now like a V-8, so different from his earlier weary tones. His cheeks had turned pink. His shoulders looked broader. And his eyes. His eyes were molten gold, fixed on me.
    In his right hand he was holding a shiny black staff, longer than he was tall, its glassy surface carved with animal figures that seemed to writhe. It was just like Morfael’s staff, only our teacher’s was made of wood. He tapped the staff on the cage floor and seemed to get bigger, taller, darker, like something that wasn’t even remotely human.
    â€œGet back!” Caleb shouted, yanking the rope away from me. “Everyone, out!”
    â€œLittle cub.” It came out of Ximon as a growl.
    Every hair on my arms stood on end. I’d been called that once before.
    He smiled. His shiny black teeth were sharp. “Perhaps it’s better I didn’t eat you after all.”

CHAPTER 5
    Many things happened at once.
    Ximon grew even taller, leaner. His skin blackened and shone. His fingernails lengthened into claws, grasping his staff. His eyes were worlds of gold shot with green and black.
    Caleb shoved me back, putting himself between me and Ximon.
    Lazar pointed his hand at Ximon, speaking with a tone of command, “I objure you. Back to Othersphere. Back . . .”
    Ximon laughed, a deep, rumbling chortle that was not his own. He curled his black, clawed hands at the floor, as if pulling it toward him with an invisible rope.
    The ground heaved. The walls swayed and shook, as if a giant hand was using the room as a rattle. The shelves and beams shuddered and cracked around us as loudly as a train hurtling past when you stand right next to the tracks.
    Lazar and Caleb stumbled and fell. November hurtled off her shelf, catching the edge with her two right paws at the last moment to stop her fall. Paint cans, tools, and old rags rained down around her as the screws pinning the shelves to the walls jiggled outward. I kept my feet and staggered toward her.
    The cage clanked and hopped around Ximon, or rather, the thing that Ximon had become. The silver bars rattled out of alignment. Nails popped from their holes. The cage roof swayed, coming away from one of the corner poles. The Ximon-thing had no trouble keeping its feet.
    He tugged upward