by M. O. McLeod
16.
Daggers, Scales, Claws, and All
Rimselda looked at Kurma. She didn’t seem crazy, and didn’t look crazy either. For the most part, Kurma looked sane, healthy, and normal. So why was she was saying such ludicrous things?
Rimselda had forgotten she was in her birthday suit. She stood up, placed her hands on her tiny hips, and said, “That’s a whole lot of story you got there.”
“It’s the truth,” Kurma lied again.
“What was it you’re calling yourself?”
“A Raptor,” answered Kurma.
“So you’re telling me you’re human and can change into a Raptor, and that I am now a Raptor too?”
“Correct,” Kurma said. “You can change into a Raptor on command, or whenever your body feels as if it’s in danger.”
Rimselda nodded her head in disbelief. “You’re nuts, girl. Straight up walnuts, peanuts—hell, even coconuts.” She danced around in a circle singing.
Kurma breathed in deeply through her nostrils. “You don’t believe me?”
Rimselda stopped dancing and said with a straight face, “No.”
Kurma stood up. “Alright… But you will see that I am telling the truth.”
She knew this moment had to be perfect. If she wanted her followers to be believers then she had to show and prove. The best way to do that was to turn. “Watch and learn,” she said with a smirk on her face. In an instant she had transformed into her Raptor state—colored fur, claws, shocking gray eyes, and all.
Rimselda lurched forward and then back away. She felt sick. She couldn’t take her eyes off of Kurma, or the Raptor, or both for that matter.
Kurma had tripled her normal body size. She looked down at Rimselda, who looked scared yet in awe. Kurma felt as if she had her first admirer. She could only imagine how she looked from Rimselda’s point of view. Probably beautiful and beastly, she thought.
“Do you believe what I say now?” Kurma asked.
Rimselda was too afraid even to nod her head in reply. “And you say I’m one of these things too?”
Rimselda approached Kurma and patted the soft hair on her belly. She tapped her feet against Kurma’s leg and felt rock-hard muscles. She gulped deep. She had never seen anything like this before. Her life was in the dumps—she was homeless, always hungry, and young. It was hard being her, and it had always been that way. Now someone was telling her that maybe she was different. Maybe she didn’t have to be Rimselda anymore, the Rimy who was beaten and abused. The old Rimy with the insecure and malicious mom. The Rimy who had been burned and tortured because she happened to be pretty. Rimy didn’t want that baggage over her head anymore. She had run across the country to get away from it. She wanted this to be real.
“Show me how,” she declared.
Kurma smiled. “You need to think about it really hard at first. Think about how your body really isn’t yours, but this other thing.” She looked at Rimselda, who stood there looking helpless. “You already changed, back at the café. Don’t you remember?”
Rimselda was shocked. The café seemed so long ago. She had gone in to order breakfast with the money she had made panhandling around the corner. The café was her and her friends’ usual hangout in the evenings. Rimselda liked the night shift waitresses, and had only gone into the café early that morning because she was going to meet up with her friend Millie. Then she had totally forgotten about Millie, the breakfast, everything. It seemed to Rimselda that she was in another time zone parallel to that one.
She racked her brain, thinking back to the morning. She remembered the little café, walking in the door, being pushed by some rude chick, and then her memory went blank.
Then it hit her. “Oh, you’re that girl! The one who knocked into me and didn’t say excuse me.” Now she remembered. She gave a sweet smile of victory, tapped her head, and beamed.
“Try to remember the dumpster,” said Kurma.
“I know I wasn’t in a dumpster.” Rimselda smelled her body. There wasn’t a scent. “I was in a dumpster? What for?”
Kurma nodded. “I had to put you somewhere when you were going through the changes. Try to think back to when I had us in the air. You still had your wings, I believe.”
Rimselda stood there, naked with her eyes closed, and tried to conjure up an image of what she would look like if she were a Raptor as Kurma was. Her body temperature rose without her knowing it. Rimselda thought about how she would look if she had wings, scales on her face, long, thin, muscular legs, claws for hands, and a beak of a nose. She imagined herself attractive, no less.
Kurma watched as Rimselda unknowingly transformed into a Raptor. Coal-colored hair covered her entire body except her face, which was hidden beneath thin scales the color of lilacs. Her lips were ginger, and her nose had become hooked. The hair on Rimselda’s head was as bright as ever, though, red and on fire. Kurma noticed she wasn’t as tall as she had been, but her legs and arms looked thicker. Rimselda’s wings were tucked behind her arms. Kurma couldn’t make out if there was a specific pattern on them, as she had, but she approved of Rimselda’s transformation. The girl looked provocative and exotic.
“Is anything happening?” Rimselda asked with her eyes shut tightly.
“If only I had a mirror, Rimy,” Kurma replied, trying to coat her jealousy with excitement. “You look gorge!”
Rimselda popped her eyes open and looked down at herself. “Get the hell out of here. Look at my feet!”
She moved about on her thin legs, watching her claw-like toes. “I don’t have any boobs!” Rimselda went to grab her chest, and out sprang her wings, which were attached to her arms. “I think I’m going to be sick. I have skin that’s attached to my arms,” she moaned. “Look at all this hair on my body. When people see me they’re for sure going to die on the spot.”
“No, they won’t see you,” Kurma said, hoping it would cheer Rimselda up. She wished there had been someone to cheer her up when she’d first turned.
“How am I supposed to go about my day-to-day activities?” asked Rimselda. “Am I going to become a nighttime creature, like an owl?”
Kurma laughed at her outlandish questions. “You look beautiful, babes, seriously. And I look just like you. We’re now in this together.”
“You look better than I do. You don’t look as birdish as I do. Your hair is long and blowy, and your lips look like someone painted them on.” Rimselda couldn’t believe her luck. “Your wings have this pattern thing going on. I’m the one stuck with wings the color of mud.”
“But that’s not the best part.” Kurma had almost forgotten about her secret weapons.
“There’s more?” Rimselda hoped it was something better than mud-colored wings. Not that her wings weren’t cool; it was just that compared to Kurma she was definitely lacking.
“I have these,” Kurma said. Her long, metal daggers lashed out, and she held them out for Rimselda to see. “We both have these.”
Rimselda’s mouth hung open. She looked at her own arm and couldn’t see any openings for daggers. “Are they in my arms?”
Kurma thought. “They’re a part of your arm bones, and whenever you want, the bone can split off and become metal daggers.”
“So how do they come out?”
Kurma thought for another second. Her daggers had first shown up when Santino had tried to attack her. Every time she felt in trouble, she could also feel her hands itching, as if the daggers were triggered by her anxiety and fear levels. But then again, if she thought hard enough about them coming out then they appeared from her skin without too much difficulty.
“When you’re in danger they’ll come out for sure. Otherwise you have to think about them coming from your arm. Try to imagine your arm growing another limb.”
Rimselda concentrated on her arm where her wrist started. She could feel something
there. She thought fiercely about the daggers for what it seemed like eternity, but they never sprang.
“I guess I’m not as good at this as you,” she said.
That made Kurma smile. She had never really been good at anything either—except this. Now she felt as if she had a head start in a race…and she was destined to win. “Don’t worry. It will get easier.”
Rimselda looked up at the sky. She wanted to fly, but didn’t want to fail at that too. “You think I could try flying?”
Kurma wasn’t so sure about the new girl trying to fly so soon. If she couldn’t get her daggers out then who knew if she was even strong enough to fly? Kurma thought about pushing her off the building. Her own wings had naturally taken over when she had fallen from the window, so maybe the same would happen for Rimselda.
“Maybe we should just walk for a bit.” Kurma couldn’t risk losing a protégé so soon. “We should test out your hearing, smelling… All these things have been intensified since you became a Raptor.”
“Is that what we’re called?” Rimselda asked. She thought that was a funny-sounding name, but kind of cool in a quirky way.
“Yes, that’s what I’m calling us.”
“What kind of things do we eat? Are we nocturnal creatures? Who changed us into these things?” Rimselda shot off questions all at once.
“I created us!” Kurma yelled, feeling a twinge of annoyance. “There are no scientists, no formula to change us back. We are this, and we will never be regular human beings again. Do you understand that?”
Rimselda was taken aback. “I was only asking a question.”
“No, you asked several all at once. Get it right.”
Whatever, Rimselda thought. “So what do we do now, Captain Kurma?”
“We need clothes. Can we go to your house?”
Rimselda hadn’t had a home since her thirteenth birthday. “I’m homeless.”
Kurma wasn’t surprised. Rimselda seemed to have a displaced vibe. At the café Kurma had wondered why she was even up at that hour and by herself.
“I live at the old train station, the one down by Snowhill. The big one.”
“Yeah, I know where that is,” Kurma said.
"A couple friends and I stay in one of the rooms on the top floor. I think it used to be the head honcho’s office.”
“I heard there are hundreds of people who stay in that train station.”
“Yeah, when the rent prices went up, people had to move out. Either it was the places like the train station and old bus terminals or out on the street,” Rimselda said.
Kurma thought about living in the train station with other people, but worried about contaminating the population. She didn’t know if she wanted that so soon.
“There’s running water—not the freshest, but it runs. We have this guy who turns it on and off for us whenever the city comes out and shuts us down. It’s a whole community down there. People like us have lived there, undisturbed for the most part, ever since they put up the AirTrains tracks.”
Rimselda looked at Kurma and wondered what her story was. “You don’t have a family?”
“I do actually, it’s just… This thing that I am. I don’t want them knowing. I don’t want them looking at me differently or trying to put me in a lab where they do all sorts of experiments on me,” Kurma said softly.
“They’re your family. I’m sure they would take care of you and accept you for what you are.” Rimselda immediately wished she hadn’t said that. She didn’t know what a family should do or how they should behave. Her family hadn’t been that way, so she didn’t even know where that fantastical statement had come from. She was the last person to speak to when it came to family structure.
“We can go to the train station. I’ll introduce you to everyone. They can get a feel for you,” Rimselda offered. “But we have to find some clothes first. The station is across the city, you know. And I have to change back to regular. I’m not sure if Alexandria is ready for all of this.” She twirled in a circle and let her wings flap in the wind.
“Do you think your friends will be freaked out by you?” asked Kurma.
“We all have our secrets, ya' know. I’m not sure if I want to tell them about me yet. I’m not sure if they’d even believe me. Down at the station, it’s a different world. What you have, someone wants. Bringing you with me is a risk. They might just beat you up, steal the clothes off your back, and send you packing. I mean, I don’t know, it’s a dog-eat-dog world down there.”
Kurma wasn’t afraid. She may have been a lot of things, but she was not scared of people. She wasn’t worried about being bullied. If anything she would turn Rimselda’s friends into Raptors, and they would be her official lackeys. Her friends would welcome Kurma into their little misfit clique if they knew what was best for them.
“I might be able to find some clothes in the laundry room in my building,” said Kurma.
“This is where you live? You actually have a home and a room and a bed. Why are you giving this all up to stay down at that old, raggedy train station?”
“You know, you ask about a hundred questions,” Kurma joked. “Does your mind always move that fast?”
“Pretty much.” Rimselda laughed. She had a light voice and a childish giggle. Kurma wondered why she was homeless; she wanted to ask Rimselda about her story but thought better of it. At the moment she didn’t need to hear another sob story. She needed to make moves. Rome wasn’t built in a day, so Kurma didn’t want to rush too much, but she did want to see some major developments.
If this girl really was a runaway and knew of other runaway teens then Kurma could come into the picture and persuade, coax, lure, entice, or whatever she had to do to get them to think of her as a leader—their leader. Most runaways ran away for a reason. Kurma could only assume they had no guidance or leadership, and no one telling them what to do. At least she hoped they didn’t. She would have problems then.
Kurma wasn’t schooled in the art of making friends, but she did know how to be an authoritative figure. She had basically raised her twin brothers, since her mother was always running behind her father. She knew how to get someone to do what she wanted and was good at giving out demands and orders. She recognized people’s talents and gifts and knew how to use them to her advantage.
Being the older sister had always had its perks. She was full of little tricks that could pit one sibling against another. She made up rules that her brothers had to live by; she didn’t see why she shouldn’t make up rules for Rimselda’s friends. If she decided to turn all of the girl’s friends into Raptors then their old lives were over; Kurma would be in control of their new lives, or at least try to be, and guide them as best she could, as she had guided her brothers.
Kurma made her way toward the door that led into the building from the roof. “Well, come on,” she urged.
Rimselda quickly followed.
And so it had begun.