Finally, the exams were complete, and the rest of the term was dedicated to completing course work projects. Now, thought Clara, I’ll have some time to make things up to Sinead. Unfortunately, this was not to be. The school trips had been organised for this time of year, but Clara couldn’t go because the first-year trip clashed with the next full moon.
As Clara waved Sinead and her other classmates away on the school bus, she felt angry about having the curse. While Sinead was away, Clara sullenly kept to herself in the library where she worked on her projects alone, trying not to think about how much fun her friend was having without her.
On the first night of the full moon Clara went to bed, as usual, and then listened for her parent’s downstairs. After a while she heard her mum come up to bed. Sometime later, though, her father was still downstairs. Clara was getting a stronger and stronger urge to transform and wasn’t sure how much longer she could hold it off. What was her dad doing down there? He was always in bed by now. After a few more minutes suffering a building agitation that was turning torturous to hold inside, Clara crept out of her bedroom and down the stairs, her heart thumping loudly at the fear of getting caught.
As she reached the bottom step, she could see that the living room door was open and, through the door, she could see her dad stretched out on the sofa with the TV on. Clara froze in case he saw or heard her, but then realised that there was another noise coming out of the room – her dad’s gentle snoring. Clara rolled her eyes – of all the nights to fall asleep on the sofa. She tiptoed through to the kitchen and slipped out of the back door and down the garden path. Having successfully left the house undiscovered, she hurried to her usual spot, hoping with all her might that her dad would’ve gone to bed by the time she returned later in the night.
On reaching the log she didn’t have time to dwell on what type of animal she’d become. She was barely out of her clothes when it felt like someone had snagged a rope in her belly button and pulled it sharply. Gulping for breath, she bent over, wrapped her arms around her stomach, and squeezed her eyes shut. Her legs gave way and she collapsed on to her hands and knees. As the aching sensation started to subside, she began breathing more easily and, when she opened her eyes, she had taken her dog form. When her legs felt strong enough to bear her weight, she shakily padded off up the track to her hilltop spot, where she sat for a while, calming down and re-familiarising herself with the area. She stretched out her senses to see what was going on locally, and touched the minds of the usual dogs, cats, foxes, squirrels and birds. She found the mind of the wild dog and noted that he was in his usual spot, hunting for food.
Clara began to relax. She’d mastered, and was able to control, the onslaught of animal forms at each full moon and submerged herself fully in the ebb and flow of the forms in her mind. They gently came in and out of focus. She noted all of the separate species and the individuals within families. After a while, she was so relaxed that she was almost in a hypnotic state. It was in that state that she suddenly felt a surge of power flow through her, along with a realisation that she could make all of the animals in her mind do whatever she wanted them to. The surge continued on, swelling her mind to gigantic proportions and she began to feel frightened, it was out of control and wasn’t going to stop. It was engulfing her, subsuming her own conscious self. Clara gasped and instinctively threw up a wall in her mind. She felt the surge slow, halt and then withdraw, like a wave retreating from a beach.
Sagging in relief, Clara was left with an empty cavern in her mind, with merely the faint echo of the presence of the animals that had occupied it completely only a few seconds before.
She sat, panting, while uncontrolled tremors ran through her body. In order to take back total possession of her mind, she focused on the land below and repeated the names of everything she could see in the whitewash of the moonlight. Grass, trees, moon, fields, crops, sheep. She felt the tremors fading away and her body returning to a more normal state.
Wow! she thought. What the heck was that? she felt both awe and fear at the strength of the power that had possessed her a few moments before. It was so alien that it’d initially felt like it had come from outside her body. However, on reflection, she realised that it had come from within her. The power had surged up out of the centre of her being it’d broken free from some small dark place inside her.
Clara shivered. She wondered what else lay hidden in the depths of her sub-conscious. Now that the fear had mostly dissipated, she was curious enough to want to explore this new power a little more. But, she thought, Tomorrow night is soon enough.
Having made this decision, Clara sat quietly on the hill and watched the moon move slowly across the mostly cloudless sky. After a while, though, Clara got a little bored and decided to go for a walk. She went back down the track and followed the edge of the woodland until she came to a path that went off towards the farm fields. Following it, she came across a short track leading up to a farmyard.
Clara made her way up to the farm gate and took a look inside. In the light from the moon she could see a farmhouse surrounded by a huge barn and other smaller outbuildings. All was in darkness. Clara sniffed the air and cocked her ears. She could neither smell nor hear any other dogs in the farmyard. Satisfied that she wouldn’t be discovered or set upon, she slipped between the rails of the gate. Keeping close to the wall, she trotted around the outer edges of the yard and peeked curiously into the outbuildings.
There were tools and other equipment stored in the first couple of sheds. The third building she couldn’t see into, but her nose told her that it was a milking shed. Clara was beginning to enjoy her game of guess the contents when she heard a commotion start up around the corner. Some chickens were making nervous clucking noises, Clara could hear them crooning and shuffling in their coop. Had they heard her in the yard? Was she upsetting them? Clara turned to make her way back out of the gate when an explosion of panicked noise from the chickens made her turn back. Clara reached out to them mentally to see what was upsetting them and unfortunately, in doing so, was caught up in their terror. She wasn’t the one causing their fear – there was something else trying to get into the coop.
Clara shot in the direction of the chicken coop. Rounding the corner she could see a fox digging at the dirt outside the protective fence surrounding the coop. Still caught up in the terror of the chickens’ minds, Clara ran at the fox, barking frantically. As soon as it saw and heard her, the fox froze, and then took off into a field and out of sight. At the same time, lights came on in the farmhouse and the door was thrown open, spilling bright, yellow light across the yard.
“It’s a dog,” she heard someone yell. “Be off with you.”
And a large, shadowy form started moving aggressively towards her. Now aware that she was the one being chased, and fearing for her own safety, Clara ran as fast as she could through the farmyard. She barely slowed down to jump through the gate and didn’t stop running until she’d reached the safety of the woods.
Panting crazily, she trotted back up to her hilltop spot and flopped down in the grass to recover. Whew! she thought, shaking all over. That was intense.
On reflection, she realised she’d been lucky. It wasn’t uncommon for farmers to have guns for protecting their livestock. She had merely been chased. She’d also learnt an important lesson about being in the minds of other creatures. She’d never felt as frightened as when she’d read the minds and experienced the terror of the chickens and it’d severely clouded her judgement. She was sure the fox would’ve run away, even if she hadn’t barked at it. She might then have been able to leave the scene without alerting the farmer to her presence.
Clara stretched her mind in the direction of the farm. She picked out the minds of the chickens and realised that they were already asleep. They were completely over the drama of a few minutes ago. Humph! she thought. But with all the excitement and the exercise, she was feeling tired, so she made her way home. Peering in through the back door as far as s
he could see, the house seemed to be in darkness. She slowly and silently opened the back door, crept in and shut it behind her. She tiptoed to the bottom of the stairs and listened intently. Hearing no suspicious sounds, she went up. As she was entering her room, the door to her parents’ bedroom started to open. Clara flung herself into bed, pulled the duvet up to her chin, and lay as still as possible. Seconds later, she heard her door being pushed open.
“Clara, are you awake?” her dad whispered. Clara didn’t respond but was sure her heart was pounding so loudly he couldn’t help but hear it. After a few seconds, though, she heard her door being pulled to and then the bathroom light across the hall was switched on. Clara didn’t move a muscle until she was sure that her dad had gone back to bed and fallen asleep. At which point she pulled off her outdoor clothes, too tired to do anything other than drop them off the side of the bed. She pulled her nightie over her head and, wondering what else could possibly go wrong the following night, she promptly fell asleep.
Chapter Fourteen
Clara slept through her alarm the following morning, “Come on, sleepy head. It’s almost the weekend,” her mum said ruffling her hair. Clara grunted and slid out of bed.
Later that day, Clara was pretending to read in the school library with her chin in her hands, when her tiredness and the heat of the room conspired to send her into a doze.
She was a dog again, padding along the track to the farm gate, only this time it was in bright daylight. Then, a fox strolled out of the hedge up ahead and stood in her path. The fox looked like it was laughing at her. She found that she was annoyed with the fox and was about to chase it, when the school bell rang for lunch and she was startled back into wakefulness. Clara looked around quickly to see if anyone had noticed but was relieved to find that she was alone.
After dinner that evening, Clara told her parents that she wanted to finish off one of her projects and went to her room, where she lay down and nodded off to sleep.
A couple of hours later, Clara woke to see the moon shining brightly through the window. She sat up and watched it for a while, considering the night ahead, before going downstairs for a drink. Her parents asked how her project was coming along and Clara lied that she’d finished it. She spent some time sitting with her parents and brother watching the end of a film, and then went back to her room.
This time, to fill the hours until transformation, Clara actually did do some of her project work, putting it away when she felt it was time for her parents to come upstairs. A few minutes later, she heard her mum come up. She put her head around Clara’s door but left quickly as Clara feigned sleep. She heard her do the same at Peter’s door and then proceed to her own room. Clara waited and waited but her dad didn’t come up. She didn’t want to repeat the events of the previous night, so decided to take the chance of going downstairs before she started to feel the desperate urge to transform. She crept down to find her father apparently sleeping on the sofa once again. She softly pulled the living room door closed, went through the kitchen and out the back door.
Clara decided to stick with her dog form initially this evening, but thought she’d practice changing forms later. In dog form, she went up to her hilltop spot and reached out with her mind. All seemed to be calm in the local area. She couldn’t “hear” her wild dog companion; he must’ve gone out of his usual territory this evening. Satisfied that she wouldn’t be disturbed, Clara closed her eyes and pictured the fox from the night before. She pictured its pointy noise and crafty eyes, it’s straight, arrow like ears. Its ginger fur and bushy tail, its black boots and long body. She imagined all of those attributes on herself. She felt a tingle run through her body. When the sensation stopped, she opened her eyes. She knew she definitely wasn’t a dog anymore because she felt different, unfamiliar, but had she become a fox? Clara crossed her eyes to peer down her nose – it looked pointy to her – then she stood up and examined her feet. In the moonlight, she could tell that the fur above her ankles was definitely a lighter colour. Clara inspected her tail – Yep, there it was – a bushy tail with a black bit at the end.
Clara yipped with joy and ran around the clearing, occasionally leaping and pouncing on imaginary prey, in a fox-like way. She decided to test her foxy abilities and stood scanning the area. She concluded that foxes were similar to dogs in that they also had an excellent sense of smell and good hearing. She thought, though, that foxes had better night vision than the dogs.
After she was done wearing out all of her fox abilities Clara transformed back into her dog form.
Then she took a deep breath and relaxed her mind. She was hoping to initiate the power surge she’d felt the night before, but in a way that she could control this time. But no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t do it. Every time she started to relax and become submerged in the animal forms in her mind, her subconscious would remember the feeling of being overwhelmed, and the fear she’d felt the night before would return, causing Clara to tense.
Each time she tensed up, she’d roll her head and her shoulders to ease the tension and breathe deeply to initiate the meditative state. But she didn’t seem to be able to overcome her subconscious fear of the power surge and the tension returned at each attempt.
After several attempts, Clara got very frustrated. She sighed deeply, and decided it was time to call it a night.
Once dressed and back at her garden gate, though, Clara found she had a problem. It appeared that her dad was no longer sleeping on their sofa but had woken up and decided to get a cup of tea, which he was sitting at the kitchen table drinking. As the back door was located in the kitchen, this meant that Clara couldn’t slip in without being seen. And she didn’t have her front door key on her, so she was stuck. There was nothing for it – she was going to have to wait until he left. Clara found a stone to perch on and tried to make herself comfortable for the wait.
After half an hour, though, her dad was still sitting there. His tea was stone cold, and he was staring at whatever was on the table in front of him. What is he doing? Clara thought, desperately. She was cold and tired, and she’d jumped several times in the last half hour, hearing mysterious noises in the trees behind her. Each time she’d reached out and identified a harmless animal mind, but her nerves were on edge.
Eventually, when Clara was about to start crying from sheer cold and exhaustion, her dad rose from the table, put the papers he’d been reading in a drawer, switched off the kitchen light and made his way upstairs. Clara closed her eyes and prayed that he wouldn’t check in on her on his way to bed, or if he did, that her pillows would fool him into thinking she was there.
After waiting a few minutes more, she stood up and stiffly made her way along the garden path to the back door. Holding her breath, she unlocked and opened the door, slipped in and closed it behind her. She waited a few moments, listening for movement upstairs and, when she didn’t hear anything, she started breathing again.
Clara was making her way across the kitchen when she noticed that her dad hadn’t fully closed the drawer holding his papers. Curious, she pulled the drawer open and took out the papers on the top. Not wanting to put the light on Clara took the papers over to the window and, although she couldn’t read them properly, she could see by the light of the moon that the top one was a newspaper article about the company her dad worked for. The headline read “LOCAL COMPANY VICTIM OF RECESSION,” the by-line went on to say that the company was struggling because its customers were taking longer to pay for their goods. The company was currently being supported by their bank, but they didn’t know how much longer they could do so before having to reduce their costs, which would mean losing staff.
Clara felt sick. This explained her dad’s peculiar behaviour. No wonder he was having problems sleeping. Clara didn’t know much about her parent’s financial affairs, but she knew that there were loads of things her friends had, like mobile phones and computer games, that her parents couldn’t afford. She knew this was why her parents pushed her to be succe
ssful at school.
Clara sighed miserably and put the papers back in the drawer. She went to bed with a heavy heart and took a while to drop off to sleep, her troubles keeping her awake. With her eyes closed, and a frown drawn across her features, she worried over the development of her gift. She worried about how she was going to break the curse. She fretted about the breakdown of her friendship with Sinead and about the security of her dad’s job and, most of all; she was deeply concerned about whether or not she was going to have problems getting in and out of the house the following night.
Chapter Fifteen
The following morning, Clara wasn’t the only one to sleep late. When she went downstairs, she was surprised to see her dad at the table eating his breakfast.
“No work today?” she asked.
“No,” he replied. “They’ve given me a few Saturday mornings off so that I can see more of my family.” He smiled at Clara and gave her a one-armed hug.
“That’s nice,” said Clara, knowing full well that this was one of the ways her dad’s company had decided to reduce costs, but playing along with her dad’s story anyway.
“What are we going to do today, then?” she asked.
“Well,” said her mum. “There’s a car boot sale up at the farm today, I thought we might go and see if we can find a game to buy for Friday evenings, instead of getting DVDs. Don’t you think that sounds fun?”
“Mmm,” said Clara unenthusiastically. They’d have to find a game for Peter’s age group, rather than her own, and whenever they’d previously played games with her parents, they’d always lose deliberately in favour of one of the children.
As Peter came into the kitchen to find out what he was missing out on, she immediately felt guilty. He was the one that would miss the DVDs most. It was the least she could do to spare an hour once a week to keep him, and her parents, happy.
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