Perspective Flip

by Kris Schnee

  The sunlight was dazzling, now high overhead and making the shallow water shine in light blue and green. Here in between the Luskinsday — or Hikkoi — Islands there seemed to be a complex set of reefs and shallows that made navigation tricky. Dane's native pilot humored him and taught him a few words, including the name of the island they were headed towards: Ilbri. Dane paid attention to the way the man rowed with alternating strokes of a long paddle in his webbed hands. He tried to help out by using magic to push them along, trailing his hands in the water to create a gentle current. The otter shrugged, asking questions that Dane didn't understand. After an hour or so they reached their destination.

  Dane thanked him and waded ashore. Ilbri Island looked familiar... ah! Seal had actually anchored somewhere around here. This island was reachable from the open ocean and the docks were probably just out of sight. There was a long, squat building made of bricks in a version of Imperial style; various military sheds and stockpiles, and a two-story inn that the sailors had mentioned. The wooden sign hanging from a carved driftwood post marked the place as "The Crown and Tail". Dane had been denied shore leave, while other people relaxed and escaped from the stench of the ship.

  The inn was built in a hybrid style, mostly thatch and intricately linked branches that looked more grown than constructed. It had been extended with brick and stone that gave it some right angles, yet blended in well along one side. Windows of green-tinged glass looked out to the sea and inland to the forest that the king's men had only begun to strip for lumber. It looked like a good place to ask for information, maybe even to beg for a place to sleep for a day or so.

  He'd hardly laid a hand on the door when a wave of fatigue and dizziness hit him. He steadied himself against the wall, stumbled, and then decided he really needed a nap right this second.

  * * *

  He woke up still dizzy, with something jabbing at the base of his spine. There was a bed, at least. Had he made it to the inn? Dane grunted and rolled over to pry whatever it was off of him. Slowly it dawned on him that the annoying thing was soft and fuzzy, a few inches long, and only painful because he'd been sleeping on it wrong. It was uncomfortable to have your tail wedged the wrong way, it seemed.

  The tiny wooden room he was in had only a little mirror, so Dane spun around ridiculously trying to see the thing and nearly passed out from vertigo again. He fought down a bit of bile and panic; he'd signed up for a tail and much more, after all. The new fur growing there and just above it on his back was thick and brown, lighter tan on the underside. His whole spine shivered when he scratched along the thing. "I have a tail," he told himself out loud. "And this is perfectly normal." He hoped that falling unconscious outdoors was less typical.

  He peeked out of the room, having to lean against his bed just to make space to get the door open. A portly otter woman was passing by, humming to herself, and stopped with a smile when she spotted Dane. "There you are! You gave Kirani a scare yesterday when you dropped yourself off like a sack of clams. You had rum on your breath, so I'd have had you thrown out as a drunk, but she said you're probably a new immigrant. Is that so?"

  Dane nodded. "Thanks for taking me in."

  "You're welcome. This is the Crown and Tail."

  Dane blushed. The matronly otter or one of the others must have hauled him upstairs. This one wore a long skirt made from woven palm fronds and an apron of imported cloth. He said, "You speak our language?"

  "Of course I do. I take your king's money, so I need to know how to ask for it."

  "My name is Dane. I was hoping for a place to stay, or just advice on finding one. I suppose I also need work."

  She put her hands on her hips. "Well, why didn't you say so instead of fainting dramatically at my doorstep? Come on down. I'll have you wash dishes or cook. Can't have you waiting tables for now."

  "I could probably do that too if you wanted." He'd never been one for idle conversation, but how hard could it be to carry plates and mugs? Might be a good way to meet locals too.

  The otter gave him an odd look. "Because, we only have waitresses. It's part of the appeal. Tourists, you know. Or maybe you don't. To be fair, the townsfolk seem to like us too, but that's mostly Jules' cooking. And our rum. And the clean floors, so get that tiny tail of yours downstairs and start in with a broom. We don't open for half an hour and I don't want you wasting time."

  Dane was still dizzy and a little overwhelmed. "If I work for you today, can I get room and board?"

  "If you work hard, at least. We're slack now that the sailors are mostly gone."

  Dane learned his way around the inn by cleaning it. Four otters, all women, darted around rearranging stools and going outside to unfurl umbrellas at patio tables. It was afternoon already, with bright sunlight streaming through the windows and making it all look cheerful. The legally-required portrait of the king over the bar was completely overrun by a display of nautical salvage, nets, oars, and splintered wood. The walls were painted in a native style of whorls and wave patterns. Dane swept, feeling his tail twitch whenever he shifted his weight. It felt a little longer already. He looked back and forth between the shipyard scraps and the local-style paintings of fish and abstract designs.

  "Glad to see you're up and about!" said one of the waitresses. She wore a grass skirt and nothing else. "I'm Kirani. It'll be fun having you around as you get used to everything!"

  Dane nodded stupidly, forcing himself to look her in the eyes. "Thank you. I've got a lot to get used to." That was as articulate as he could get, and he couldn't hide his blush or his other reactions with her standing right there. Come on, he told himself; you knew to expect this!

  Kirani took Dane's hand and giggled. "We're used to it. We get great tips; you'll see! For now the boss says to go to the kitchen." One of the other waitresses opened the front door, revealing a few humans and an otter waiting already.

  Dane might not have been familiar with the culture, but dishes were dishes. He spent hours washing them, and watching the Crown and Tail's other employees darting in and out. Once he managed to quit fumbling whatever he was holding every time one of the waitresses sashayed past his sink, he started to study the otters more closely. They varied much like humans, which made them seem more like people once he started picking out their different voices, builds, and so on. It was easy to spot the women from those curves he kept staring at whenever they turned around, but also from more subtle cues like the slight curl in how they held their tails. The population seemed skewed toward men, especially among the human explorers and tourists. Come to think of it, most of the otterfolk he'd seen even outside the inn had been men, too. Maybe the women were off on other islands to keep them away from the navy.

  That evening the boss let him sleep again in the tiny upstairs room. He needed it more than he'd thought; fatigue from the work shift and his gradual changes hit him quickly once he was upstairs. He sat on the bed and looked himself over, fidgeting. He didn't feel quite right. His body was incomplete, alien, tingly. For the dozenth time he thought about leaping onto the next ship and going in search of a "cure" so he could get back to his old life, as ridiculous as that was after coming here. "Being an otter won't be so bad," he murmured. "I did sign up for this." By now his tail felt like some sort of warm, fuzzy pillow, one that shivered when he ran a hand along it. The thick fur on it had spread out from the base of his tail, making him look a bit puffy. There was no hiding the thing now. Dane flopped sideways under the covers, winced when he landed on his tail wrong, then found a better angle and fell asleep a minute later.

  * 2. *

  His third day on the island started early. Dane sat up and stretched his arms, legs, tail... oh, right, that. He stood and surveyed himself. Knee-length tail, nearly full grown. Fur had wrapped around his waist, giving him a preview of what his pelt would look like.

  Someone knocked. Dane tugged his shorts on as well as he could, which was pretty poorly considering the fluffy fur and his tail, and opened the door. Kirani stood there
on the inn's second-floor walkway, peering around the door at him. "Good morning!" she said.

  "Could I borrow a pair of scissors?"

  Kirani giggled. "We'll have to go shopping for you once we know what sizes you need. Are you comfortable? With... everything?"

  Dane shifted to one side, feeling like he was missing something here. Downstairs, the tavern had begun to stir with preparations for opening. Kirani was only watching him curiously, watching his gaze drift down from her wide, blunt muzzle to her chest. He was being a blockhead. He said, "Uh, ma'am? I don't know much about your people yet, and I need to learn. For one thing, am I being improper? Do you have a hus — a family?"

  "My parents are off on Ilekk Island, so it's just me here. Why do you ask?" Judging from her toothy grin, she knew the reason and liked it.

  Why feel guilty about being attracted to a cute native? Though the other waitresses were friendly, only Kirani had taken more than a casual interest in him. Back in the Empire's genteel cities there was a lot of protocol to follow when courting someone. He'd been stupid enough to visit a dockside tavern just as the press gang showed up to "recruit", and the people in that district had much looser ideas about how a gentleman should behave. The human visitors he'd seen in the inn yesterday flirted and ogled the staff, who returned the attention without actually selling themselves. Dane got flustered again from the clash between his upbringing as a respectable merchant's son and this outpost of civilization. "I don't know how this place works," he said.

  "You might be the only outsider who doesn't think he's figured us out," Kirani said.

  Dane steeled himself. "Is there a good place to get breakfast away from here? Other than catching our own."

  "Come on. I know where."

  Kirani bounded along the beach, chattering with him about life beyond the islands. She'd never left the otters' lands. Dane saw a hut standing by itself on a little pier with several odd clam-like wooden boxes tied to the supports. "This place serves food?" he said. Something seemed off about the surrounding water... "Magic!"

  "You can tell from here?" said Kirani, looking back over her shoulder.

  Dane pointed. "We call that a thaumic field. This water probably glows at night, I bet. There's some sort of enchantment in that hut." Now that he was studying it more closely, the walls too were strange. Instead of the usual wicker-like structures, this one was slathered with shiny white plaster that glittered, maybe full of tiny bits of glass.

  Kirani nodded. "This is Rapanui's place. She's the best healer around, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Also, the best cook." She ignored the dock, splashed into knee-deep water, waded until she was under the hut, then climbed a ladder and knocked on the floor above her. She called out, "Raar! Hungry shark!"

  Dane heard someone rattling around in there, and a muffled, "Kirani?" The door opened after more banging around, and an otter-lady with long brown hair leaned out. She said something Dane didn't understand.

  Kirani answered, "This is Dane, a new immigrant. Dane, Rapanui personally stopped a plague a few years back, and she earned those shark teeth she wears. So don't mess with her."

  Dane went in with the otters. Rapanui's fur was styled with elaborate painted spirals like the way a spell looked to the magic-sense, and the markings were barely hidden by her simple cloth shirt and skirt. She was a whirlwind in her cluttered hut, slicing a few dried fish up and tossing spices into a cookpan while trying to keep Dane from blundering into anything fragile. Every surface of the mostly spherical room was full of drawers, shelves of potted plants and unusual stones and carved wooden trinkets. Much of the clutter radiated magic, though Dane couldn't make much sense of the whorls and auras his trained eyes could detect.

  Rapanui dished out three wooden bowls of fish and vegetables that smelled dauntingly spicy. "You'll get used to it," Kirani said. "Some people come here and they don't even like fish! What are they thinking?"

  Dane tried the food and managed to keep it down, once someone handed him a jug of water. "Whew! Uh. I hope the change affects my tongue." Realizing he might've just insulted Rapanui and that the shaman was looking at him with narrowed eyes and ears laid flat, he said, "The flavor's fine, just the heat."

  "Ha!" said the cook, perking back up. She asked a rapid-fire set of questions but Dane caught only a few words.

  Dane said, "'What are you'... I don't follow."

  Kirani translated: "She says, What are you planning to do once you're settled in? Keep working at the Crown and Tail?"

  "I kind of collapsed on their doorstep, so I owe them some work. It's been free room and board too. I wasn't thinking of being a waiter forever, though. I have some magic training."

  Kirani piped up. "He could see that healing waters spell under this place."

  "Is that what it is?"

  Rapanui looked thoughtful, despite the fishbone sticking out of her mouth. She pointed at a talisman made of topaz and mangrove on a necklace chain. She spoke slowly and loudly in Dane's language: "Say what is?"

  Dane took a drink and stood, reaching for the wooden amulet. He turned the bumpy surface over in his hands and let his mind slip into magic-sense, spotting the bubble-like glow around it. "This affects air in a tiny area. Maybe lets you breathe underwater?"

  Through Kirani as translator, Rapanui said, "Close. It keeps an air bubble around your head, enough for a few breaths. Your skull's probably full of Imperial magic textbooks, right?"

  "Only a few. I didn't get far in my studies before getting forced into the navy."

  Rapanui spoke, and Kirani said, "She's not surprised the Empire would order mages around. Would you be willing to demonstrate what you know? She might want an assistant."

  Rapanui added on her own, "Too many folk not listen. You listen?"

  Did he have the humility to take orders from a shaman who wasn't even human? Dane nodded, adding what he was pretty sure was the word for "yes".

  "He's been washing dishes," said Kirani.

  "Fine."

  * * *

  Dane couldn't fling clouds of razor-sharp arrows with his mind, or do anything else impressive, but back home he'd learned a few spells. He could create magelight to brighten a room, or scribe messages that only someone else with the magic-sense could see. He could make ink flow along paper to copy a written page, which was a useful enough skill that it could have landed him a job as a clerk or scrivener. Then of course there were his water-related spells. "I want to learn more," he said. "It'd be better to start over and become a proper mage than to cast the same spell all day forever." A warm and sunny island seemed like a good place to learn, too.

  They chattered about magic on the beach. Rapanui was satisfied enough with him to offer at least temporary work. She nodded and pointed at one of the odd wooden boxes Dane saw earlier moored in the water by the shaman's house.

  "What'd she say?"

  Kirani frowned. "She's letting you use the blue clam-hut once she cleans it out. Come when you're ready. But Dane, are you going to be able to handle this if you can't understand each other?"

  Dane sighed. "I'll make it work. I know a few words already."

  He was sitting cross-legged on the sand. He stood up, feeling strange after the rambling conversation and demonstration. Besides the fizzing in his mind from working with spellcraft so intently, he felt like he'd been sitting on a pillow for the last hour instead of the hot sand. This furry backside of his was going to take getting used to. He started back toward the Crown and Tail so he could take a nap before the evening work shift.

  He kept wiggling with each step. Dane glanced back accusingly at his tail, which swung like a metronome. His tailtip kept doing that little curl, apparently a habit he'd picked up from the ottergirls he'd been hanging around with. He brushed the sand out of the tan fur that had formed a wide and growing belt around his waist. In a way he was eager for the change to hurry up so that he'd quit looking like a human with an odd fraction of a costume.

  Dane wondered about the "clam-hu
ts", which must have been places to live. He needed to get back to work; he could investigate later.

  When he got to his room at the Crown and Tail and opened the door, he found Kirani laying on the bed and smiling up at him.

  "Huh?"

  Kirani looked up at him. "Come on; shut the door."

  Dane wriggled around the door, knocked his tail into it and winced, then closed it behind him. "We don't really know each other," he protested. A gentleman didn't bed a near-stranger. He'd been hoping to get to know her better.

  Kirani sat up with her head on her hands, looking concerned. "This could be your last day, depending on how quick the change is. Maybe you could hold off until tonight after work, but we'll both be tired."

  "My last day? You mean, before I go to work for Rapanui?"

  Kirani looked as puzzled as Dane felt. "You know I'm not interested in girls, right? I do still want to be friends, you know, after... Please tell me you know what I'm talking about. No?!" She stood in one fluid motion, and since there was hardly any space in the room she ended up very close to him, where he could feel her warm fishy breath. "Did nobody tell you to expect to be an otter-woman?"

  Dane's fur prickled. The island's otter population was skewed, with too many men, and the shaman who'd cast the transformation spell hadn't asked for any payment. "What exactly did the spell do? There must be some mistake!" He told himself that, but didn't believe it.

  "It's not a bad thing," Kirani said, sheepishly scratching one ear. "It probably would've been better if you'd known what you were getting into, but you were open to changing species and this is a smaller change. Nothing to worry about."

  Dane gestured toward the door. "I... I've got to get them to reverse this."

  "I've never seen a major transformation undone, even for the humans who immigrated and panicked and wanted to change back. Also, why?"

  Why? "I'm a man!"

  "At the moment, yeah." She put her fuzzy hands on his waist and slid them down, making him feel for the first time how his body already flared slightly out at the hips and curved softly under his tail. "Not for long. Want to take advantage of things while they last?"