by Nina Berry
We made our way over the rock, and past the second tree as the sounds and smells of the forest at night enveloped us. Branches grabbed at my hair as we continued winding between trees and stumbling over roots. November scrambled up and down the line of us, trying to make sure we didn’t stub our toes too horribly or smack our faces into low-hanging branches.
I could feel when the moon rose. Its rays were the cool equivalent of warm sunshine, only they didn’t calm me down. In fact, my skin crawled, jittering with something. A need. A need to shift.
“We’re going so slow,” Arnaldo said right in front of me. “I wish we could just shift and follow the twine in animal form.”
“An eagle wearing a blindfold, hopping along with string in your beak?” I said. “Not exactly practical.”
“I know, I know,” he said.
“He just wants to shift,” London said. “I want to shift. God, I can smell the deer over to our left, and I just want to shift and hunt. . . .”
“That’s because the veil is so thin here,” I said.
November piped up from ahead, “And the moon coming out only makes that worse.”
“How much you want to bet Morfael planned this at moonrise for exactly that reason?” said Siku.
“It’s part of the test.” I shook my head, and then realized no one but November could see me.
“That pointy-headed bastard,” London said.
“So, we focus.” Unexpectedly, it was November saying that. “Feel the twine with your human hand, focus on moving your human feet where I tell you to put them with my lovely human voice.”
We hung on to her chattering as we made our way through a narrow gap between two rocks higher than my head. November crowed with victory. A night bird called out an answer, but November’s voice choked off a second later.
“Oh, crap!” Her footsteps pattered away from those of us who were blindfolded. “Maybe it goes around or over. . . . No, there’s no way over. Damn!”
“What the hell is going on?” London shouted.
Siku grunted. “Just tell us.”
November’s soft-soled shoes on the soil moved closer. “The twine leads us through this ... hole in the rocks. A bunch of them collapsed, but they left a kind of tunnel. It opens up after a few feet. But it’s too small for me to get through, let alone Siku.”
“Could you get through in rat form?” asked Arnaldo. “Morfael said we could decide whether to shift or not.”
“Sure,” she said. “It would be easy for me, but none of the rest of you could make it. I mean, Dez and Siku are bigger in their animal forms, and even your eagle and London’s wolf would be way too big.”
“Then how the hell are we supposed to follow the stupid twine the way Morfael told us?” London asked. “This is just dumb.”
“Maybe we should just take the blindfolds off and go back,” Arnaldo said, his voice hesitant.
“Morfael would know we cheated,” Siku said. “You know he would.”
A crazy idea was running through my head. “I could get through if I shifted into a cat,” I said, trying to keep my voice light, almost as if it was a joke. When I’d accidentally shifted into a cat last term, it had freaked out the other shifter kids so much they didn’t want to be my friend for awhile. As far as they knew, shifters only had one animal form. I thought we’d mostly gotten past the weirdness brought on by that episode, but the subject might still be a little sore for them.
A little silence fell. Then London said, her voice emanating resentment, “Well, that would be okay for you. You and November could get through the tunnel. But what about the rest of us?”
“Maybe once they get to the other side, they’ll see something over there that will help us,” Arnaldo said.
“Morfael does tend to give us problems we can’t solve with the usual tools,” I said. “What if I’m not the only one who can change into different animal forms?”
“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” November’s voice got closer. I could smell the gummi bears she had in her pocket.
“That’s ridiculous!” London’s voice rose with a rush. Even though she resented her parents’ restrictions more than anyone, she had the hardest time dealing with anything that violated the rules she’d grown up with. “No offense, but Dez is a freak! I’m a wolf-shifter, and I’m always going to be a wolf-shifter!”
“No,” came Siku’s rumbly voice. “You’re always going to be London. Human, wolf, whatever.”
My heart jumped at Siku’s words. He’d figured out the heart of it. “He’s right. When I turned into a cat, I felt and thought the same as I did when I was a tiger, or a human. I was still me—whoever that is. The shape didn’t matter.”
“Yeah, but I’m an eagle-shifter,” Arnaldo said. “That’s all I’ve ever been, and I like it. I don’t want to be . . . I don’t know—something smaller like a sparrow hawk or even a sparrow. I mean, I could eat those birds for breakfast if I wanted.”
“Don’t want to be prey, you mean,” said November. “Don’t want to be like the rats and know how it is to be small and have bigger things threaten to eat you all the time. That might be scary.”
“I’m not scared!” Arnaldo said, stung.
“I know it’s different; it’s uncomfortable; it’s weird,” I said. “But you only have to do it for a minute, right, November?”
“It’s not far,” she said. “But sounds to me like Wolfie and Bird-boy don’t have the nerve to even try. Go home with your tail and feathers between your legs. Get a new-moon grade and have to come back to school for another term and be a failure. It’s no rind off my cheese.”
“I didn’t say I was giving up on the task!” Arnaldo’s sharp voice got even sharper.
“I could try,” Siku’s voice was quieter, more uncertain than usual. “But the smallest ursines are sun bears and they’re still five feet long and about a hundred and fifty pounds. Could I get through it in a form like that, ’Ember?”
“Mmm, probably not, Siks,” she said. “If it were big enough for that, I could just get through in human form, or London could in her wolf form. Sorry.”
“Some scientists think bears are actually related to raccoons,” I said. “What if you’re not limited to actual bears?”
“A raccoon?” Siku sounded skeptical. “They’re . . . small.”
“Again with the anti-small prejudice!” November stomped closer to Siku. “Here, walk over here, big bear jerk, and feel the entrance to the tunnel. . . .”
I heard Siku’s larger tread shuffle after November’s. “I don’t know, ’Ember,” he was saying.
“Here!” November slapped her hands against rock. “Feel that. And see, here’s the twine going through it. That’s the tunnel you have to get through. Now do you want to get a full moon on this test or not? Hey, Morfael didn’t say you could take off the blindfold. . . .”
Cloth slid over hair as Siku said, “It’ll come off anyway when I shift into a raccoon.”
I pulled off my own blindfold in time to see November smiling up at Siku in delighted surprise. They stood in front of a wall of rock that extended for dozens of yards in either direction. The twine still in my right hand did indeed disappear into a hole in the rock about a foot in diameter. I looked around. We were deep into the forest, in an area I didn’t recognize.
“You’re going to try it?” November asked Siku, her voice ripe with excitement.
“You showed me small is pretty cool,” he said. “And I’ve always liked those black mask markings on raccoons.”
“Like furry bandits!” November clapped her hands. Then she turned on London and Arnaldo, who were slowly slipping off their own blindfolds. “See? Siku’s not afraid to be different.”
“We’ll see if he can do anything at all.” Arnaldo’s voice was politely skeptical. London snorted. “He’s never done it before. No offense, Sik.”
“I can do it,” Siku said. “We read about raccoons last term in class. They eat lots of different things, the s
ame as bears. And they fish in streams and ponds, like bears. They just catch smaller fish. If I was catching fish with smaller paws . . .” He closed his eyes, wiggling his big fingers.
For a long moment he stood there, nose out, as if sniffing the air for his catch of fish. Then he was gone. I blinked. Where . . . ?
Then I looked down. Standing at November’s feet was a dark gray raccoon with roguish black stripes over its glittering eyes, standing only two feet tall on its hind legs.
“Holy crap!” London drew back.
The raccoon dropped to all fours and made a chittering sound of triumph.
“It’s still Siku,” I said, walking over to put my arm around London’s shoulders.
She leaned into me, burying her eyes against my neck. “I’m sorry. I know. I don’t know why this freaks me out so much.”
“What’s freaky is how cute he is,” November said, hunkering down to look the raccoon more in the eye. “Good job, Siku. You’re a hottie in every form.”
The raccoon chirped, then turned, made a very human beckoning motion to us, and hopped up into the hole in the rock.
“You’d be cute too,” I said, pulling away from London to catch her eye. “Maybe as a little arctic fox or something?”
“How about a Chihuahua?” November smirked.
London’s icy blue eyes glared at her. “A fox could catch and eat a rat,” she said, then turned to me. “But what if I can’t come back? I don’t want to be a fox. I’m a wolf.”
“It’s like Siku said—you’re London,” I said. “You’re our friend, no matter what. As long as you can find your way back to yourself, you’ll be fine.”
She swallowed, and took my hands in hers. Her eyes held mine with equal firmness. “Okay. But the smallest fox is the fennec, so maybe I should go for that, just to be sure I can get through.”
“Good thinking.” I gave her hands a squeeze. “Look at me. I’m thinking about those adorable fennec foxes with those amazing huge ears and that creamy fluffy coat. . . .”
London nodded, then let go of my hands. She shut her eyes, but I could see her irises moving behind the lids, as if searching. “I think I can see the fox, way up ahead,” she said. “So small . . .”
“So beautiful,” I said. “So perfect.”
London let out a small, appreciative laugh. “Flattery . . . works.”
Then with a strange warp of the air, she was gone. At my feet sat a creamy tan doglike creature only a foot high, with a sharp, pointed noise, liquid brown eyes, and enormous ears, open wide like wings on either side of its narrow head.
“Oh, my God, you’re adorable!” November squealed, scuttling up to London’s new form. “You better be careful with this form, London, or every bored housewife in suburbia will want to adopt you!”
The fennec fox lifted its lip in a snarl and gave a tiny growl. I fought back a smile.
November reached out, as if she couldn’t help herself, about to pet London on the head. London ducked and ran toward the hole in the rock. Siku shuffled back just in time to give her room to leap up into the hole. She turned to look at us and yipped, as if to say “Hurry up!”
“Guess that’s my cue,” said Arnaldo. “The smallest bird of prey I know of is the spot-winged falconet that lives in South America. They eat mostly insects, I think.” He made a face.
“Still a bird of prey,” I said. “Still a falcon.”
“Still able to fly,” November said, envy creeping into her voice. “That must be really fun.”
Arnaldo smiled at her. “It is. I’ll take you up one day if you want.”
“I want,” she said. “Now get your fine, feathery ass through that tunnel.” She looked back at the watching raccoon and fox. “Go on through, boneheads. Arnaldo’s going to need to fly and you’re in the way.”
The raccoon made a gesture that looked remarkably like he was flipping her off, but then he turned around and disappeared into the tunnel. The fox stuck out its small pink tongue, then followed after him.
“Here goes nothing,” said Arnaldo, and closed his eyes.
“Fly,” said November, then started to chant. “Fly, fly, fly, fly . . .”
A smile spread over Arnaldo’s narrow face; then in a heartbeat, he was gone, and a flutter of wings shot up into the sky, wheeled, then swooped around November’s head.
We both cheered. “Woo-hoo!” The falconet’s brown wings were beautiful, spotted with a dramatic pattern of white visible even as he fluttered and danced in the air around us.
“Looks like this form’s more maneuverable,” I said. “Better for tight indoor spaces maybe?”
“Just hurry up and go!” November said. “I’m tired and it’s almost time for breakfast. You coming, Stripes?”
And she shifted into her rat form, clambering up the rock wall to follow the falconet through the hole.
Now it was my turn. It had seemed so easy when I thought of it. But now, alone here with my friends waiting on the other side, it seemed impossible. I was a tiger, right? A tiger and a girl.
Then I remembered how it had felt, sitting on that bookshelf in the form of a domestic cat. I’d had a tortoiseshell coat, and Caleb had stroked my back till I purred. Purring had felt wonderful, and it was something tigers didn’t do. It would be pretty great to be able to purr again. I looked down into that roiling realm of darkness inside me that led to Othersphere and found it larger, crazier, more filled with promise than it had ever seemed before.
The moon and the thinness of the veil.
Morfael had planned this well. I slipped into the small form of a tortoiseshell cat and leaped easily up into the tunnel in the rock. My whiskers reached out, assessing the narrow space around me, feeling the currents of air created by the movements of my friends up ahead. My ears pricked, hearing the skitter of November’s claws and the beat of Arnaldo’s wings.
Then I was out, the light of the nearly full moon shining down on a carpet of white. London shook her huge fox ears, and shifted abruptly into her usual form, a rangy silver wolf with eyes like shiny arctic pools. The rest of us stayed as we were, following the twine only a few dozen yards farther to find it wound us back to exactly where we’d started.
Morfael was waiting. He smiled down at us, eyes crinkling. “I am proud of you,” he said.
My heart swelled, and I was very glad to be in cat form. Cats and tigers did not have eyes that welled up with tears when they got a rare piece of praise from Morfael.
“Only the wise and the strong can see themselves as other than they have always been, yet remain true to themselves,” he said. “You have proven yourselves strong and wise this night. Now go back to bed. You may sleep an extra hour.”
The others got to sleep an extra hour. Raynard roused me at the usual time so that I could clean up and meet Caleb outside the computer room for the Council meeting.
His heavy gaze sent a dark thrill slithering under my skin, for a moment overwhelming the Council-based anxiety in my stomach. “Didn’t sleep enough, did you?” he asked.
I tried to ignore the heat threatening to take me over and threw him a pretend glare. “How can you tell?”
His mouth turned down appreciatively, lifting one hand to twist a lock of my hair between his fingers. “Because you look delicious when you’re all rumpled.”
So he’d been thinking about us being together, just as I had. I leaned into him, and he seemed to be leaning into me, when Morfael’s staff tapped a little louder than usual on the nearby steps. We turned to find him surveying us with frosty eyes.
Caleb coughed slightly to cover up a laugh. “Just giving Dez a pep talk before the Council meeting,” he said.
That made Morfael’s nearly invisible eyebrows lift.
“He’s good for my morale,” I chimed in. “I want him with me during the call.”
Morfael did not respond for a long few seconds, and then said, “Only if he promises not to speak a word.” Caleb opened his mouth to promise, and Morfael rounded on him. “Not a
word.”
Caleb shut his mouth and nodded.
“Very well,” said Morfael.
It took him a few seconds to set up the video conference call on the large monitor in the computer room. His long pointy fingers tapped the keys with the speed and sureness of a Silicon Valley nerd.
“Has Amaris been giving him lessons?” I whispered to Caleb.
He smirked, but laid a finger against his lips, reminding me that he’d promised not to speak.
We stood in front of the camera as Morfael adjusted it. I kept transferring my weight from one foot to the other, tapping my fingers against my thighs, feeling like I was about to burst out of my skin. These Council members had way more power over my life than I liked.
If they kicked me out of school and Morfael didn’t make me go, the Council could make life very difficult not only for us, but for the kids who stayed here and their families.
If I did leave, it’d be just me, Mom, and Richard on the run from the Tribunal, and any hope of infiltrating Ximon’s new compound would vanish. Caleb and I would be physically a lot farther apart most of the time. Would he leave Morfael and Amaris to go on the run with me? How could any of that work?
The monitor blinked, and five faces appeared, sectioned off each in its own area, with one additional square showing me my own blank, wide-eyed face. I tried not to look at myself much, knowing it would make me self-conscious. I had brushed my hair, but my unruly red mane had a mind of its own.
It had been over a month since I’d last seen the Council, but that experience had been so odd, so full of import, each face was branded in my memory. This time I didn’t need Caleb to tell me who everyone was.
The lady lynx, half-smiling at me through her camera, had the same bushy, tufted gray hair and red-brown skin. She was wearing a green flannel shirt this time instead of a blue one, but she looked just as outdoorsy and ageless as before. Shifters could live for hundreds of years, and I suddenly wondered how old she was. Had she been living here when the first explorers from the East wandered into the western part of the United States?
Anyone of them could be that old—the gruff wolf with his crazy red eyebrows, or the hawk with his piercing hooded gaze, or the bear with white skunklike streaks in her long dark hair. They all looked like they’d been that way forever. Only the rat, with her black hair in a messy up-do and traces of cherry-colored gloss on her lips, looked like she might still be maturing, still figuring out the world. The others seemed as immovable as mountains.