by Terry Brooks
He hesitated then, giving her a long, considering look. “Even to speak about it is painful to me. Even that.”
“Your silence is painful to me. Your refusal to tell me anything is unbearable. Please, give me relief. Tell me at least a little of what troubles you. Let me try to understand. I would hear you out, I would give your words weight if you would speak them. Perhaps you are right. Why not find out?”
Imric Cort looked over at Oost Mondara. “I would imagine you had difficulty saying no to her, as well? She seems a very determined sort. I suppose if Arcannen Rai were my father, I would be the same.”
He turned back to her. “All right. I can see this means a great deal to you, so I will tell you why you must let it go—at least so far as I am concerned. And don’t blame me for the choice it leaves you with when I am done.”
He sat down again on the hay bale, waited for her to do the same, then leaned forward. “Now listen well.”
He discovers the truth about himself when he is six years old. One minute he is playing in his front yard the way he plays almost every day, pretending at being this or that, making up stories in his head and acting them out, and the next he is writhing and twisting, as if a beast contained within a skin too small, a creature desperate for a release that is impossible to achieve. It feels that perhaps he will break out of himself like a chick from its shell, cracking it apart and emerging into the world newly born. But what he finds is that it is his body itself that is changing—reassembling, re-forming—until he is no longer a boy but something vaguely wolfish. He has become the creature he was imagining only a moment earlier. He has somehow brought that creature to life.
He is all alone when this happens, so he doesn’t have to worry about being seen. He stands perfectly still and tries to process the reason for what has happened. Why would he be able to become something he was only pretending to be? How could he transform so suddenly and so completely?
Because this is what he has done. He is no longer a boy. No longer even human. He is another species entirely. Coarse black hair covers him everywhere. His body is strong and lithe; he experiences the primal instincts he imagined his creation would possess. His senses are so sharp he can barely register their limits. He can smell a dead mouse hundreds of yards off. He can see the hawk that dropped its carcass winging away a mile distant, scared off by the fox that is now moving in to claim the mouse. He can feel shifts in the air currents and breathe the scents they bear in their invisible hands.
Panic sets in, terror so thorough he does not think he can bear it. What will he tell his parents? How will he explain to them what has happened? How can he, when he doesn’t know himself? They will not recognize him. They will drive him from his home without knowing who he is, without even trying to find out.
He starts to scream, then stops himself. In the split second before he opens his mouth, he senses his voice will not be a human’s but an animal’s. Words will not emerge, but growls and wolfish cries. His mother will come running. She will imagine the worst. She will be frantic and then enraged. At him.
He tests his voice in what he imagines is a bare whisper, and a low rumble emerges from his throat. He is right. He cannot go to her.
Oddly, this realization seems to calm him. He knows better in the few seconds it takes to discover his condition what he must do. He became the thing he is by pretending. He can become himself again in the same way. He must think himself back into being, re-create the boy he was five minutes ago, give new life to who and what he was. It worked before. Shouldn’t it work again?
So he closes his eyes and reimagines himself.
When he opens them again, he is restored.
Physically, but not emotionally. That particular damage cannot be repaired so swiftly. Time will be needed.
He doesn’t realize yet how much.
—
“I did not tell my mother or my father what happened that day. I did not tell them until much later and then only because it became necessary to do so. Instead, I worked at mastering this strange ability to change shapes. I quickly discovered I could be almost anything I wanted. All I had to do was imagine myself changing, and it would happen. It was a grand game for a six-year-old to play. In the beginning.”
Imric Cort paused, measuring Leofur’s stare. His eyes had a distant look to them, their depths reflecting memories that were tinged with regret. “But the game had rules I didn’t understand. It was one thing to make myself another creature. It was something else again to learn to live with it. I didn’t realize it at first, but it was stealing something from me. It was an insidious sort of theft, the kind where you don’t even know it is happening until it becomes something so terrifying you think you have willingly embraced a special kind of slavery.”
“You began to like it too much?” she guessed.
“You are quick, girl. But it was more than that. I didn’t just like it. I loved it. I became obsessed with it. With this ability, I could make myself become anything I desired. I could go anywhere I chose just by selecting the right form. Increasingly, I began to crave the changing. I was always looking to try something else. I was still a boy, remember. I was excited and reckless with my newfound power, and I lacked the perspective to be wary of it. It wasn’t enough just to change. I began to want to embed myself in adventures born out of my imagination. I began to create stories in which each new form had a principal role. I began to look for reasons to change so I could do the things I had never been able to do before.
“Eventually, I began to spy on others, taking forms they would not notice or find invasive. Animals, birds, insects. I became a part of their lives, just for the thrill of engaging in forbidden behavior, watching and listening so I could discover their secrets and learn what they were really like.”
He paused. “It went well enough until I chose to spy on my parents.”
—
It is all chance that it happens when it does; there is no planning involved when he decides to secretly observe them. He has never done this before, never even considered it. But with his growing success in adopting new forms for his clandestine intrusions, he feels emboldened enough to try. He will have to be very careful, he knows. He will have to be extremely cautious. If he is caught, he will be in terrible trouble. Yet the lure of listening in on whatever they might say in his supposed absence, the prospect of hearing something deliciously forbidden, is too strong to ignore. His parents are in many ways a mystery to him; he would like to change this.
So one night, after they have gone to bed and believe him asleep, he changes forms and becomes a wraith, as insubstantial as the air he breathes. He has only just learned how to do this. His skill has advanced, and he has become adept at changing in ways that at first would have been beyond him. He is invisible as he leaves his room and goes outside, pressing himself against the walls of their home, creeping along and leaving no sign of his passage, both hesitant and eager. He finds his way to their bedroom window, which is always open, and he crouches there. When at last he stands, knowing they cannot see him, he looks inside and watches them lying in bed, talking. He has heard them do this before, heard them through the walls that separate their bedrooms, their voices low and indistinct. They talk every night before sleep; it is their special, private time. He is certain that some of what they talk about will include him.
By now, he is comfortable with every form of invasion he can imagine. This secret observance of his parents is just his most recent experiment. It is more than a year since he discovered his ability to change, and this additional year has given him a fresh perspective on life. He understands the world of adults better. He sees more clearly the ways in which children are manipulated and controlled. He is already chafing to be free of these restraints, in large part because of the freedom he has found in changing shapes. He thinks what he will hear tonight might give him insights into how better to achieve this. He thinks it will help him avoid the rules and regulations placed upon him by his parents. He thi
nks it will enlighten him as to how his parents see him.
He is mistaken.
What he hears is a discussion about crops and weather and the new neighbors who have just finished building a home near them and other mundane and uninteresting bits of news. Nothing he hears is the least bit salacious or revealing, and eventually he creeps back along the side of the house to his room and to bed.
For various nights over the next month, he engages in further spying, always at night, and always in the same way. Each effort is wasted. He learns nothing. He comes to believe he should stop. His parents do not seem the type to share confidences. Their talk is typical adult talk and holds no interest for him.
Until, one night, that changes. He is prepared for another failure, another conversation that will disappoint him. But this night is different. This night the conversation is most especially about him. It does not begin that way; there is small talk at first, none of it interesting, and he thinks again that perhaps he has been mistaken about the delicious secrets he will learn.
Then his father says suddenly, “I sense something is different about Imric of late.”
His mother looks stricken. “I told you there was nothing. I have watched him closely and have seen no signs that would indicate otherwise.”
“We had an agreement.”
“Why speak of it? There is no reason to think we need to be concerned.”
“He is gone all the time. He plays away from the house. He is secretive and restless.”
“He is a boy, growing up, learning about life, experimenting with his world. Of course he is like that. All boys are.”
His father shakes his head. “I think it is something more. I need to test him. If the blood is in him, you know what must happen.”
“Stop it!” she snaps. “Don’t speak like that. He is our child!”
“He is your child, but perhaps not mine.”
There is cold fury reflected on his mother’s face. “Don’t try to make this something it isn’t. I told you, I would know. I would tell you if it was there.”
“I will still test him. If I find your shifter blood in him, I will do what I promised I would. We can make another child. Or accept that we are meant to have none.”
His mother gives his father a dark and dangerous look. “Beware, Jonat. Do not travel too far down this road.”
But his father lies back within the bedcovers, rolls over facing away from her, and goes to sleep.
His mother remains sitting up. But she does not look at him; she stares into space. The expression on her face is dark and threatening. Even in the dim light of the single lamp set off to one side, he can see this. He has never seen his mother look this way.
It makes him afraid.
He wishes he hadn’t come.
—
“After taking time to reflect on what I’d heard, I began to understand better what was being kept from me. My mother shared my ability; my father clearly didn’t. They had formed a pact—though I did not know the circumstances—that if her ability ever showed itself in me, I was to be…” He paused. “I cannot even now say the word. But you know it.”
Leofur nodded. “Did you talk to your mother of this?”
“I went first to boys in the village with whom I played sometimes and asked them about people who could change shapes. I used the pretext of wanting to know if such a thing was even possible or only a rumor. One of them seemed to know. He said these people were called shape-shifters, and they did indeed exist. But because they could be anything and you might never know if they were real or pretending, they were hated and feared in many parts of the world. I asked if he had ever seen one, knowing he had seen my mother, but all of them said no.”
He took a deep breath and exhaled. “So then I went to my mother and told her the truth. I confessed my discovery. I told her I did not understand its nature and was frightened by it. I told her, too, that it was clearly a part of me, and it was not something I could ignore. The lure of its use was too strong. I said nothing about overhearing their conversations. I said nothing about what my father had planned for me.”
“Was it then you came here?” Leofur asked. “To the Druids?”
He shook his head. “That happened much later. I wish now I hadn’t waited; things might have turned out differently. But my mother did not suggest it. She simply told me never to tell my father and never to let anyone see me changing shapes. ‘If you must do it,’ she said, ‘do it in private and far away from everyone. No one must ever see you. If they do, I cannot be sure I can protect you. Even from your father.’ She paused then—I still remember that pause. ‘Maybe especially from your father,’ she added.”
“Your father would really have killed you, if he knew?”
“My mother thought so. Yet she loved him anyway. He was handsome and charming. He found her beautiful and smart, and he once loved her as much as she did him. They did not marry; they simply moved in together. They had lived alone, their parents gone, their families scattered. They were both looking for a fresh start. They pledged to be life partners in the way so many do. I think their feelings were genuine and strong back then. All went well for them until the night my mother admitted the truth about her identity.
“After she confessed—an act I have never been able to understand—she sensed an immediate change in him. He said he didn’t believe her. He said she was making it up. But she told him it was so, that she had been born this way and seldom used her skills in any case. She was not compelled to do so in the way I was when I discovered my talent. She was content to be who she was and found the changing disquieting. But she felt he should know, so she told him. She hoped he would try to understand and accept her admission as proof of her love for him. It was a mistake.”
He looked away, as if unable to face Leofur or Oost Mondara with the rest of it. “He was never the same man again. He never came back to her emotionally. He stayed with her, was kind to her and cared for her, but he told her they would never speak of it again. He told her he never wanted to see her undergo a change—not for any reason. And he made her promise that if they had a child and it was discovered to possess her blood and could change as she could, she would kill it.
“My mother agreed to all but the last. She said they would simply not have children, so the issue would never arise. They would live out their lives as a childless couple. This commitment sufficed for a time, but then she became pregnant with me. My father told her again what must happen if I was like her. He made her promise to tell him if she saw anything. He watched us both closely.”
“Why didn’t your mother leave him?” Leofur asked. “She could have, couldn’t she? Why did she stay?”
He thought about it a moment. “She never spoke of it, but she did say once that she couldn’t imagine life without him. I don’t think the idea of leaving him ever crossed her mind; he was too important to her. More important, perhaps, than I was. So she stayed, caring for him, watching out for me, hoping she could keep things in balance.”
A long silence followed. Imric seemed at a loss for words. Leofur waited patiently for him to continue, but when he didn’t and it appeared he might not, she said, “Where does all this leave us? How does this tale impact what I have asked of you? How does it explain why you seem so reticent to help?”
The other’s eyes shifted to meet hers again, and he grimaced. “Maybe it doesn’t.” He sighed. “It might be better if I just tell you how this story ends. I think at this point, the only thing you need to understand is exactly what could happen if I help you.”
She sensed a tightening of his resolve, and she knew that what he was going to tell her would not be pleasant. She heard genuine pain in his voice, tremendous sadness and regret. For whatever reason, this was going to be extremely difficult for him.
“You don’t have to explain anything you don’t want to,” Leofur said suddenly. “I only need to know one thing. Will you help me regardless of the risk to either of us?”
He
looked at her as he might a curiosity. The lean, sharp features were bladed as hard as iron. “It would help if you understood why that question is not easily answered.”
He straightened slightly, squaring up to her. “My father found out about me. About what I was. I don’t know how; I never did learn the truth of it. But he did. He confronted my mother. I wasn’t there when it happened. I expect she tried to calm him, to make him understand. But he was beyond rational behavior by then, crazed by what he must have perceived as an unforgivable act of betrayal. He reacted instinctively, driven by fear and hatred and his own personal demons. He killed her. She must not have been expecting it. She could have prevented it otherwise; she could have stopped him. But she died there in our home, not far from the front door. I think he wanted me to find her when I came in. He got his wish.”
He took a deep, steadying breath. There were tears in his eyes. “He told me that it was my fault. That I had caused this to happen. She had to die because her blood was bad. Mine, as well. Shape-shifters, he spit at me. Heathen spirits. Beasts. We were all the same, abominations to nature. My mother was gone; I would follow. It was his duty to see to it.
“Those were the last words he ever spoke. He came at me with a knife. He was much bigger than I was, but I was prepared. I could change instantly by now. In my rage at what he had done, in my hatred of his defiance, I became something so terrible he just crumpled up in front of me, sobbing. But it wasn’t enough. I seized him and I killed him like the animal I was. I shredded him until nothing recognizable remained.”
He laughed softly, and the sound was jarring—a response so unexpected it unnerved Leofur. But his laugh was short and bitter and tinged with regret and sadness, and when it finally died out it did so as a soft wail of anguish.