Shapeshifter

by Holly Bennett

  She was halfway to the water when she smelled smoke, and no brushfire either. It was the tang of peat she smelled, and that meant a hearth. Heart tripping with mingled excitement and fear, Sive scanned the shore of the lake.

  A thin plume of smoke rose into the sky, just a little way around the shore. Sive raised her muzzle and flared her nostrils, searching for the scent of the person who had made it. There—the faintest whiff, but a person, clearly. Just one, it seemed, not a settlement. Far Doirche. Sive almost leapt away at the mere thought, but something made her wait. Yet it must be him. Why else would a person be in such a lonely spot? Him, or a hunter. In either case she should be far, far away.

  She jumped at a sudden bang, the skin over her shoulders rippling in alarm. A door? Was there a dwelling hidden behind the lakeside trees? Now the scent came clearly to her as the person—the woman!—was caught in the breeze. Sive watched, intent and curious, fear forgotten, and was rewarded with the sight of a small figure approaching the water’s edge. A woman, definitely, with a bucket in one hand which she filled at the shore. She was bent, though, and walked slowly. Sive wondered if she favored some injury.

  Moments later the woman had disappeared from view, and the peat smoke grew rich with the scent of frying onions. Sive’s mouth filled with saliva even as the deer part of her urged her away.

  Four days, and there had been no sign of pursuit. She must be far away from the Dark Man by now. Surely she would be safe here, at least for a time.

  Even as she made the decision, her body was dissolving, streaming into the upright, slim shape of a woman. Green leapt into her sight, the lakeside foliage glowing in the slanting sunlight, and Sive straightened herself luxuriously. Such a pleasure, it was, just to take on her own true form and walk once again on two legs. Nervously, she patted her hands over her head and smoothed her gown. All seemed to be as it was before she changed, unaffected by her days in the wild.

  With a deep breath, Sive began the walk around the shoreline.

  “I HAVE HER!”

  Far Doirche clutched the amber pendant hanging on his chest and closed his eyes, head cocked as though listening to a faraway whisper. “You’ve traveled far, little deer,” he murmured.

  Then the green eyes snapped open, and their fierce will bored into Oran.

  “She has turned, but she is deep in the mountains.”

  “Shall I saddle your horse, master?” Oran’s heart had been stirred by Sive’s unexpected escape, and he was filled now with pity. His master had plucked a long auburn hair from Sive’s shoulder at their roadside meeting. That hair, preserved in resin and held against Far Doirche’s skin, would lead the sorcerer to the poor girl whenever she took her own shape.

  Oran had long ago learned to keep his expression neutral and submissive. He did not show his dismay when his master waved away his suggestion with contempt.

  “Horse is too slow. There is barely a footpath to Glendalough. I will require other means.”

  Far Doirche’s features burned with predatory anticipation.

  “Lay the fire and then bring me one of the captive crows. I will travel on the ashes of its wings.”

  THE HOUS E WAS SMALL and poor, a squat round building with white walls and a tall thatched roof. Sive paused before the entrance, taking in the lack of windows and crude workmanship. Why would anyone choose to live like this?

  Still, the memory of frying onions lingered in Sive’s nostrils. She glanced up at the smoke rising from the thatch, unaware of how she flared her nostrils, questing after an aroma that was too far for her human senses to capture.

  She was saved from knocking or calling when the door abruptly opened, releasing a cloud of cooking odor, the onions joined now by meat and herbs. Sive stared at the woman standing on the sill.

  She was as small and hunched as her house, her face wrinkled like a dried-out apple. Her hair was coarse and gray, a color Sive had never seen on any person. She had heard that a decay like this plagued the children of the Gael as they grew old, and wondered if this woman could be a visitor from the mortal lands. The woman laughed at Sive’s expression, the sound musical and merry.

  “You wonder at my appearance. I must say I wonder at yours as well. It is not every day a woman wanders out of the wilds for a neighborly visit!”

  She studied Sive up and down, her gaze sharp within the deep folds of skin. “It is a rough walk here from anywhere, yet you look as fresh as a spring bluebell. Though your eyes tell a different tale. Come in, so.” Sive’s strange host stood back to make room, and Sive ducked into the dim house. “We’ll share a meal, and then perhaps we’ll share our mysteries.”

  HER NAME WAS MURIGEN, and she saved Sive the trouble of finding a polite way of asking why she lived in such a place.

  “A hag in a run-down hut,” she said as she eased herself onto a wooden bench. “I don’t suppose you’ve ever seen the like.”

  “I haven’t,” Sive admitted, pulling herself briefly away from her wooden bowl. Food had never tasted this good, she was certain of it.

  “I have a fine enough form, and no lack of lodgings. But there are times when I grow weary of the din of the world, and of the attentions of men. Then I come here, to these waters that are my charge.”

  Murigen flashed an amused smile, gesturing down her body. “I learned this from the mortal lands. When the women grow gray and wrinkled, the men leave them alone.”

  Not me, thought Sive. Unless she could rip her voice from her very throat, one man would never leave her alone.

  Murigen’s eyes fastened on Sive, alert as a bird’s. “Ah, now. There is a bleak look. What is it that haunts those pretty eyes and sends you to roam the mountains?”

  There was a power pulsing through this woman. Sive had sensed it from the moment she entered the little house. A thin bright thread of hope unfurled in her breast. Perhaps there was true shelter here.

  “There is a man,” she began. “A sorcerer.”

  A wrinkled finger, thrust in the air, stopped her words. Murigen tipped her head to one side, her features attentive, as though she listened—but not to Sive.

  “Someone is here.”

  “Someone—where?” Sive was on her feet, looking wildly around the dim cabin, but Murigen flapped her hand toward the bench and Sive perched, reluctantly, at its edge. He couldn’t be here, so quickly. He couldn’t.

  Murigen turned to Sive. She did not look pleased. “I have protections on this place. I know when its borders are passed. And this is the second time today that a person has appeared on my land well past the place where I should have sensed it!”

  “Who—?” There was no interrupting her. She was intent, in charge.

  “This sorcerer,” demanded Murigen. “Does he hunt you?”

  Sive nodded. There was no need for more.

  “Then it is him. You must flee now, for he is not far off.” She was walking as she spoke, pulling Sive to her feet and out the door, bent no longer but brisk and strong. The bright eyes fixed on Sive again.

  “I assume you have better clothing for the wilderness than that silk dress.”

  Again Sive nodded.

  “Then change into it, and fly!” Her brisk manner softened, and the gnarled fingers rested on Sive’s shoulder. “My good wishes go with you, child.”

  Sive’s shoulders crawled with the need to change, but she held off.

  “Murigen, be careful. He has a staff—”

  A bark of laughter cut her off.

  “He cannot harm me with his little stick. I am far too old for such nonsense.”

  Sive’s heart, already beating too fast, tripped into a canter, the hope unfurling into a bright ribbon.

  “Then can you—could I not—?” Her words were halting and incoherent, unable somehow to ask now the possibility loomed. But Murigen understood, was already shaking her head.

  “I am sorry, child, truly. I cannot protect you. Your man has no power over the likes of me, but neither can I stop him. My business is with the la
kes and rivers, not with people. If he were foolish enough to swim in these waters, then yes. He would have some trouble, I think, were I to call forth the ancient creature who lurks in their secret depths...”

  She became brisk again. “But he won’t. And you must be off. I’ll see you leave no prints to guide him.”

  The panic of the hunt surged in Sive’s chest, and with it came the deer. The air rippled as her form streamed into hooves and legs and thrusting muzzle. The pale green silk was gone, replaced with a sleek auburn coat still daubed with the last remnants of a fawn’s white spots.

  The deer sprang up the mountainside, pale rump flashing. Murigen stayed until the noise in the underbrush was almost too faint to hear; then she stumped into her house to tidy up. The sorcerer would be in sight at any moment. Just as well he find her at home—with the remains of one bowl of stew.

  EIGHT

  Sive jolted awake, her body trembling with alarm before her mind understood the reason. Then the sound that had threaded through her dreams came clear: hounds. Their music was faint in the still air, floating up the mountainside from far away. But it was Sive they sang for, of that she had no doubt. The Dark Man was on the hunt.

  Day after day the hounds quested for her. The mountains were vast, and at first it was not hard to stay clear of them. But each day more packs added their clamor to the air, and no matter how many false trails they followed after other deer, Far Doirche always set them back to their true quarry. It seemed to Sive the baying voices rang out from all directions now and she began to feel the net Far had cast about her feet slowly drawing tighter. She would have to go down and break past the dogs while there were still gaps between the packs.

  Yet something else sought her on the lower slopes. It was the time of the rut, and not even the onslaught of hunters could stop the stags from gathering their harems. Their bellowing cries added a deep bass counterpoint to the yelping hounds. They guarded their does jealously, herding them to what seemed the safest spots, challenging any stag that dared approach. The first time Sive attempted to slip past the dog packs and escape into the long, tractless stretch of the mountains, she all but ran into a group of does huddled nervously together. They stamped and twitched their ears at the sound of the hunt but stayed in their group. Then Sive saw the stag. On a high outcrop of rock, a powerful form topped with a mighty rack of antlers, he was a magnificent sight. And his entire attention was fixed on her, as predatory as a wolf. The thick shoulders and great shaggy throat ruff seemed to swell as he took her in.

  Sive fled back up the mountain, not resting until the dark pines swallowed her.

  THE MAGPIE’S WINGS flashed with startling white patches as it swooped through the gloom. Woodtits, treecreepers, squirrels—there were many in the pines, busily digging insects from under the bark or prying seeds from the cones. Magpies, though, favored the richer offerings of mixed woods and open hills.

  Even through a deer’s eyes it was a handsome bird, and Sive paused in her miserable attempt to browse on the fungus growing from a fallen log to follow its flight. But the bird checked sharply and dipped down to perch on a dead branch thrust from the log. It cocked its head and stared at her with one shiny black eye.

  Nosy thing, thought Sive. Find your own feast. But then she thought twice and stepped back. Lacking both a deer’s instinct and a mother’s training, she did not know enough about what was edible. If the magpie sampled her fungus, that would be one thing she could eat without fear of poisoning.

  But the magpie did not move. It simply stared at her, first from one side and then the other, and suddenly Sive’s heart was pounding, not daring to believe yet somehow certain all the same. And sure enough the space where the magpie had been was rippling and blurring with color. In an instant, her father stood before her, the smell of him so familiar though a hundred times stronger to her animal senses, his shape and stance so well-remembered though his features were strangely blurred in her eyes.

  And she was streaming into her own shape without even willing it, thinking only of rushing into his arms. But his urgent shout rang on the air.

  “Sive, NO! He will be upon us if you change! You must stay as you are!”

  “I can’t!” She was sobbing, caught in the stream of shifting energies, so full of need.

  “Only for a moment, Sive, I promise you. You must not change here.”

  Everything within her was rushing toward him, but she trusted his word. She closed her eyes and forced herself back to animal form. The pain of it was shocking—not a liquid flowing transformation, but flesh and bone ripped and shoved into place. She gritted the jaws that had already lengthened away from the hinge of the joint, caught between mouth and muzzle, and willed herself to endure it.

  “Brave girl.” Derg spoke softly, not wanting to excite a new flare of emotion that might betray her. She trembled and panted already from the effort of the change.

  “Come with me, dear one. There is a stream not far from here. Far Doirche is not all-powerful after all. Not yet.”

  FAR DOIRCHE HAD been patient and pleasant for days, but now he rounded on the man who brought him the latest downed deer, mangled but alive.

  “Am I paying you to feed all of Tir na nOg? Can you not tell the difference between a buck and a doe, at least?” He kicked at the offending beast, who struggled where it lay but was too badly wounded to rise.

  The hunter blanched and took a hasty step back from the angry druid. “Of course, Far Doirche, but the hounds don’t distinguish. You asked to see all our catch, but I can instruct them to weed out the…” The man’s voice trailed off as he risked at glance at his employer.

  Far clutched at the pendant at his neck, his eyes vague and faraway, the buck forgotten. “Here she comes at last,” he murmured. But his knowing smile faded away. His brows knotted; his knuckles whitened from the pressure of his grip. With something very like a snarl he released the amber talisman.

  “Our vixen is a tease,” he said. Already composed, his voice smooth as tallow, he gave the hunter an easy smile that caused the man to take another cautious step backward. “Luckily there is no end to men who enjoy hunting, especially for a price. One way or another, I will have her.”

  THEY WADED INTO the deepest water they could find, and then at Derg’s urging Sive sank down onto her haunches.

  “This will buy us a little time,” he said. “Less of you to track. Let me see you now, daughter, but take care to stay covered.”

  In a heartbeat she was with him. She gasped as the icy water pierced her thin skin, and then as her father’s face came clear and he waded forward to embrace her, she was weeping, sobbing into his chest like a little girl waking from a bad dream.

  But already he was talking, his voice low and urgent.

  “We must be quick. Even now he will know you have taken your right form again.”

  “How can he?” Twice now Far Doirche had seemed to know exactly where she was.

  “He has something of yours.” Sive shook her head against him, but Derg insisted. “He must have. It could be something you are unaware of, as small as a hair. But it draws him like a beacon.”

  Derg released her and stepped back, so they could see each other’s faces. “Manannan taught me this trick. The formlessness of the water will confuse Far Doirche and slow him down.”

  Derg nodded at her unspoken question, but his mouth drew into an angry line. “Manannan saw me, for your sake, and for your mother’s. But he will not set himself against the Dark Man, not until he is directly threatened.”

  Sive shook her head in baffled frustration. “But isn’t that just what will happen?”

  “It is, and by then the battle will be that much more perilous. But Far has put it about that it is I who have cursed you with the deer’s form, to punish you for defying me. He says I set myself against a love-match between you and him.” He acknowledged Sive’s indignant cry with a bitter smile. “Aye, a ridiculous pretense, as Manannan knows well. But until there is proof he will
not challenge it. The old ones do not concern themselves with the loveknots of girls. That is a father’s duty, or a husband’s.”

  Her father’s features twisted. “You’d be better off if you were Bodb Dearg’s daughter, and that’s the hard truth of it.”

  Before Sive could say anything—and her mind was in such a turmoil that she did not know what words she would find—her father hurried on.

  “There is not much time. The Dark Man will not be delayed very long by this ruse. Sive, there is one thing that may be of help to you. You know when Manannan drew the veil between Tir na nOg and the mortal world, he left doorways where those of us who wish to travel in our old lands may pass through.”

  Sive nodded. She had never thought much about it, but she knew there were ways to get there.

  “There are other openings between our worlds, many of them. Cracks and holes and burrows and streams traveled these many centuries by the wild creatures. They do not distinguish between worlds, and so they pass freely between them.”

  He leaned forward, intent now. “Sive, when we are changed we can pass through as well. I have done it. If you have need, you can enter the mortal world and Far will not be able to follow you—not through the same portal. He must use the doorways Manannan created. I do not know if he will be able to track you in the mortal lands as he does here, but he will certainly be delayed in his pursuit.

  “Wherever you flee, you must seek out these places. They may save you when nothing else can.”

  “But—” Sive was overwhelmed. Time hurried on like the stream through her fingers, and Far Doirche’s shadow loomed. Her mind was a jumble of frantic questions. She grabbed at the most insistent.

  “How will I find them? I don’t know what to look for.”

  “Once you find the first few, you will learn to sense them,” her father assured her. “They will begin to draw you as you pass by.