Shapeshifter's Guide to Running Away

by Lari Don

  She looked down. To her left she could see Innes and Beth, pressed close together in the glistening cage. To her right she could see the boy, facing Atacama. He had his back to the cage, but one hand twisted behind him, pointing at the icy barrel, holding the spell steady.

  Atacama was sitting calmly in front of the door, asking the riddle again, slowly, patiently, as if he was helping a small child with a reading book.

  …say what you like to me,

  but my face will never show any emotion.

  What am I?

  “A mask?”

  “Wrong.”

  “Is it… Oh, I don’t know. Give me a clue!”

  “You know I can’t give you a clue.”

  Molly moved carefully along the top of the pyramid until she was nearer the boy, nearer his bashed and bruised skull, nearer that hand trapping her friends in an icy cage.

  Atacama said, “Try again. You might get it this time.”

  “A pair of gloves?”

  Innes laughed. “You really are useless at riddles, aren’t you?”

  The boy glanced round at the cage. “Hey, where’s Molly?”

  And Molly leapt.

  She flung herself off the top barrel. She hurtled down through the air. And she crash-landed on the boy’s head.

  He yelled in shock. His hand dropped.

  Innes was already a horse, already kicking the cage to smithereens.

  Molly slid down the boy’s skull and landed awkwardly on his shoulder. He reached up to grab her, but she leapt down his back and landed at his heels.

  She heard the familiar thunder of Innes’s hooves. She saw him emerge from the ice shards and gallop towards the boy, towards her.

  The boy lifted his hands. Innes swerved out of the way and lashed out, not at the boy, but at the pyramid beside him.

  Molly heard Innes’s hooves boom against the hollow barrels. She saw the pyramid shiver and shake.

  She saw a huge wooden cask falling directly towards the boy. Directly towards her own fragile hare body.

  So Molly turned and ran, away from the cloaked boy, away from the shattered cage, away from the angry horse, away from the barrels rolling and thumping down the side of the pyramid.

  She heard several echoing crashes and thuds. And one scream.

  She skidded to a stop and turned round. There was a jagged gap in the side of the pyramid she’d just climbed. A heap of rocking barrels between the pyramids. And a pair of motionless sandals sticking out from under the heap.

  Innes reared up one more time, kicking the air in triumph.

  Molly ran back, as Innes shoved the empty barrels off the boy.

  When Molly reached them, Innes was shifting back to his human form, Beth was brushing flakes of ice off her black clothes and Atacama was sitting in front of the door, not a smooth cat-hair out of place.

  Innes said, “Good idea, Molly, using your size to escape the cage. Brave too, when we’ve no idea how to turn you back.”

  Molly looked at the boy. He was lying on the ground, not moving.

  Beth knelt beside him. “He’s still breathing, but those barrels knocked him out.”

  “Good,” said Innes. “He was ungrateful, dangerous and trying to force Atacama to break his vows.”

  Molly moved closer to the boy. He was thin, almost gaunt, with the sharp bones in his face and hands clear under his dark skin.

  Beth pointed to the boy’s head, newly scarred in dozens of places, like he’d been shaved against his will. “It looks like someone attacked him.”

  “I attacked him,” said Innes. “Very effectively too.”

  “No, before that. Before he was a toad. He doesn’t look well. Even though he attacked us, we can’t leave him lying here.”

  Atacama nodded. “That’s the second time he’s tried to force me to let him past. My family will take me off the rota again if they think I’m being targeted. I’ll tidy up while you take him somewhere secure, then we can find out why he’s desperate to get through this door and what he meant about answers to our questions.”

  Innes looked at Molly. “Your aunt’s away this afternoon. Could we take him to her house?”

  Molly dipped her head down and up, in an awkward hare’s nod.

  “I’ll join you at the Drummond cottage, as soon as my shift is over,” said Atacama.

  Innes changed to a horse again, Atacama and Beth draped the boy over his back, and Molly loped along beside the horse and dryad as they walked out of the cooperage yard.

  As they walked past Mr Crottel’s gate, on the way to Aunt Doreen’s cottage, Molly stopped. She didn’t want to go back into the garden where her curse had been cast, but she wondered if it might help her shift back.

  Beth looked round and saw Molly crouched on the pavement. She nodded. “Witch’s gateposts. Like at the farm. Clever.”

  The dryad pushed the gate open and Molly stepped warily through. She felt a slow fizz tickling along her spine, she lost control of her long legs and fell over. Then she felt her ears shorten and her limbs straighten.

  As soon as she could stand, she staggered out of the garden. She smiled shakily at Beth. “I don’t know why witches’ gates work when walls and fences don’t, but at least something works.” She pulled the gate closed and looked up at the roof. The crows had gone.

  “It took longer to work, though,” said Beth. “You didn’t shift in the blink of an eye, like you usually do. I actually saw your fur become skin and clothes. Did that happen at Skene Mains too?”

  “I think so.”

  Beth frowned at the unconscious boy on Innes’s back. “Let’s hope he has some answers, because we keep finding more unpleasant questions.”

  Chapter Four

  When they reached Aunt Doreen’s garden, Molly and Beth slid the cloaked boy off the horse’s back and dragged him to the doorstep. Innes shifted into human form, while Molly unlocked the front door.

  Molly called, “Aunt Doreen?”

  There was no answer.

  “She’ll not be back from Elgin until teatime. Let’s take him to the kitchen, it’s the biggest room.”

  They struggled to manoeuvre the tall boy’s flopping legs and sharp elbows along the narrow corridor and into the large bright kitchen built onto the back of the cottage. Then they put him down.

  The boy didn’t move. He just lay there, flat, on the stone-flagged floor.

  Innes crouched by his head.

  “He’s not dead, is he?” said Beth.

  Innes touched the boy’s throat gently. “He still has a pulse. We’d better make him safe.”

  Molly looked round. “We could put him on the couch, so he’s comfy, and put cushions on the floor, so he doesn’t bruise himself if he rolls off.”

  Innes laughed. “Not that kind of safe! I’d happily let him pick up a few more bruises. No, we need to make him safe like you make a bomb safe. We need to neutralise his magic, so he doesn’t encase us in ice as soon as he wakes up.”

  “Could we use iron?” suggested Beth.

  Innes shook his head. “Iron is for faeries.” He pointed at the boy’s scalp. “A forest faery would glamour something over those ugly scars.”

  “Running water?” Beth pointed at the sink. “We could turn the taps on.”

  “Running water is for evil spirits.” Innes prodded the boy’s shoulder. “I don’t know if he’s evil or not, but he’s certainly solid.”

  “Garlic?” suggested Molly.

  “He’s not a vampire. We saw him standing in the daylight.”

  Beth said, “Will anything work against him? He had more power than any witch I’ve ever met. It didn’t even feel like magic. It felt… deeper. Stronger.”

  “Someone turned him into a toad.” Innes stood up. “And he’s just been defeated by a hare and a horse. So he’s not all-powerful.” He looked round the kitchen at the white units, the blue range, the big dining table and the small couch by the window. “We could create a circle round him. Keep him and his magic enclosed i
n one safe space, so he doesn’t knock the house down before we’ve had time to talk to him.”

  Beth nodded. “What would we use to mark the circle?”

  “Anything that will make a clear unbroken line on the floor.”

  Molly thought about the contents of the kitchen cupboards. “Food colouring?”

  “Too thin,” said Beth.

  “Flour? Sugar? Salt?”

  “Sugar is too sweet, flour is too floaty,” said Innes. “But salt has strength, especially sea salt.”

  Molly opened cupboards, searching for the container of salt crystals her aunt used to refill the salt grinder. “Here. It’s heavy, so it must be nearly full.”

  Innes grinned. “Perfect.”

  Then Beth moved the wooden table and chairs nearer the cooker, and Molly dragged the boy into the middle of the clear space. As she slid him across the floor, she looked at his bashed scalp. She grabbed a stripy cushion from the couch and placed it under his head.

  Innes filled a glass of water and clinked it down on the stone floor beside the cushion. “He might be thirsty when he wakes, and we can’t pass things in and out of the circle.”

  “We should give him food too,” said Beth.

  Innes shook his head. “That would look like we plan to imprison him in the circle for a long time.”

  “Imprison him?” said Molly. “Is that what we’re doing?”

  “To imprison his magic, we have to imprison him as well,” said Innes.

  “But… that doesn’t seem right. He was part of our team just a few days ago.”

  “I know. But we just defeated him. He’ll be angry with us when he wakes up, and you saw how dangerous he was. This will keep us safe until we find out why he’s trying to get past Atacama and what he knows about those vanishing witches.”

  “I still think we should give him food,” said Beth. “He’s very thin.”

  “He’s not a baby bird or stray kitten. He’s a violent powerful magic-user. But you can feed him if you want.”

  Beth frowned. “I suppose he did curse Atacama to lose his riddle a couple of weeks ago. If he’s a curse-caster, then he misuses magic in dark and dangerous ways. I don’t suppose we want to feed that…”

  “Is casting curses the worst possible use of magic?” asked Molly, as she moved a chair further from the boy’s feet.

  “Hardly,” said Innes. “I can think of much worse—”

  “Totally,” said Beth. “Curses are an unnatural warping of the potential of magic spells. It’s the most appalling thing you can do with magic. So curse-casters are the worst magical beings possible.” She looked at the boy on the floor suspiciously. “We might not be able to trust his answers, even if he does talk to us.”

  “Not all curse-casters are dark and untrustworthy,” said Innes quietly. “Mrs Sharpe cast a curse on that wrym and you were happy to stay in her bunkhouse.”

  “That was different,” said Beth. “We needed her workshop to lift our curses.”

  Innes shook his head. “That’s so hypocritical. You can’t say all curse-casters are bad, then say it’s ok to take advice from a curse-caster when it suits you.” He sighed. “Right. Let’s make this circle.”

  As Innes paced round the room, muttering about diameter and circumference, Molly looked at the skinny boy on the floor, grabbed a packet of crisps from the nearest cupboard and dropped it beside the glass of water.

  Innes crouched down and put a tiny pile of salt crystals about ten centimetres from the boy’s feet, then another much further from his right knee. He went round the whole boy, dotting the outline of a circle. Then he stood on a chair, looked down and shook his head. “That pile near his left shoulder, Molly, move it closer. Good. And Beth, the one by his right ear should be further out.” He asked Molly and Beth to move a few more piles, then finally nodded.

  He jumped down. “Who should draw the circle? There’s a lot of wooden furniture in the room – if that would enhance your power, Beth, perhaps you should create the circle?”

  The dryad shook her head. “There’s more metal and stone in this kitchen than wood, so I don’t have much influence. You’d better do it, Innes.”

  “I did defeat him less than an hour ago, which might give me power over him now. Molly, stand on the chair and tell me if I go squinty.”

  Molly watched as Innes poured the salt in one long slow smooth curve, joining all the dots and making a perfect white circle round the unconscious boy.

  As he completed the circle, joining the end of the line of crystals to the start, Molly felt a release of tension, a warming and calming of the air in the room.

  “Well done,” said Beth. “I felt that take. He’s in there with all his power and we’re out here, and that circle will keep us separate.”

  Molly said, “It’s just a line of salt. How can it keep him in one place? It wouldn’t even keep me in and I don’t have any magic at all.”

  “Think about how powerful boundaries are for you: all those walls and gateposts you need to turn human again,” said Innes. “We’ve made a boundary, and we can hold him inside until he’s answered our questions.”

  “He can’t answer any questions until he wakes up,” said Molly. “Does anyone want a snack?”

  She found smoothies and homemade biscuits for her friends, feeling slightly guilty about the water and plain crisps they’d given the boy on the floor.

  When she brought the tray of snacks over, Innes and Beth were looking at a display of photos above the couch.

  “That’s my wood!” Beth pointed at a black-and-white photo of children in old-fashioned clothes, lined up in front of leafy trees.

  Molly nodded. “Aunt Doreen says the Sunday school had a bluebell picnic there every year when she was wee.”

  Innes was looking at an orange-tinted group of children in flared jeans, leaning on a rough stone wall.

  Molly smiled. “My dad and his friends, playing Poohsticks on the bridge near your mill-house.”

  “And that’s you.” Beth pointed at a picture of Molly laughing, between two smiling adults, in front of the Eiffel Tower.

  “Last summer, with my mum and dad.” Molly sighed. “They don’t get much time off, so that’s why I spend most school holidays up here, in Dad’s old home town with Dad’s old aunt.”

  “So why have we never met you before?” asked Beth.

  “I suppose because I’ve never been cursed, needed magical help and attended a witch’s workshop before. Anyone want a biscuit?”

  “We don’t take family holidays,” said Beth. “The trees are our family too, so we need to stay here. It’s the same for your family’s rivers, isn’t it, Innes?”

  He nodded. “But adult kelpies go on lone hunting trips, which are like holidays. It’s only safe to stalk prey far from our home rivers.”

  “Your mum told my Aunt Jean that your dad has gone on a hunting trip,” said Beth, “to celebrate the lifting of your family’s curse. Do you know where he’s gone?”

  Innes sat down and examined the biscuits. He carefully chose the one with the most chocolate chips and fewest raisins.

  Molly sat beside him. “How far away does your dad have to travel? Is it like my mum going to London for meetings?”

  “We never go as far south as London. We usually go north and west from here. But whichever direction a kelpie goes, we have to hunt outside the catchment of our own river system. So I’m sure my father is exactly where he’s meant to be right now.”

  Beth squeezed in beside Molly and picked up a biscuit. “Those crows seemed pleased we couldn’t find Mr Crottel. Do you think they know where he’s gone?”

  “I think Mrs Sharpe was visited by crows too,” said Molly. “Innes, did you see that black feather by the till in the shop?”

  Innes shook his head, his mouth full of biscuit.

  Beth frowned. “I wonder if we’re wasting time waiting for that boy to wake up and tell us what he meant by vanishing curse-casters. Perhaps we should go to the crows’ St
one Egg Wood right now, to search for the witches or for clues. I could wait outside on guard while you both sneak in.”

  “We can’t go out and leave a strange boy lying on my Aunt Doreen’s kitchen floor.”

  Innes swallowed and nodded. “That could be dangerous, for her.”

  “Don’t worry about Molly’s aunt,” said a calm voice. “I wouldn’t hurt her. After all, she didn’t knock me out. That was one of you.”

  They looked over and saw the boy sitting up in the centre of the circle.

  “Which one of you hit me on the head?” He looked at Molly, then at Beth, then at Innes.

  “We didn’t hit you,” said Beth. “The falling barrels hit you.”

  Molly stood up. “I distracted you, so Innes could attack you. I’m not going to apologise. You were threatening us and trying to force Atacama to break his vows.”

  Innes stood up too. “I kicked half a dozen barrels onto you. I’m not going to apologise either. You deserved it.”

  “Would you be quicker to apologise if I was outside this circle?”

  Innes grinned. “Possibly. But I’m not letting you out until you’ve answered our questions. You’ve got water and food.”

  The boy took a gulp of the water, ignored the crisps and sat cross-legged on the cushion. Then he nodded. “Ask your questions.”

  “You know who we are,” said Innes. “You spent days listening to us talk about our lives, our families and our curses. We don’t know who you are.”

  “I am Theo.”

  “What are you?”

  “I’m a magician.”

  “A stage magician?” asked Molly.

  He laughed. “Did you think that ice was a theatrical effect? I’m an elemental magician. I work with the deepest levels of magic, not the superficial levels used by witches and other commonplace magic-users. They cast spells to tweak the surface of the world’s magic; I manipulate the elements at a more fundamental level.”

  Innes crossed his arms. “If you’re so deep and fundamental, why couldn’t you transform yourself back from that toad?”