Shapeshifter's Guide to Running Away

by Lari Don

  Corbie grinned. “It’s working. We stop curses being lifted, we keep more curse-hatched alive, and soon we’ll build an army that can rule the world!”

  Nan nodded. “An army of curse-hatched, with you at their head and me by your side. By your side…” She sighed. “Right. Bath time and bedtime for this one.”

  She handed the baby to Corbie. “Start filling the bath. I need to stretch my wings.”

  Corbie held the baby away from his body, at arm’s length.

  Nan laughed. “Be quick, you know what she’s like when she’s not got a nappy on!”

  The ragged crow carried the shining baby towards the door. Three more crows swooped from the darkness above the throne to follow him out.

  Nan lifted her arms and changed into a blue bird. She flew straight up into the high rafters, then dived down to hover above the ashes of the fire.

  The blue bird was slimmer and more elegant than a crow, with pale blue feathers, a bright blue beak and dark blue legs.

  As Molly watched Nan soar and hover, she hoped the bird wouldn’t fly between the pillars and spot them all.

  The bird glided over towards the throne then flew round it, directly above a silver circle embedded in the floor a couple of metres from the padded chair. As she flew, she sang a soft sad song.

  Then she settled onto the ground, outside the metal ring, and changed back into the old woman in her blue dress.

  Nan smoothed her apron, then strode towards the door. “I’d better check that young crow hasn’t made the bathwater too hot.”

  As the door closed behind Nan, Molly saw Atacama creep round the pillar and stare up at the darkness above the throne.

  “No more crows.” He padded over to Molly, Beth and Theo. “We’re safe, for now.”

  Beth slumped at the base of the pillar. “Innes isn’t safe. He’s been captured by the curse-hatched. And he said we weren’t even his friends.”

  Molly sat down beside her. “He said that to protect us, not because he meant it. If he meant it, he’d have told them we were behind the pillars.”

  “He tried to protect the baby too,” said Atacama. “He was the only one of us brave enough to try to save the baby from the flames.”

  “That wasn’t bravery, it was ignorance,” said Theo. “I wasn’t being cowardly when I didn’t dash out to grab the Promise Keeper, I just doubted that an elemental being, even a baby one, could be hurt by a simple wood fire.”

  “Is that why you stopped us running out?” said Beth. “Because you knew the baby wasn’t in danger?”

  Theo nodded. “I’d have stopped Innes too, if I could, but perhaps it’s just as well I didn’t, because his impetuous act got us lots of useful information.”

  “It also got him captured,” said Beth. “We have to rescue him right now.”

  Atacama said, “He’ll be fine for a while. He’s at a feast, what harm can come to him there?”

  Theo frowned. “That depends on what he eats.”

  Molly said, “We can free Innes at the same time as the other curse-casters. But we can’t rely on Nan to help us.”

  “No. She’s Corbie’s mum!” said Beth.

  “She’s the mother of all the curse-hatched.” Theo sighed. “And she’s caring for the Promise Keeper, who decides when curses are lifted and therefore when curse-hatched die. That explains why the helix is becoming unbalanced.”

  “But she seemed so nice…” said Beth.

  “She’s planning to use a curse-hatched army to take over the world,” said Molly. “How can we stop her?”

  Atacama and Theo looked at each other.

  Theo said, “Her curse.”

  The sphinx nodded.

  Theo turned to Molly and Beth. “Nan’s curse might be the root of her power as well as the cause of her anger. If we can discover the terms of her curse, we can work out how to reduce her power.”

  Molly stood up. “It’s about time a curse helped us out. Let’s go and hunt for the one useful curse in this Hall.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Night was falling outside and the corridors were deserted. “Perhaps it’s everyone’s bath time and bedtime,” murmured Molly.

  They crept into the Chamber of Promises and closed the door quietly.

  “If Nan is the mother of the curse-hatched, then she’s really old and her curse is probably old too,” said Beth. “So we’re looking for an old mirror.”

  Theo nodded, and pointed to carved symbols on the front of each rack. “They’re filed by type of curse: transformation, burning, slow death, that sort of thing… But we don’t know what type her curse is, or even what all the symbols mean.”

  Molly stood back and considered the racks. “I don’t think we need to understand all the symbols. It looks like the oldest mirrors for each type of curse are stored at the left-hand side of the rack. Let’s just look at the mirrors from that end of every rack.”

  As they brought over the three or four oldest mirrors from each rack and laid them on the table, they saw people turned into snakes and wolves. They saw fabled beasts melted into puddles and frozen into ice. They saw curses cast by warring kings and terrified mice. They picked up mirrors heavy with jewels and mirrors light as a slice of air.

  Then, at the back of a rack marked with a broken crown, Molly found an old mirror that was polished and well cared for. “What about this one?”

  The mirror was made of gleaming black stone, with edges so thin, it was like the blade of a wide dagger.

  “Obsidian!” said Theo. “That could be it.”

  Molly laid the mirror on the table and they all crowded round.

  The shiny black surface of the mirror shimmered and they saw a young man in golden robes being dragged towards a hole in a stone floor by four shadowy creatures. He flung a cup of wine at a slim woman on a throne, then screamed panicked words at a bulkier woman in a metal dress standing by the throne. The standing woman shouted back at him and he repeated his words, more deliberately. The woman on the throne laughed as the man was pulled into the pit, which closed over his head.

  The mirror misted over. Then the scene ran again. The man screaming as he was dragged away, throwing wine at the queen on the throne and throwing a curse at the warrior beside the throne.

  But Molly couldn’t understand the words. “It’s too old. It’s not in English. We don’t know what he’s saying.”

  Theo was muttering beside her, his fingers trembling on the edge of the table. The mirror misted and repeated again and again, and Theo stared at it, mumbling the words, his hands shaking even more.

  “Lift it off,” ordered Atacama. “Lift it off the table!”

  Molly grabbed the obsidian mirror. The voices stopped. The image faded.

  And Theo slid to the floor.

  Beth crouched beside him, as Molly put the mirror in its rack.

  When Molly came back to the table, Beth was wafting Theo’s cloak over his face.

  “Thanks, I’m fine,” he said, pushing Beth’s fanning hand away.

  “Did you understand the curse?” asked Atacama.

  “It was in an old Mesopotamian dialect, which I’ve only read, never heard, but I got the sense of it.”

  “Why did it affect you so much?” asked Molly. “Did you need raw power to understand it?”

  “No. The armoured woman by the throne… I recognised her voice. She’s the one who cursed me, the one who attacked me outside the crowgate, stole my power, shaved my head and turned me into a toad. That was Nan in her true form, in her younger original self. Nan is much more powerful than we realised.”

  “Is she more powerful than you?” asked Beth.

  Theo ran his hand over his scarred scalp. “Right now, of course she is. But she was also more powerful when I was at my strongest. She’s an ancient being of great malevolence.”

  “So what is her curse?” asked Atacama. “Can we use it against her?”

  Theo nodded. “Possibly. That young man was a king, being dragged to the underworl
d in place of his queen, who believed she was a goddess. The woman by the throne, Nan, was a minor queen and a great warrior, who served the goddess as her protector. The young king blamed Nan’s manipulation and ambition for the queen turning against him. So he cursed Nan, saying she would never sit on a throne, she would never be in the supreme position of power, she must serve by the side of the throne forever…”

  “Forever?” said Atacama, a purr in his voice. “Forever! What a foolish young man.”

  “Yes,” said Theo. “That probably wasn’t what he meant.”

  “But it’s what he gave her.”

  “What do you two mean?” said Beth. “Stop talking in riddles.”

  Theo smiled. “If a curse that lasts ‘forever’ is strong enough, cast by someone powerful enough, it can make the ‘forever’ come true. The victim lives forever, so they suffer their curse eternally. That’s why Nan’s still here, serving reluctantly beside the throne, thousands of years later. She’s been given immortality by her curse.”

  Atacama said, “That must be what Corbie meant by the benefits of the curse. So if we could break her curse…” The sphinx grinned.

  “If her curse is broken, will she die?” asked Molly. “That’s a bit brutal.”

  Atacama shrugged. “She’s burning a baby every night to stop the baby growing up, she’s imprisoning curse-casters and preventing curses being lifted. She’s not a cuddly old lady. She’s quite brutal herself.”

  “How would we break the curse?” asked Molly. “That young king didn’t look like he was setting easy limits.”

  “He didn’t build in any way to lift it,” said Theo. “It was a very strong curse. And he added the power of the dark shadows dragging him down to the earliest human version of hell. It’s not an easy curse to break.”

  “So we could end her long bitter life if we could break the curse,” said Molly, “but we can’t break the curse.”

  “We could make the curse contradict itself,” said Theo. “Nan can’t put herself on the throne, but if she’s put there by someone else, the curse would no longer be true. Seating her on the throne might cancel out the ‘forever’.”

  “Or it might give her all the power she’s desired for millennia,” said Atacama.

  Theo shrugged. “That’s the risk. But I can’t see any other options.”

  “How do we put her on the throne?” asked Beth.

  “Lift her, shove her, force her.”

  Beth frowned. “She’s stronger than you, even when you have all your power. How can we force her to do anything?”

  Molly said, “She doesn’t know we know about her plans or the curse, so she won’t be on her guard. And we have the rainbow-maker she wants. Perhaps we can trick her onto the throne.”

  “I have an idea to get her into the throne room,” said Theo. “Once we’re there, if any one of you sees a chance to get her onto that throne, grab it.”

  Beth snorted. “That’s not a plan. It’s a hope that an opportunity will present itself.”

  “It’s the best we can do. With our four different skills and powers, we have a chance.”

  “We’d have a better chance with Innes,” said Beth. “Can we break him out of the feast before we face Nan?”

  They went to a window and peered cautiously into the courtyard.

  Innes was sitting by the fountain, popping green olives into the mouth of a giggling mermaid.

  “He’s having fun,” said Beth.

  “He’s closely guarded.” Theo pointed at three crows circling above the kelpie’s head.

  Innes turned round to get more olives out of a bowl on the table, and looked over at the arched windows of the chamber. He smiled, raised his eyebrows to indicate the crows above him, then nodded once.

  “He knows we’re here,” said Atacama. “He knows we’ll get him out.”

  “We need him to defeat Nan,” said Beth. “Innes is better than any of us in a straight fight. I know I didn’t want him here, but now we know what we’re up against, I don’t think we can do this without him.”

  “We have to,” said Molly. “If we help him escape, the crows will notice. Then we’d be fighting hundreds of crows as well as one old woman.”

  Beth sighed, then walked back to the table and picked up the wood-framed mirror that reflected Molly’s curse. “When the curse is lifted, the mirror shatters. What if we broke the mirror? Would that break the curse?”

  “I don’t know,” said Theo. “There are no records of such an experiment.”

  Beth handed the mirror to Molly. “Let’s see if smashing it breaks your curse. Because I’m sure it’s not a good idea to take on an ancient dark-magic user when you’re filled with darkness yourself. You have to break it now.”

  Molly looked at the mirror, then at the stone floor.

  She lifted the mirror above her head, then slowly lowered it again.

  Molly thought about how the world looked and smelt and sounded when she was a hare. She thought about racing Innes, about the power in her legs and her speed over the earth. Then she remembered how vulnerable she felt when she stopped running.

  She hadn’t chosen this magical ability. But she could choose to get rid of it. She lifted the mirror high, her arm stretched above her head. She closed her eyes and threw it at the stone-flagged floor.

  The mirror hit the stone.

  And Molly heard a loud crack.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Molly opened her eyes and looked down.

  The mirror was undamaged. The flagstone on the floor was broken.

  Beth sighed. “It was worth a try.”

  “Yes, it was. But I’ll have to carry my curse for a while longer.”

  And they left the Chamber of Promises.

  “I saw a bath in the baby’s playroom,” said Molly. “She’s probably splashing with her duckies in there.”

  As they walked along the corridor, Theo said, “Let me do the talking. Molly, show her the rainbow-maker, but don’t give it to her.”

  Theo knocked on the playroom door. Rata-tat-tat. Confident and loud.

  “Come in,” called Nan’s gentle voice. “I’m just taking the baby out of the bath.”

  They walked in and saw Nan standing beside a big claw-footed bath. The squirming Promise Keeper was cuddled up to Nan’s shoulder, wrapped in a hooded yellow towel.

  Nan raised her eyebrows. “The young questors have returned. How clever and brave of you. Do you have the rainbow-maker?”

  Molly pulled the crystal fang carefully out of her pocket.

  Nan’s wrinkled face brightened in genuine pleasure, and she reached forward.

  “Not yet,” said Theo. “We brought it for the baby. We can only give to it to the baby.”

  “But it’s probably covered in germs. I’ll have to wash it before she touches it.”

  Theo shook his head. “We have to present it to the baby.”

  “Nonsense,” said Nan. “She’s sleepy, she won’t enjoy it just now. I’ll take it.”

  Theo smiled. “My people have a tradition that quest objects must be handed over in a specific ceremony. If I don’t do this right, with the appropriate words and correct ritual, I’ll have to fill in piles of paperwork when I get home. So if you take us to the most ceremonial room in the building, something with height and grace and ideally a bit of gold paint, then I will speak the words for the end of a quest and Molly will hand over the rainbow-maker officially. To the baby. Then you can grab it and clean it. It will only take a few minutes, my lady.” Theo yawned. “We’re keen to get home.”

  “Just a few minutes?” asked Nan.

  “Yes. Then everything will be done properly, we’ll take the curse-casters away and you’ll have peace and quiet.”

  “The throne room would be the best place, if you want gold paint. Also, I lit a fire there earlier, so it’s nice and warm. We’ll go once the Keeper is dry and dressed.” She pointed at Molly. “You, the holder of the rainbow-maker. Tell us the tale of your quest as our bedt
ime story. I’m curious to know why you’ve returned with one less kelpie and one more sphinx.”

  Molly looked at Theo. He nodded.

  So as Nan dried the baby, Molly said, “After you kindly showed us the way out of the Keeper’s Hall, we met up with Atacama. Then we went into the mountains, tracking a wyrm we met last week.”

  “Ah yes, the wrym who escaped that neat earth-binding curse.” Nan wrapped a nappy round the baby’s bottom. “Did you find her?”

  “Yes, after a disagreement about rights of way with some grey men. We asked her if she knew where to find the snake’s first toy. We thought, because she was a serpent…”

  “Very clever.”

  “She took us to a cave, where a very old, very big, very scary black snake asked us questions and laughed at our answers. Especially when it turned out Innes – the kelpie you met last time – had cast a curse on his dad. So we got this crystal fang but we lost Innes, because he and Beth had an argument and he stormed off. Then we were attacked by nasty creatures called nuckelavee, but we managed to defeat them.”

  “Goodness, what an exciting bedtime story. How did you defeat them?”

  “They can only come onto land once a day, so we pushed them back into the sea, and they couldn’t attack us again.”

  Nan frowned. “I suppose every power has a weakness. Aren’t they clever children?” She blew on the baby’s tummy, then eased the baby’s arms and legs into a pure white sleepsuit.

  “Then we got home, answered the sphinx’s riddle, had a chat with the mosaic men and here we are! With the rainbow-maker!” Molly held it up and smiled. She hoped she hadn’t told Nan anything that would undermine Theo’s plan.

  “You’ve worked very hard.” Nan picked the baby up and walked to the door. “If you want to speak the words to end your quest, we have just enough time before beddy-byes.”

  She led them to the pillared room, where they oohed and ahhed as if they’d never seen it before. Theo strode towards the throne, past the cold dead fire. “This is the best place.”

  “The best place for what?” said Nan. “What exactly are you planning, young man?”