by Jade White
“How do you even fit in here?” she asked, turning in a circle to take everything in.
“Very carefully,” he answered blandly, and he turned away to begin rummaging through a closet. When he emerged, he was holding what looked like a harness with saddlebags attached to it. “This is my companion whenever I head down the mountain,” he explained, unfolding it to reveal that it was, indeed, a snow leopard sized harness with several pouches attached. “Clothing goes in the pouches, we wander down the mountain until we get to the garage, then we transform and get dressed and go about our business. When it is time to come back, anything we bought goes in the pouches, we transform again, slip the harness back on, and mosey our way back up the mountain.” He folded the harness back up again and put it away in the closet. “Luckily for me, I went shopping last time, so I have a while yet before I need to go again.”
Amelia could understand why that was a good thing. It certainly sounded like more of an event than her forays to the shopping center down the street back home.
“You can get comfortable,” Aibek pointed out, gesturing loosely toward the couch. “Unless you have some pressing urge to go back to the family room.”
In response, Amelia began shedding her winter clothing in a heap on the floor before she plopped herself down on the couch. She crossed one leg over the other and made a show of squirming back against the cushions. Aibek snorted out a laugh as he shucked his own winter wear and sat down on the other end of the couch.
“So,” Amelia began after a moment, “what sort of stuff goes on way out here?” She leaned forward, leaning one elbow on her knee. “Does anything happen out here, or is it just snow, snow, and more snow?”
Aibek hummed thoughtfully. “Well, there is hunting, obviously. Hikers pass through occasionally. And we managed to convince a sizable amount of people that the mountain is haunted.”
Amelia stared at him, sitting up with a start. “I’m sorry, what?” She pulled her legs up onto the couch, curling them beneath herself.
“Well, snow leopards are not native to the area,” he pointed out. “And we are very good at hiding. Despite that, we do get spotted now and then.” He shrugged casually. “Most people assume they were imagining it, but one very stubborn group of hikers spotted Anara and Sezim and were determined to track them down.” He shifted in his seat, getting comfortable so he was slouched sideways against the arm of the couch. “They came back in a panic, and we did not want them stumbling upon our home, so all four of us transformed and tracked them down again. We spent four days following the hikers, stealing their supplies, collapsing their tents, raiding their food, and we got very good at disappearing whenever they looked anywhere near us.” He was smirking by then. “We made them miserable enough that they gave up their search and left, and the next time one of us had to head down off the mountain and into town, people were discussing the ghosts on the mountain.”
Amelia snickered behind her hands, her laughter barely muffled by her fingers. “Ah, man,” she sighed, her hands dropping back down to her lap. “I wish I could be that casual about shifting back home,” she lamented.
“Does anyone know?” Aibek asked curiously, his head tipped to one side.
“Of course,” Amelia hurried to supply. “I mean, my mom’s a cheetah, too. My dad’s not, but Mom never kept it a secret from him once she decided they were serious.”
“How did you wind up with cheetahs in London, anyway?” Aibek wondered, one eyebrow cocked. “I am not an expert, but I did not think they were native to England.”
“Back alley breeding,” Amelia deadpanned, purely to watch his expression screw up in confusion before she snorted out a laugh. “Nah. My mom was born in Zimbabwe and left to go to university in London. She met my dad there. Dad’s from Iran, so we’re figuring he might’ve had some Asian cheetah somewhere in the family tree? Otherwise, the odds of little ol’ me happening on the first try were astronomical.” As an afterthought, she added, “We moved to Chicago when I was little, since Mom got another job.”
“But does anyone other than your parents know?” Aibek asked, returning to his original point.
“A few people,” Amelia answered. “Never had much other family around to tell, but a few of my friends know. I mean, some of them kind of had to. Bailey and Riley liked to just drop by whenever, and they both walked in on me as a cat a few times. And Ayomide followed me when I snuck out of the cabin at camp so I could take a sprint across the sports field.”
“But you’ve never deliberately told anyone?” Aibek asked carefully.
“Nope,” Amelia replied, popping the P as she said it. “Never told any boyfriends. Never told any friends who didn’t figure it out for themselves. It never really seemed worth the danger,” she reasoned, one shoulder lifting in a shrug. “I mean, how many people could I trust to not say anything the instant they got a chance? I know at least some of my friends would’ve gone straight to the media.”
Aibek looked slightly distasteful at the admission. Before he could say anything about it, though, Amelia pointed out, “But have you actually told anyone?” She lifted a hand and gestured around to encompass the entire miniature village. “I mean, you didn’t have to tell anyone here. So you can’t really judge, now can you? I’ve told more people than you have, even if it was by necessity.”
Aibek smiled crookedly and held his hands up in surrender. “Fair point,” he conceded easily before he let his hands drop. “What was it like, then?” he asked instead. “Someone outside the family knowing. If it even changed anything.”
Amelia snorted. “Of course it changed things. To the rest of the world, the idea of people turning into animals is a fairytale. Bailey was terrified at first and didn’t speak to me for a week. Riley tried so hard to act like everything was normal that it actually got a bit painful. Ayomide was convinced I could turn her into a shifter, too, even though it doesn’t work that way.”
“Surely you got something good out of it,” Aibek coaxed. “You do not sound like you regret them finding out.”
“No, I don’t,” Amelia hurried to agree. “Things were…all kinds of weird at first, but they got to be great.” She smiled crookedly as a thought occurred to her. “Ayomide has a longbow, and she’s been training to use it for longer than I’ve known her. Whenever we got together when we weren’t at camp, my mom or my dad would take us out to where I’d have space to run, and Ayo would wrap her arrows in all this colorful, glow-in-the-dark ribbon, and then she’d fire them as far as she could and time how long it took me to chase them down and bring them back. If I got a head start, occasionally I could jump and catch them right out of the air.”
She leaned back, letting her head fall back against the back of the couch cushion. “Bailey eventually got over it and called to make sure she hadn’t hallucinated it when she walked in on me just as I shifted, and to ask me out for coffee to talk about it. She chilled out pretty quickly, and once I swore her to secrecy, she would come up with any excuse she could think of to drag me out into the middle of nowhere for a weekend. She liked watching me move, said it was a good art study.” Amelia snorted and rolled her eyes. “I acted as her model for so many things. Sculptures, sketches, realistic pictures, fantasy things where she’d give me horns and wings. She’d ask me to do crazy stunts and film them so that she could just pause them with me in midair or upside down or doing some twist or flip.”
She shifted again, shuffling down to get comfortable against the arm of the couch. “And Riley never really stopped trying to pretend it was all normal,” she sighed, shrugging one shoulder. “It was a bit awkward for a while, but we managed to move on eventually, and he relaxed about it after a while. He was really good at lying on the spot if I was ever close to being found out, though I think my favorite was when he had one of the neighbors convinced that I was a theater major with a collection of animal pelt capes. The guy acted like I was a crazed Viking every time he saw me after that, and I think he expected me to take a battle-ax to his front door or some
thing like that, but he never figured out the truth, so I guess it worked out in the end,” she finished with a crooked smile. “It might’ve been fun to try, but I liked not being in jail.”
Aibek grinned. “Even for a very good joke?”
“Even so,” Amelia returned wryly.
“Your loss, I suppose,” he sighed in return before he wondered curiously, “did you learn how to hunt?”
Amelia was almost offended for a moment, until she realized that it was a fairly valid question. There was no hunting in Chicago, and she had done a pretty thorough job of making it seem like she hardly even got to do anything outside the city at all.
“My mom made sure I knew how,” she replied. “In case I ever got into some sort of really weird trouble.” She snorted. “I used to think she was paranoid, but considering everything that has happened lately, I guess maybe she wasn’t so far off track.”
Silence fell for a moment, and Amelia slid Aibek a slow, searching look. “What about you?” she asked after a moment.
“What about me?” he parroted back, blinking at her.
“What’s it like to always have someone who ‘gets it’ around?” Amelia clarified, looking out the window at the nearest structure. “I mean, I love my friends, don’t get me wrong. They’re great. But they always look at me like I’m just complaining about a tension headache or a cold if I say it’s been so long since I could run that I’m getting jumpy. They don’t really get…” She trailed off, searching for the words.
“They do not really get that you are a cat shaped like a human, rather than a human who can become a cat,” Aibek supplied after a moment, his eyes understanding.
Amelia sighed in relief. “Yeah. That. Exactly. They don’t get that. And I don’t blame them for that, because how could they? But it does seem like it would be nice to have someone around who can get it. And I was just wondering what that was like.” She glanced away, though she wasn’t even sure why she found the admission embarrassing.
Aibek was silent for a moment, his expression thoughtful. “It is a relief,” he settled on eventually. “Sometimes I wish there were people here who did not know everything about me because then they think they know best. But it is always a relief to know that when I need to hunt, or climb something, or just be in the proper skin, there are multiple people here who understand and feel the same way.”
“Does your mom ever feel left out?” Amelia wondered. “My dad was always a good sport about it, but I know he always felt a bit lost whenever Mom and I transformed together.”
“She probably does,” Aibek replied, shrugging minutely. “But she is, as you said, a good sport about it.” He paused, hesitating for a few seconds before he admitted, “Though, I do wonder what it might be like to tell other people. It is very hard to get a proper opinion on anything when the only people you know are your family or very casual acquaintances that you see so infrequently they forget your name.”
“Well, I can be your sounding board for as long as I’m here,” Amelia volunteered, offering him a crooked smile. “You listen to me, and I’ll listen to you when I’m not goggling at your family, and everything will work out great. Deal?”
Aibek laughed gently. “Deal,” he agreed.
Slowly, Amelia’s smile faded to a thoughtful look after that, until Aibek was eyeing her warily, as if he expected her to suddenly turn into a yeti right there on his couch.
“Just one more question,” Amelia assured him finally, lifting her hands to steeple her fingers in front of her lips as she fought a smile off of her face. “When you were little, did you do that thing I’ve seen pictures of, where snow leopard cubs walk around with their tails in their mouths?”
Aibek’s face went bright red, right up to the tips of his ears. He sputtered incoherently for half a second before he managed, “I most certainly did not.”
Amelia’s grin was fit to crack her face clean in two as she crowed, “Oh, I am totally asking your mother for pictures later!”
“How do you even know she has pictures?” Aibek demanded, folding his arms over his chest and slumping into a huff. “You have no proof.”
“She’s your mom,” Amelia scoffed, a bubble of laughter escaping. “Of course she has pictures.”
Aibek groaned and dropped his face down into his hands until he dragged them down his face and asked abruptly, “How about we watch a movie?” It was probably the least subtle way to change the subject in all of known history, but his face was still bright red, so Amelia took pity on him.
“Yeah, alright,” she agreed, and he abandoned the couch to go root through one of the shelves.
“Hey, Aibek?” she called after a moment, and he turned away from the shelf just long enough to make it clear he was listening before he resumed sorting through the movies. “Can I borrow a phone for a few minutes?” Amelia asked.
Aibek paused, his head cocked to one side and his brows furrowed together, until he observed, “I am not sure why that did not occur to me before now.” He lifted a hand, pointing to the end of one shelf. “There is a satellite phone right there.”
Amelia swung her legs off of the couch and stood up, her knees cracking, and she stretched her arms over her head and arched her back until it popped before she made her way over to the shelf to pick up the phone. To her surprise, it looked like any other cell phone, for the most part. “Aren’t these expensive to use?” she asked, eyeing it like it was a cobra ready to strike even as she picked it up.
Aibek waved it off. “We rarely use it; you are not exactly going to break the bank.”
So with that blessing, Amelia dialed her parents’ landline and hoped that someone would pick up.
The phone clicked as the other line was picked up, and a bewildered voice said, “Lark residence. Who is this?”
“Mom!” Amelia practically shrieked in relief.
“Mel?” her mom gasped in surprise. “What’s going on? What number are you calling from?”
“Ah, I’m on a sat phone somewhere in the Balkan mountains in Bulgaria. I ran into a bit of trouble—I’m fine, don’t worry, I’m safe—but considering the weather and the time of the year, I might be here for a little while,” Amelia explained hastily before her mother could begin to truly worry.
“What happened?” her mother demanded in the tone that Amelia had never been able to argue with, even as a child.
“I ran afoul of a pride of lions,” she stated bluntly, “and a family of snow leopards saved me from freezing to death once I got away. I’m at the snow leopards’ house.” Though house was not quite the correct term, for expediency’s sake, it was the most convenient. “Safe, warm, there’s food and bathrooms. All of my stuff is gone, but other than that, I’m perfectly okay. I just wanted to get in touch and let you know that I probably won’t be back when I originally planned.”
There was silence for a moment, and Amelia could perfectly picture the stunned look on her mother’s face. Finally, though, her mom sighed out a slow breath. “You’re sure you’re safe?” she asked. Granted, even if she wasn’t, there was nothing Amelia’s parents would be able to do. They both knew that, but Amelia chose not to bring it up.
“I’m sure,” she answered, nodding to herself despite the fact that her mother couldn’t see her. “I can’t talk long, but I’m safe.”
She could practically hear her mom fretting and dithering, until finally there was an explosive sigh. “Alright,” her mom breathed. “You take care of yourself, and let those snow leopards know that if they let anything happen to you, then they’ll have to deal with me.”
“I’ll be sure to let them know,” Amelia agreed with a weak laugh. “Bye, Mom. Try not to worry too much.”
She hung up the phone reluctantly and turned to look at Aibek. “My mom says she’ll kill you all if anything happens to me.”
Unperturbed, Aibek laid a hand across his chest. “A reasonable response,” he assured her wryly, before he held up a DVD case. “Shall we?”
*
CHAPTER THREE
The movie was interesting, though not the sort of thing Amelia usually went for. She was an unashamed action movie fan, so sedate political thrillers were generally not what she picked out. All of the actors spoke Russian, but the subtitles were easy to read.
The credits were nearing their end when Amelia and Aibek heard someone shouting from outside; both of them cocked their heads toward the window. The shouting was followed a moment later by knocking on the door as Sezim called impatiently, “Beka! Stop necking or whatever you’re doing in there and open the door!”
Aibek rolled his eyes and heaved himself up off of the couch. He crossed the space to the door and pulled it open to find Sezim and Serik. Sezim had her fist raised, poised to knock again. “Beka!” she greeted exuberantly before she schooled her features into a more serious expression. “There’s someone on the mountain. Some of the same smells from the other day.”
The implication was easy to understand. The lions had come back. Amelia shot to her feet and began to scramble to gather up her borrowed winter gear and put it back on.