I whooped in shock. Whooping is also a hyena noise—almost like a howl—except it doesn’t sound as cool.
“Get your spotty tail out of here, hyena boy!” Will Andris shouted from behind.
I turned and let out a giggle. The wolf pack had followed us home, probably by changing form and cutting through the forest. Their clothes were all wrinkled, which meant they’d been carrying them in their mouths. Approaching with sneers on their faces, they flashed teeth halfway between human and canine form.
“We’ll deal with you later,” Joe growled in my direction. The others kept their eyes fixed on Manny, who’d lowered down on all fours. Fur began sprouting from his spotty skin.
Spotty like mine, I thought. No way … could it be he’s another hyena?
Just then, a deep rumble sounded in Manny’s throat, followed by a roar so loud it shook the trees. Birds screeched and took flight. Definitely not a hyena noise.
The pack hesitated, unsure of their next move. Will let out a nervous yelp.
Manny transformed and leaped from his clothes. He was definitely a cat—a big one—covered in spots. He sprang several steps forward and took a swipe at the pack with fearsome claws. The six in Will’s gang shifted to wolves and bolted, tails between their legs as they ran. Their clothes stayed behind, fluttering on swirls of air.
After a growl that I could feel in my bones, Manny turned back in my direction and leaped onto a boulder. His dark yellow eyes were filled with rage.
“Give me my clothes,” he ordered.
I grabbed Manny’s shirt and pants without a second thought, but I wasn’t quite sure how to get the underwear. They were in the middle of the path, with Velcro edges facing up. Every shape-shifter parent knows how to fix clothes so they don’t tear during a transformation; otherwise, they’d be buying new clothes each week. Most would sew Velcro strips into the seams so the pieces separate, but the fancier parents would get special clips imported from Europe. Will Andris was definitely one of those fancy types. I chuckled, thinking that his mom would be furious when he showed up naked at his house and without his elegant undies.
I flung Manny’s shirt over his jockey shorts and picked up both together to avoid any direct skin-to-underwear contact.
“So … you’re a leopard?” I asked when I stepped toward him.
“Jaguar,” he said, grabbing the shirt-underwear bundle in his claws. “Leopards come from Africa, I think.”
While Manny got his clothes together, I edged up against the nearest tree and lowered my pants a few inches. The urge to scent-mark is pretty embarrassing to admit, but it’s something I can’t resist. It’s like a booger in your nose that’s within finger’s reach—you don’t want to pick it, but it keeps bothering you until it comes out. A similar impulse drove me to rub my rear against the rough bark at that moment.
Less than a minute later, Manny was back in human form and dressed.
Hiking my pants to their proper position, I asked, “What’s your bite force?” My dad claimed that hyenas have some of the strongest jaws in the animal kingdom, so the question usually gave me a chance to show off.
Manny said, “One thousand and fourteen.”
“Really?” Suddenly I felt ashamed, because mine’s only a thousand. Bite force, which measures the power of our jaw muscles, is a way of ranking carnivores from wimpy to fierce, and Manny outscored me. To cover my shortfall, I said, “Wolves are only four hundred and six—can you believe that? I was six hundred and three when I was a cub.”
Without answering, Manny shot careful glances all around.
“You sure showed those guys,” I said, trying to break the ice. “They always think they’re so tough when the full moon comes around.”
“They’ll be back, and in bigger numbers,” he said. “It’s going to make my job harder.”
“What job?”
“The job my mom and I came here to do.”
“You mean to find that great hunter you mentioned at school?”
“That’s the only reason we’re here,” he said with a slow nod.
“Why do you need to find him?” I asked.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said.
“Why not?” Now I wanted to know even more.
“It’s none of your business, that’s why.” I thought I perceived a low growl coming from his direction.
Darn. I knew if he went home without telling me why, it’d bug me all night.
“Do you want to come over to my house?” I asked. Maybe he’d share more information if we went somewhere safer and less exposed.
“No.” He turned to walk away.
“Then, how about I show you where the game trails are? There’s supposed to be good hunting around here.” Not that I knew from experience, but I’d overheard the wolves say how easy the deer and moose were to catch.
“Nah,” he said. “I can find them myself.”
I touched the back of my head while grasping for something else to say. The rock Will had thrown had opened a gash in my scalp, but it already stopped bleeding. Hyenas are quick to heal, thankfully, although even if it had been worse, I’d just have to hope it would improve on its own. Shape shifters usually avoided hospitals, because of the risk that no-tails might learn our secrets—especially under the influence of medication. Like the wolves, I had been born at home, and none of us ever went to a doctor or dentist.
Manny started walking in the opposite direction, farther down the trail.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“Home.”
“Already? But there’s lots to do out here. You ever go fishing? One time I caught a trout that was almost as long as my arm.”
“Look,” Manny said over his shoulder, “we jaguars aren’t the social type, okay? And I’ve got work to do. Why don’t you hang out with your own kind?”
That’s the problem, I thought. I would if I could find any other werehyenas around.
After a moment’s hesitation, Manny asked, “Are you sure there isn’t anything else up here besides bears and wolves?” His nose flared while adding, “And besides hyenas, I mean.”
“Um, no, not that I know of.”
“Any pumas? Or other big cats?”
“I’ve never heard of any, no.”
Manny turned and stalked off without saying anything else. His steps were catlike; he placed one foot directly in front of the other. I watched him disappear around a curve, then slumped my shoulders and shuffled along the trail leading home. When I reached the wooden porch of our stone house, I sniffed the air to see who was inside.
Just Dad. Thank goodness.
“Why, hello there, big fella,” he said as soon as I came through the door. Dad was dressed in an apron and was setting the table. Of all the kids I’d ever met, I was the only one whose father stayed home while his mom worked. And unlike other shape shifters, it was my dad who’d sewn the Velcro into my clothing. Whenever we had craft day at school, he was always first to volunteer as a room aide.
“What’s new?” asked Dad.
I dropped my backpack next to the door and took a seat at the table. “Well, there is a new kid in school.”
“Is that so?” As always, his voice was full of enthusiasm. I knew he loved me just by hearing how he talked—his tone was full of warmth.
“Yeah,” I told him. “He changes into a jaguar.”
“A werejaguar, huh? Wow. I never saw one of those before.”
“He’s from Mexico,” I said.
“Down south. Hmm …” He was clearly thinking, but then he glanced up at the clock. “Oh goodness. We’d better eat.”
Dad disappeared into the kitchen and retrieved a platter of muddy raccoon and three-day-old turtle. The smell of decay punched my nostrils like fists.
“Leftovers again?” I whined. Something about rotten meat always grossed me out. Especially the dead raccoon—this one was crawling with maggots.
“Times are tough,” Dad said. “The wolves aren’t leaving much for us.
”
“Because there’s too many of them,” I grumbled, flicking a maggot back onto the plate.
Heavy footsteps sounded on the porch before Dad could say more, so I grabbed the raccoon, tore off a leg, and shoved it into my mouth. The taste made me gag, but I managed to gulp it down after a few bone-crushing bites.
The door flew open. A silhouette nearly blocked the doorway’s rectangle. Mom stood there, tall and wide as a refrigerator. My sister Lauren was yipping and giggling behind her, excited over what they’d apparently dragged onto the porch.
“Go clean that up,” Mom told me, pointing her thumb behind her.
Ugh. Good thing I’d scarfed down that raccoon leg, because I just lost my chance to eat. Mom runs everything in our household, and she doesn’t like it when commands get questioned or ignored. At the same time, I guess I’ve always looked up to her, because she has this quiet power that others seem to respect. It’s like—I don’t know—maybe she’s more than just some ordinary scavenger. And even though the wolves made fun behind her back, they never said anything to her face. Deep down, I think they might’ve been scared of her, which was probably smart. I was usually scared of her, too.
For me, any protest was out of the question, so I headed straight for the open doorway.
Mom motioned for Dad to speak with her in the kitchen, and he padded right after her.
Once they were gone, I stepped outside, where my sister whacked me in the arm with all her might.
“Ow!” I giggled. “What’s that for?”
She cuffed me on the neck and squeezed. “What, you think you’re tough all of a sudden?”
“No, I never said that.” I really didn’t want to deal with her at the moment. She was two years older than me, thirty pounds heavier, and a total menace most of the time. My mom had been grooming her to be a leader, in case we found other hyenas, I supposed. The problem was that Lauren always got carried away; she showed off her strength at every opportunity. The Code said that families needed to be supportive of each other, even if Dad and I ranked lower, but with me, my sister was just a pain in the butt—or a pain in hundreds of other places on my body.
Lauren released me with a shove, and I walked across the porch. The carcass Mom left was a moose: a young male, too small for antlers but larger than the average deer. Ribs on one side were caved and broken, which meant it’d probably been hit by a truck.
Grabbing a hatchet from the shed, I set about chopping the moose into sections. Lauren watched with her arms crossed and her shoulder propped on a post, never offering to help. Sometimes she’d say, “Cut that piece a little smaller,” or, “That piece is for Mom and me,” because female hyenas always got the best cuts. Wolves or bears or regular people might argue that it wasn’t fair, but I’d had the words “this is the way things are” drilled into my brain more times than I could count, so I didn’t even question it anymore.
Hyenas are different, I was always told.
Once I’d finished hacking up the moose, I tried to sneak a sliver of lung into my mouth, except Lauren snatched it before I could gulp it down.
“Hey!” I blurted, too shocked to keep quiet.
Lauren’s eyes narrowed, and she let out a giggle. It was the hyena warning to back off.
“Come on,” I pleaded. “I did all the work. Can’t I get just one treat?”
Lauren giggled again and bared her teeth. Even in human form, her bite could be nasty.
“What’s going on out there?” Mom’s voice thundered through the doorway. When she stepped into the sunlight, the scraggly hairs on her face almost looked like a beard.
“Sam’s causing trouble,” said Lauren.
My mouth opened, although I quickly lost the courage to speak. If I tried to defend myself, Lauren would get me for it later.
All Mom said was, “Leave out twenty pounds for tonight, and put the rest in the freezer.” With that, she headed back inside.
Twenty pounds? Lauren could probably eat that much by herself, leaving Dad and me with nothing but bones to gnaw.
As it turned out, Lauren did eat half of those twenty pounds, although Mom was careful to save Dad and me enough meat to fill our bellies. She may have been tough, but Mom did care, and she kept me safe and healthy. Without her, I’d probably be in real trouble, because every hyena needs a strong mother to see them through to adulthood.
That night, while closing my eyes in bed, the mystery of who Manny needed to find returned, hanging fresh in my thoughts.
Who else was a hunter around here? And why could Manny possibly need to find him?
WHENEVER I SLEPT, MY DREAMS WERE FILLED WITH grass—vast, green expanses with no more than one or two twisted trees sticking up near the horizon. It was in stark contrast to my waking hours, where birches and pines stood straight and tall like the bars of a prison. My dreams made me feel that the forest was no place for a hyena.
Grasslands were where I needed to be.
Animals also roamed through my mind each night—zebras, wildebeests, and gazelles. It was never hard to imagine how they moved, how they sounded, or even how they tasted. In this particular dream, my family was facing down a pride of lions that had killed a Cape buffalo. My dad and sister giggled at the edge of the kill site, charging forward to drive off a large lioness. Mom chattered near the front while the male lion, leader of his pride, snarled in defiance. Mom’s response was to face the ground, raise the fur on her neck, and give a loud whoop. When she did that, the sound came out halfway between a howl and a roar.
The male lion froze, visibly shocked. Several lionesses fled. Mom repeated her bellow, and the male turned and ran. Overjoyed, I let out a whoop of my own, because it was time to eat. The females would go first, of course, but I was excited because there was more meat than I’d ever seen in my entire life, and we didn’t have wolves as competition.
Except Mom didn’t slow down to start eating. She kept charging, leaping straight over the dead buffalo and sprinting forward. I didn’t understand.
Opening my eyes, I tried to figure out what my dream meant. What got Mom so riled up in that made-up moment?
Then that whoop sounded again. My eyes scanned the room. The lamp next to my bed was on, since it was the best way to avoid nighttime transformations. In the light, I remained human, unless there was some urgent need to shift.
“Rrrr-OOOOOO-ah.” Another whoop reached my ears, with a trill like someone practicing the “r” in Spanish class. That call definitely came from my mother, and it was answered by a slightly higher “Rrrr-OOOOOOOO-ah” from Dad.
They were both outside, and they were both hyenas.
But why?
The answer came crashing through my window an instant later. I had one of those big bay windows that overlooked the backyard; at least I did until that thing smashed through. All I saw were feathers at first—it looked like an enormous pillow had burst. The feathers were dark, mainly gray and black, although a few white ones flashed here and there.
A figure straightened itself behind the flurry and hissed. I thought it was a giant bird, but then I saw the head, which was bald and almost human-like.
A harpy?
It had to be. Her eyes burned red, and she sneered with pointed fangs. When she lunged in my direction, I spun on my mattress and leaped, changing into a hyena the instant my paws touched the floor. Fortunately, she was too big to spread her wings, and the claws on her feet couldn’t get a good grip on the hardwood surface. She let out a hideous shriek while I tore down the hall.
I skidded on the stairs and jumped straight through the front door, which was wide open. Outside, under the bright moonlight, a horror met my eyes, like nothing I’d ever seen.
There were at least a dozen harpies perched in the trees, some with claws on their wings that shook the branches while they made awful, high-pitched cries. Every few seconds, one of them would dive at Mom, who giggled and whooped with her head held low. Dark liquid glistening on her fur told me she was bleeding; it looked
like she’d gotten badly scratched up. Dad didn’t look so good, either—they’d both obviously been fighting hard.
Another four-legged form came charging from the house, knocking me onto a patch of dirt.
“Do something!” Lauren ordered.
Is she kidding? I thought.
A hard nip to my backside told me she wasn’t. And since it was better to risk a slash from those talons than to lose a chunk of my butt, I sprinted into action, with no idea what I’d do. A giant harpy thumped on me almost instantly, and its claws dug into my back, so I whipped my head around and caught one of its legs in my mouth. The monster squawked, and its grip loosened, then Mom pounced and knocked it off me, yanking the leg from between my teeth. There was a lot of flapping while the two struggled until the feathered monster returned to the sky with a leap, a scream, and a whoosh.
Mom snapped her head up and spat feathers from her mouth. “Sam, get out of here.”
I hesitated, staring at her dumbly.
“Now!” she yelled.
As Mom turned, all the harpies swooped down at once. Yelps from my father and sister mixed with powerful wingbeats that sent dust and pine needles into my eyes. Soon another harpy was on top of me. I rolled and sent her to the ground, tucking my front paws close to my chest, preparing to lash out if she tried another attack.
And attack she did. With a murderous glare, she hissed and thrust her open mouth in my direction. In response, I swiped a paw and smacked her hard on the cheek. My claws dug through, leaving four gashes in her skin. When she pulled back, a crest of feathers rose from her head, her teeth disappeared, and her lips transformed into a beak. I was stunned. Shape-shifting birds really did exist!
Now an eagle, the creature swooped at me again, although she lost her balance, stumbled forward, and caught her beak in the dirt.
Then I saw it: a jaguar stood on the harpy’s back. It roared something I didn’t understand.
A second jaguar leaped beside the first and shouted, “Run!”
Earning My Spots Page 2