by Sharon Shinn
“We were in a chemistry class together our junior year. We were doing some experiment—I can’t even remember what—mixing together a couple of compounds that created this noxious gas. Our teacher insisted it was harmless,” she says in an aside, her stern face still showing disapproval, “but a couple of people started coughing and one of the boys opened the windows. Derinda was coughing harder than anyone and all of a sudden she jumped out of her chair and said she was going to throw up. Ran out of the room.”
Bonnie lays her spoon aside. “After a few moments, I asked the teacher if I could see if she was all right, but he was so busy trying to wave the fumes out the window that he didn’t answer, so I just went after her. Found her in the girls’ bathroom, crouching in one of the stalls. She kept saying, ‘Don’t come in here, don’t come in here,’ but she sounded really scared. I asked if she wanted me to get the nurse and she said no, and then she started crying. And then she said, ‘Don’t let anyone else come in.’ Of course—school bathroom—there was no lock on the outside door, but I’d brought my backpack with me, and I had a notebook in it. So I made an ‘out of order’ sign and stuck it to the front of the door with a wad of gum. And then I came back in and said, ‘Okay, I think it’s safe.’”
She pauses for a moment. Her wide, dark eyes are a little unfocused as she gazes back at that old memory. I do the math; this must have happened more than forty years ago.
“But she wasn’t there. On the floor of the stall was a pile of clothes and this—this creature. An otter, though at the time, I wasn’t sure what it was. All I knew was that Derinda wasn’t there, and this animal was, and that Derinda had to be the animal. I couldn’t think what to do or what to say. I just stood there staring at her as she came walking out on these—she had the most delicate little feet. I can still hear the sound her claws made on the tile floor of that bathroom. She came mincing out from under the door and then looked up at me.
“I’m sure she was afraid. She told me later that she’d never changed in front of anyone before. She had no idea what I’d do—call the teacher, call the cops, put her in the trash can and take her to the principal’s office. But she knew her fate was in my hands. So she came out and she looked up at me, and she waited for what I’d do next.”
“What did you do?” Celeste asks.
“I got down on the floor and I said, ‘I don’t know what to do to keep you safe. Should I put you outside? Will something eat you if I do that? Should I take you home?’ Well, of course, she couldn’t answer. She started running between me and the window, back and forth. I said, ‘You want me to put you outside?’ and then she came to a stop. I took that as a yes.” Bonnie shrugs. “So I picked her up, careful as I could, and hid her under my jacket. I picked up her clothes, too, and folded them as small as I could. Then I snuck out of the building, and put her down under some trees. And she ran off. I hid her clothes under a bush, then I went back to class. Told the teacher she’d gone home sick.”
Bonnie takes a deep breath. “Two days later she was back in class. Didn’t say anything to me right then, but we walked home together when school was over. And she told me that she was a shape-shifter, and described what her life was like, and said she’d never known anyone outside her family that she could trust. We started dating, and we were together three years.” She stops abruptly. I can tell Celeste is dying to ask the obvious question: Why did you break up? But even Celeste can sometimes tell where the boundaries are.
I’m surprised when it’s Alonzo who speaks up. “Did you love her as much as you love Aurelia?”
I tense up, wondering how Bonnie will answer. A couple of months ago, he’d asked me if I loved Ryan, and I didn’t know what to say. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It’s complicated. I think Alonzo’s experiences with love are so limited that he’s still trying to figure it out.
Well, I suppose all of us are still trying to figure it out.
Bonnie gives him her full attention, not seeming at all alarmed by the necessity of answering the query. “I loved her as much as I knew how, considering I was only seventeen when we met. I don’t think I understood back then how generous you have to be when you love someone else. I don’t think I got all of it right.”
He pushes the donut crumbs around on his plate. “What if you were still dating her, you know, when you met Aurelia? Who would you pick?”
She still doesn’t seem alarmed, though I think this question is even worse. She leans back deeper into her chair and seems to consider. “What a very interesting dilemma. If I’d still been with Derinda . . . I don’t think I’m the kind of woman who leaves one person for another, so I doubt that would have happened. But Aurelia and I would have been very good friends, I think. We would have been special people in each other’s lives. I would always be happy the universe had thrown her in my path.”
That seems to satisfy him; he nods and reaches for another donut. Bonnie straightens in her chair and becomes her usual brisk, no-nonsense self. “That’s the last donut for you, young man. In fact, eat it while you gather up your things. It’s time we were going home.”
She offers to help me do the dishes while Alonzo stuffs his dirty laundry in his gym bag, but I wave her off. “I’ll make Celeste help,” I say. “She hasn’t worked hard enough the past three days.”
Bonnie and Alonzo are gone within fifteen minutes, and I start clearing the table. Celeste pours herself another margarita and stays seated at the table. “I don’t feel like helping,” she informs me.
I grin. “That’s fine. You’ve done enough. In fact, you’ve been uncharacteristically wonderful.”
She snorts. “Comma, bitch.”
Dirty dishes in my hands, I turn back to her, laughing. “What? I didn’t say that.”
“Yeah, but I can hear it in your voice, so you may as well just say it out loud.”
I scrape food into the trash and load the dishwasher. “Well, bitch, I really appreciated you dropping everything and coming here to hang out in the boonies with me and Zo. I’m sure you had to give up dozens of social engagements and dates with hot guys, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
“Hot guys have been in short supply lately,” she says. “But there’s a new bar that opened up in the Square. Supposed to be a lot of fun. So if you want to make it up to me, let’s go out Friday night.”
I wrinkle my nose in distaste, but I nod anyway. I’m always ill at ease in bars. I don’t know how to talk to strangers, I don’t like loud music and flashing lights, and I’m afraid to drink too much because I have a long, winding drive home. But sometimes I think if I spend one more solitary weekend alone on the property, I’ll turn into a stooped and demented old crone before I’ve even hit thirty.
The Square is a section of Quinville that contains about eight bars and five restaurants across a few adjacent blocks. It boasts the only nightlife to speak of in the whole town, so I’ve been there dozens of times. I think Celeste goes almost every week. She’ll meet a guy in one venue or another, date him for a few months, then move on. It can be pretty humorous sometimes—we might encounter three of her ex-boyfriends in the same night. She’s still on relatively good terms with most of them, but one night this drunk guy came up to our table and started shouting and waving his arms and threatening to cut her up. The bar owner called the cops and had him hauled off.
There’s usually some kind of excitement when Celeste’s around.
“Sounds like fun,” I say. I snap shut the dishwasher door and return to the table to sit down. There’s enough left in the bottle for me to pour myself half a margarita.
“We could invite Ryan,” she says.
I hesitate a little too long before I say, “Sure.”
She leans her elbows on the table and gives me a piercing stare. “So what’s up with you two, anyway?”
I shake my head and give her a wide-eyed expression. “Nothing.”
“Yeah, right.”
“You know. I’m serious and he’s not. I want to stay here and take care of the property and all the animals, and he wants to travel around the country. I’m too responsible. Or he’s too irresponsible. We don’t suit each other.”
“Yeah, but he’s crazy about you.”
“You think so? Maybe.”
She makes a throaty sound of irritation. “And I always thought you were crazy about him.”
I sip my margarita. I have spent so much time trying to figure out how I feel about Ryan, and I still can’t put the emotions into words. “He fascinates me. I feel drawn to him. I feel connected to him. He—when he shows up at my door, I feel this little kick of excitement. Even now. But he’s—” I shake my head. “I’m always in this state of high alert when I’m with him. I never know what’s going to happen next. I can never fully relax.”
She tosses back the rest of the liquid in her glass. “So? He’s never boring. That’s not a bad thing.” She grins. “Especially for a very dull girl like yourself.”
“Bitch,” I say obligingly.
She leans forward again. “But I suppose the real question is: Do you love him or don’t you?”
“I’m not sure that is the question,” I say slowly. “I think it’s: Do I trust him or don’t I?”
“You don’t trust him? Ryan? What, you think he’d cheat on you? Steal your money?”
Suddenly I’m irritated. “If you think he’s so perfect, why don’t you go out with him?”
She grins. “We’d claw each other’s eyes out within a week. We’re too much alike.”
“I don’t think you’re alike at all.”
That surprises her. In fact, it’s sort of an article of faith between Ryan and Celeste that they’re twins separated at birth. They tend to like the same music, the same movies, the same politics, the same people. Sometimes they’ll call each other up to ask the stupidest questions. What time did you wake up this morning? Or If you could either learn to fly or learn to become invisible, which would you choose? They crow in delight when their answers match.
“What’s different about us?” she demands.
I salute her with my glass, now almost empty. “You I’d trust with my life.”
* * *
Celeste spends the night, but only because I take away her car keys. “Friends don’t let friends loose on Highway W after too many drinks,” I tell her. She’s only slightly annoyed and not even remotely surprised.
She’s gone in the morning before I get up, but that’s all right. I have plenty to do. Animals to care for, bills to pay, e-mails to answer.
One of the e-mails is from Nina Kassebaum, Janet’s mother, who still doesn’t know her daughter is dead. It’s hard to explain why I’ve kept up this deception for so many years. The two of them weren’t close—Janet left home when she was eighteen and never laid eyes on either parent again. She told me the only reason she answered her mother’s letters was because she didn’t have the energy to be cruel enough to ignore them. They never talked about important things—I’m not sure her mother even knew about Cooper, Janet’s shape-shifter lover, and she certainly didn’t know that creatures such as shape-shifters existed. They would trade observations about the weather, and Janet would tell her about some of the human clients she’d met and the more interesting ailments their pets had contracted. Her mother would respond with similarly bland news and anecdotes.
It was obvious to me that, even if Janet didn’t care about these meaningless exchanges, her mother was desperate to keep this faint connection between them alive. Janet never went into much detail about the abuses that went on when she was still under her parents’ roof, but I gathered there had been a fair amount of violence and invective. She just walked away, but her mother couldn’t let her go. It gave Nina the slimmest, sparest thread of comfort to believe Janet didn’t hate her, Janet was happy, Janet had not been destroyed by her mother’s choices.
I can’t take that comfort away by telling her Janet is dead.
And, I’ll be honest here, I get a certain amount of satisfaction from the connection as well. My own mother died when I was a little girl, my father when I was in my early twenties. Shape-shifters tend to live short lives, because the stresses on their bodies just take too great a toll. I miss both of my parents. I miss having someone in my life who loves me simply because I exist—not because I’m funny or charming or smart or beautiful or gifted or kind. Just because I am. And despite what Janet thought, I believe her mother loved her for that very reason.
So I continue to write to Nina, and she writes back, and both of us, in a very small way, rejoice.
Today I don’t have much news to share. I type up a recipe Bonnie gave me last week, tell her that Alonzo has been here for a few days to help out, though of course I’m not specific about why I needed him. She’s become interested in Alonzo, I don’t know why; she asks after him when I don’t mention him in our infrequent letters. I wonder sometimes if she had been a foster child herself, though I can’t ask her because it seems like the sort of thing I ought to know. She even requested a photo of him once, which I duly sent. I had to remember at the last minute to send one of Alonzo by himself, not one that showed him standing next to me.
I conclude:
Well, that’s about it for now. Tons of work still to get done before I can call it a day. There’s never any “time off” when you have animals to take care of.
TTYL.
I sign the e-mail with her daughter’s name and hit send.
I do have work to do, but I’m not going back to the barns and kennels. I’m heading to the tiny laboratory Janet set up in the smallest room of the house. She’s the one who started experimenting with various serums and concoctions, trying to find the right combinations of chemicals that would prevent or slow down Cooper’s transformations from a man to a wolf. She never found the magic potion she was looking for, but she did make some extraordinary discoveries—that changed her life—that changed mine. For three years, I worked alongside her in that little lab, trying to figure out what cues my body sent that triggered my transformations, trying to figure out how to redirect them or block them altogether.
Janet’s theory was that shifters carry the complete genomes of all the animals they transform into, as well as the usual human components. Those who only turn into one kind of animal have somehow managed to switch off all the other genomes, probably through some kind of methylase enzyme complex. She also believed that shifters who only change at infrequent intervals possess a particular kind of RNA retrotransposon that actually alters their DNA. She’d learned all the scientific jargon at vet school; I didn’t always understand the words, but I’d learned how to carry out the necessary experiments nonetheless.
I’ve had some promising results. For the past three months I’ve been inoculating myself with enzymes isolated from a shape-shifter named Isabel who always turns into a yellow tabby—though I don’t know if I took cat shape last week because of those doses or because of some random imperative in my bones.
Last year, my goal was to cut down on the frequency of my transformations, so I used genetic material donated by Baxter, a shape-shifter who changes once a month or less. That experiment had actually been a wild success from my point of view—for the past nine months, I’ve only changed shapes about once every four weeks, a schedule so steady and so reliable that I actually had come to rely on it. I had started to think that I could live something approximating a normal life if I was human three-quarters of the time and could always plan around my transmogrifications.
Apparently not.
I’ve been reluctant to combine serums—start injecting myself with Isabel’s enzymes while still influenced by Baxter’s retrotransposons. But maybe that’s what I have to do if I want to design my own personal schedule and type of transformation. Maybe I have to play Dr. Frankenstein and stitch together my idea o
f the perfect shape-shifter, gathering components from various donors until I have the entire creature expertly assembled.
I already know what that bizarre hybrid would look like. She would have the enviable ability of a shape-shifter named Lanita, who can take whatever form she likes. If she couldn’t have Celeste’s gift for transforming at will, she would have the ability to stave off transformation for up to a week if circumstances dictated. She would be blessed with the knowledge that her time in animal incarnation would last no longer than a day.
But no shape-shifter I’ve ever met has the skill I really want. The ability to stay human forever.
You’d think that, instead of experimenting with the DNA of shifters, I would start doctoring myself with vials of human blood, but that’s the very last trial I would undergo. Shape-shifters learned the hard way that we can’t tolerate infusions from our genetic cousins, most likely because their blood can’t handle all those extra genomes. Occasionally, a human-to-shifter transfusion proceeds without trauma, but other times it results in catastrophic consequences—delirium, madness, death. There are terrible stories of shape-shifters who are critically injured in car crashes or workplace accidents; ambulance drivers rush them, unconscious and bleeding out, to the nearest hospital, where the ER personnel try to save their lives with blood transfusions.
Most of the time, they would have been better off if they’d been left to die at the scene of the disaster. Most of the time, they die anyway, but not before they’ve gone on some kind of rampage—small and personal, or big and terrifying. A few years ago, a shape-shifter over in Missouri got a blood transfusion and ended up crazed, warped, and guilty of murdering five people.
So I’m wary of injecting myself with human blood, even in a small, measured amount.
Lately I’ve been thinking about making a shape-shifter cocktail, controlling for time, controlling for species. I figure it might be time to up the ante, assume a little more risk. There’s no easy or foolproof way to tell if such a cocktail will work, since test-tube experiments don’t yield much information and I refuse to experiment on one of the animals under my care. The only way to really know is to try the formula on myself. Since I want to become a cat on a reassuringly predictable schedule, I mix up a potion that includes equal parts of Isabel and Baxter, and I fill a syringe with the result.