She closed her beady eyes, still cheeping, and the air around her warped again. Her tail vanished, and she grew taller. A naked human girl stood before us, her hair still wet.
“. . . just follow the smell of this world back through the window. It smells like a damp basement with a touch of bacon. And here I am.” She’d finished in English what she must have started saying as a rat. She grinned, putting her hands on her hips. “See? Not so hard. I’d ask London to talk you through her shift now, but she’s about as helpful as a silver bullet.”
London grabbed a towel, her hair hanging down around her face. “Go to hell.”
“At least she’s got a vast vocabulary,” said November.
London’s mouth became a hard line, her eyes averted. I knew how she felt: like she’d been shoved to the margins and marked “loser.” November was too sexy, too gregarious to understand. And I needed to hear what London had to say if I was going to start getting a handle on shifting.
“You’ve done this way more than I have,” I said to London. “And if you have a hard time with it, I’ll probably learn even more from you than from November. You know, if you don’t mind. I’d really appreciate it.”
“Fine. Fuck it.” London finished drying off and threw her towel in the hamper. “I have to shift anyway.”
“Holy crap,” said November. “One kind word and London crumbles like a cookie.”
“Shut up, varmint,” London said, padding to her locker.
I turned off my own shower and grabbed a towel, glad to be covered up once again. As I sat on the bench and November put on her clothes, London stood stiffly and closed her eyes. “So,” she said, “it’s like there’s a wolf off in the distance, running away from me. I don’t want to follow her, but I know that’s the way I have to go.” Under her eyelids, I could see her irises shifting, as if she was searching in the darkness.
“She’s huge, all silvery gray, with eyes like big blue lamps. Sometimes I think it’s my mother, but when I get close, I can see it’s not.” She inhaled sharply. “She’s so fast. She’s getting farther away. I wish she’d just disappear, but I want to graduate from this goddamned school before I die, so I have to run and run . . .”
She lifted her head as if looking at the ceiling through her closed eyes, the long column of her throat exposed. Her fists clenched, and the atmosphere trembled. Then her fists weren’t fists, but huge gray paws. A wolf with silver-gray fur and penetrating sky-blue eyes dropped to all fours where London had been, not three feet away from me.
She took a step forward on her long, rangy legs, her wet, black nose sniffing. She stood nearly three feet high at the shoulder, larger than any normal wolf, her ropy muscles bunching effortlessly beneath her thick coat. I drew back without thinking, my heart thudding.
November laughed. “Now you know how we rats feel. Don’t bite her too hard, London.”
The wolf turned her glowing gaze and growled at November, the fur along her spine ruffling upward.
“Laurentia, I mean, Laurentia,” said November, throwing a nervous smile at me. “When she’s in wolf form, it’s better to humor her.”
London snarled, baring long, sharp teeth.
“Yes, I know you have bigger teeth than I do.” November backed up a couple of steps. “But remember, now, you’re not a wolf made hungry by a morning workout and shifting. You’re Laurentia, a wolf-shifter who will now turn back into a girl so we can hurry up and have a normal breakfast.”
“She wouldn’t . . . eat you,” I said, staring at the huge animal in front of me. “Would she?”
“Of course she wouldn’t,” said November. But she swallowed hard.
I took a step toward the wolf. London. She fixed her gaze on me. There was an alien wildness in those intense blue eyes that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. “That’s not why she won’t do it,” I said. “You won’t do it because it’s wrong. Right, Laurentia? You knew that before you shifted, and you know that now.”
The wolf considered me for a long moment; then she sat down. November took a deep breath in relief.
“Are all wolf-shifters this big and gorgeous in their animal form?” I asked.
November raised her voice to an annoying whine. “Wolves are so magnificent, so elegant, so mysterious. Ugh.” Her voice slid down to normal tones. “Bunch of romantic bull leftover from fairy tales and nature documentaries. All of our animal forms are bigger and more impressive than regular animals, including the rats.”
I looked over at London. “Think we touched a nerve there. Do rats have an inferiority complex?”
London slid her laserlike gaze to November, her eyebrows twitching slightly.
“You try being hunted for generations and told you’re filthy and slimy all the time and see how you feel!” November slammed her locker shut. “Hurry up, London. My stomach’s growling.”
The wolf’s mouth opened in what looked like a panting sort of laugh; then she nodded and shut her eyes. I watched carefully for a long minute as nothing happened. London opened up her eyes and yipped in what sounded like frustration.
November gave an exaggerated sigh. “Now who’s got the inferiority complex?”
“Wait, let’s think about this,” I said. “What does she have to do to get back her human form?” I thought about how London chased down her wolf form in order to shift to it, how she’d described that wolf in beautiful terms and didn’t seem to think of it as being herself. Now that she actually embodied that magnificent animal, maybe she didn’t want to give it up. “You have to let her go,” I said to London. “At least for now. She’ll still be there, waiting, the next time you look for her. Let her go. You’ll find her again.”
London let out a small whine and closed her eyes again. November frowned at me, as if trying to figure out what I meant by all that. The air around the wolf altered, and London stood there once more in her human form. Her brows were furrowed, as if she was thinking hard. She didn’t look at me as she started to get dressed.
“Okay, Stripes,” said November. “Your turn.”
CHAPTER 16
I should’ve been eager to jump into shifting, to learn all about becoming a tiger. But now that the time had come, my heart was pounding unevenly, and my mouth went dry.
“You’re stalling,” said November. “Come on. Let’s see the big bad kitty.”
You can’t go home until you get good at this.
No more endangering myself or my family. I had to start somewhere. Seeing these two girls do it meant it had to be less impossible for me. “Okay. I’ll try.”
I closed my eyes. After falling into the stream I’d found a dark, burning place inside me that led me to shift. Maybe that was the link to Othersphere November talked about. Could I find it now, awake and with no danger looming?
I heard November sigh and shift her weight. So I took a deep breath and tried to remember how it had felt when I’d shifted in that stream. I’d been worried, panicked, desperate. Shifting had been my only way out. Before that, anger had triggered it—frustration with the brace, then fury at Lazar and his thugs.
So maybe dark emotions were the key, all the ones I didn’t like.
But I don’t have any dark emotions.
I was a good girl who didn’t worry her mom. I was so strong that the pain of the brace never bothered me. I was tough enough to take the isolation it kept me in. Everything was fine. Just fine.
But it’s not. Just take a look at your life. Being afraid is getting you nowhere.
And it was exhausting. I’d never get home at this rate. I knew what I had to do.
I found that uneasiness again inside me and pushed my mind toward it. It lay first within my heart. Then it went deeper. The churning darkness lay there still, bringing the weight of dread with it.
I couldn’t breathe. I wanted to run. But instead of pulling back, I forced myself to move closer. The amorphous mass rolled toward me like an immense boulder. But rather than trying and failing to climb over it, I plunged in.
Hot shadows vibrated up my back and down my limbs. I would have called out, but my throat was gone, reformed into something mightier. I roared as I shook my head and the skin and fur around it realigned. My paws hit the ground.
All dread, all fear had fled. The world reoriented itself, and I wanted to smell, to taste, to listen to all of it. I opened my eyes to see November and London with their backs pressed against the lockers, mouths open in shock. A moment ago, that look would have made me cringe. But I was a tiger now, and it was right.
They looked not only sharper and more detailed to my tiger eyes, but they’d become a part of a larger whole. My whiskers detected the currents of air that swirled around them; my eyes analyzed the bounce of light off their skin and hair; I could hear their unique heartbeats. The smell of the room filtered through me, sweat and soap and a pile of candy November must have hidden in her locker. Faint noises came from beyond the room, a locker door slammed, and heavy footsteps exited the boys’ room next door. Arnaldo and Siku were done shifting.
“Holy shit!” said November, her voice scratchy. “You’re huge!”
I lashed my tail, thumping it against the bench. I’d eaten nothing since dinner last night, and inside me lay a deep hollow place that needed to be filled. An artery under the skin of November’s neck pulsed, and I flexed my claws, thinking how it would feel to sink my teeth into that tender flesh.
“Okay, you are looking at me, but not
at
me, and that’s not good,” said November. “Up here, Stripes. Look me in the eye.”
I heard her but couldn’t focus on her voice. One pounce and my hunger would be satisfied. I tensed the muscles in my legs, growing very still.
“Desdemona.”
London said my name very clearly and deliberately. I looked at her. “Remember who you are, who we are. You’re Dez.” She turned to November. “What’s her last name?”
“Hell if I know,” said November. “But you better listen to London, Dez. Morfael will be royally ticked off if you eat me.”
London swallowed hard and took a tiny step toward me. “You have a family somewhere, don’t you? Do you remember them?”
My mother. I had a sudden vision of her, pointing the Tribunal’s gun at me, her hands shaking with terror. And here was November, with the same expression on her face. God, I’d really been thinking about eating her. Poor girl. First London, now me. I couldn’t say I was sorry, so I sat down and waved my tail around airily, twitching my ears to show I was no longer interested in anything involving blood and guts.
Both girls recognized my body language and relaxed. “Okay, so deciding not to eat your cabinmates is the first step to shifting back to your human form,” said November. “Which you will do chop-chop, right?”
I nodded. What I really wanted to do was wolf down some raw meat, go outside, smell the grass, hear the wind in the leaves, and stretch my legs while lying in a pool of sun. But I was a girl as well as a tiger, and the girl had breakfast waiting, if only she could find herself.
“Okay, so close your eyes,” said London, her voice sounding unusually firm.
I shut my eyes and pictured my human body. I imagined the brace and how it had caged me. I had long red hair that frizzed in the rain, green eyes, freckles, and fingers with nails that grew fast.
I opened my eyes and twitched my whiskers at November and London. It wasn’t working.
November sighed. “Cats are so lazy.”
“And rats are so helpful,” said London. “Dez, what are you picturing?”
I tried to frown, but the muscles in my tiger face curled my lip up into a snarl instead. London was squinting at me. “You’re imagining what you look like as a human, aren’t you?”
“I used to do that,” said November. “But it never worked.”
London said, “Don’t think about the outside of your body. Think about the inside. How does it feel? Try that.”
I didn’t quite get what she meant, but it couldn’t hurt to try. I shut my eyes again, trying to find that hot, black nucleus inside me. I found it faster this time. Maybe it was easier to locate in tiger form. It burned inside me, churning and pulling. I flashed on the heat that rose inside me when Caleb looked at me, how my skin thrilled to his touch, how it felt to press against him and have his mouth on mine.
Blackness flashed through me, and there I was, sitting on the floor of the girls’ locker room, naked and human once more.
I scrambled for my towel as November pretended to dust off her hands in satisfaction.
“That was good,” said London. “What did you think about?”
I felt myself blush and got busy putting on my clothes. “Um, just stuff that you can only do in human form. Tigers can’t do everything.”
November let out a laugh and ran a hand down her hip. “Girl bodies are great for lots of things. My former fiancé can attest to that.”
“You were engaged?” I found a pair of socks that were gray from many washings but smelled clean. The odors and sounds around me felt unusually magnified. As before, coming out of animal form changed my human senses for a while. “How old are you?”
“She’s seventeen. Shifters tend to get married young,” said London. She didn’t sound as if she approved.
November nodded. “The tribes want us to start having kids ASAP. Lord knows Roger tried hard to get me there.” She popped her eyebrows up and down.
“Plus, there’s nothing else to do.” London pulled her hair back so only her blond roots showed around her face. She looked young and pretty without the unnatural color spoiling things. “No going to college, no travel abroad, no jobs that take you away from the tribe.”
“That sucks,” I said. “I mean, sorry. It just sounds so limiting.”
“Don’t be sorry,” said London, shutting her locker hard. “It does suck.”
Arnaldo and Siku were waiting for us in the gym area, lounging silently on the equipment. November grabbed Siku’s beefy arm and pulled him toward the door into the main house. “Breakfast, breakfast!” she said, grinning.
He trotted to keep up with her, a slow smile breaking across his face. He looked almost cute when he wasn’t glowering.
A huge meal lay on the table. No sign of Morfael or the mysterious Raynard, but Caleb was there, pouring syrup on a stack of pancakes. He smelled clean, his black hair wet and curling a bit as it dried. He watched me, chewing, as I sat between London and November. No one said anything as huge platters of scrambled eggs, sausages, bacon, toast, and fruit made the rounds. I piled eggs onto my toast, topped it with bacon and took a bite, closing my eyes in ecstasy.
“So, Caleb, what did you do while we were busy shifting?” November asked, looking a little too interested in his answer.
“Turned a teapot into a volcano,” said Caleb. I choked a little on my toast, and he smiled. “Well, not exactly, but I did get it to pour out lava instead of hot water.”
“What good is that?” said Arnaldo.
Caleb shrugged. “Could be handy if you wanted to burn something. But I think Morfael just wanted me to practice. It’s easy to find big shadows, like the ones in you guys. But small ones, like that teapot, are tough.”
“Does every person have a shadow?” I asked.
“No, only shifters,” he said. “And not every object has one either. That’s part of the challenge: to find things with shadows and then figure out a way to use that shadow to your advantage.”
“Are the shadows of people always animals?” I asked.
Morfael spoke as he entered from the kitchen. “In this world, yes.”
“But in Othersphere, maybe there are people with shadows of trees or teacups?” I said.
“Perhaps.” His eyelids half veiled his eyes. “Or perhaps in one of the many other worlds we cannot see.”
“Hey, Siku, what do you think about in order to shift into a bear?” I asked him. “November and London told me what they did, and it really helped.”
The good humor vanished from Siku’s face. “That’s a personal question.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” His shuttered expression made me draw back. “I figured you guys had all talked about this already.”
“Nobody ever asked before,” said November, sucking on a slice of pineapple. “Come on, Sik. I want to know too. What goes through your mind?”
Muffled through a bite of apple, Siku said, “Okay. Bees.”
“Bees?” said Arnaldo.
He nodded, wiping his mouth. “I hear bees buzzing, and I follow the buzzing because bees mean honey.”
November laughed. “Oh, my God, you’re Winnie the Pooh!”
“Could be worse,” said Caleb. “Could be picnic baskets.”
Laughter broke out as Siku shrugged and spooned more honey onto a pancake. Even Morfael had a thin smile on his face as he sat down at the head of the table and helped himself to a piece of toast.
“Your turn, Arnaldo,” I said.
Arnaldo was frowning. “Is that how it is for all of you?” he said. “You think of something you like and you follow it?”
November, London, and Siku nodded. I didn’t do anything since that’s not how it was for me. But I sure didn’t want to discuss what I went through to shift, especially what it took to get me back to human.
“But there’s no way to turn that info into an equation,” Arnaldo said.
Everyone but Arnaldo and Morfael laughed. After a second the shifter kids stopped, eyeing each other self-consciously.
They’re not used to laughing together.
“Maybe it’s more like a sequence,” I said. “Like the countdown before you launch a spaceship.”
Arnaldo blinked at me as something lit up behind his eyes.
“Goody,” said November. “Someone else who speaks geek. Oh, hey.” She leaned over to catch Morfael’s eye. “Why does Dez still have bruises on her waist? Even after she shifted, they didn’t heal up.”
“November!” My face was turning red.
“Oh, please, we’ll all be seeing each other naked at some point,” she said. “Well—” She gave Caleb a sidelong glance. “Most of us anyway. And maybe there’s something wrong with you that Morfael can fix.”
“They’re just old bruises from my back brace,” I said as Morfael gazed at me, expressionless. “It’s no big deal.”
Siku shook his head. “Bruises should heal when you shift. Mine do.”
“The mind is powerful,” said Morfael. “It can cause wounds deeper than the shift can cure.”
“So . . .” November’s brows drew together. “She’s still got the bruises because she
thinks
she’s got them?”
Morfael just kept eating.