Shapeshifters
Authors: Amelia Atwater-Rhodes
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Copyright Act 1968
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SHAPESHIFTERS
ePub ISBN 9781742741444
Kindle ISBN 9781742741451
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
A Random House book
Published by Random House Australia Pty Ltd
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www.randomhouse.com.au
Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children's Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. The works in this collection were originally published separately in hardcover by Delacorte Press in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2007.
Published by arrangement with Random House Children's Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, New York, USA.
All rights reserved.
This collection first published by Random House Australia in 2010
Hawksong
copyright © 2003 by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes
Snakecharm
copyright © 2004 by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes
Falcondance
copyright © 2005 by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes
Wolfcry
copyright © 2006 by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes
Wyvernhail
copyright © 2007 by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes
Cover art copyright © 2010 by Miranda Adria
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian
Copyright Act 1968
), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Random House Australia.
Addresses for companies within the Random House Group can be found at
www.randomhouse.com.au/offices
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National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication Entry
Author: Atwater-Rhodes, Amelia
Title: The Shapeshifters / Amelia Atwater-Rhodes
ISBN: 978 1 86471 890 4 (pbk.)
Target Audience: For secondary school age
Dewey Number: 813.54
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They say the first of my kind was a woman named Alasdair, a human raised by hawks. She learned the language of the birds and was gifted with their form.
It is a pretty myth, I admit, but few actually believe it. No record remains of her life.
No record except for the feathers in every avian's hair, even when otherwise we appear human, and the wings I can grow when I chooseâand of course the beautiful golden hawk's form that is as natural to me as the legs and arms I wear normally.
This myth is one of the stories we hear as children, but it says nothing of reality or the hard lessons we are taught later.
Almost before a child of my kind learns to fly, she learns to hate. She learns of war. She learns of the race that calls itself the serpiente. She learns that they are
untrustworthy, that they are liars and loyal to no one. She learns to fear the garnet eyes of their royal family even though she will probably never see them.
What she never learns is how the fighting began. No, that has been forgotten. Instead she learns that they murdered her family and her loved ones. She learns that these enemies are evil, that their ways are not hers and that they would kill her if they could.
That is all she learns.
This is all I have learned.
Days and weeks and years, and all I know is bloodshed. I hum the songs my mother once sang to me and wish for the peace they promise. It's a peace my mother has never known, nor her mother before her.
How many generations? How many of our soldiers fallen?
And why?
Meaningless hatred: the hatred of an enemy without a face. No one knows why we fight; they only know that we will continue until we win a war it is too late to win, until we have avenged too many dead to avenge, until no one can remember peace anymore, even in songs.
Days and weeks and years.
My brother never returned last night.
Days and weeks and years.
How long until their assassins find me?
Danica Shardae
Heir to the Tuuli Thea