Books by B. V. Larson

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The Birdlords

Real Life

Lost Shores

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CREATURES

by

B. V. Larson

Copyright © 2011 by the author.

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book (not just the sample) and did not purchase it, please purchase your own legal copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the author.

Chapter One

Monsters

I ran until I reached my street. When I turned the corner I slowed down. Usually, this was as far as they chased me. My sides hurt from breathing hard. I looked back, but I didn’t see the pack of monsters that had followed me from the bus stop. I began slogging through the snow. I was almost home.

In between glances over my shoulder, I looked up at the dark clouds overhead. The January sky was gray, as it tended to be in our backwoods town of Camden, Oregon. It had been snowing all week, and it was snowing now. My boots crunched and the snowflakes fell from the sky to sting my cheeks one by one. Each snowflake burned my skin for a moment as it melted away.

Just as the street curved and I saw the lamppost up ahead that marked my house, the creatures rounded the corner behind me. They paused, spotted me, and then came fast, loping and galloping and hopping. I started running again. I had to make it to my door before they caught up.

The things on the icy sidewalk behind me weren’t human. They weren’t animals, either. They were something in-between. They snuffled the ground like animals, and they ran on paws and hooves and claws, but as they chased me they winked and grinned to one another. The grins on the dog-types were particularly disturbing as their black lips curled up to display white, curved fangs.

I thought about stopping and growling at them myself. I thought about bashing Danny, the one that looked like a Rottweiler, right in the snout with my backpack. But I knew there were too many of them. They would bite at the backpack, yank it way, tear up my homework papers.

I made it onto my porch with seconds to spare. One of them made a joke and they all laughed, their laughter sounding like coughing to my human ears. The things were laughing at me, of course. They, my own cousins, had chased me all the way from the bus stop to my front door. I slammed it in their faces, and they howled and scratched and chipped the paint. They poked their horns and snouts and paws into the brass mail slot and snarled fiercely.

“Connor,” shouted my older sister Heather from upstairs. “Don’t let your idiot friends mark up the front door again. Mom will be mad. And remember it’s trash night!”

I twisted the lock and relaxed a little. I looked into my backpack. Homework. A book report. I sighed.

“Answer me, Connor!” shouted Heather again.

“What?” I shouted back.

“Don’t get mouthy, Mom left me in charge. And don’t you dare turn on the TV or the computer until every wrapper and empty soda can is outside.”

“Yeah,” I said.

Outside, the snarling pack echoed: “Answer me, Connor… Yeah…” in the warped voices their animal throats made.

I waited quietly while they knocked things over on the porch and begged me to come out to play. Eventually, the pack wandered away. The game had ended for today.

I went outside cautiously with a big white plastic bag of trash slung over my shoulder. The wind whipped up the snow into flurries, making me jump, but there seemed to be nothing hiding in the growing shadows of dusk.

They had ganged up on me because I was different. I couldn’t wait until I became a monster like everyone else. I really wanted to go through the change, even though it might turn out badly.

I’d heard all about it from my relatives, of course. One lonely night, most likely a night when the moon was full and yellowy and hanging up there in the sky like a fat streetlight, I would feel the change coming on.

At first, it will be an itchy feeling. That’s what everyone tells me. This might start on the tip of one finger. Or the side of my nose. Or maybe in the middle of my back in a place I can’t reach. It will be an itch that keeps returning, like the itch caused by a haircut that sprinkles some tiny hairs down the back of your shirt to prickle your skin.

So far, I’ve felt that itch, but I haven’t changed. Not yet. All of the other kids have changed by now. They know what kind of monster they are, but I still don’t.

The last bag of trash, the big one from the kitchen, never made it into the garbage can on the street. I heard jaws click and a plastic ruffling sound. The bag ripped open like a busted piñata. A dark goat-shape ran off, laughing. Trash spilled out onto the snow. Greasy paper towels and dripping soup cans rolled about on top of a pyramid of chicken bones and orange peels.

“Come back here! I’ll make you eat this junk, Zach!” I shouted.

The only answer was a strange, gargling laugh.

I sighed and began picking up bits of trash from the snow. My fingers were soon slimy and freezing cold.

I thought about Sarah, who had turned just last month. One morning she woke up in her bed and realized she was a blue jay. Just a normal-looking blue jay too, not something horribly warped like a huge plucked bird with blue skin. Her mom had to gently help her out of the blankets. Right away, she had hopped out the window and flew into the sky. Of course, her parents had freaked out and worried she would crash or that a cat would catch her while she tested her new wings. But she came back in one piece.

I think about Sarah’s change, sometimes. Turning into a blue jay is a pretty good deal, really. I mean, she gets to fly and everything and people don’t even get upset when she shows up. She can go to the park and squawk and hop around and even get a picnic handout if she wants to. She’s one of the lucky ones.

Heather, my sister, changed three years ago. She got lucky too. She’s a cat, when she wants to be. She loves cats anyway, and now, for a few nights every month she’s out there prowling around the neighborhood rooftops with the rest of them. Her fur is an orangey color with tiger stripes. An orange tabby cat, that’s what they call her.

And then there’s poor Jake, my best friend. He’s a toad! A crummy toad, poor kid. He doesn’t even look like a normal toad, so he has to hide it. Sometimes, the change strikes people differently and they don’t change all the way. Jake was one of those who hadn’t learned to change completely. Who wants to see a hundred-pound toad with human arms and blue eyes hopping around the garden? Everyone laughs at him.

I can’t laugh at him, however. Because I don’t know yet what I’m going to become. And there are worse things than oversized toads in my family history, let me tell you. Much worse.

My name is Connor Ryerson, I’m twelve years old, and I still don’t know what my life will be like. I still don’t even know what I am.

Everyone in my grade has changed now... Everyone but me, that is.

I’m still waiting.

Chapter Two

Evil Sister

Mom gave Heather one of those small digital movie cameras for Christmas. I really wish she hadn’t.

“And what shape is the loser brother in today? That’s the sixty million dollar question,” said Heather. She approached my bed and circled it.

I opened one eye and aimed it at her. She had the camera, of course, and she was doing her endless documentary on me, her younger brother.

“Its head looks normal, if a little bit chimp-like,” she narrated. The little red light on the camera gleamed at me. I glanced at the clock. It was 6:20 AM. I hated mornings in general, and early mornings with Heather’s camera were the worst.

“Bumpy, nerdy, boy-skin,” Heather continued. She moved the camera very slowly and tried not to wobble it too much. She liked a clear picture so she could show it to her high school girlfriends and have a good laugh later. “The subject’s winter coat has grown in. It has a full head of black hair in a bowl-cut pattern.”

I tossed a book at her from my bed stand. She sidestepped it expertly and the book made a ruffling sound as it hit the wall and slid down onto my dresser.

“The creature’s summer freckles are gone now that it’s winter. But I’m sure it will grow something new and nasty on its face to replace them very soon. Something like a zit, but worse.”

“Get out,” I said. My mouth was full of a nasty morning taste. I hated when Heather called me “It”. She did that all the time.

“Ah,” said Heather. She was now all the way around my bed to the side by the window. “It’s in a bad mood. Could it be covered with fur under those sheets? Or perhaps... feathers?”

I pulled the covers over my head, but it was no use. I knew what was coming next.

With a whoop and a flourish, she yanked off my blankets.

“Hey!” I shouted and snatched at the covers, trying to get them back. Cold air rushed over me and cut right through my thin pajamas. January always left your room so cold it was hard to get up and leave those warm blankets. Camden was out in the boondocks of Oregon, in Harney County, where there were a lot more trees and mountains than there were people.

Heather gasped. “Oh! Oh no!”

She let me have the blankets back and I pulled them over myself. I was happy to feel the warmth again.

“I’m so sorry. Really I am,” said Heather. She sounded like she’d seen something horrible.

I cracked one eye back open and looked at her.

“I just... I just didn’t know,” she said, lowering the camera and looking at me with eyes full of worry and disgust.

Just for a second, just for a tiny fraction of a second, she had me. I saw the look on her face and I wondered: What if I had changed overnight? The way Sarah had changed into a blue jay. What if for me, it wasn’t anything cute and normal like a happy little birdie? What if I had the body of a snake with thick oily scales?

Or worse, what if I was part bug? It happened sometimes. I knew that. The adults only whispered about it, but the older kids would tell you about it when there weren’t any parents around to shut them up. Sometimes, the change was bad. Very bad.

I sat up suddenly and felt around in my bed, felt my body. Skin, hair and pajamas. That was all I found.

Heather was grinning hugely, and recording it all, of course.

“Got you!” she shouted and she ran.

I chased her all the way to the upstairs bathroom, where she slammed the door and locked herself in. No matter how much I banged on the door and yelled at her, all she did was laugh.

“You have to come out of there someday,” I told her.

“No I don’t, punk,” she said. Her voice was muffled coming through the bathroom door.

I waited with my feet freezing. I found my slippers in the hall and jammed my feet into them.

It hadn’t been this way before our mom had gotten the overnight job. She was a nurse and she didn’t even come home now until after Heather and I had taken the bus to school. Every night and morning Heather and I were on our own. We were always messing with each other. Today, it was Heather’s turn, but tonight... Well, I had ways of getting revenge. I always thought of something.

I got mad then and sometimes when I get mad I say things I shouldn’t. “I’m going to get on the phone and call Vater. Jake says he knows the number. Vater will straighten you right out.”

Heather stopped laughing and the door flipped open. I jammed my slippered foot in there before she could shut it again. I was getting stronger now, my kids muscles had hardened into a teen boy’s muscles over the last year. I figured if I pushed hard and long enough, I could force the door open, even though she was still bigger than me.

“Connor, don’t ever talk like that,” she said, straining as I pushed on the door. My sister was no slouch either and she had her feet braced like a sumo wrestler ready to make a charge.

“Why not? You think he can hear us?” I asked, still pushing. I felt the door give an inch and a grin that was half-grimace split my face.

“Don’t say his name!” she said, easing up and showing me her disapproving face in the cracked open doorway. “Don’t ever joke about him.”

I looked up at her and sighed, knowing she was right, I had gone too far. All my strength faded and my plan of forcing open the door faded with it. I stopped pushing. “Okay, okay, it wasn’t funny. I’m sorry, now let me in the bathroom.”

“Promise me!”

“He hasn’t been here since before we were born!”

“Mom says that doesn’t matter,” Heather scolded me. I knew by the look in her eye, the one eye I could see in the cracked open door, that she was serious. She had turned into mom on me, and I hated when she did that. She was fifteen, and she was technically still a kid like me. But at times like this she thought she was Mom.

“Promise me,” she said again.

“Okay, I’ll never make up bull-oney about Vater—”

“Connor!”

“Sorry again. I won’t even say that name! Now let me in.”

“Okay,” she said. She opened the door part-way.

I took a half-step forward, but she leaned around the door into the hall. “Hey, there’s Bennie! Mom must not have let him out,” she said, pointing down the hall. “Here boy!”

I turned to see Bennie, our pet dog, walking up to us. His claws clicked on the hardwood floors with each step. The second I turned and took my foot out of the way, she slammed the door, naturally.

“Hey!” I shouted, “No fair!” I gave the door a kick and it shuddered. The kick stung my toe.

Bennie stopped to look up at me. He was half-Terrier and half-Pekinese. A fluffy, brown-furred little guy with bulging eyes. I smiled at him.

Bennie stared at me and cocked his head. He was probably thinking about his food dish, but it looked like he was thinking about me. Maybe he was trying to tell me I was a fool, and that I should just go down to the other bathroom instead of waiting on Heather. I supposed he was right, but I was in a stubborn mood and wanted to annoy her until she came out. It was the principle of the thing.

But Bennie wasn’t trying to tell me any such thing, I realized after a few moments. He just stared at me, and then his lip shivered up to show a few teeth. He snuffed, and then sneezed. He barked once, nervously.

“Hey boy, good morning,” I said to him.

I reached my hand down toward him.

Bennie backed up. His lips curled fully back and he sniffed at my hand and rejected it. He gave another sharp bark and one of those throaty little growls that he usually saved for days when the garbage truck was rolling up the street.

“What’s wrong?”

His eyes. They got to me. They weren’t the same. Bennie never looked at me like that.

He looked at me as if I were a stranger. My own dog didn’t know me.

Chapter Three

Ruffled Feathers

Everyone was hoping for a snow day, but it didn’t happen. The bus picked me up in front of our house on Raccoon Street and I was on my way to school. The bus heater droned and blew hot dry air down on my head. My hair ruffled and my eyes felt dry.

The bus driver, Mrs. Terry, always played bad old music on the radio. I had no idea what we were listening to today. Some old guy with a twangy voice seemed to have lost his hound dog. Or something like that.

“Connor,” said someone behind me.

I pretended not to hear.

“Connor, I’ve got something for you,” said the voice again. I felt hands on the seatback behind my head. I knew those sweaty hands.

“What, Danny?” I asked, frowning suspiciously over my shoulder at him.

“You still whining about yesterday’s little run?” said Danny, still grinning at me.

I just glared back. Thomas was with him, sitting beside him with a big mean grin on his face. Danny and Thomas were best friends and that was good for them because nobody else had ever wanted to be their friends. They could both change into dogs, and they loved to go out together and get into trouble.

Then Danny lifted something to my face. There was a loud blatting noise and I felt a warm rush of air along with cold bits of wet spray hit my face. They had a balloon, and they had been holding the end of it pinched. When I turned toward them, they let it blow in my face.

They snickered. I wiped my face and glared at them.

“I’ll get you guys,” I said.

“Oooooo,” said Danny.

I turned away from them and Danny reached his hand over to pluck at a single hair on my head. I slapped him away.

Jake, sitting next to me, watched all this without comment.

“Thanks for all the help,” I grumbled to him.

“I’ll tell!” said Jake. That was his answer for everything. It never really did any good. But I guess I couldn’t blame him for not standing up to guys like Danny and Thomas. What was he going to do, turn into a toad to scare them? Ha!

Danny could make himself into a Rottweiler, a big scary-looking dog. Thomas turned into one of those Alaskan dogs. Malamutes they called them. That breed of dog doesn’t bark, which maybe was why Thomas always let Danny do the talking.

“You know, I hope I turn into something big when I go through the change,” I told Jake.

“Connor, you don’t want that,” said Jake.

“I don’t mean something like... You know.”

“Nothing like a disgusting fat toad, you mean.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Nope, but you thought it.”

Great, I thought, now Jake was mad at me too. I could hear Danny and Thomas behind me. They were laughing and having a great time, making funny sounds with their hands, mouths and armpits. They had a talent for making funny sounds, those two.

I looked at Jake, sulking next to me. He had a big mop of blond hair that hung down in very straight lines from a central point on his head. His hair looked like a wig, because it hung down so straightly it wasn’t natural looking. He had chubby cheeks and glasses. I wondered if he wore his glasses when he turned into a weretoad.

I’d only seen him actually turn into a toad once, and I think my reaction that day made him my friend forever. All I did was not laugh. Everyone else laughed. It was at school, in the cafeteria, and I remember we were all having sloppy joes that day. Suddenly, Jake had grown a huge tongue that spilled out of his mouth into his half-eaten sloppy joe. Then his legs had sort of wriggled, kinking up and firing his shoes right off his feet when the rubbery flippers sprouted. Moments later, the transformation was complete and there, instead of Jake, sat a huge lumpy toad.

I did smile, I have to admit that. But I didn’t laugh. Everyone else laughed so hard he just hopped down from the lunch table and crawled away toward the office. He had lumpy warty skin and huge eyes and an even huger mouth. I could see in his big eyes he was scared and upset, and somehow it just wasn’t funny to me. He had hidden in the Principal’s office the rest of the day.

But later on, he told me he had noticed that I hadn’t laughed.

“You know, Jake,” I said.

He didn’t look at me.

“You know why I didn’t laugh at you that day you changed in the cafeteria?”

He finally looked at me. “Why?”

“Because I don’t know what I’ll become. It didn’t seem funny to me. One of these days, I’ll become something, but I don’t know what it is. That worries me. It could be something a lot worse than what happens to you.”

Jake was quiet for a minute.

“Thanks,” he said finally.

“Thanks for what? For not laughing?”

“No,” he said. “Thanks for making me think that maybe, just maybe, someone at this school will have it worse than me.”

I made a face at him. He laughed.

“That’s what I’m here for,” I said, “to cheer people up. If you feel down in the dumps, just say to yourself: ‘Well, at least I’m not Connor Ryerson.’”

We both laughed loudly until the dog pack behind us demanded to know what was so funny.

We just laughed harder, knowing that would annoy them.

Sarah scooted over to our seat then, coming to talk to me. Sarah had dark eyes that darted everywhere and never seemed to miss anything. She always wore her ginger ale-colored hair in a ponytail. Her hair was so short, however, that the ponytail couldn’t even droop down and instead formed sort of a fan of hair behind her head.

“What are you guys laughing so hard about?” she asked.

“Three in a seat breaks the rules,” said Jake teasingly.

“Shut it, you old toad,” she told him.

“Catch any good worms, lately?” he asked her.

She slapped at him. It was all in good play, I knew. We were tight friends. She was such a good friend that she could tease Jake about being a toad and tease me about not being anything at all without getting us mad. In turn, we could tease her about being a blue jay on sunny weekends in the park and she didn’t get mad either. Of course, what did she have to become angry about? The only bad thing about being a blue jay was the serious business of eating worms. She always swore she had never tried one because she didn’t want to change back and be sick afterward.

Danny popped up behind us again, making a tsking sound. “Three in a seat, that will never do,” he said. “Mrs. Terry,” he cried out loudly. “Children are breaking the rules back here, and I fear for their safety.”

“Shut up,” said Sarah.

“Mrs. Terry!” Danny shouted more loudly. He jabbed his finger down at Sarah’s head. “Safety first!”

Sarah tried to duck down low, but the driver’s eyes were on us in that big mirror of hers. Sarah’s standing spray of hair gave her away instantly.

“Back to your seat, Sarah. Keep your seat or I’ll have to report you.”

“Yes, Mrs. Terry,” said Sarah.

“See you boys at lunch and in Algebra,” she said.

As she passed Danny, she shook herself. It was an odd gesture, something only angry birds can do: she ruffled up, seeming to swell. A single blue feather slipped out of her sweater and floated down.

“Jerk,” she said to him.

“Only protecting your delicate feathers, Miss,” said Danny as if he were some kind of good Samaritan. He snatched Sarah’s blue feather out of the air and tickled Thomas’ nose with it until he sneezed.

Chapter Four

The New Girl

The next time the bus stopped, my day changed completely. Looking back, I think maybe my whole life changed.

A new girl got on the bus. She was cute. She wore one of those girly coats with a hood that had fake fluffy white fur coming out of it. The white fluff encircled her face like a picture frame. Her nose was small and turned up a tiny bit. There were three tiny freckles on the tip. That nose and her naturally smiling eyes made her look like an elf. I liked her immediately. Sometimes, a girl’s face will just strike me as especially nice, even though a hundred other guys wouldn’t think she was anything special. This was one of those times.

Everyone stared at her. In Camden, everyone is somebody else’s second cousin, and we aren’t used to new kids. Every once in a while, someone would try to move into our town who wasn’t special like us. After a few months they figured out that Camden was no normal little backwoods town and they would move out again—usually really fast in the middle of the night. But even that kind of thing was rare. People from Burns and other small towns in Harney County knew about us. They knew there was something different about our little town.

Oh sure, they might smile nervously at us when they stopped to get gas or to buy a cola at the Stop-n-Go. But they weren’t trying to make friends. They just didn’t want any trouble. They smiled at us the way you might smile at a mean dog that is curling its lips, but hasn’t come after you yet. Oh sure, they acted friendly enough, but none of them would ever even think of moving here.

The elf-looking girl was very self-conscious. She knew we were all staring. She didn’t meet anyone’s eyes. She came down the aisle slowly, looking for an empty seat.

“Jake, get down,” I hissed.

“What?”

“Just get down off the seat. Sit on the floor.”

“Why?”

“Just do it, for me, man,” I said. I half shoved him down to the floor.

He muttered something about being mistreated just because he was a toad and sat on the floor. I scooted over into his spot, with my legs hanging over his shoulder.

“What the—” he complained.

“Shhh!”

Sure enough, the girl saw the open spot. It was the first one in sight, and she headed right for it. I knew she would. All she wanted to do was get away from all those eyes, and the quickest way to do that was to get her rear into a seat.

She slid in next to me. I felt my heart quicken. She smelled good, like fresh snow and perfume and fruity shampoo.

“I’m Connor Ryerson,” I said, putting out my hand.

She looked at me and stuck out her hand slowly. “Elizabeth Hatter,” she said, “But everyone calls me Beth—” she broke off here, noticing Jake, who glared up at us.

“Who’s that?”

“Oh, that’s Jake,” I said breezily. “Don’t mind, him, he likes it down there.”

“I do not,” said Jake, pinching my leg.

I gave him a mild kick.

“Nice to meet you, Jake,” she said, trying not to laugh.

“Let me up,” he complained.

“No, you can’t,” I hissed. “If Mrs. Terry sees we have three in the seat again, she’ll fuss about it.”

He glared. “You owe me, dude.”

“I’m the only one that didn’t laugh, remember?” I reminded him.

“You still owe me.”

Beth looked from one of us to the other in bemused disbelief. She looked around on the bus, and for a panicky moment, I thought she was going to get up and find another seat.

Right then, Mrs. Terry finished marking down the new arrival on her clipboard and the bus lurched back out onto the road again.

“Great to meet you, Beth,” I said with my best winning smile.

“You too,” she said. She shook her head at us and laughed. “You guys are the class clowns, aren’t you?”

“You figured it out!” I said, laughing with her.

She addressed Jake, and leaned down toward him. “You really like squatting down there?”

“Squatting,” I chuckled, “a very good choice of words.”

Jake made a growling sound. “One word about toadstools and I’ll bite your legs off.”

Chapter Five

Ketchup

We hadn’t gone another five minutes before I was certain she was a normal person. For most people, this is a good thing, but not in Camden. If you’re not a monster in my hometown, sooner or later, you are going to have a problem. Normal people, or mundanes as my mom calls them, never seem to like living in a town full of creatures. Once they figured it out, they panicked every time.

But in matters of the heart, I’m not always reasonable. Well, in truth, I’m never reasonable about girls. Heather would say that I’m totally immature and that I freak out every girl that likes me. My mom says I’m not even in high school yet and not to worry about it. But I do.

Beth was different. She was so easy to talk to, not like most of the boring girls in town who all wanted to know if I had changed or not yet. That was all they cared about. But Beth wouldn’t know anything about that. In fact, she probably would be happy if I turned out to have no powers at all. If I was a mundane, I would eventually have to leave Camden. That was clan law, our law, everyone here had to have the power to change or they had to leave.

“I like math, do you like math?” Beth asked me.

“Yeah! Well, no,” I said.

Beth pulled down that fluffy hood of hers and revealed hair that was somewhere between brown and red. It was straight and long and she had a gold barrette clipped over each ear. A wisp of white fluff caught on one of her barrettes and just floated there as we talked. To me, it seemed like an angel’s halo.

“What about Geometry?” she asked me. “Have you got that far yet?

“No,” I admitted. “I’m in Algebra.”

“He’s getting a D in there, too,” said Jake, interrupting.

“Am not.”

“Are too.”

Beth giggled.

“I’m getting up. I’m done squatting down here,” Jake said. He began pushing his way up onto the bench seat with us.

“Toads like squatting,” I told him.

“Not one more word,” said Jake. The green vinyl seat wasn’t really wide enough for three. I found myself pressed up against Beth.

“What is it with you guys and toads?” asked Beth. She started talking very quickly and excitedly. I liked the way she did that. “Do you like them or hate them or have you been traumatized by a wild herd of toads? Or what?”

“Or what,” said Jake.

“Well,” I said slowly, not sure how to tell her.

“Just tell her,” said Jake. “She’s going to find out soon enough anyway.”

“That’s right,” said a new voice, butting into our conversation. It was Danny from the seat behind us. His grinning face was the last thing I wanted to see hovering over my shoulder like a bad moon, but there he was.

“Danny”, I said, “people tell you to shut up all the time for good reasons.”

“Make me.”

“Danny, she’s new. There’s no need to be rude.”

“She’s a mundane. I can’t believe anyone rented her family a place.”

“I’m staying with my Aunt Suzy,” said Beth, talking quickly again. “It’s just for the rest of the year, I guess. My parents split up and somehow I ended up with my Aunt. What the heck is a mundane, anyway?”

“It just means you’re normal,” I said.

“Well, that’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

“Not around here,” said Danny. “It means you don’t belong.”

“Danny, just back off,” I said.

“Make me,” he said again, resting his chin on the seat between us. His face was inches away, and I thought of all sorts of mean things to do to him. Then I got one of my ideas. I dug into Jake’s lunch with one hand.

“Hey, get out of there!” Jake complained.

It only took a second to find one of those little ketchup packets. Jake always had a few in his lunch, those little white ones that have about enough ketchup to dip three fries. I held it in my hand so Danny didn’t see it.

“What’d you take?” asked Jake, digging in his lunch in outrage.

Danny had his tongue out now, making “Mmmm,” sounds like a little kid. Boy, was he asking for it.

Beth saw the packet in my hand, and she saw me pop it open with my thumbnail. Our eyes met, and she gave me a little smile. I could tell right away that she was like me, that she got ideas.... If she had frowned, I might not have done anything. But with her encouragement, I squirted it into Danny’s face.

He had his eyes closed at the moment of impact and that made the surprise complete and all the sweeter. We roared with laughter. He had ketchup on his cheeks and around the rims of his nostrils and in his eyebrows and gluing his bangs down to his forehead.

Everyone around us laughed too, and soon everyone on the bus was gawking and laughing. Even Thomas had a grin on his face.

But not Danny. His face was as red as the ketchup. He glared at me and rubbed the stuff off with his shirt, which was green. It made dark stains in his shirt that he would wearing all day.

“Hey!” said Mrs. Terry. I could see her eyeing us in that big long mirror she had up there above the windshield.

“Hey, what’s going on?” she asked. “Why are there three of you in that seat again?”

We sank down, trying not to be noticed.

Then I heard a voice in my ear. A quiet, angry voice. It was Danny.

“After school, you’re dead,” he said.

Chapter Six

The Thing on the Roof

While Danny sulked behind us and made dark plans for my future, Jake, Beth and I held our own meeting in our seat.

“What are you going to do now?” asked Beth. “And you never answered any of my questions. What’s with you two and toads? What is a mundane? Sounds like a breed of dog, or something.”

Jake nudged me.

I eyed him and sighed. “I suppose, I might as well tell you. But you probably won’t believe me. Not at first, anyway.”

“Just do it,” said Jake, “she’s already gotten you in enough trouble.

“I’m sorry if I did, but I surely don’t see how,” said Beth. “All I did was walk onto this crazy bus with you crazy kids. Everyone’s been acting strangely since I got here. It’s like you all have a big secret. No one will tell me anything.”

I nodded. “Well, the thing is, we aren’t normal people in this town. It’s kind of hard to explain.”

“I can tell that!” she agreed heartily. “You all seem a bit nutty.”

“Come on, get to it,” said Jake.

“Can I just tell her my way?” I asked.

“First you make me squat down in a hole and now—”

“Toad-in-a-hole!” shouted Thomas from behind us. He laughed uproariously. He had a very strange sense of humor and it was probably best for everyone that he never said much.

“See?” said Beth. “Like that! Why don’t you just tell me about the toad thing?”

“Okay,” I sighed. “Jake here is a toad. At least, he can turn himself into a toad if he wants to. And when the moon is full, sometimes he turns into a toad whether he wants to or not.”

There it was. It was out, and now she could stare at me as if I was completely nuts, just as I knew she would.

Thomas shouted, “Toad-in-a-hole!” again from behind us, laughing like a mad man.

Beth opened her mouth, but for once, she didn’t know what to say.

Then, there was a whooshing sound outside. A big shadow came over the bus, as if a small plane or a huge bird were up there cruising by.

“What’s going on now?” said Beth.

We all craned our necks to see out the windows above the bus. There was something up there, above the snow-crusted pine trees. Or someone.

“Who is it?” asked Jake.

“I can’t see,” I said.

“It looks like a pterodactyl up there!” said Beth excitedly.

There was a thumping, slamming sound on the roof of the bus. Some of the kids squealed. Everyone started yelling at once.

Mrs. Terry pulled the bus over to the side of the road. We lurched to a stop. Everyone fell forward and some people were left rubbing their heads.

“No one lands on my bus,” muttered Mrs. Terry. She climbed out of her chair and pulled the lever to open the door. A cold gust of freezing air swept in.

We were on Berger Street, right near the park. Snow covered everything in the park, of course. The statue of a soldier standing at attention was a mass of icicles. We were only a few blocks away from the school now.

“What the heck is going on?” asked Beth.

“A flyer just landed on the roof,” Jake explained as if it were the simplest thing in the world. “Obviously, they wanted us to stop the bus.”

“Hey!” said Mrs. Terry, craning her head out the open door. “A flyer? Who’s up there? There had better be a bridge out or something!”

A figured climbed down from the roof onto the hood of the bus, and then dropped lightly onto the sidewalk. It was Miss Urdo, the school Principal.

“How can she fly?” asked Beth, staring. “She must have been on a hang-glider or something.”

“She’s a hawk. She must have changed back,” I told her.

Beth stared at me for a moment, and then shook her head and smiled in disbelief.

“Oh, hello Miss Urdo,” said Mrs. Terry. Her anger melted a bit, seeing as it was someone from the school. “I thought a high-schooler was playing a joke.”

“It’s not a joke, I’m afraid, Mrs. Terry,” said our Principal. “School is cancelled today. You have to take all the children up to the Estate.”

“The Estate?” asked Mrs. Terry. “You don’t mean...?”

“Yes, I do. A message arrived this morning. Vater is coming back. We must all prepare to meet him.”

“Hmm,” said Mrs. Terry. “I’ve got a new kid aboard. What about her?”

Miss Urdo looked back along the ranks of seats. We all sat in our places, quiet for once. Everyone wanted to hear. We all strained our ears and shushed each other.

Miss Urdo’s eyes zoomed in and landed squarely on Beth. She had eyes that made you feel like she was watching you from clear across the school grounds. Beth squirmed under her stare.

“I see,” she said to the driver. “We’ll have to bring her along.”

“If we are going to the Estate, maybe we will get to play Hussades,” Danny said excitedly behind us.

“Yes, Danny,” said Urdo. She had the ears of a hawk as well as the eyes. “We will be playing Hussades tonight at the Estate.”

A cheer went up throughout the bus. Everyone was smiling except for me.

“What the heck are Hussades?” asked Beth in my ear.

“It’s sort of hard to explain,” I said, “they are races. You race through an obstacle course. It’s a sport we brought over from the old country.”

“The old country?”

I looked at her pretty little nose and sighed. There was so much she didn’t know about. She would learn it all from Hussades. She would learn about all shapes the other kids could change into. And she’d learn that I couldn’t change into anything at all.

Chapter Seven

The Estate

“Okay,” said Beth. She started talking slowly then sped up the more she talked. “You guys are good. I mean, really, good. You had me going, I’ll admit it. I’m the new girl and you had your fun. I actually believed you, for just a minute there. When the Principal banged on the roof, I’ve got to say, that was pretty wild. I mean, what is the deal? Was she up there the whole time inspecting it or something?”

“Beth—” I began, but that was all I managed to get out.

“Hold it! Stop right there! I know what you are going to say. You don’t have to keep shoveling out the fairy tale stuff! The fun is over now and I want to know where this bus is going. Maybe I should go ask the driver.”

“Her name is Mrs. Terry,” Jake said helpfully.

“Yes, whatever,” said Beth. She was tugging at the white fluff of her hood and winding it up with her fingers.

“It’s all true, Beth,” I told her gently. “Try not to freak out. Just sit back and watch. You aren’t in any danger. We are pretty harmless.”

“I’m not harmless,” said Danny from behind us. I noticed he was listening to us, but he wasn’t sticking his face into our conversation anymore. He glared at me with scrunched up eyebrows. He still had ketchup sticking the hairs of his left eyebrow together, I noticed.

I ignored him and turned back to Beth. I didn’t want her to freak out and run off. I liked her. “Just stay calm and watch everything that happens. If you don’t get it, ask me or Jake, we’ll fill you in.”

“So why don’t you just turn into a toad for me, to prove it?” she said to Jake.

Jake looked ashamed. “No.”

“He’s not happy about being a toad,” I told Beth.

“What about you then? What can you turn into?”

“I don’t know yet. I haven’t turned yet. Most kids my age have, but I’m still waiting. It could be anything.”

“Well, isn’t that convenient,” said Beth. She fluttered her eyelashes and gave me a mocking little smile. “I’m not buying any of this, just for the record. You can all have your big laugh on the new kid, but I’m in on it now. The fun is over, everyone. I’m so sorry I’m only gullible, but not extremely gullible. I’m sure you would all enjoy this even more if I were.”

“Okay,” I said, “you don’t have to believe any of it now. I’ll just tell you some things about our town, so you know what to expect.”

“This should be good,” she said, crossing her arms.

“You see the Principal up there?” I asked, pointing to Miss Urdo.

Our Principal had sat down up at the front of the bus in the seat right behind the driver. She and Mrs. Terry were having a hushed conversation.

“You mean the hawk-lady?” she said, sounding like she didn’t believe it.

“Yes. She’s probably going to give you a chance to get out of this. She’ll ask you for your Aunt’s phone number and she will call and get you a ride home.”

“Why?”

“Because you are not one of us, and we are all headed to the Estate.”

“Who says I’m not one of you?” she asked. “I’m related to someone from this town.”

Jake and I looked at each other. Could she be a creature too?

“I suppose it’s possible, but people from around here don’t leave too often. I think your parents would have told you.”

“Okay, well, whatever,” she said making a flapping motion in the air with her hands. “What is this about? The Estate thing, I mean.”

I chewed my lip and thought about it. I wasn’t sure I should tell her.

Danny finally leaned into the talk again. “Good thinking, Connor,” he said. “She’s a mundane. Don’t give away all the family secrets.”

I was so tired of Danny. I decided to tell Beth about Vater, if only because it would bug him.

“It’s all about Vater,” I told her. “He’s the original creature, from a long time ago. We are all related to him.”

Danny made a disgusted sound and leaned back in his seat.

“Vater? What kind of a name is that?” asked Beth.

“It’s Swiss, I think. My parents always say he’s from the Alps.”

Beth nodded, but kept her lips pursed up in a doubtful expression.

“Vater is our great, great, great grandfather. Actually, I should probably put about five more greats on there, but you get the idea. The guy is really old and our clan is really a very large family that is all descended from one person. We don’t say his real name, we just call him Vater. That means something in the old country, where we all came from about a hundred years ago. But nobody has seen him since long before I was born. Some people even thought he was dead, until now.”

“So, he is some kind of super-old dude? How old can he be?”

Jake and I looked at each other.

“Well, Mr. Waldheim, that’s the dean, he says he’s very old,” I said.

“Mr. Waldheim is an alligator,” said Jake, jumping in.

“An alligator?” asked Beth, rolling her eyes.

“He’s really more like a monitor lizard,” I said seriously, “when he changes I mean. You see, sometimes it’s hard to tell exactly what kind of animal a person is because they only change part way, and they keep part of their human look.”

“You don’t want to get detention with him when he gets mad,” added Jake.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” said Beth, sighing. “You were talking about Vater.”

“No one really knows exactly how old he is,” I said. “At least if they do, they don’t tell us kids.”

“Half-human alligators? Centuries-old grandpas?” she said. She threw up her hands. “Now I know you guys are full of it.”

The bus stopped then. We hadn’t been paying attention to where we were going, but now everyone looked outside. The white-frosted trees crowded up to the bus on both sides of the narrow lane. A huge gate of black iron bars squatted in front of us. Beyond the gate, the road ran uphill to a big, strange-looking house. It was huge and rambling and my mom always called it “Victorian”. It had shingles on the walls, lots of balconies and turrets like a castle. There were stained-glass windows and complex designs made of wood everywhere. There were statues too, carved things like animals and gargoyles that crouched on the roof. Even though it was morning, up high, maybe on the third floor, a pair of yellow lights shined in the windows. They looked like eyes staring down at us.

“This is the Estate?” asked Beth, her voice filled with awe at the sight of it. “Who lives there?”

“No one really lives in the mansion. It’s Vater’s home. We take care of it for him.”

“That’s wild! It looks huge.”

The gates slowly swung open. We heard them creaking, screeching on their rusty hinges.

“What’s in there?” she hissed to us excitedly.

“Lots of stuff,” I said. “We usually get to go in only once a year, for Vater’s birthday celebration in the summer. We have a cake and everything, but he never comes.”

“What’s up in those top rooms? In those towers and things?”

“I don’t know. I’ve only been on the main floor,” I said.

“Cool!” she said. “I want to check out those towers.”

I smiled. Beth was no chicken. Maybe she would do all right in this town after all.

“Listen,” I said to her, “if you want to come along, I’ll help cover for you and tell you what is going on.”

She looked at me and chewed her lower lip. “Okay,” she said.

The bus didn’t move, not even when the gate was open. Mrs. Urdo got up and walked down the aisle. Her steps were graceful, measured and sure. She stopped in front of us and crouched down so her face was at our level. She looked at Beth seriously.

“I’ve called for a ride for you,” she said.

Beth looked at her for a long moment. Everyone else on the bus stared at us.

“I don’t want a ride,” she said finally.

“You aren’t from here,” said Miss Urdo gently. “There’s no need for you go with us.”

Beth and Miss Urdo locked stares for a moment. “I do belong here,” said Beth. “My Aunt is from here. I’m just like everyone else.”

Urdo stared at her for a moment longer without any expression. Then she glanced at me. Her gaze always made me squirm. Then, finally, she gave us a tiny smile and nodded.

She walked back up the aisle to her seat and the bus lurched into gear.

We headed into the Estate grounds.

Chapter Eight

The Mansion

We piled out of the bus and trudged through the snow to the mansion steps. They were steep, about a foot high each, as if made for someone taller than a normal human. HHHuge double doors waited for us at the top of the steps. The doors stood open, yawning wide like a giant’s mouth. Beth stopped at the threshold before going inside.

I stopped beside her. She was eyeing the ornate old-fashioned door. She ran her hands over the heavy rings that opened the door.

“The adults called this The Portal,” I explained.

“Is that real gold?” she asked. She rubbed the thick, gleaming rings of yellow metal that you pulled on to open the doors. They looked like they were solid gold to me.

“Maybe,” I said. “Knowing my family, it probably is.”

“That’s great,” she said, grinning. “You might be full of it, Connor, but I’m glad I came along.”

I nodded and smiled. She would figure things out soon enough. I only hoped she didn’t go too crazy when something really strange happened.

We tramped into the entryway and knocked snow off our boots. The carpet was thick and red and your feet sank into it as if you were walking on cushions. Along the walls were more carvings, mostly of animals. One was a wooden carving of a beaver that leaned on a cane. The beaver looked old and tired, but strained to stand up straight.

Beth giggled. She pointed at the beaver. “One of your uncles, I presume?”

“A grand aunt, actually,” I said.

“Oh Connor, you’re too much.”

I pointed at the plaque at the bottom of the statue. It read: In loving memory of Aunt Ethel.

Beth’s mouth sagged open. “Oh, come on!” she said. She stared at it for a few more moments. “Okay, so somebody had an aunt that loved beavers, right?”

“Yeah, she had a thing for beavers that walked with canes,” said Jake.

Beth just laughed and shook her head.

Jake and I exchanged glances. I knew what he was thinking. She still didn’t believe us. This was going to be a rough landing for Miss Elizabeth Hatter.

The entry led into the Great Hall. The hall was two stories high and all around the upper level were dusty portraits of people in old-fashioned clothes. Down on our level there were doors and corridors that led off deeper into the mansion. The middle of the hall was full of more plush, red carpet and a lot of overstuffed chairs and sofas. There were tables and old-fashioned frosted-glass lamps everywhere. Miss Urdo let us all relax here.

“This has got to be the best room,” said Jake, stretching out on a sofa.

Beth made me tell her things about the people in the portraits up on the walls, but I couldn’t remember most of their names.

While we talked, something fluttered down to land on the arm of my chair. It was Sarah. She was in the shape of a blue jay.

“Hello, Sarah,” I said.

She pecked at my hand. I reached out a single finger and she hopped on. I lifted her gently. Her tail wobbled as she balanced on my finger.

Beth, for the first time maybe, looked astounded. “How did that bird get in here? It’s trained? I didn’t know people had pet blue jays.”

She walked over and knelt to get a closer look. Sarah and I looked at her. Sarah cocked her head curiously.

“Sarah, meet Beth,” I said, introducing them as gracefully as I could. “Beth, Sarah.”

“Oh geez, another animal friend of yours, huh? Is she your auntie too?” laughed Beth.

“Beth,” I whispered, “I told you to play along with things until you understood.”

“But this is too much,” she said. Beth laughed hard and loud, she was so loud that all the other kids noticed. Soon everyone in the Great Hall stopped talking and looked over at us to see what was so funny.

“Beth,” I whispered.

She had the giggles now, and shook her head at me. She couldn’t talk.

“How rude,” said Sarah.

Beth’s laugh cut off with a gasp. “Someone taught it to talk?”

“Sarah,” I said to the bird, “You know she’s new.”

Sarah turned her beak toward me and said, “Your new girlfriend isn’t too smart, is she?”

“Sarah!” I said, shocked at her rudeness.

“Hmph,” huffed Sarah, turning around so her tail feathers faced me.

Beth’s face froze and her eyes flashed from my face to Sarah’s. In that instant, she got it. I was talking to a bird and it was talking back in a snooty fashion. One moment, everything was a big joke. Funny and interesting, but not real. Then the next moment, she got it all. All at once. Everything was real, and the joke was on her.

It was too much surprise all at once for one person. Beth was still kneeling in front of my chair. She rocked backward, lost her balance and sat down hard. Fortunately, the carpet was cushy. She stared at Sarah and me in shock. Her mouth made a perfect “O” of surprise, matching her wide, staring eyes.

Everyone in the place hooted with laughter.

I felt bad for Beth, but it could have been worse. She was only embarrassed and shocked. Not scared.

Chapter Nine

Beth Believes

Beth recovered well. I have to give her that. She didn’t scream or pull her hair out or run out through the portal into the estate grounds and the swirling snow. She did shove a lot of her fingers into her mouth. She chewed on them, without seeming to realize she was doing it.

“You okay, Beth?” I asked, leaning forward. She still sat on the floor, looking around at everyone as if we might turn into monsters and eat her or something.

She shook her head. She wasn’t okay. This wasn’t the first day at a new school she had been expecting.

“Let’s go somewhere,” I suggested. I reached out my hand to her. Sarah fluttered up to land on my shoulder and looked down at Beth.

“She’s lost it,” said Sarah.

“Hush, Sarah,” I said. “You aren’t helping.”

“Hmph,” said Sarah, and she fluttered away to land on a frosted-glass lamp. Her claws clicked on the glass. She left behind a single blue feather that floated down between Beth and I.

Beth took her hand out of her mouth and reached out. She caught the feather gently. She lifted it up on her finger. We both looked at it. By now, since nothing else interesting had happened, the other kids had gone back to their conversations.

“She’s a bird,” said Beth.

“That’s right,” I said encouragingly.

“She’s really a bird,” she said, still staring at the feather. Her pretty eyes lifted up and met mine. I was glad to see she was calm again.

I nodded, not knowing what else to do.

“What happens now? Am I the guest of honor at some cannibal feast?”

I laughed. “No, silly. What will probably happen is they will give us some job to do, like dusting the statues. That’s what usually happens when we are having the birthday party.”

“I hope they give us the basement to clean,” said Jake. “I hear there’s really weird stuff in the attic.”

“They say the same about the basement,” I said.

“What about her clothes?” asked Beth suddenly.

“Hmm?” I said.

“Her the clothes, Sarah’s clothes. What happens to them when she turns into a bird?”

“They drop on the floor, I guess,” I said.

“She has to wriggle out of them,” said Jake.

“So when she turns back, she’ll have nothing on?” asked Beth.

We grinned. “Yeah, usually we get a friend to hang onto our stuff. When we change back, we do it in a closet or bathroom. Just like changing into a swimsuit.”

She nodded. “So, Connor, you don’t know what you can change into yet?”

I looked down at my hands. “No.”

“It could be anything, right?” she asked. “Like a lion or a dolphin or a spider, even?”

I nodded. “Usually it is some kind of mammal. Birds and reptiles are less common.”

“So are amphibians,” said Jake gloomily.

“Are you worried about it?” she asked me.

“Of course,” I said. “Mostly, I’m worried about not changing into anything at all.”

“Then you would be a mundane like me, right?” asked Beth. “I’d like that, actually.”

I looked up at her we smiled at each other. I thought she still looked a bit sick. She hadn’t really gotten used to all this yet, but she was making a very good attempt to be cool.

A few minutes later Miss Urdo stalked back into the room. She didn’t shout for our attention. She didn’t have to. She just stopped in the middle of us and stood there. Soon, everyone quieted down and looked at her, knowing she would have something important to say.

“Time to prepare, children. This time, you will dust and organize the attic.”

Jake groaned. We’d all heard strange stories about the attic.

“Where are all the other kids?” asked Danny.

Urdo turned on him slowly. She didn’t really like questions. You could just tell.

“Few others are coming,” she said. “Your class has been requested. You are the youngest generation of new changelings, and Vater wants to meet you in person.”

There were a lot of gasps, but no more questions.

Chapter Ten

The Attic

After climbing four flights of wide, creaking steps, we finally reached the attic. In most houses, the attic is no big deal. You have to make sure you don’t bump your head, but that is about it. But the mansion’s attic was different, very different. First of all, it’s huge. The roof didn’t come to a single peak over this giant house. Instead, it sort of flattened out into many small roof peaks over different sections of the building.

The attic itself consisted of dozens of oddly shaped rooms with walls that cut at sharp angles. Sometimes you could hardly stand up straight because the ceiling slanted down on you and the whole room was only four feet high. All the rooms were dimly lit and dusty and strangely quiet. Usually the only light came from tiny dirty windows that cut slits in the ceiling or down close to the floor. The light that did get in past the cobwebs and layered dust was gray and lifeless.

“Everything smells old,” I said, twitching my nose.

Beth followed me closely. Sarah and Jake had gone off in another direction to explore. We entered another room, looking around. This one was storing five huge chandeliers of cut glass covered in white sheets. They hung down from chains mounted in the slanted ceiling. The chandeliers tinkled when you touched them.

“Do they honestly expect us to clean this place up?” I asked her, holding up my broom and dustpan. “It would take an army a year to do all this.”

Beth bent down and swept up a foot-wide hole in the dusty floor. “See? It can be done, you just have to actually do some work,” she said laughing at me.

“Oh,” I said, “now that we are alone, I wanted to apologize for Sarah’s mean words. She isn’t normally like that. I don’t know what got into her.”

“You don’t?” she asked. She sounded surprised.

“No, she’s normally sweet.”

Beth shook her head and widened her clean spot on the floor.

“She’s just jealous, silly,” she told me.

“What?”

“She’s probably used to having your attentions all to herself. You know what I mean.”

I opened my mouth to deny it, but snapped it shut again. It did make sense. Beth was new and Sarah was used to getting all my attention. But that meant....

“You think she actually likes me?” I asked.

Beth just laughed and rolled her eyes. I joined her in sweeping up. After a few minutes, the room looked a lot better.

Then I heard a familiar sound. It was the sharp tread of boots on the creaking hardwood floor. Miss Urdo was coming. We were hard at work when she came in and she nodded curtly. We had even cleaned some of the junk off the tiny slit windows along the floor.

“Very good, children,” she said. “Come with me, I’ve got something to show you two.”

We got up, dusted off our knees and followed her. Beth gave me a questioning look and I shrugged in answer. I had no idea where she was taking us.

We followed her graceful, sure steps quietly. Even Beth had figured out by now that Principal Urdo didn’t like questions.

Beth skipped ahead of me, and began imitating Miss Urdo’s unique way of walking. She put her hands to her sides with fingers out and walked by swinging her hips. She walked on her toes to create the look that the Principal had because of her heeled boots. Beth really did look like Urdo, but she was overdoing it, of course, exaggerating everything for a laugh.

Beth looked over her shoulder and gave me a huge impish grin and I almost blew it by laughing aloud. I managed to contain it and only released a single snort.

Urdo’s head slid around and her eyes landed on us. Beth was instantly herself again. She was quick, I was impressed.

Urdo gazed at each of us for a second. We smiled back, innocently.

“This,” she said, reaching her hand down to a tiny door in the wall and twisting the brass doorknob. “Is a very special laboratory.”

She opened the door, which had to be no more than three feet square. Light and cold air swept in through it.

Urdo gestured with a slow sweeping motion of her hand.

We crept through the door in a crouch.

Urdo followed us and clicked the door shut behind us.

A large part of the laboratory was taken up by an enormous, old-fashioned brass telescope that stuck up like a cannon through a domed metal ceiling. I had been on a field trip to see Haggart Observatory. There they had computers and electric motors to control the telescope. In this place, there were only huge gears and levers and cranks. Everything had to be moved by hand.

“Wow,” said Beth, “this is great!”

Urdo smiled at her. When she smiled, she looked pretty. Normally, I never thought of her that way. She was old compared to us kids. I figured she must be at least thirty. She usually had such a serious look, I never thought of her as pretty.

Urdo went to a hanging chain that dangled down one wall. She grabbed the chain and hauled on it. There was a rattling, rusty sound as unoiled equipment squealed into life. Part of the dome ceiling slid aside, allowing a slit about a foot wide to open up.

Snow and cold wind blew down upon us from the gray skies outside. Beth grabbed her own shoulders and shivered, but she looked excited.

“Are we going to try out the telescope?” I asked.

Urdo nodded and indicated a big brass wheel near me. It looked like the kind of wheel you saw on old movies to steer sailing ships, except it was made of metal. I grabbed it and cranked it. It barely budged. Beth came and helped me.

Grunting and straining with effort, we got the wheel moving. It became easier once it was started.

“Hey, the telescope is moving!” said Beth.

I looked up and sure enough, as we cranked the wheel, the barrel of the telescope rose up and poked its tip out into the sky.

“But wait,” I said, pausing in my efforts. “How are we going to see anything? The sky is totally overcast and there is snow everywhere.”

Miss Urdo gave us a smile. It was a cold, thin smile.

“This telescope is special,” she said.

Chapter Eleven

The Forever Room

We watched with big eyes as Urdo moved to an old roll top desk and produced a tiny silver key from a chain around her neck. She took out the key and slid it into the lock. It clicked and the rolling cover that closed the desk rolled up and away with a rattling sound.

There was a lot of stuff on the desk. There were bottles of fine colored liquids and shiny stones. There was a tiny green plant, no bigger than a maple leaf that sat in a pot. It looked green and fresh, but everything else was dusty.

“How did that plant live?” I asked. I put my hand to my mouth as Urdo turned slowly to face me. Her eyes cut into mine.

“Sorry,” I said, “I know you hate questions.”

“Nonsense,” she said, turning back to the plant. “I only dislike silly questions.”

“Um,” said Beth. “It looks like that desk hasn’t been opened in about a hundred years, so how can it be so alive and green in there?”

Urdo froze and her eyes slid to Beth. I knew the only thing she liked less than questions were interruptions.

“There are oddities of science in this place,” she said, as if this explained everything. “Some things are from now, some things are from before, and some things are from after.”

“You mean the past and the future?” I asked.

“Perhaps,” she said, nodding. “But those words are too certain, too definite. These things are from what might have happened, and from what might yet be.”

Beth and I exchanged confused glances.

“We call this room The Forever Room,” said Urdo. “There are things here that can see what might be the past, and what might be the future. Let me demonstrate with a little experiment.”

Urdo opened one of the dozens of small flat drawers in the desk and produced a disk. The disk was about six inches in diameter. She held it up. It was round and made of rose-colored glass. It had a silvery metal rim.

“A lenses for the telescope?” guessed Beth.

Urdo nodded and proceeded to open a sliding door on the side of the telescope. She slid the lens into place. Then she worked small wheels that squeaked as the telescope shifted into place and an oval-shaped viewing cup came up to lock in place in front of us.

She indicated the viewing cup and I stepped forward. Beth jostled into me. We looked at each other and laughed.

“You first,” said Beth.

“You are the guest,” I said.

Excitedly, Beth climbed onto a stool and hunched over the viewing cup. I could see light shine up into her face. Her eyes widened and she made sounds of appreciation.

“You see stars?” asked Urdo. She seemed surprised.

“Oh, yes,” said Beth. “There are stars. Lots of them. Three of the brightest are in a line. Sooo bright. This thing really can look right through the clouds, Connor!”

“My turn,” I said, feeling greedy.

“Give her a chance, she must remember the pattern,” said Urdo. She thumbed busily through a large dusty catalogue of star pictures.

I made a face and practically danced around her.

When she finally sat back, she beamed a smile that lit up the room. “Okay,” she said reluctantly, “Your turn, Connor. Sorry to be piggy.”

I climbed onto the stool and it was warm with her body heat. I put my eye down to the eyepiece.

I did indeed see stars. But they weren’t as bright as she described. And there was no line of three bright shining stars in the pattern. Instead, they looked like a glowy mass at first. There were two reddish ones that looked like eyes, and twinkling hood of dimmer stars around it. These stars were so faint they just made the sky glow, like the Milky Way.

“Do you see stars, Connor?” Urdo asked me quietly.

“Yes, but they are nothing like what Beth described,” I said. “I don’t understand. Did you move the gears or something?”

“Just tell me what you see.”

“Two red dots, like eyes, and a hood of bluish glow around them, forming a mountain or a triangle, sort of.”

“Ah,” she said. She pulled two sheets out of a pile of star charts. She showed one to Beth first.

“Yes,” said Beth, “that’s the pattern. That’s what I saw.”

“Orion,” said Urdo, “The Hunter.”

She showed me another sheet, and it did indeed resemble the constellation I’d seen. I realized now that’s what they were, constellations.

“Loki,” she said, “The Thief.”

“So we saw different things?” asked Beth.

“Of course. When using that particular lens, everyone sees the thing they will become.”

I looked at the telescope in awe. I reached out a finger and tapped it. “This thing is magic.”

Urdo laughed. It was a sound I’d never heard her make before. Her laughter was muted and smooth.

“No,” she shook her head, “We don’t use magic. We only use science of a sort that other people have forgotten. Or which, perhaps, they haven’t yet dreamed.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

Urdo looked at me for a moment, as if deciding if she should answer or not. I stared back, certain it had not been a silly question.

“If you went back in time to the most brilliant inventors of centuries past, such as Ben Franklin or Leonardo Da Vinci, and you showed them a working television or a computer, what would they think of it?”

“They’d be amazed,” I said.

“Certainly. And what if you showed it to the common folk?”

“They would call it witchcraft,” said Beth.

“Exactly,” said Urdo, gracing her with a rare smile. “Any technology, sufficiently advanced, will be considered magic by someone who doesn’t understand it.”

“But why did we see different things?” I asked, daring another question.

“What you see shows you what you are, or what you will become.”

“I’m going to be a thief?” I asked. “I’ve never stolen a thing.”

She shook her head. “Perhaps you will be something quiet. Something that can move unseen.”

I thought about it, and realized I’d always been a schemer. Thieves were tricky. I wasn’t sure I liked the whole idea. “Something like a cat? My sister is a cat. Danny and Thomas would love to chase my tail off.”

“Does everyone see something different?” asked Beth.

She nodded her head. “Yes, unless they are mundane.”

“What do mundane people see?” I asked.

Urdo lifted a graceful hand into the air and directed her finger out into the open slit that revealed the gray skies. “They see only the sky and the clouds and the falling snow.”

I turned to Beth. “So you aren’t just a normal girl after all,” I said.

Beth’s eyes widened. “Then what am I?”

Chapter Twelve

Abandoned

Urdo lifted her head as if she heard a distant call. I thought I heard something, but couldn’t be sure. Urdo twisted her long neck around without moving the rest of her body. She looked up into the gray daylight that came in through the slit in the sky.

I wanted to ask her if she heard something, but she so obviously did that I couldn’t bring myself to ask a silly question like that. Beth and I glanced at each other and shrugged.

Finally, she turned her head around again to face us. “You two are of interest. I must leave you for now.”

She walked over to the tiny square door and put the silver key in the lock. It clicked.

“Um,” I said, “Shouldn’t we be going down to the basement? Everyone will be getting ready for the Hussades.”

She smiled at me with half her mouth. “I doubt you will be missed.”

It was my turn to frown. The Hussades were obstacle challenges and the competition required you to change your shape in various ways to cross the obstacles. Her remark indicated that we wouldn’t be important because we couldn’t change into anything. I crossed my arms.

Then she did something quite unexpected. She turned into a hawk.

First, her head narrowed. Then her face extended forward, poking out at us. The nose grew to a point, then became harder and longer and began to curve downward into a beak. The beak shifted from pink to whitish gray. Her nostrils became tiny slits on the top of the beak.

I could hear Beth breathing next to me, quick, shallow puffs of fright. Her hand groped for mine and clasped it. I didn’t say anything, I was too stunned. I was as surprised and amazed by the process as Beth was. I knew people changed, everyone did it, but for us it was like changing your clothes. It was something you did in private. You simply didn’t stand in front of people and openly shift your form. Doing so would allow others to see all the intermediate forms, sometimes odd, embarrassing or disgusting sights would emerge during this time.

The black, stretchy clothes Urdo wore beneath her cloak accommodated her new shape easily. Specially designed, they fit her in either form. As a hawk, she didn’t shrink in size as Sarah did when she became a blue jay. She became a huge hawk of human weight with a wingspan of perhaps twenty feet or more. The wings grew into sight, arching up over her back. They loomed up higher than her head, and then she folded them down on her back again.

“Connor,” whispered Beth. She squeezed my hand very hard.

I squeezed back lightly, but didn’t say anything. I felt it was best that we simply stood there quietly.

Feathers were sprouting everywhere now. They were reddish brown and long and thick. Since she was bigger than any natural hawk, those feathers were over a foot long and they rustled as they popped out of her skin. Her beak opened and we watched her teeth recede in her mouth.

She shook off her boots one at a time. Yellow wrinkled skin covered her taloned feet.

She opened her wings and snapped them once, experimentally.

We backed away reflexively, up against the roll top desk. Beth still gripped my hand.

“That was most unusual, Principal Urdo,” I said diplomatically.

She looked down at me. Her eyes had the same hard glint in them they always had. In any form, she seemed to have the cold predatory eyes of a hawk.

“Things have changed, little thief,” she told me. The words sounded deeper coming from her altered throat.

I was immediately upset. I didn’t like to be called a thief by anyone. I’d never stolen a thing in my life. It wasn’t fair. I opened my mouth to protest, but she brushed past us. She hopped up onto the brass tube of the telescope. Her talons scrabbled a bit, but she managed to climb up the polished tube. When she reached the roof, she ducked her head down, folded her wings tightly and squeezed out into the open sky.

“She’s leaving us,” said Beth.

Once out in the open, Urdo unfurled her great wings and gave an unearthly screaming cry. I’d heard hawks before, but only at a distance and only from their relatively tiny beaks. This cry was like that of a dinosaur. It was long and loud and full of pride. Beth and I both hunched down our heads and clasped our ears.

She took off then, with powerful strokes of her wings. In a moment, she was gone.

We ran to the slit and craned our necks, but she was nowhere in sight.

“Where’d she go?” asked Beth.

I went to the tiny square door and tried the knob.

“We’re locked in,” I said.

“What?” cried Beth. She tried the door too. She looked at me in horror. “What have you gotten me into?”

“I don’t know,” I told her. “The grownups are acting strangely. I don’t really understand it. But I bet it has something to do with Vater coming back.”

“What happens when he comes home?”

I shook my head. “He hasn’t been here since before I was born. None of the young people really know. I’m sure it will be a happy time. We’ve always celebrated the very idea of it every year.”

“Connor,” said Beth grabbing both my hands in hers. “This might all seem normal to you, but I don’t like how this is going. What are we going to do if we are stuck in here?”

“We could mess around with the telescope some more,” I suggested.

“Forget that. You got me into this Connor. You have to get me out.”

I looked at Beth. Her face was drawn and full of fear. These weren’t her people. To an outsider, our ways were always scary.

I looked around the room and saw no way out other than the door. Then my eyes landed on the slit that led out onto the roof.

I’d always been good at slipping through tight spots.

Chapter Thirteen

A Cold Escape

I had to drag Beth through the wide slit that allowed the telescope to poke outside. After a struggle with clothes catching on gears and twisting our bodies to fit through the narrow space, we finally made it. She felt surprisingly light when I pulled her after me, as if she only weighed half what I did. Once we are outside on the snowy side of the dome, we half-fell, half-slid down onto the roof.

The outside air was fresh, but bitingly cold. We didn’t have our coats, we’d left those down in the entry area. The roof wore a thick coat of snow. The scrolling woodwork along the eaves was iced like a cake. We stood on a relatively flat spot, but there were peaks and adornments everywhere around us. I grabbed hold of a crouched gargoyle’s iron wings while I brushed snow from my legs.

“How did you wriggle out of that tiny hole so fast?” she asked, brushing herself. She looked up at the observatory dome and the tiny slit we’d come through. It was less than a foot wide.

“I’m not sure how I managed to pull you out, you don’t weigh much do you?”

“I guess not,” she said. She frowned. “What seems odd to me is that you are definitely bigger around than I am and I’m the one that almost got stuck.

I shrugged. “I’ve always been able to get through tight spots like that. One time, when I was little, I got under the house and crawled everywhere down there with the spiders until my parents coaxed me out. They were very upset and I was very dirty.”

“I’ll bet,” said Beth. “What are we going to do now? I’m cold.”

I looked around and my initial excitement at having escaped the Forever Room faded. It was cold, icy and windy up here. “I suppose we have to find another way down. There has to be a roof access door somewhere.”

“Brrrr,” said Beth. She crossed her arms tightly and pulled her head down.

“We’ll get up on that high platform and have a look around,” I said, pointing.

She followed me as we picked our way across the roof. The worst part was crossing the slanted roof sections. They were icy and steep. More than once, we slid into valleys between the peaks and had to start over. I made sure we didn’t get too close to the edge. That way there was no chance we would fall off.

While we struggled across the roof like mountaineers crossing frost-covered hills, Beth talked.

“You never did really explain Hussades to me. What the heck are they, exactly?”

“It’s rather like crossing this roof,” I said. “Except with a lot more variety. It’s a race through an obstacle course. The big difference is that the players change their shape so they can do better in the race.”

“I thought it was impolite to change in front of others,” she said.

“Yes. There is a tent to change in. You only change once in secret, that’s part of the game’s strategy. You have to choose your form to beat your opponent’s form. That’s what makes it exciting, because the opponents are always different for each race.”

“So, why don’t the flying types always win?”

“Well, the courses usually have some trick for them, like a flaming hoop or two you have to dive through. If you have feathers, this can be a problem. You will have crispy wings very quickly.”

Beth thought about that for a few moments. I looked at her face. It was red from the cold, but I could see the gears working in her mind. She was a thinker, I could tell.

Slipping and scratching at the icy shingles, we managed to reach the top of a high platform. A big statue stood up there. I couldn’t quite make out what the statue was supposed to be, the snow caked up on it so much you could only see a few bits poking out. What we could see were snarling lips and a single clawed hand. The hand stretched toward the sky with every finger extended. The claw-tips were curved hooks of black iron, and I decided right away we didn’t want to know what else was hidden under that white blanket of snow. I didn’t want Beth to see anything... scary. She didn’t need to know everything about my family just yet.

“So, couldn’t you just be so small you could dart through the center of the flaming hoop?” she asked.

I smiled. Her mind was still working on Hussades. “Yes, but if you are very small, you often have trouble with pushing open a big door or something like that. Every form has its advantage and disadvantage, but the better you are at morphing into different shapes the more options you have.”

She nodded. “Why can’t you just study the course and come up with the best form?”

“You can do that, but the course itself changes somewhat every time.”

“Hmm, so every game has different players and a different course?”

“Yes, it’s very exciting.”

“But Connor, you can’t change into anything. And neither can I.”

I nodded grimly. “Don’t rub it in. I’m always picked last when we form up the teams.”

She made a sympathetic clucking sound with her tongue. We turned our attention back to the frozen roof. We scanned the hilly expanse of white lumps and dark crevices.

“Over there!” said Beth, bumping me with her shoulder and pointing. I looked and there it was! A box-shaped entrance that made a hump in the snow. A door faced us. It was small and square, like the one that had let us into the Forever Room.

“I wondered why the doors up here are small and square?” I asked aloud.

Beth shrugged.

It took a few minutes of scrambling, but we managed to get over there. I gripped the frosty brass knob and twisted. I twisted harder, but it didn’t budge.

“Locked,” I said.

Beth groaned. “We’ll have to break one of the windows soon, or we will freeze out here.”

I chewed my lower lip. First, we had disobeyed the principal’s instructions to stay in the Forever Room. Second, we were about to break into the mansion.

I looked back at the dark footprints we’d left all over the roof. If it didn’t snow soon, it wouldn’t require the eyes of a hawk to notice we had been messing around on the roof.

Then I snapped my fingers. I smiled at Beth. She smiled back and shook her head slowly.

“Somehow,” she said, “I know I’m not going to like your idea this time.”

I laughed. “The balcony,” I said. “There’s one on the fourth floor right over the side, very near the roof. All we have to do is drop down onto it and go inside.”

Beth looked at me like I was crazy. “I’m not dropping over the side of the roof! We can’t tell what’s down there! I’m not even going to near the edge, I’ll slip off.”

I waved away her concerns. “Here,” I said, giving her one end of my scarf. “Hold onto this while I go over and have a look.”

She protested, but finally took hold of one end. She had her other hand wrapped around the foot of a hoofed statue. Holding onto my scarf, I crawled out on the frosty roof and went flat on my belly. I looked down over the edge. There it was beneath me, the balcony I was looking for. But it was a bit over to the left from where we were.

“There it is!” I said triumphantly.

“Be careful!” Beth shouted back.

I squirmed along the roof line toward the balcony. When I got closer, I hung my head out further and tried to peek in the glass doors. Inside I saw two figures moving around. The room beyond the glass was the upstairs study. I could see books lined up in massive dark wooden cases. There were globes and more statues and big leather chairs with ottomans to put your feet on while you enjoyed a book. One of the people inside turned my way and I recognized the face. It was Danny. He saw me, and he frowned, and the frown melted into surprise. He started laughing and pointing at me.

“Great,” I said over my shoulder to Beth. “We’ve been spotted.”

“Connor!” said Beth. She pointed up into the sky.

I followed her finger and there, so high above us that she was no more than a winged speck, flew a very large hawk. I slipped a bit from craning my neck and grabbed the scarf. I yanked on it, and caught myself.

I heard Beth give a yelp. She had been looking up as well, and when I yanked the scarf, I pulled her enough to start her sliding down toward me. The frost crackled and hissed as her shoes slid over it.

Beth slid faster. Her boot took aim at my side. She came down like a kid sledding down a hill, going faster as she went.

I braced myself as best I could, gripping the roof edge, but it wasn’t enough.

Beth didn’t weigh much, but she weighed enough. When she hit me in the side, we both went over the edge.

Chapter Fourteen

Mr. Waldheim

The wooden railing caught me right in the ribs. I folded over it and felt all the air whoosh out of my lungs. I thought that hurt until Beth landed on top of me a fraction of a second later. Then I knew what pain was.

We rolled around moaning on the floor of the balcony. I fingered my ribs, they were sore, but nothing seemed broken. When I could open my eyes, I searched the sky for Urdo, but she was gone. I was sure she had seen us, however. We’d been two dark spots crawling around on the glaring white roof. A hawk would have seen us from miles off.

The door rattled, then opened, and a warm dry wind washed over us from inside the mansion. Danny and Thomas poked their heads out. They grinned at us wolfishly.

“This is good,” said Danny, laughing. “This is really good, and I want to say that I appreciate it. I haven’t laughed so hard at a fool since that day Jake turned into a mutated, warty, pink toad during lunch.”

“I’m here to make people happy,” I said with a groan. I struggled up and stood as straight as I was able. There was snow up my back and my ribs were singing in pain.

Danny nodded. “Yes, it was good,” he said, wiping his eyes.

Beth and I glanced at each other. Our clothes were frosted with snow and ice crystals. I reached for the door handle.

Suddenly, his smile was gone. “But not good enough,” he said. His smile had transformed into a sneer.

“You should check the mirror,” I told him.

Danny’s eyes narrowed.

“I think you missed a spot,” I said. “A bit of ketchup in the left eyebrow, I think. You must be a messy eater.”

Beth put a cautionary hand on my shoulder. I thought to myself she was probably right, but things were already torn up between Danny and me.

Danny’s frown turned into a glare.

Thomas barked with new, louder laughter. If anything, he seemed to think my comment was funnier than watching us fall.

“I’m still going to kill you,” Danny said. His mouth opened to show rows of white teeth. Danny elbowed Thomas out of his way as he went back inside. The elbow cut off Thomas’ laughter and turned it into a sudden gasp.

“You didn’t have to—” began Thomas.

“Shut up and get in here,” Danny told him.

I knew right away what he was going to do. Maybe being tortured by my older sister all these years had its benefits.

He was fast, but my foot was faster. I had my shoe wedged in the door before he could slam it shut and lock it. Beth and I worked together to wrench it open.

The fight might have started right then if Mr. Waldheim hadn’t shown up.

“Children,” he said in his stern voice. His voice was always stern. At least, I’d never heard him sound any other way. We all froze and looked up. He was the Dean, and was in charge of discipline at our school. We all felt like little kids again when he showed up. He was all about detention and intimidating lectures and red notes to take home. Everyone took their hands off the door handle and each other.

Beth and I took the opportunity to squeeze through the door into the blissfully warm study. The door shut behind us with a click.

Waldheim ran his eyes over each of us in turn. He paused when he looked at Beth. He gave her a quizzical nod. “The new girl,” he said quietly. “Not a good start, Miss Hatter.”

“Sorry sir,” she said.

“So, does anyone want to tell me what is going on here?” he said, speaking with sudden loudness. “Who will begin explaining why we are tearing up the mansion on the very eve of the Master’s return? Explain your actions!”

Danny eyed me with a sneer, daring me to talk. Daring me to whine about his threats. I knew he would immediately rat on me for the ketchup and climbing the roof.

“Such as, sir?” I asked innocently. It came out sounding more sarcastic than I meant it to.

“Such as why you children were playing on the balcony? Such as why you were all wrestling over the door like sharks in a frenzy over a side of beef when I walked in? Such as why there is such a thick coating of snow on your clothes, Mr. Connor Ryerson?”

I blinked and tried a weak smile. My innocent approach had clearly backfired. He was angry, so angry I thought I saw a hint of yellow in his eyes. His eyes always did that before he lost it and turned into a lizard on you. His nostrils were flaring too. They looked bigger than they should. So did his mouth. That was never a good thing.

“Sorry, sir!” I said.

Beth squeezed my hand. I could tell she was trying not to freak out.

Danny watched me with a quiet smile. Suddenly, Waldheim turned on him and took a step forward. He loomed over Danny. His spine seemed longer than before and it was no longer straight. His head hung down over Danny on its now overly-long neck. That neck looked like a flower stalk and his head looked like a huge blossom that weighed so much it had bent the stalk over. I thought Mr. Waldheim might suddenly open his growing, triangular mouth and snatch off Danny’s startled face.

“And what are you smiling about? Is this all very funny to you, boy?” demanded Waldheim. He was hissing out his “S” sounds now. When he spoke, I could see that his mouth, which had turned lipless now, contained far too much tongue for a human.

“No. Not funny sir,” said Danny. He stood still like a soldier at attention and looked away from the Dean. “I apologize, sir.”

Waldheim paused for a moment. His tongue flicked out. The forked tip of it lightly brushed Danny’s hair with two pink, fleshy tines. Danny winced, but didn’t jump back. Wrenched by the sticky tongue, a few strands stood up from his head as straight and stiffly as Danny himself.

I noticed Beth had her eyes closed. But she hadn’t broken and run.

Waldheim swung back to me. Those eyes were completely yellow now, and the pupils had drawn into black slits. “So,” he said to me, and I felt his odd, warm, moist breath washing over me. “What do you say?”

“I’m sorry as well, sir,” I said quickly. “Won’t happen again.”

He blew more hot breath over my head for a moment. I noticed his hands were scaly, greenish-black and they now terminated in curved, wicked-looking claws.

Finally, he nodded. His hands turned pink again. The claws shrank into fingernails. “Very well. See that it doesn’t.”

His body shortened and thickened and we all relaxed a few notches. Beth even opened her eyes.

“I’m sorry, children,” Waldheim said. “If I seem easily angered, I apologize. We are all anxious, because tonight is a very special night.”

“Sir,” said Beth.

Waldheim eyed her with some surprise. “What is it, Miss Hatter?”

“Will we all meet Vater? What is he like?”

Waldheim had completed his transition back into a human being. His eyes were blue again, and they looked down on her with something approaching kindness.

“Count yourself lucky, girl,” he said, “if you never find out.”

Beth opened her mouth to ask something else, but thought the better of it. I was very relieved that she stopped herself. Normally, no one dared to speak directly about Vater.

“Now off with you,” said Waldheim. “Back downstairs, everyone. First it’s time for lunch, then an afternoon of Hussades. I dare say none of you deserve such a treat. But perhaps you can work out some of your excess energies on the obstacle course. I understand it’s a mean one this time.”

Chapter Fifteen

The Fifteen-Foot Tongue

We slipped past Waldheim and trotted out of the room. Passing through the study, we saw books, globes, and even a suit of armor, but none of us had time to look around. We rushed down the wide stairs with thumping steps. I kept my distance from Danny, just in case he considered giving me a push.

Danny and Thomas quickly left us behind and raced down the steps.

“Out of the way, losers,” said Danny as he rushed down. Thomas’ laughter floated back up to our ears.

I slapped myself on the back of my head.

“What?” asked Beth.

“They are already thinking of it as a race. We are heading to the Hussades and all I could think of was my own safety. That will never win the race.”

“Why do they call it Hussades anyway?” asked Beth.

“It’s an old-country thing. You are supposed to shout ‘huzzah, huzzah,’ to cheer for people. Over time, that kind of warped into the name, we call each race a Hussade. When we team-up and have a lot of races, we call it Hussades.”

She nodded and we joined the mass of kids heading down a wide hallway that led past the kitchens to the dining hall. We got into line behind all the other kids. Danny and Thomas ran forward and found some friends who let them cut into the line. The rest of us grumbled, but no one did anything.

“Why do you all let them get away with stuff like that?” asked Beth.

“Do you want me to start a fight?” I asked.

“No, silly. You could just tell on them. Like back there in the study, with that man or dean or thing, Mr. Waldheim. You could have just told him what was really going on. And another thing, was he about to eat our heads off or what?”

“Probably not,” I laughed. “He makes a good dean because he’s scary, but I’ve never heard any real proof that he’s eaten any of us.”

“Okay, so what about speaking up?”

“We would have gotten into trouble too.”

“Sure, but it would have been worth it, they were out to kill us or something.”

“Well,” I said slowly, not sure how to begin. “We aren’t quite like the kids from other schools.”

“I certainly know that by now!”

“No. I mean, not just because we change our shapes. We have some different ideas about honor and solving our own problems.”

“You mean the adults wouldn’t have helped us?”
“They wouldn’t have been happy to help. They teach us to be self-reliant. There is an unwritten rule here against tattling.”

“Okay,” said Beth slowly. “But why exactly?”

“Beth, you might think we are just cool and interesting, but most normal people are scared of us. We’re different, and if the rest of the world ever finds out about us, they might come to hunt for us.”

Beth nodded. “I see,” she said soberly. “So I’m actually a danger to you all.”

I looked at her in surprise. She was a fast thinker.

“I know your secrets, and if I told people about them...”

“Fortunately, you’re just a kid,” I told her with a smile. “No one believes a kid who tells crazy stories.”

She grinned back. “Good thing.”

Jake joined us. He didn’t have to cut in line because we were the last ones. He came up at a trot, huffing. He was a bit overweight and usually huffed a lot after even a short run.

“Where have you guys been?” he asked, grabbing us both by the shoulders. “I’ve been looking everywhere. You almost made me miss my lunch.”

We told him all about the Forever Room and our crawling escape on the roof and being caught by Danny and Thomas, and finally meeting up with Mr. Waldheim. His eyes just kept getting bigger as we went. By the time we’d finished talking, we had trays in our hands and had almost made it to the food.

“You mean he almost changed completely?” exclaimed Jake. “Wow, you must have really ticked him off. You’ve a knack for upsetting people, Connor. I’ve always said it.”

I had to admit he was right.

Lunch was better than the standard fare. I wondered if Vater’s coming had made them break out the good stuff. Instead of soy-burgers and previously-frozen veggies, we had roast chicken and mashed potatoes with gravy. The gravy was real too, not that cheap stuff that tastes like salted library paste. There were beans and peas, and even a salad on the side with really good dressing.

“I’m sooo hungry,” said Jake, digging into his heaping plate.

“I’m looking forward to the Hussades,” said Beth.

Jake looked at her with chicken in his mouth. “Why?”

“Connor told me about them, they sound like an exciting sport.”

Jake snorted. “Not interesting for us. Did he mention the part about being picked last? You won’t do any better, you are new and you can’t even turn into anything.”

“You can Jake. You are better off than us,” said Beth.

Jake puffed up a bit with pride. I believe it might have been the first time any girl had ever admired his transformation abilities. “Yes, I can change, sure. But I’m not very good at it. I can’t do special forms. I can’t make just one part of me change like some guys can.”

“Why not? Have you tried?”

“He never practices,” I said. “I tell him he should, but he doesn’t like to. He’s traumatized or something.”

“Shaddup,” muttered Jake. He put his head down and worked on his plate.

“Jake,” said Beth gently. “I bet you could do a lot of cool things. I mean with partial changes.”

“Like what?”

“Well, maybe you make a tongue that snaps out and nails someone’s dessert,” she said. She nodded suggestively toward the next table. Danny and Thomas had gotten to the dessert cart early and had ice cream cones in their hands.

Jake looked at them and smiled.

“That would be cool,” I said.

“And in Hussades, I bet you could gain powerful jumping legs.”

“That’s frogs,” I said. “Toads don’t really jump much.”

Beth gave me a look. This time I knew she was suggesting I shut my mouth.

“I can jump pretty far,” mused Jake. “I once got onto the roof with one hop and my father yelled at me for cracking the shingles.”

“Right,” said Beth, “Exactly.”

I could see that Jake’s mind was working now. I looked at Beth appreciatively. She had gone so quickly from someone who didn’t even believe in us to someone who was coaching Jake. She was one of a kind, that’s for sure.

Suddenly, Jake opened his mouth very wide. Inside, I could see a tongue, a huge tongue that must have gone all the way down his throat, which looked to be about a mile deep. His whole neck looked wider now. I knew he’d puffed it up to hold that huge tongue.

Beth and I looked at each other in shock. Before we could say anything. Jake snapped out that huge tongue of his. It traveled about as fast as a baseball pitch across the room. Thomas was enjoying his ice cream cone. It was a vanilla cone that had been dipped in chocolate.

We watched in amazement as the tongue reached out what had to be fifteen feet. Jake was no expert with it, however. Instead of snatching up the cone, the tip of it merely slapped the cone.

The cone flew out of Thomas’ hand and splattered on the floor. For a second the lunchroom fell silent as everyone figured out what had happened.

Then the place exploded in a wild storm of laughter.

Chapter Sixteen

Hussades

After we’d finished a lengthy clean-up under the watchful glare of the lunch staff we went down to the basement. It was finally time for Hussades. I felt a familiar sweaty, jittery sensation come over me. Don’t get me wrong, I’d always loved watching the game as much as anyone. When I was expected to participate, however, Hussades seemed like an event created specifically to point out my complete lack of abilities. I was sure to be picked last, and that never felt good.

As it turned out, I wasn’t picked last. Not this time. What happened was far worse than that.

It started when Urdo walked in. She was in human form again and everyone fell quiet when she entered the cavernous basement. I noticed her feet were bare. She’d left her boots up in the laboratory. But I think most of the other kids just assumed she was in workout mode. This was natural enough, as the basement resembled a gymnasium. The floor was covered in blue and yellow foam rubber mats. There were straps hanging down with steel rings at the bottom and parallel bars and uneven bars.

Some of the kids were practicing on the equipment when Urdo came in. Jake tottered along on the balance beam and fell off with a whoop when he saw her. The rest of us giggled. Jake turned red and walked back into line with slumped shoulders.

Urdo, as usual, didn’t shout orders at us. She walked toward us, padding gracefully and silently over the mats. We fell silent and lined up without having to be told.

We’d all changed into our gym sweats. They were loose-fitting and well-suited to something like Hussades. She walked the line in front of us like a general reviewing her troops. She stopped in front of me.

I looked up and saw her piercing gaze. I stared back, without flinching. I had always believed when the game was over, you might as well make a brave show of it.

I was surprised to see Urdo give me a tiny nod of approval. She stared at me for a moment. I wondered then about her reasons for locking Beth and I in the Forever Room. Had she expected us to escape? Had it all been a test of some kind?

“Connor will be the first Captain,” she said loudly.

The crowd gasped and some groaned. No doubt, they feared I would pick them for a day of grim losses. No one was more shocked than I was. I opened my mouth, but didn’t protest or thank her. I snapped my jaws shut and set my lips in a firm line. Perhaps this was another test. If she wanted the worst player to run a team, then so be it, I would do the job as best I could.

She continued to walk along the line, slowly, dramatically. She stopped when she reached the end of the line.

“Danny,” she said finally, stopping in front of him.

With a confident grin, Danny stepped forward and gave her a short bow from the waist. “You won’t be disappointed,” he said.

Urdo raised her eyebrows at him, but made no remarks.

When she got to the end of the line, I realized I had to start thinking about my picks. Whom would I choose? I’d never made these decisions before!

“Captains, step forward,” she said.

Hesitantly, I walked out of line and turned around to face the class. I looked at Danny. He had his hands on his hips and his lips pursed. He looked smug and confident. He’d been a team Captain many times. I could see he was already piecing together a killer group in his mind.

I thought of copying his stance with my hands on my hips, but decided not to be so obvious. Instead, I put one hand up to my chin as if I was in deep thought. Inside, I was close to panic.

Urdo stepped between Danny and me and pulled out a coin. It was a large silver coin, like a silver dollar, but a bit smaller. I knew that coin, they always used that same old coin to start our games. They called it a denari, which meant it was a Roman coin, our History teacher had explained once. One side of the coin was stamped with an emperor’s head. On the other side was a woman lying on a couch.

“Call it, Danny,” said Urdo. She tossed the coin in the air.

“Heads!” shouted Danny.

The coin came down and thumped flatly on the mat. The head of a Roman emperor showed face-up.

“Hadrian smiles on you, today, Danny,” Urdo said.

“I pick Thomas,” he said without hesitation.

And then, just like that, it was my turn. Everyone looked at me. Everyone eyed me expectantly, as if a great bit of wisdom could fall from my lips at any moment.

I ran my eyes over the group. Some were waving me off, these were the best players, Danny’s friends most of them, who hoped I wouldn’t invite them into my group of likely losers. Others were trying to get my attention, such as Sarah, who hopped from foot to foot. Jake and a few others, used to rejection, slouched and toed the mats sullenly, sure they would be waiting for a long time before they heard their names called.

Out of the whole crowd, only Beth looked at me evenly and happily. She did not appear to be urging me to do anything. She was confident I would do the right thing.

“Connor?” asked Urdo.

I opened my mouth, planning to call out Beth’s name. But I stopped. “Jake,” I said finally.

Jake looked startled. Snickers and groans went up from the crowd. People rolled their eyes. They knew how it was going to be now. I would build a loser team of my own loser cronies. Or at least, that’s what they thought.

Jake came up and stood next to me. “What are you doing?” he hissed.

“Picking my team,” I said.

“Don’t make us lose just because I’m your friend. Get some good guys.”

“You are good, now shut up.”

Danny called out another pick. Another athletic friend of his named Jamie, who could turn into a badger, of all things.

On my next turn, I chose Sarah. At least no one groaned at that choice. She was considered a good player. Bird-types were often very effective. I took Beth next and then took the best of whoever was left.

When the choosing was over, I huddled up with my team. We all formed a circle and bent our heads together.

“Connor,” said Jake. “We’re going to be stomped.”

“This is a race, right?” asked Beth.

Some of the others realized how clueless she was and groaned aloud.

“Don’t worry people,” I told them all seriously. “I have a plan.”

Chapter Seventeen

Splashdown

“Who’s running first?” a boy named Eddie asked me. He was an eager sort, and I knew what he really wanted was the green light to go first. He could turn into a ram, and he was pretty good on his feet or hooves.

I nodded to him. It was time to make some fast decisions. We only had five minutes to talk, and then we were supposed to put our first player on the course.

I looked at the course, we couldn’t see most of it, naturally, that would make things too easy. You could only see the first part which was a balancing beam that sloped upward to a push-door. They always made the first part something that almost anyone could get past. But what was on the other side of that door? We would only find out when someone made it there. Usually, the first several players were surprised by what they found and failed when they got to new territory.

“Okay Eddie, you can go first and play scout,” I said.

Eddie beamed and a few others rolled their eyes.

“Great!” he said.

“He can’t beat my wings!” said Sarah. Her arms were crossed.

“How are you going to open that door if its heavy and you’re a five ounce bird?” asked Eddie.

“Sarah, Eddie’s going first,” I said. “Let’s not argue already, we only have a few minutes to set up.”

Eddie headed for the tiny black changing tent, pulling off his shirt as he went. White coarse hairs were already sprouting from his temples.

I followed him. “Maybe you should go with your upper half still human. Then you would have arms and be able to handle a surprise on the other side of that door.”

Eddie shook his head. “Balancing is harder on two hooves. I can race up that beam as a mountain ram. Faster than anything that doesn’t fly anyway, and fliers will have trouble with that door if it’s heavy. I can just ram that out of the way. I’ll get you two points for making it first, and then you’ll see what I can do in the next stage.”

I nodded, my lips cinched tightly. I could tell he wanted to be all ram, he liked it that way. Since we really didn’t know what was on the other side, he might be right or wrong.

“I don’t like it,” said Beth. She had trailed me. Eddie was in the tent now, changing. The sides of the tent bulged as his curved horns sprouted.

“It’s your first game!” I said, laughing. “You’re second-guessing already.”

She nodded and smiled. “What was that he said about points?”

“The scoring system is simple,” I said. “If you make it across an obstacle, you get one point. If you get past an obstacle before the other guy you are racing against you get two points. The only other rule is that if you make it all the way to the end, you double your whole score for the race. That’s the whole system, but there is strategy. Sometimes it’s better to blast through as many stages as you can super fast to beat the other guy and get two points for each obstacle until you fall. A player who takes it slowly might make it farther, but with only one point per obstacle. Going all the way to the end is rare, of course. “

“Ah,” said Beth, “Double points if you make it to the end? That must make things stay exciting.”

“Right, a spectacularly fast run all the way to the finish can score huge points. That happens more often when people know what to expect at each stage. Often, the winning team wins by surprise in the last few races. You never know for sure which side has won until the last race.”

A deep, throbbing horn blew. The basement walls reverberated with the heavy sound.

“What’s that?” asked Beth.

“An old hunting horn, I think. We have one minute until the race starts.”

Eddie burst out of the changing tent and trotted up to the starting line.

On the other side was Haley, a tall girl that had changed into an Ocelot, a small Amazonian member of the cat family. She looked like an overgrown housecat that had gone wild. Her fur was orange and sleek. She snicked her claws in and out and hunkered down at the starting line as if preparing to pounce on a mouse.

“She’s fast-looking,” said Beth.

“It will be a race to that first door, but if it’s heavy, Eddie should beat her through it.”

Before I knew it, everyone was shouting, “Huzzah!” in unison. The brick walls bounced back the cries and the noise was deafening. After the third Huzzah, the hunting horn blew again. The race was on.

Eddie charged up the beam, galloping nimbly. But the cat-shaped Haley was even faster. She sprang up the beam, hardly having to use her claws.

“He’s losing!” cried Beth.

“Wait,” I said.

They hit the door at almost the same moment, but Eddie was clearly second.

But the door proved to be a problem for little Haley. As a cat, she didn’t have much weight. The door didn’t open immediately. Instead, she nosed under it, like a cat coming in through a heavy dog door into the kitchen.

Eddie lowered his horns and burst right through.

A chime sounded and the old mechanical scoreboard on the far wall clicked. The blue numbers were our score. Danny’s team score showed in red. The score board clicked up a big numeral 2 in blue and a big numeral 1 in red. We were winning already, but it was far from over.

“We’re ahead!” squealed Beth in my ear.

I had to smile.

The black curtains dropped and revealed the next stage of the course. The crowd moved quickly, almost trotting, to see what the next obstacle was. My teeth clenched in dismay when I saw it, and before I could even shout advice to Eddie, it was all over.

The next obstacle was a four foot deep pool of water with a single tire swing hanging over it. The pool was only about fifteen feet across, but Eddie was a flying white furred mountain ram when he charged through. There was no way to stop, so he didn’t even try. He did his best, I’ll give him that. He took a mighty leap. The leap looked good, and I thought for a second he might even make it. But he sailed right into the tire swing and crashed down, all four legs pumping in the air for a moment. There was a tremendous splash and shouts of wild laughter from the far side of the room.

“Huzzah!” shouted the other team, mocking us.

Danny and Thomas stood on the opposite side of the room, appearing confident. When they saw me looking at them, they stuck out their thumbs and pointed them toward the ground. They laughed. Their teammates slapped their backs and cheered them.

Haley crawled out on the ledge above the pool and looked down unhappily. As a cat, I’m sure she didn’t want to fall in there. She took her time, but then leapt to the tire swing. It was touch and go for a second, but she managed to sink her claws in the rubber tire and hang on. Then she timed the next leap and landed on the final ledge.

But her landing was a bad one. Wood splintered as she slipped. She hung onto the ledge with her claws and scrabbled at platform. Ahead of her, she could see it, was a dark tunnel that led on to the next unknown obstacle. If she could keep going, with her competition out of the race, she could score double points for each obstacle she finished. And she could take her time doing it.

“She’s got to fall,” said Beth. “She’s just got to.”

And she did. It was my team’s turn to hoot and laugh as Haley slipped with a “Yeow!” and fell into the pool.

“That means were ahead, doesn’t it?” asked Beth shouting in my ear to be heard over our team’s wild cheering.

“I think so,” I said. “Depends on the ref.”

A whistle blew, one long, loud blast. We fell silent. Urdo strutted out between the two courses. She put her hands on her hips. “The obstacle ended with a tunnel, no barrier. The obstacle was therefore crossed. Two points for red.”

Danny’s people went positively ape. Some of my people booed. I shushed them. The board clicked again. Blue 2, Red 3. We were losing, but not by much.

“That’s not fair,” hissed Beth in my ear. I waved her away.

“This isn’t over yet,” I said.

I tried to think. Who should I run next?

The horn blew again. It was time for race two.

Chapter Eighteen

Long Jumps

“These obstacles seem pretty difficult,” said Beth. “Who is going to be able to make it through a whole series of them?”

“You’re right about that,” said Jake coming up and poking his head between the two of us. “Usually, they start off with something easy, like a six-foot wall you have to climb, or a pipe you have to wriggle through.”

“Why would they make it harder than it normally is?” asked Beth.

“Maybe Vater is already here, watching us, and Urdo is trying to impress him!” said Jake.

I elbowed him and he oofed. “Hey!”

“You’re up next,” I told him.

“Me?”

“Grow a tongue in that big mouth of yours,” I said, “and put on some frog legs too. Jumping high never hurts.”

“Toad legs,” grumbled Jake.
“Get going! We only have two minutes left.”

Still grumbling, Jake bounded toward the changing tent. Already, I could see his legs were bandy and far less than straight. I smiled quietly.

“And Jake!” I said and he entered the tent and pulled the flaps after him. He poked his head back out to look at me questioningly.

“We’re all depending on you!” I told him.

It was Beth’s turn to elbow me. I looked at her in surprise. She shot me a frown and turned a smile to Jake. “You can do it! It’s just like stealing ice cream!” she shouted. Jake’s frown changed into a grin and he vanished back into the tent.

“Don’t pressure your team, encourage them!” Beth said.

I looked at her and nodded. “You’re right.”

We barely had time to get into position before the hunting horn blew again. It was time for the next race.

Jake burst out of the changing tent and hopped straight up to the line. He waited there at the bottom of the balance beam. He had changed completely into a toad this time. He wasn’t a small animal either, I figured he weighed in at least one hundred pounds of toad. He wasn’t pink, and still half-human, this time he was all toad. He had brownish and grayish skin on top, with a pale white underbelly underneath. A few of the girls wrinkled their noses. But Jake took no notice. He looked prideful, if such a thing can be imagined a toad’s face. I smiled to see his expression. A few complements from Beth had done him a lot of good.

My whole team craned their necks to see who was going to be up against him. Out of the tent walked Thomas, in dog form, head and tail held arrogantly high. He too, had gone for a full change. He was a malamute, with a fluffy curled tail, a wolf’s pointed ears and spooky, pale blue eyes. He looked over at Jake and curled back black dog lips to reveal a set of white fangs.

No one laughed immediately at Jake this time. There was just a bit of twittering from the other side. When a third horn sounded however, and Jake began hopping up the balance beam with big, laborious, humping hops, that’s when the laughter really got going. Determinedly, staring straight ahead, Jake ignored it all. He didn’t have an easy time of it. Toads are not really built to climb a narrow surface. I’d never seen a toad walking along the top edge of my back fence. I’ve seen cats and birds up there, but never a toad. This is for good reason. They are not well-built for balance.

But then again, neither are dogs. I couldn’t recall ever seeing a dog balancing up on the edge of my back fence, either. Thomas had difficulty getting a grip with his paws on the balance beam, which was varnished and smooth. I recalled watching my dog Benny try to climb a ladder. Dogs attempting a steep climb always looked funny. They just aren’t built for the task. The two slowly worked their way up their respective beams. Jake tottered, struggling not to fall off to one side or the other, while Thomas scrabbled and strained scratching desperately with his hind claws. Watching a huge toad and a dog struggling and slipping on narrow sticks of wood was too much for the crowd. Both teams laughed openly at the spectacle. Even I had to smile, despite my worries. If I hadn’t been a worried team captain, I probably would have screamed with laughter myself.

They both finally made it to the top. Thomas was slightly ahead. He nosed open the door at the top first.

“Two points red team,” shouted Urdo.

I sighed quietly to myself. Perhaps I had made a mistake. But I did not let these thoughts show on my face. I did not give the slightest hint of my concern. I felt the eyes of my own team on me, and I worked hard to look confident and determined. I let myself frown, but that was all. I didn’t want to let them lose hope just because I did. To keep everybody else doing their best, I pretended it was all part my plan.

The next obstacle, of course, was the tire swing. I had to figure that this one was probably going to be a bit easier for Jake than it would be for Thomas. How was a dog supposed to handle a tire swing? He did what he could, making an especially a big long leap across the room. Jake took a similar leap. Being a toad, he lashed out with his tongue to grab the rope that the tire hung down upon. His powerful hind legs uncoiled, firing him into the air and at the same moment that huge pink tongue shot out and wrapped itself around the rope. The crowd gasped as he slung himself around the tire swing and managed to land with some smoothness on the ledge on the far side.

There was scattered applause from our team. Beth and I clapped the hardest.

Thomas did not fare so well. He leapt halfway to the tire itself. Scrabbling with his hind paws for a grip on the rubber, he swung back and forth a few times before vaulting himself the rest of the way to the final ledge. Dogs do have good jumping muscles in their hind legs, but not as good as toads. He more or less did a belly flop on the ledge. He let out a painful whooshing sound, which made everyone wince, but managed to cling to the ledge.

But Jake was the first one into the cloth tunnel beyond.

“Two points blue team.”

My team all whooped and shuffled quickly to see what the next obstacle would be. The curtain dropped, and at first it looked like there was nothing. It was just a flat circular area. There were no obstacles in sight, just a big expanse black cloth. Of course, I knew right away, and sucked in air over my teeth. Everyone else made similar sounds of concern.

“What is it?” asked Beth.

Jake hesitated, knowing just as we did the dangers that lay before him.

“Holes,” I said, “there are holes out there. You can’t see them, but there are spots in that cloth surface that will cause you to fall right through into a pit.”

“Ah,” said Beth, nodding.

Jake hesitated, but Thomas didn’t. We got there about two seconds after Jake, didn’t bother looking for weak spots in the cloth, he simply started running around the left edge of the black circle. It was a good, but gutsy, strategy. Usually, the holes were in the middle to catch someone who simply scrambled across without expecting the trap.

Jake, seeing he was being left behind took another mighty leap. It looked to me as if he was deciding to simply vault across the entire obstacle as he had done with the tire swing. But this time, he didn’t quite make it all the way to the opposite ledge. His gamble failed just as Thomas’ did. They both found a pit hidden right before the opposite ledge. Neither one of them made it.

Thomas sailed into his hole, front paws first. For a moment. His tail and hind legs were still visible, he struggled, trying to catch hold of anything he could, but then down he went. A buzzer sounded. It was over. Thomas was out of the race.

At that moment, Jake was already in the air. He was coming down hard, his eyes bulging.

“Oh no,” said Beth.

In a desperate move, Jake shot out his tongue the last second, trying to find something to hold onto on the far side. He, like Thomas before him, shot down into a dark hole. From our point of view, he seemed to vanish into the floor. Briefly, his tongue attached to the steel tubing that held up the next ledge, but he couldn’t pull himself up with his tongue alone. His legs were caught up in the net set up at the bottom of the pit to catch people as they fell. He struggled for a few moments, but finally gave up. A buzzer sounded again.

There was a pause. Everyone looked to Urdo. She had been standing between the two obstacle courses watching both contestants carefully.

“Two points blue team,” Urdo said, after only a bare moment’s hesitation.

My teammates went wild with cheering.

“Same ruling as with Haley,” I said. “He touched the goal, so he won the points.”

“At least she’s fair,” said Beth.

Everyone was clapping me on the back as if I had done something. We were ahead, for the first time. Danny’s team on the other side look positively glum. This was a much better performance than anyone had expected from Jake.

When Jake got back to us, he had changed most of the way back into his normal self.

“Jake,” I said, “that was a good run.”

He grinned at me. His mouth was still huge.

Chapter Nineteen

Electricity

The next three races didn’t go very well for our team. Billy insisted on running as an otter. Otters don’t do too well with tire swings… Juan could turn into a lizard, he looked sort of like an iguana, but he said he is actually a blue-belly lizard. He went with just the tail and the blue scaly belly, but when he got to the room with the holes in the floor, he found a new one. Samantha, went as a chicken, which is not as bad as it sounds. I mean a chicken can’t really fly, but with a lot of flapping and squawking and flying feathers, she was able to cross the tire swing obstacle easily. Unfortunately, even though she did make across the room full of holes, she found there was a heavy door other side. She pecked at it desperately, but could not make it through.

We were coming down to the last few races, and we were about five points behind. This is not an impossible lead to beat, but my team was starting to look glum.

“Run me now,” said Sarah.

“It’s not time yet,” I said. “You’re a finisher, Sarah. We need your speed to zip through all the obstacles at the very end and win it for us.”

“I know, I know,” she said. “But people need a win now. I’m fast, I can beat anything they put up against me now, that will get us six quick points. Two for each obstacle.”

“Yes, but there’s no way you are getting past that last heavy door. If we run you last, we will get eight or ten points, instead of six.”

“But first, someone has to make it that far, and open that door.”

“I know,” I said.

“I can do it,” said Beth.

Sarah and I looked at her doubtfully.

“Well, even if I can’t, you have to run me at some point anyway.”

I nodded. Beth smiled and trotted over to the tent, even though she didn’t need to change into anything.

Sarah and I exchanged glances. We were both thinking, both hoping, that this would not turn out too badly for Beth.

I thought perhaps that Danny was in a cruel mood, because he ran Andy against Beth, who was probably their best player. He could change into a gibbon, a type of monkey that is particularly good at obstacle courses. Determinedly, the two of them crouched down at the base of the balance beam, waiting for the horn to blow.

From the very start, Beth was horribly outmatched. Andy zoomed ahead of her, scampering up the balance beam, swinging across the tire swing with smooth grace and hopping over the treacherous holes so fast he made it all look easy. But Beth did not even try to race with him, she focused on simply getting across each of the obstacles. I nodded my head in appreciation as I watched her. She had no intention of winning two points for any of the obstacles, but if she could make it through each of them to at least get one point, she would be doing her part.

And so she did. She was still on the tire swing, carefully swinging back and forth to get momentum enough to leap to the final ledge, when Andy managed to force open the heavy door more than two full obstacles ahead of her.

We forgot about Beth for a moment. All of us shuffled down to see the new obstacle. There were gasps from the crowd. The next obstacle was one that we had hardly ever seen. It was called the dominoes. Large wooden blocks standing on end, sort of like pillars formed steppingstones across the room. Each was easily tipped over. If you did tip one over it would hit the next one, until they all went down and you found yourself in a heap on the floor. The trick was to hop from one domino to the next, quickly and lightly, so that you could make it across before they all fell down.

Andy, of course, was a monkey. He had no problem with this. He hopped and leapt lightly from domino to domino, and made it to the other side before the teetering dominoes in his wake could fall and knock the them all down in a chain reaction. There was a tunnel and then, the next curtain fell. I looked back, thinking of Beth. She had made it past the tire swing now and was carefully crossing the treacherous room full of holes feeling in front of her with her toes at each step to find a new trap. I nodded again, appreciating her approach, she was going to get at least one point for the first three rooms. If she could at least open that heavy door and make it to the domino room, Sarah could fly against the next contestant and get two points per room.

The last obstacle was revealed. There were cries of dismay when we saw it. I had halfway expected a flaming hoop, but this was something else, this was something that I had never seen before. I’ve heard of it, but never seen it. It looked just like a flaming hoop around a tight wire, but instead of flaming, it rippled with blue-white electricity. The hoop spiraled like a giant spring around the tight wire that went through the middle of it. The wire itself was thick and black, like TV cable.

“A Tesla coil,” said Sarah in hushed awe.

“That’s not fair!”  said Jake.

“I’ve heard of them,” said Eddie.

“Don’t they shock you?” asked Jake.

“Only if you fall off and touch the coil,” I said.

“Poor Beth,” said Sarah.

We watched Andy. He seemed as surprised as we were. Every other obstacle he had breezed through. But not this one. He sat there at the entrance without even touching the cable and watched the electricity spiral and twist around as if mesmerized. At this point, Beth managed to make it to the dominoes. Andy glanced back. I could see his team was calling to him. No doubt, Danny was shouting for him to continue.

Beth stood on her ledge looking at the dominoes. She frowned at them in thought. She still was not in a hurry.

Andy finally reached out a small hand-like paw and grabbed hold of the cable.

“He’s gonna do it,” said Jake.

Then, suddenly, he scampered forward running on that wire. I could tell he wanted to make it through all at once.

He made a mistake, however. Have you ever seen a monkey run? They often run with their tails high in the air. His tail reached too high and touched the coils. A brilliant purple spark jumped down his tail. All his fur stood on end and he gave a surprised squeak. He tumbled off and fell down to the mats.

The buzzer sounded. He was out.

We all craned our necks. We saw him jump up and run out of the course like his tail was on fire, even though it was only just smoking slightly. A round of hooting laughter mixed with applause went up from the entire room. Now, all eyes turn back the Beth. The surprising thing was that she managed to cross the dominoes at all. But she did it, proving her step really was light, as I had noticed. Everyone from both teams was impressed. Generally speaking, human bodies are not as good as animal bodies when it came to matters of speed and balance. But Beth made it, and with a good deal of straining managed to open the heavy door on the far side. One more point clicked up for blue on the scoreboard.

But she was no match for the wire and the Tesla coil. She didn’t make it to the coil itself. She couldn’t even hold herself up on the cable. She just let herself fall, and we all clapped. It had been a great effort. She had taken it slow, and it made it further than anyone else on our team.

I looked around and was a bit surprised to see that only Sarah and I were left.

“Okay,” said Sarah. “Now it’s my turn.”

I shook my head. “No, I’m going next.”

“What?!”

“We don’t know what is at the far end, after the coil,” I explained. “It could be another door. You can’t open a door as a five-ounce bird.”

Sarah shook her head. “You’re nuts,” she said. “But you’re in charge.”

I didn’t even bother with the tent. I just went to bottom of the beam and waited for the horn to sound.

Chapter Twenty

Surprises

When Danny came out of the tent, it was my turn to be surprised. He was just his normal self. It wasn’t a dog all. There was no hint of the Rottweiler he could become. His teeth weren’t even long, curved fangs. He often grew just the fangs so he would look like a vampire.

As we crouched down, I wondered if Beth’s performance in human form had impressed him. I certainly knew that human form was better than dog form to get across that tire swing and that high wire act through the Tesla coil.

Urdo walked out to stand between us. She had her hands on her hips, and she turned her head to look at each of us. We looked intense, we wanted to win. She gave one quiet nod of approval.

The horn sounded and the race was on.

I scrambled up the balance beam as quickly as I could. I was surprised to feel how slick the surface was. I wondered how some of the contestants had ever made it up in the first place. The rubber soles of my sneakers made it relatively easy. Danny and I made it to the top and into the next room.

“Two points, red team.”

I gritted my teeth, it had been a photo finish, but I guess Danny had been ahead as far as Urdo was concerned. We jumped for the tire swing at about the same moment.

Instead of climbing into the central hole of the tire, I got up on top of it and stood up on it. After a few swings, I took the leap and landed on my knees on the far ledge. I was ahead of Danny this time. I scrambled into the tunnel.

“Two points, blue team.”

In the room with the holes I hesitated chewing my lip. I took a few tentative steps forward trying to remember where I had seen people step before, where it was safe. I took a few more steps, and then Danny burst out of the tunnel and ran in a blur of speed and leapt for the far side. My jaw dropped open, because Danny was a dog.

A great booing erupted for my team.

“Cheater!”

Urdo raised her hand for quiet. “The tunnel was dark. No one saw him change. No rules broken. Two points, red team.”

There were more boos from my side, but they were subsiding.

Deciding not to fall further behind, I took a risk and ran along some narrow ridges between the open holes. I made it without finding any new ones, mostly by luck. I came out of the next tunnel into the room with the dominoes. A great wave of new jeering had erupted.

“He did it again!”  came a cry from somewhere, I think it was Sarah.

Indeed, Danny was human again. He just used his dog form to get across that one obstacle faster than I could.

I tried to put all of this out of my mind and focused on getting across those darned dominoes.

I barely made it. Behind me, dominoes crashed and fell. Somehow, skipping from one of the next, I managed to get across. Danny made it too, he was good, I had to give him that. He beat me, mostly because he had had a head start from the previous room.

Suddenly, I was aware of a funny sensation. I felt feverish. My mother had always warned me that I would get heatstroke one day, whatever that was. I wondered, as I felt a rush of heat going through my body, if this was the moment my mother had always predicted.

Tired now, breathing hard, sweating, I crawled into yet another cloth tunnel. It was dark inside, and it seemed even hotter. It seemed close, like the tunnel itself was shrinking around me. I peeled off my shirt, tearing it in the process. Then I heaved myself up and kept crawling.

Everyone gasped as I entered the next room and grabbed hold of the black cable running through the shimmering Tesla coil.

“He’s changed!” someone cried.

“I don’t believe it!”

I looked over at Danny to see if he had figured out a new way to bend the rules. But I saw nothing unexpected. He was in his normal human form. He had taken hold of the cable and wrapped himself around it and was hanging underneath it. He was shimmying through the coil.

I did the same, reaching out my paws and grabbing the cable. I shimmied my body out toward the coils. Somehow, it still didn’t register in my mind...

“What is he?”

“I don’t know, but he still has his pants on.”

I almost lost my grip. I looked at my paws. Yes, I had paws now.

They were furry on the back, but with palms and claws. I realized I had actually changed!  I couldn’t believe it!  I didn’t know right away exactly what I was, but clearly it was some kind of mammal. That in itself was a relief. Just having changed into anything was a relief. What a time for it to happen, too.

Whatever I was, it certainly made navigating that wire several times easier than it would’ve been with my normal hands and feet. My tail helped too. Yes, I had a tail. Looking back down my body and seeing it, I knew the truth. It was long, and it was pink, and it was snakelike. It tapered to a point at the end.

I was a mouse. Or maybe a rat. Maybe—I hoped not, even as I thought of it—I was a possum.

Danny had no chance of beating me at that point. Rodents are good at climbing along wires. Andy could have beaten me, but he had gotten his tail zapped. At that thought, I made an effort to control my tail and wrapped it around the cable behind me so the same thing wouldn’t happen to me. Then I got down to the business of the race again.

The crowd was making a lot of noise now, more than any of us had made up until that point. They were cheering, and jeering, whistling and just plain screaming.

I had almost made it across when I looked over at Danny to see how he was doing. In the same moment, he looked across at me, probably to see what all the hullabaloo was about. That was a mistake for him. Because when he saw me, and my new form, he slipped. One of his legs dipped down and his ankle touched the coils. There was a flash and a buzzing sound.

Danny made a strange whooping sound and fell.

The crowd was going wild, but I ignored them. Paw over paw, I made my way to the finish. I ignored the crackling electricity that made my new 2 inch thick fur stand on end all over my body. I ignored the cheers and jeers. I focused on crawling across that wire.

I made it. At the far end, I pushed open the final door. It was heavy. Sarah could not have made it first. I propped it open and crawled out.

“Two points, blue team. Entire course finished. Double-score, blue team.”

I stretched out, panting. The kids had all gone wild, either cheering or booing. I was very tired, and my only thought was that my new whiskers tickled my face abominably. I wriggled my face and rubbed at my nose—I guess I should call it a snout—with my paws. My whiskers felt like pencils coming out of my face. Those long, white shoots of coarse hair, as thick as straws, were going to take some getting used to.

Chapter Twenty-One

Victory

Exactly as I’d hoped, Sarah flew the rest of the race as our finisher and put us ahead on points. We won with a comfortable lead, 38 to 32. After the congratulatory back-claps and huzzahs were finished, things quieted down and I went to find Beth.

“Beth?” I asked, looking at my feet, which were paws now. “What am I? A mouse?”

Beth tilted her head to one side. “Maybe, Connor,” she said, and I thought I heard a waver in her voice. “I think you’re at least half-mouse.”

Jake came up. “You really had a plan,” he said, shaking his head. “I’d thought that was all just bluff. What plan, a surprise change in the middle of the course, breaking all the rules just like Danny did.”

I smiled back at him. Maybe I should have told him that he’d been closer to the truth with his first thought, that I’d gotten lucky. But why pop his bubble?  I rarely got a chance like this. In fact, I’d never had a chance for glory like this.

“What are you exactly?” Jake asked, bemusedly. “Long-tail, whiskers, but you don’t look entirely transformed. There is still some human left in those paws with opposable thumbs. And in your eyes. Definitely a rodent, but which one?”

“I’m going with mouse,” I said.

Jake nodded. “Smart move. No one likes a... You know.”

I knew. Rat. I winced at just the thought of it. I looked back at Beth. She wasn’t looking at me anymore. She was looking off toward the obstacle course. A sudden pang of worry hit me. What if Beth didn’t like me anymore? What if Beth couldn’t get over my change?

I tried to urge my body to change back. I shook myself, then closed my eyes and concentrated. Nothing seemed to happen. I wasn’t in control of the change yet. Some people never learned to control it and changed at the oddest times, such as when they were asleep or when the moon was full in the sky. Some of us became more animal than human and couldn’t even live with normal people. I hoped for my sake I wasn’t going to grow up to become one of the wild ones.

I opened my eyes again and caught Beth staring at the long claws that curved over the ends of each of my toes. She looked away quickly and rubbed her face. I licked my teeth. My teeth were strangely sharp and my tongue was raspy, long and pink. She was definitely having a hard time with this. How could I blame her?

“Line up!” came the command from Urdo. It was time for the final team to team handshake. It was a bit awkward to walk on my hind legs in my rodent body, but I forced myself to do it. I wanted to look as human as possible.

As we went through the line, the kids on the other team whispered things to me as they slapped my hand.

“Good move,” said one.

“Congrats on the change,” said another, “It was about time.”

Danny came up and smiled at me. He still had a Rottweiler’s fangs. “All you did was cheat worse than I did. I should have known you’d be a rat.”

“Sniffed any good butts lately?” I muttered back to him.

Thomas came next. “Dogs eat rats, you know,” he said.

“I heard your parents had you fixed,” I said to him. “That’s probably why you tanked back there on the course.”

I was pleased to note that both of them had stopped grinning after talking to me. A hand pushed me lightly from behind. It was Beth. “Did you have to go and make it worse? I swear, Connor, if you see a smoking pile of wood you like to throw gasoline on it.”

I pouted. At least, I think that’s what my face did. What does a pouting rodent look like? I’d have to look in a mirror later to find out. Secretly, I was pleased that Beth was still talking to me. Maybe she could get over this little matter of my smelling like a hamster cage. I thought about what she said as we lined up back at the edge of the tumbling mats. She was right of course, my mouth and my tricks were fun, but they always got me into trouble.

What had Urdo called me? The trickster. Born under the Sign of the Thief. Well, I’d never stolen anything, but I guess turning into a rodent shouldn’t have been a surprise.

As she walked along, inspecting us, Urdo paused in front of Danny, and then me. She gave us each an appraising up-down look. She seemed pleased. I thought to myself that she would soon be presenting us to Vater. As the school principal, I supposed our performance would reflect upon her.

“The purpose of the Hussades is to train you for your future,” she said seriously. She always said everything seriously. “Some of you have made complaints concerning the bending of certain rules. Imaginative thinking is a survival skill. It was always been rewarded in this game—and in life.”

* * *

It was in the bathroom that I finally changed back. Maybe it was because it was a private place. Or maybe it was because I really didn’t want to relieve myself as a giant rodent. That was just too much for my first day out.

When I came out of the restroom Jake grinned at me. He had lost his toad form right after the race. He looked as relieved as I felt.

“You did it buddy, you’re no mundane, everyone knows that now.”

“And everyone’s happy except for Beth.”

Jake raised his eyebrows at me. “Ahh,” he said. “So that’s how it is.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing. I hope it works out.”

I felt my face turn a shade redder, but for once kept quiet. I decided to change the subject. “Can you believe we won?”

“Frankly, I almost can’t. My folks will be very happy. I need to thank you and Beth for helping me out. I don’t feel so bad about being a toad now. I can work with it.”

I grinned at him. “That’s really Beth’s doing. She’s great, isn’t she?”

He nodded. “I really hope she sticks with us. She’s great for the team. If she can get over our crazy world and Sarah can get over the competition, we will all be better off to have her.”

“But if she’s a mundane…” I worried. I told him about Urdo and our little trip through the Forever Room and across the roof.

“So that’s why she made you team captain!” said Jake. He gave a long low humming sound. “She wanted to see what you could do.”

“I don’t want to see Beth kicked out of our town.”

“She’s not going anywhere,” said Jake confidently. “There is something special about that girl. Just like Urdo said about both of you.”

“Speaking about Urdo, she’s quite a mystery,” I said.

“She sure is.”

“I’ve been thinking about the Forever Room and the things we saw up there. Any chance you would like to check them out?”

He eyed me with a sidelong glance. Finally he sighed. “I swear if you weren’t my friend I would lead a very boring life.”

I grinned at him. “Okay. We go on recon tonight after lights out.”

Jake shook his head, but I knew he would come.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Whispers

The worst everyday part of a kid’s life is knowing people are talking about you. Whispering. You can’t hear what they are saying, but you know it can’t be good. Why else would they whisper? You look at them and they just stop talking and stare back for a moment, or look away, avoiding your eyes.

I’d finally changed and everyone had to talk about it. I’d won the Hussades match my first time out as a team captain and everyone had to talk about that, too. Then there was the little matter of whether my change mid-course was a cheat or not. I think if Danny hadn’t done it before I did, I would forever be called a cheat. But how could they say that now, after Danny had bent the rules first?

“Don’t let it get to you,” said Sarah in my ear. “You’ve surprised them. They had you down as a loser and now you look like a winner and they are having a hard time swallowing that.”

She smiled at me. It seemed to me that since I’d changed, since I’d shown I had a power, she was friendlier than ever. I wondered if that meant she felt I was okay now, that I wasn’t someone to feel sorry for. I shook my head. I had to stop thinking all these bad thoughts.

I smiled back at Sarah. “Thanks for all your help today, Sarah. You scored the winning run.”

She shook her head. “You opened that last door. You had the plan, you were the leader. And your plan worked.”

My smile faded just slightly, but I didn’t think she noticed. My plan had been to tell them I had a plan so they had something to believe in. I think it worked, that part at least. They had all done their best. Perhaps, if they hadn’t believed in me they would have just given up and despite my best efforts we would have lost anyway.

After dinner we were sent to the dormitory wing of the mansion, three floors of small bedrooms and narrow corridors. I’d half-expected to meet Vater that night at dinner, but he didn’t show up. They had the big throne-like carved oak chair at the far end of the highest table set up for him, but it had remained empty all evening. They even brought out the birthday cake, just as they did every year, and set it before the empty chair. This whole thing set me to thinking. I had so many questions I longed to ask, but somehow you knew you weren’t supposed to ask questions about Vater.

“Sarah?” I asked her in a low voice that was almost a whisper. “Have you ever seen a picture of Vater?”

“You know I haven’t,” she said, blinking. She looked surprised at this sudden turn of conversation.

“We have pictures of so many other relatives, statues even. But why not Vater? You’d think there would be a big portrait hanging in the entrance and a statue in lobby.”

She shrugged. “Maybe it’s for the same reason that we aren’t supposed to talk about him.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe there are pictures and statues, but there is something about them that caused the adults to hide them.”

Sarah shook her head. “Why?”

I didn’t answer her, I was thinking hard about something else. “And they say they know he’s coming, but how do they know? I mean did he call up from the airport like my Uncle Louis, asking for a ride? Or is there some kind of signal?”

“I don’t have any idea,” said Sarah. “But I know you are going to get me into trouble with this kind of talk.”

I noticed then that Thomas had drifted near me. He could move quietly, that one. I knew someone was there by the way that Sarah narrowed her eyes and looked over my shoulder. He spoke almost into my ear, making me jump.

“Maybe he’s a bug,” said Thomas.

We turned to stare at him.

“Who?” I asked.

“You know who. Maybe he’s something so awful, that the adults keep it quiet. Like a seamonster or a dragon or a snake or something.”

It was my turn to eye him closely. I saw something in his face. He wasn’t just making a joke. “What do you know?”

“Thomas, you’re not bunking with the rat tonight, are you?” came another voice, that of Danny. He was never far from his sidekick.

Thomas glanced back at Danny, who stood at the end of the hallway. He looked back at me.

“Yeah. I know stuff. We know stuff. We’ve seen things. Things the adults don’t want us kids to see.”

“Thomas,” came a quiet word from Danny. He didn’t seem to want to approach us, but hung back. He wanted Thomas to come when he called… like a dog. The thought made me smile.

“It won’t be funny when you find out the truth,” snarled Thomas, mistaking my smile for a jeering one.

“No, I believe you,” I said, as he walked away.

“No you don’t, but you will,” said Thomas. He stalked away down the corridor.

I started to go after him, but Sarah put a hand on my shoulder.

“You never know when to quit, do you?”

I looked back at her. “No,” I said seriously. Then I smiled.

“I like that about you.”

I blinked at her. Had she just said she liked me?

She left me in the hallway then and went upstairs to the girls floor and to bed. By the time I got to the room I was sharing with Jake, I was thinking hard.

“What is it?” asked Jake.

I glanced at him and then out the window, which was crusty with frost and snow. Outside the moon had come out from behind the clouds to light up the snowdrifts with a silvery shine.

“Tonight,” I said, “We are going on a little trip.”

Jake groaned and his head fell back against his old-fashioned, feather-filled pillow with a crunching sound.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Scouting

About an hour or so later I actually had to wake Jake up. He was the kind of guy who could fall asleep no matter what was happening. He muttered and slapped at my hand, but I shook his shoulder again. I had the other hand ready, in case he came awake shouting, to clamp over his mouth. But he didn’t.

He looked at me, dazed. “What…?”

“Time to explore,” I whispered. There was only one other kid in our room, Chris Anderson. Anderson always snored loudly and wasn’t easily awakened.

“What time is it?” asked Jake, scratching his head.

I shrugged. “About midnight.” I was one of those people who didn’t feel sleepy just because it was dark out. In fact, I tended to feel more active at night. I wondered vaguely if this was the nocturnal rodent part of me coming out. I didn’t like the idea much and tried not to think about it.

I finally got a confused Jake into his shoes and pants and we crept out into the hallway. Jake yawned with a groaning sound and I shushed him.

“What are we going to do, anyway?”

“I told you what Thomas told me,” I said.

“He was just messing with your mind.”

I shook my head. “Not Thomas. He’s not that imaginative. I want to see what’s going on up in that attic.”

“Thrown out of the mansion the day Vater shows up,” muttered Jake, but he came along after me.

We’d made it as far as the next dimly lit hallway when the hardwood floors creaked behind us. I froze, melting against the wall. Jake, seemingly more awake now, pressed himself into a shadow beside me. We breathed there for a moment, listening. Nothing.

We crept forward and I peeked out to look around the corner into a side passage. I knew this hall led up to a fold-down stairway that allowed access to the attic. It wasn’t the main stairs, but a back way I’d noticed while cleaning up there earlier.

“Just what do you boys think you’re doing?”

We froze again and rotated our heads. I was thinking of Urdo, but there stood a much shorter figure, only a few feet behind us, hands on her hips. It was Beth.

“You didn’t think I was going to let you sneak off and get in trouble without me, did you?” she said with a grin.

“Oh,” said Jake, letting all the air whoosh out of him. “Great imitation of Urdo, you creep. I all but wet myself.”

I snorted and shook my head. I didn’t see any easy way to get rid of her, nor did I want to. I beckoned and the three of us proceeded into the dark side-passage.

The attic trapdoor opened and let down the stairs with what seemed like a tremendous clattering sound. I tried to do it slowly, but that just made it creak and squeal on unoiled hinges and springs. I let it go fast at the end, and it snapped down onto the carpet that ran down the middle of the hardwood floor with a resonating thump. We all winced.

“Do you want to wake the dead?” asked Beth.

“Don’t say that,” said Jake.

She gave him a funny look. I shushed them and we all listened for a few minutes. Someone opened a distant door. I heard a toilet flush. Another door opened and shut. Still, we waited, hearing nothing but the sounds of our own breathing. Cold, musty air poured down into our faces from the open trapdoor.

“It must be freezing up there,” whispered Beth.

“I don’t think anyone’s coming to investigate,” said Jake.

I nodded. We put on jackets and headed up the folding steps into the cold darkness above.

“This is a bad idea,” hissed Jake. He was the last one in the hall, looking up at us.

“Do you want to stay behind?” I asked.

“It’s just… I don’t know why we need to do this right now. I’m sleepy.”

“I knew you’d chicken,” I said, not doing a good job of hiding the disgust in my voice.

“I’m a sleepy toad, not an attic rat,” he muttered back.

My neck felt hot suddenly and I became angry. I realized somewhere in the back of my mind I was going to have to hear rat comments for the rest of my life and I already didn’t like it.

“This will work out perfectly,” said Beth, laying a hand on my shoulder. “He can stay behind and close up the stairway. We don’t want anyone coming along and finding the stairs folded down. They might come up here to investigate.”

I made a sour face, and then nodded. “All right you old toad. Close it up and do a quieter job of it than we did when we opened it.”

Jake smiled wanly, “I could hardly make it louder.”

A few minutes later, the trapdoor was closed and the attic became very dark. I opened my cellphone. It was one of those phones that only worked when you had money in the account for it, and of course mine was empty. But, the dim blue glow of the screen did help light up the room a bit. A very little bit.

“Is that your idea of a light source?” asked Beth. She made a tsking sound and produced a small flashlight. “I’ve always got one in my backpack.”

The flashlight was no thicker than my thumb, but it produced enough light to see by. I snapped my cell phone shut again. I looked at it for a second.

“What?” asked Beth.

“Funny,” I said. “My mom never called me tonight. She would normally call me if I’m spending the night somewhere.”

“Got any minutes on it?”

“Shouldn’t matter,” I said. “It’s one of those deals where certain numbers are free.”

“I see,” she whispered. “My aunt didn’t call me either, and I’ve got minutes. Maybe we are too far out in the boondocks to get a signal.”

“Probably,” I said. I looked at it again. The display showed only one bar of signal. “One bar. That’s pretty iffy.”

“Well, now what?” asked Beth, shining her light in my face and making me squint.

“Now, we are going to see what is up in that lab, that laboratory, that Forever Room. I’m curious about some things.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

The Face

I crept through the attic passages with Beth close behind.

“So are we just going to the laboratory?” she asked.

“It’s a place to start.”

“What are we looking for?”

“Whatever Thomas was talking about,” I said. “There was a funny look in his eyes. He really did see something.”

We made our way with only a few bumped heads and scraped knees in the dark, cramped attic to the tiny square door that led into the laboratory. I tried the knob. It clicked and opened.

“It’s not locked,” hissed Beth.

“Urdo has been busy.”

We moved inside. It was very dark and very cold. The metal dome over the telescope was closed, but I could feel the winter seeping in from outside. The wind blew and whistled through the cracks in the dome.

Beth shined her light around inside. It passed over the brass telescope, which gleamed with yellowy brightness. The gears that cranked the scope were dusty and still. I noticed a single tooth had broken off of one of the cogs.

“How did that thing know?” I asked in a hushed voice.

“Know what?”

“That I would become a mouse,” I said. I put out a hand and touched the cold tube of the telescope. When faced with one of the strange devices that my people sometimes come up with, I always feel a sense of wonder.

Beth made a sniffing sound and shook her head. “I’m not totally convinced it did. Maybe it just gives you a general answer that seems to work for everyone. Like a fortune cookie or a newspaper horoscope.”

I shook my head in return. “You don’t know my people yet. We actually do stuff like this. It’s creepy, but real.”

She looked at me and chewed her lip. She had seen us change into animals, so she believed in that. But predicting the future? That was too much for her somehow. I could tell that maybe she didn’t want to believe it. I could tell that maybe, she was scared. I didn’t blame her and so I dropped it.

I frowned at the telescope and the broken metal tooth. “I don’t think that cog had a broken tooth before, you know.” I examined the jagged metal and touched it. The metal was sharp and made a tiny red nick in the pad of my thumb.

“Well,” said Beth. “Maybe it just broke recently, or it was there before and hidden. Maybe we didn’t see it until now because the cog was in a different position.”

I nodded. “Either way, someone has been using the telescope. Let’s look through it.”

She sighed. “I knew you were going to say that.”

I grinned and waved her over to the mechanism that slid open the slot in the dome and let the telescope poke out into the heavens. She worked the lever, and it creaked open with what seemed like a hideous screeching sound.

I was about to look into the eye cup when Beth gasped.

“What?” I asked.

“The plant!” she said, pointing to the potted plant in the roll top desk. I followed the beam from her flashlight. My eyes widened. The plant had flowered.

“It’s some kind of flower,” I said. I touched a leaf to make sure it was real. It had a soft, slightly fuzzy to it, exactly as it should. “It’s not a fake plastic thing.”

“I think it’s an African Violet,” said Beth. “My mother never stops messing about in her garden every spring.”

For some reason, the flower made a chill run through me. What were we messing with? What kind of place was freezing cold in the dead of winter and closed up in darkness and still let a flower bloom?

“There something’s strange about the way time behaves in this place,” I said.

“Time?” asked Beth. She nosed closer to the flower and examined it. She touched a violet petal gingerly, as if it might bite her.

“Maybe time moves differently here. The telescope can see the future, and the flower can grow as if it’s springtime in the sun.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” said Beth.

“Not without knowing the whole story it doesn’t.”

Beth looked back to me. “Are you going to look into that thing?”

I eyed the telescope and the black rubber eye cup. Did I really want to know whatever it would show me?

“Open the slot where the lenses goes in,” I told Beth.

She blinked, and then nodded. She opened the slot and directed the beam of her flashlight inside. She slid out a disk. It was a greenish-tinged lens. It looked thicker and darker than the rose-colored lens had. It was as thick and dark as a green glass bottle.

We looked at each other. “It has to do something,” said Beth. She was whispering again. She carefully lowered the green lens back into the slot.

I slowly lowered my head to peer into the eye cup.

I almost screamed. As it was, Beth startled at my intake of breath.

“Don’t even tell me,” she said.

I gazed into the night sky, and I saw was there a figure there. It was not an entirely human figure. It was dark with a widespread cloak that reached far out from outspread arms, like the fluttering wings of a kite. I worked the focus knob and breathed hard. I zoomed in on the face. It was a human face, but there were fangs in its mouth. There was a scary look of intelligence in its eyes. The lips curled back over those long teeth and the fanged man looked at me, just as I looked at him. For a moment, the telescope seemed reversed, as if I were the creature being examined and all I could see was the eye of the scientist studying me.

I felt something pulling at me, and finally I fell back away from the telescope and into the chair. I gasped.

“It was holding onto your head like a suction cup!” said Beth. Her hands were on my shoulders. I realized she had pulled me back from the scope. She had ripped me away from it by force.

“Okay, tell me now, I’m ready,” said Beth.

“A man,” I said. “A face in the sky. I think—I think it was Vater.”

She looked at me quizzically.

“And,” I said slowly. “I think he saw me.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

The Stranger

We heard a creaking sound then. I knew what it was instantly. We’d made the sound ourselves just minutes earlier. Someone was out in the attic hallways, moving stealthily, but not silently. I waved wildly at Beth to put out the flashlight. She clicked it off. We both listened for a moment. I heard only the sound of my heart pounding in my ears and my breath puffing worriedly from my open mouth. I put my hand up and cupped my ear. It helps me to hear better sometimes.

Then I heard it, fainter than before, another creaking of old floorboards complaining under the weight of someone’s foot. I put my mouth to Beth’s ear.

“Someone’s coming. Let’s just run for it,” I whispered.

She gave my hand a single squeeze of agreement. We crept on hands and knees up to the square door and bolted through it. Out in the hallway, we could see a figure coming without a light. We turned the other way and ran with what seemed like thundering steps. I glanced back and saw the figure crouching and looking after us. Suddenly, as if coming to a decision, it came after us.

I turned back to look where I was going and slammed into Beth. She squeaked and fell against a door. We’d run out of corridor. We fumbled for doorknobs, rattled one then the one next to it, both were locked.

The third door wasn’t locked, however, and swung open groaning like a coffin lid in a scary movie. We fell inside another passage and slammed the door behind us. I felt around and found there was a twist-lock, and I twisted it.

We ran down another passage past windows that let in the light of the full moon that had risen outside. For the first time, I felt the moonlight as it touched my skin.

I pulled my hand back as if bitten.

“What’s the matter,” whispered Beth.

I shook my head, rubbing my hand, and then slipped it back into the moonlight. It was an odd sensation, the way normal people feel the sunlight falling on their bare skin. I knew the light wasn’t hot enough to feel it for normal people. But I had changed now. I was part animal. I was no longer a mundane. I’d always heard that our people did feel it. For us, moonlight was like the light of a hot summer day where the wind is silent and the sun is blazing hot overhead. I’d heard of people who had even been burned by moonlight. Even when it didn’t burn, we could always feel it.

We ran a good ways down the passage when Beth pulled me to one side. There was a curtain of some kind hanging down. We hid behind it. We could hear, back down the passageway, the doorknob rattling. Then we heard a jingling sound.

“They’ve got keys!” said Beth in my ear.

“I know, we’ve got to get out of here, but I’m lost.”

“We must have crossed most of the mansion by now. What if we come down in the adults section?” asked Beth. “Maybe we should just give it up.”

I looked at Beth. Even back here, in the shadows, I could vaguely see her scared, glinting eyes. What had I led her into? Her first week at a new school and she would be in all kinds of trouble at the very least. But there was much more going on here than just two school kids running loose at night.

“I want to know what’s going on,” I whispered to her.

“If it’s Urdo, she’ll hear us or smell us or something.”

I blinked in the dark, knowing she could be right. There was more jingling. Someone was fumbling for the right key. At least there was no sign they had any light or any desire to turn one on.

I broke out of my cover and went to the last window. The moonlight warmed my hands, just slightly.

I strained and the window crunched open. It was partly frozen shut and didn’t open easily. I trotted back to Beth and yanked her scarf from around her neck. Her hand jumped to her neck, but she didn’t complain.

I ran back to the window and reached outside, shoving the snow around. Then I tossed Beth’s scarf out on the roof a few feet away. Feeling I had only seconds to spare, I scooted back to our hiding place and fought to control my wild breathing.

We waited, but not for long before the hallway door clicked and swung open on squealing hinges. We felt the figure approach, but couldn’t see it hidden as we were behind the curtain. It came quietly, almost soundlessly. Still, it seemed like I could feel someone approaching, somehow.

There was a crack at the bottom of the curtain and a shadow fell over the narrow slice of the floor that I could see. I held my breath. Beth squeezed my hand very hard.

There was a scraping sound at the window sill. I dared to hope the bait had been taken.

Then we heard another door open, perhaps at the other end of the hall. Boots stepped firmly toward us. This step I knew. I knew the creaking of those black boots. It was Urdo, it had to be.

I almost gave up then. I almost opened up the curtains and threw myself on their mercy. I was just a bad kid and I deserved my punishment. But something forced me to hold back. I think it was my thoughts of Beth. I owed it to her to get her out of this.

“Who approaches me so confidently in my own house?” said the stranger. The voice was deep and it resonated through the room. It was accented strangely.

“It is Urdo, milord, Daughter of Seth and Ralen.”

“Ah, granddaughter,” said the voice in a softer tone. “I knew your parents well and I will miss them. The family blood was strong in them.”

“Thank you, Grandfather.”

There was a quiet moment, and I wondered if they were shaking hands or hugging. I realized my eyes were squinched tightly shut. Beth was digging her nails into my palm, which was hot and sweaty because we were holding hands so tightly. We both knew now that Vater was less than ten feet away from us.

“I wish I could say the same for the rest of this sprawling brood. There are far too many half-breeds. The bloodlines have grown faint. Many have been taking mundanes as mates—”

“—but milord—” Urdo protested.

“No,” he stopped her. “No excuses. Perhaps it is all my fault. In any case. I’ve been gone for far too long. There will have to be a purge.”

I heard him force the window open further. I imagined he was scanning the vast frosted roof. “Still,” he said, as he brushed snow about. “Not all of them are weak. Look at this!” he gave a strange laugh.

“Interesting,” said Urdo.

I chewed my lip, not liking the sound of her response. I thought right away that she might have a clue who had done it.

“Imagine, trying to slip away from me in my own house. The cheek of it!”

“I’m sorry, milord.”

“Oh no,” he said, suddenly serious. “No, no. Don’t be sorry, be proud. As the good emperor Fredrick often said: ‘Audacity is the rarest of traits to be found amongst the weak!’ There’s a spark of my spirit here, and it’s good to see.”

“I’m glad you approve.”

“Indeed, perhaps you’ve not failed completely. I’m going to my suite now, I’m weary after my journey. I do trust you’ve kept it in good order in anticipation of my return?”

“Of course,” said Urdo. Her voice was smooth again.

Vater’s footsteps faded away. But Urdo simply stood there. We waited, but she made no move to leave.

“Your hearts are pounding like drums in my ears,” she said finally.

I didn’t know what to do, but I felt my stomach falling away in a deep hole. We’d been discovered. Worse, we were trapped in this alcove with nowhere to run.

There was a pause. I waited for the curtains to be yanked back, but it didn’t happen.

“You’d best be getting back to your rooms now, children,” Urdo said at last. Her bootsteps moved away rhythmically.

Beth and I let out a long sigh of breath like swimmers coming up for air after a long trip to the bottom of a lake. We drew the curtain open, half-expecting to see them standing there, having tricked us somehow, but the passage was empty. We ran all the way back to the attic access and down the ladder to our rooms. We didn’t even bother putting the stairs back up. What was the point?

That night, I laid awake for a long time listening to Chris Anderson’s snoring. I went over everything in my mind. What did it all mean? Things seemed so complicated now. I’d expected an old man’s birthday party, not anything like this.

And what exactly had he meant by a purge?

Chapter Twenty-Six

Secrets

“I’ve been thinking,” I said in a hushed the voice to Jake the next morning over breakfast. “I’ve been thinking a lot.”

“Uh-oh. You’re going to ruin this lovely breakfast, aren’t you?” said Jake. He said it around the strip of crispy bacon in his mouth. It was a heavy breakfast, and seemed unusual to me since I was used to just getting a bowl of cereal in the morning. We had thick bacon slices and scrambled eggs with lots of cheese baked in. I didn’t really like it that way, but it tasted okay if you put the eggs on drippy buttered toast. My mother would have called this breakfast a “heart-stopper”.

“Do you want me to tell you what I saw up there or not?” I asked him seriously.

Jake looked at me with raised eyebrows. His expression was a mixture of curiosity and resignation. We both knew I was going to tell him anyway.

“I saw Vater, or at least I heard him,” I said.

Jake looked at me and pushed the rest of the bacon into his mouth. He eyed me for a few seconds, probably trying to figure out if I was joking or not. “Okay,” he said finally. “You’ve got me. Spill it all.”

So I did. While we munched on that heavy, heart-stopper breakfast I filled him in on the whole story.

“Why didn’t you tell me last night?”

“You were snoring when I got back. Louder than Chris Anderson, even. Besides, I had to think about what I was going to tell you.”

“A purge?” whispered Jake. “What does that mean? Isn’t that what adults call vomiting sometimes? I don’t like the sound of that.”

I shrugged.

“So, they are going to run us losers out of town, or kill us all and bury us in the woods, eh?” said Jake, chuckling.

I shrugged again.

Jake eyed me. “That’s not what you’re really thinking is it?”

“He wanted just our class to come here, just the youngest newest generation who are going through the change. He wants to see how strong we are.”

“So?” asked Jake. He fished a bagel out of the basket in the center of the table and slathered it with cream cheese. “Maybe he’s a Hussades fan. Maybe he’ll have us all run the course to prove who’s good and give us a medal.”

“Maybe you ought to slow down on the food if we are going to be running for our lives later today.”

He looked at me with a frown, took just one bite of the bagel then stared at it for a moment and put it down on his plate. It was perhaps the first time I’d ever seen food left on his plate.

As we were finishing up, Beth finally showed up and joined us.

“Uh-oh,” said Jake, catching sight of the big frown on her face. “More doom and gloom from your partner in crime here, eh?”

He picked up the bagel on his plate again, and seemed to be thinking about the next bite.

“I’ve been in the library. They’ve got a computer in there hooked to the Internet.”

“What’d you find out?” I asked her.

“It’s not good. Purges are never good things in history. I checked into the web browser history to see what people have been looking up on that machine. I read some disturbing things. Have you guys ever heard of Vlad the Impaler?”

Jake and I both shifted in our seats. Jake put his bagel down again.

“Oh, don’t tell me!” she said, staring.

Jake and I didn’t meet her eyes. “Don’t talk about him with the adults,” I told her.

“He’s like a relative or something, isn’t he?” she hissed. “You have got to be kidding me! I thought you said you were from Switzerland not Transylvania.”

I shushed her with my hand. “Look,” I told her, glancing around nervously. “It’s something we learn about in history class, but are told never to bring it up with others. Keep it down.”

“Oh geez,” she said, putting her face in her hands. “Okay, so at least tell me that Vater isn’t Vlad. I mean, the things I read…”

“No, no,” I said urgently. “Nothing like that. Look, don’t you have some cousins somewhere that you aren’t proud of? Someone in the distant family that is famous, but not in a good way? Someone who went to jail or something?”

“Yeah,” she answered slowly. “There’s my Uncle Bobby. I think he forged checks or something.”

“Well, it’s the same way for us. There are bad cousins in every family. We don’t associate with their sort. We might have some distant connection, but we don’t get along and haven’t for centuries.”

Her mouth hung open while she flicked her eyes back and forth between the two of us. “Let me get this straight now, you guys are talking about vampires aren’t you? Because Vlad the Impaler, a real guy in history, was thought by some to be a vampire.”

I felt like clamping my hand over her mouth. Instead I reached over and grabbed her shoulder and pulled her close and whispered in her ear. “Don’t use that word out loud, not ever. That’s not a good word around here.”

“What? Vampire?”

I winced.

“That’s a very rude word,” said Jake. “It’s like a dirty word for us.”

She looked at me with wide eyes, an open mouth and curled lips. She was very pretty even when alarmed, and she smelled good up close to me like that.

“Okay…” she said.

I felt eyes on us and turned to see Sarah two tables away. She had been watching Beth and me closely. From her point of view, it might have looked like I’d grabbed Beth and kissed her cheek. I felt a flush of red go up my face and gave Sarah a weak smile and a nod. I let go of Beth and took up another piece of bacon, even though eating was the very last thing on my mind. Sarah gave me a frosty stare in return. She tossed her head and her ponytail-like spray of hair flipped behind her head. I thought I saw a blue feather float away from her head, a sure sign she was upset.

“Okay,” said Beth finally. “Maybe that explains why there were searches about, um, Vlad on the computer.”

Neither one of us looked at her. We’d learned the history of Vlad Dracula, a lord who lived in the 1400s in Europe. He’d been an evil and terrible man.

“But you guys aren’t telling me the whole story, are you?” asked Beth, leaning close so that only the three of us could hear. “He’s related to you somehow… So that’s why you feel the moonlight. That’s why it almost burns your skin.”

I took this moment to look up at Sarah again. Sarah jerked her eyes away from me the moment I looked up, pretending she hadn’t been staring.

“What do you mean?” I asked. I put as much innocence in the question as I could.

“Because you guys are like werewolves or something.”

Jake dropped his fork.

It was all I could do to not grab Beth’s pretty little head again. I leaned close to her instead, and whispered. “The word werewolf is even more offensive to us than the word vampire.”

She nodded and gave me a tiny smile. “Okay. Makes sense, I suppose. No one likes to be reminded of distant relatives that did very bad things.”

My eyes slid back to Sarah, who was staring back, but trying not to look like she was staring back.

I realized right then that having two girlfriends was worse than having just one and probably worse than having none at all.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The Game

We were finishing up breakfast when a chime went off and Urdo walked into the dining room. Everyone stopped their chatter. She hopped onto the table and walked calmly to the middle of it, her boots causing plates to slide and clatter.

“There will be an assembly to meet the lord of the house in the great hall at ten am sharp. Do not be late, children,” she said.

She hopped from the table to the floor with a single flap of her arms, which I noticed for the first time had become folded wings under her cloak. Everyone gasped, it was rare to see any adult shift in front of us.

Urdo walked out of the dining room without giving us so much as a nod. When she had gone, everyone fell to whisperings and wild speculation.

“I’ve heard he’s a bird-type too,” said one voice, I thought it was Sarah’s. “She’s showing off her wings to impress him later.”

“They’ve rounded us all up here for a reason,” said another voice. “We’re all to get awards. We’re the best crop of shifters Vater’s ever seen.”

One word kept coming up in a constant, bubbling fashion, always spoken with reverence and in a hushed tone: “Vater.”

Beth and I exchanged glances. Jake caught the gesture.

“What do you guys think will happen?” he asked.

“He said something about a purge,” said Beth.

“A purge?” questioned Jake. “That doesn’t sound positive.”

We agreed. By the time lunch had ended we were all in a tight huddle, discussing what we could do about it. Really, there wasn’t much to be said. We did determine we should be among the early birds at the meeting.

* * *

When the assembly time approached, all of us were there ten minutes early. Even Danny and Thomas looked concerned and attentive, although Danny took the occasion to rub his nose with his middle finger after catching my eye. I returned the subtle gesture with one of my own.

“I taught him that one,” I said to Beth, who watched our interplay. “He’s a slow learner, but he shows promise.”

Beth grimaced at me, unimpressed. Jake gave a hoot of laughter.

All of our messing about was cut off suddenly, as Urdo entered the room followed by Waldheim, who flipped at his clothes and wrapped his hands together as if he didn’t know what to do with them. It had to be the first time I’d ever seen Waldheim look nervous about anything.

The last figure strode in behind the other two. He was tall with broad shoulders. His hair was dark and wild-looking. I’d expected an old man, but he didn’t look particularly old. There was an odd light in his eyes as he slid them over the group. Those glinting, intelligent eyes seemed unusual. They were the eyes of a nocturnal animal, the eyes of a creature you might see watching your campfire in the woods at night.

He stood while everyone else was seated. He put his hands on his hips like I’d seen Urdo do countless times. Perhaps this was part of the family heritage, a swaggering posture.

“Children,” he said a deep, resonating voice. I heard his accent from the very first word. “Your principal has told me everything about you. And I do mean, everything,” he eyed us all to let that sink in. We shifted in our seats. Somehow, he didn’t make you feel at ease. It was like watching a tiger behind glass at the zoo. He made you feel as though he might be hungry, and you might just look like dinner.

“At this moment you are to be judged. By me. I will warn you, that most fail to meet my standards. Many of you might be thinking of how to explain yourselves. Excuses for mistakes, guilty secrets and other nonsense. Strike those thoughts bubbling in your minds! Excuses are worse than nothing on this day.”

Jake looked at me and I gave him the tiniest shrug. Whatever we’d both expected, this wasn’t it.

We turned our attention back to Vater, and were shocked to see him approaching us. There was an angry hunch to his shoulders. His brows beetled and his teeth showed in a snarl.

“You boys!” he said. With two incredibly long arms that ended in strong overly-large hands, he reached out and took us each by a shoulder. He drew us forward into the center of the floor. “Exactly, just so,” he said, as if speaking to himself.

He lowered his face to look at each of us in turn. His voice and demeanor softened suddenly, becoming almost gentle, but I knew he wasn’t in a gentle mood.

“Perhaps, boys, I’ve bored you?” he asked. His breath puffed out into my face smelling faintly of coffee. “Perhaps I owe you two an apology?”

“No sir,” we both stammered out at the same moment.

“No?” he asked, almost sweetly. The large hand on my shoulder became very heavy and the fingers sunk into my flesh. He looked first into my eyes, then Jake’s. Jake winced. I stood firm, staring back at him.

He nodded at me and pushed Jake. Jake fell to his knees. I thought maybe he would cry, and reached out my hand toward him. I glared at Vater, who watched me closely. I managed to control my expression and make my anger vanish, but it was too late. He’d noted it.

“I see,” he said, releasing me. He stepped forward away from Jake and I, we were now behind him, forgotten. I helped Jake to his feet.

Vater approached the other children. He eyed them carefully. I looked at them, trying to see what he might see.

“Children,” said Vater, his voice filled with the infinite patience of a parent that has caught naughty kids for the hundredth time. “We are going to play a game today. A very serious game. The world is a harsh place for our kind. One weak link is all it takes to break a chain, you see.”

We stared at him, not knowing where this was all going. But suddenly, in the quiet, a throat was cleared. All eyes swung to Waldheim, except for Urdo, who looked at the floor.

“Milord,” said Waldheim when those slightly yellow eyes struck him. Again, I was surprised by Waldheim’s obvious state. He worked his hands in his pockets and swallowed as if his throat had filled with dust.

Vater’s brows rose as high as they would go. “Yes?”

“The children, milord,” stumbled Waldheim. “They aren’t prepared for this… for this sort of thing.”

Vater lit up at his words. With one extremely long finger upheld in front of his face, he stalked toward Waldheim. “Exactly!” he shouted. “You have hit upon the trouble, my good dean. They are not prepared. They are not well-served, there has been shirking here, and I’m glad you would be the first to admit it. Your job, I understand, has been the maintenance of discipline, am I right?”

“Yes, milord,” said Waldheim in a strangled voice.

“Then perhaps you’d like to participate in our exercise?”

Waldheim’s face changed from nervous to fearful. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t think he feared anything. I found myself wanting to see him change into a lizard and give Vater a good kick in the rear. The thought shocked me, but there it was.

I wasn’t the only one with such a thought in my head, as I heard something then, something everyone heard while Vater and Waldheim stared at one another. It was a coughing sound, but a fake one, the sort of cough a kid gives when they are really saying a word.

The word sounded like “Bully” and it came from the kids in the line-up. It could have been a much worse word, but it was hard to be sure. I flicked my eyes that way and saw Beth’s hand coming down from her face. She’d done the fake cough, I knew it in an instant. The rest of us had been conditioned for this moment our entire lives, the moment when we met our great-great grandfather. She hadn’t. She had none of our inbred awe of this strange, scary man. Who else would have had the guts to mock him publicly?

At that single word, Vater stiffened as if someone had put a knife into his back. He loomed up, taller than I would have thought he possibly could have stood. He turned slowly and slid his eyes across the faces of the assembled children. I followed his gaze, and I picked out Beth almost as quickly as he did.

It wasn’t the other kids who gave her away, mind you, I was proud to note that they weren’t snitching on her on purpose. No, what gave her away was her expression. Everyone else had a look of sick shock on their faces, but not Beth. She was trying to look innocent and unconcerned. She was covering, but didn’t realize how everyone else was taking it.

Like a laser beam, I felt Vater’s eyes zero in on Beth. He took a single step toward her, and those long fingers rose up slowly to point at her.

“That one,” he said. He cocked his head at her. It was an animal-like gesture. “You, girl. There is something about you… Did you have something you would like to say, my dear?”

“No sir,” said Beth, still playing innocent. She had the gall to smile at Vater. No one, and I mean not anyone I’d seen so far this day, had even thought to smile while looking at Vater. I felt sure he rarely saw that expression on anyone’s face.

Vater cocked his head the other way and took another single slow step toward Beth. His hand rose up to touch his chin. “Interesting,” he said. “Unforeseen.”

He slowly pointed at Beth with a long finger. The finger turned upward and curled into a beckoning gesture. Beth played up the innocent act to the limit, I’ll give her that. She did the “What, me?” face and pointed to herself.

Vater frowned and raised his chin, beckoning again. Perhaps this time there was a bit of impatience in his gesture. Beth came forward and joined Jake and I in the center of the group.

“Yes,” said Vater, ignoring us now and speaking to the rest of the group. He eyed each in turn carefully. “Yes, I think that’s it.”

Waldheim drew in his breath, and I knew he was about to speak. So did Vater, who put up a flat hand toward Waldheim’s face. “Don’t speak,” commanded Vater. “Don’t compound your errors, Dean.”

Waldheim fell silent. Whatever words he’d thought to say died in his throat without ever having been spoken.

“Children,” Vater said, addressing our classmates. “These three amongst you have been selected as the hares. The rest of you, are the hounds. The hares will run from you today, and tonight, for a full day. You, the hounds, will try to catch them. Are there any questions?”

Danny raised his hand. There was an eagerness in his eyes I didn’t like.

“Speak!” said Vater.

“Milord,” said Danny smoothly. “What will the hounds do when they catch they hares?”

Vater smiled at Danny. He turned and regarded the three of us. “What hounds always do when they catch their prey. Nature will take its course,” he said evenly.

I blinked at him and suddenly, there was an odd pain in my pants. I felt shocking discomfort, and then something long snaked down the back of my pantsleg. It slipped out onto the floor beside my shoe. I had sprouted a long pink scaly tail. The tip of it flipped and curled like a snake around my leg.

Some of the kids in the line-up snickered.

Vater looked down at my tail and pursed his lips. “A rodent,” he said flatly. “I don’t care for rodents.”

I looked back at him, narrowing my eyes. I almost said many things, but held back with a desperate effort of will.

He noted the look in my eye with interest, and gave me a tiny nod, showing he’d read my thoughts.

Vater drew himself up. “The game begins. He pointed at the clock on the wall. It showed it was 10:15 am. “The hounds will give the hares a fifteen minute head start,” he announced.

He turned back toward the three of us and leaned forward. He put his hands on his knees. He eyed each of us intently, Beth, Jake and lastly me. His face loomed into ours.

“It’s time to run, children,” he said in a whisper.

We staggered back away from everyone. All their eyes were upon us.

We ran.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Hounds and Hares

We’d been taught, all our lives, that someday we might be pursued. We’d been taught that on some single, fateful day, we might become hunted prey. Remember all those horror movies that ended with a bunch of angry villagers carrying pitchforks and torches and chasing down the monster? Well, the monsters in those movies were our relatives. We’d been trained for this day, which everyone hoped would never come. But we had never expected that the hunters would be our own friends.

“So now I guess we know what kind of a purge he had in mind,” I puffed as we ran down the hall. Beth and Jake were right behind me.

“What did you get me into, man?” asked Jake, wheezing as he ran.

“What do you think they’ll do if they catch us?” asked Beth.

“I don’t plan on finding out,” I said.

“I knew being your friend would end with something like this. I just knew it. You’ve been flipping off the adults since day one. It was only a matter of time. And now I’m guilty by association. Why did I have to be your buddy? All because you didn’t laugh at me that one day.”

“Shut up, Jake,” I said.

Jake had no intention of shutting up. “I should have just sucked up to Danny and Thomas like all the other guys. I should have been their court jester. I could have done silly little toad-tricks to keep them all amused, but noooo, I had to go with the rebel, the prankster, the powerless boy.”

“Jake,” said Beth, “Please shut up.”

“I’m tired already,” said Jake. “All day and night did he say?”

“Where are we going anyway, Connor?” asked Beth.

“They’ll expect the attic, they’ve seen us up there. So I’m headed for the basement.”

We got to the basement door and rattled the doorknob. It was locked. We stood there for a moment, hands on our knees, breathing hard.

“Locked,” I said. “We’ll have to find another way down.”

“This can’t be happening,” moaned Jake.

Beth just looked at me. No doubt she expected me to pull a rabbit out of my hat, as I had during Hussades. I looked back at her, thinking to myself there were no more rabbits in there. In fact, there wasn’t even a hat.

“Maybe we should really run for it,” said Jake, looking at me seriously. He had some of his wind back and could talk clearly. “Let’s just open a window and head for the woods. We could make it before the fifteen minutes are up.”

“Ten left now,” interjected Beth.

“Whatever, we have time,” said Jake. “We could be home in two hours and just forget this whole thing. What are they going to do? Make us move out of town?”

I looked at him seriously. “Maybe.”

“You think so? What about our families?”

I just stared at him. “If we shame ourselves in front of Vater I think anything could happen. Our folks could be too ashamed to stay here. People move out of Camden for a lot less reason than this.”

I turned my attention to Beth, who watched us closely. “You’ve got no big stake here, Beth. I think Jake’s right in your case. Just take off. No one will feel bad about it.”

“Except us, that is,” said Beth. “I’m not a quitter. You should know that about me by now. Look, Connor, we’ve been running away from things since I got here. Maybe it’s time we planned out some moves of our own.”

I looked at her and slowly, I grinned. “You really do think the way I do.”

Jake moaned. “Okay, I’m out!”

I turned to him and my grin vanished. “Jake?”

“No, I’ve had enough Connor,” he said, heading to the nearest window. He jimmied the lock, but it was frozen shut. He tried several more while he talked. “You are my best friend, but I’m not going to get run down in this spooky place. I’m bailing.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but Beth put her hand up in a gesture to stop me. Hard words died in my throat.

With a grunt and a crunching sound, Jake got one of the old-fashioned windows to crack open about a foot. He put one leg out into the snowy outside world. Cold air blew in, cooling our faces.

“Don’t freeze to death out there,” I told him.

He looked back at me, and I saw the pain in his face. He didn’t want to do this, I could tell. “I’m sorry,” he said.

I grabbed his hand and gave it a shake. He and Beth hugged, and then he was running around the side of the house, plowing through about two feet of snow.

I couldn’t believe Jake was gone.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Underworld

Beth and I closed the window to cover his tracks, and then we ran further into the house, toward the back where the kitchens were.

We avoided the adults working there and slipped into the basement through the kitchen’s backstairs. This part of the massive basement was used to store food and cooking goods. The gymnasium section was far away at the other end of the mansion under the dormitories.

“How long?” I asked Beth. The first hallway in this part of the basement was dingy and dark. A single, naked 25 watt bulb hung down from the ceiling and glowed with yellowy light. We were surrounded by musty crates of vegetables and canned goods. The place had an earthy smell to it, the smell of dust and mold. She snapped on her tiny flashlight, examining her watch. I had neither.

“Five minutes, maybe less.”

I chose a passage at random and we ran into the darkness.

* * *

For several hours, no one came near. I imagined them combing through the attic, finding nothing.

“I hope they aren’t chasing Jake in the woods,” said Beth in a whisper. I looked at her, but could barely make out her shape in the darkness. I’d been thinking the same thing.

“He’ll be okay,” I said without much conviction.

“Why is your grandfather doing this? Why is he dividing up the family and putting us against one another?”

I shrugged. “We’ve always been a competitive bunch,” I said. “But this is different. I guess he thinks this is what he needs to do to make us tough.”

“So this is all about trying to show him how tough you are? This whole scary game of hide and seek, is just about impressing the old man?”

“Sort of,” I said. “Like I told you back on the bus, we are not normal people here in Camden.”

“I remember that, like a dream from a year ago. I had no idea.”

There were some thumping steps on the ceiling above us. I waved for Beth to be quiet. The steps slowed, and then stopped. It seemed like they were directly above us, perhaps in some hallway.

“What do you…?” began Beth, but I shushed her.

The steps began again, slowly moving above us.

“They can’t hear us down here,” hissed Beth in my ear.

“Those might not be human ears listening,” I hissed back, putting a finger to her lips.

We listened for perhaps thirty seconds. Nothing.

Then, suddenly, the steps started thumping again, fast this time.

“Come on,” I said, grabbing Beth’s hand and pulling her out into the hallway.

“You think they heard us?”

“I think so, we need to move.”

Somewhere in the distance we heard a door creak open and slam. Beth squeezed my hand. The hounds had come down into the basement.

So we ran again. We traveled deeper into the basement. I came to realize as we stumbled about in the dusty underworld that the mansion’s basement was fully as big as the main floor of the mansion.

Then we found the stone steps. They led down further into the ground. A single dim light bulb hung down on a wire. It looked very old, as if electric lights had been a new idea when it had been installed. I wondered how many decades it had hung there. I reached up and twisted the hot bulb, unscrewing it just enough that it went out quietly.

“What’s down those steps?” asked Beth in the heavy darkness.

“We’re going to find out,” I said, pulling her after me as we went down the steps. I hadn’t even known there were deeper levels, but I didn’t want to tell Beth that now.

The second level down was much older than the first. Instead of walls that were flat concrete, the walls here were mortar and stone. The stones weren’t bricks either, but real stones with rounded corners, they looked and felt smooth like river rocks to me. We found a lantern near the stairway with Beth’s tiny flashlight. There were very old wooden matches with the lantern. After burning out half the box of matches and singeing my fingers, I managed to get the lantern to light.

“Good,” breathed Beth when yellowy light splashed and flickered over the walls. “The batteries in my flashlight wouldn’t have lasted much longer.”

I nodded and held the lantern up to look closely at the space we were in. There were leather straps and things hanging on the walls. Small rooms built of wood were here and there around the dusty interior.

“This must have been for animals,” said Beth. “That’s a bridle, and there’s a yoke, like for oxen.”

“Yes,” I said, “I get it, they must have kept animals down here years ago. But why keep them underground?”

“I know in cold places they did that, like Scandinavia,” said Beth. “To keep the animals warm, the lower levels of a big house were for the cattle and horses in the winter.”

“Wouldn’t have been much fun for the animals,” I said.

“Nor the people caring for them, either,” said Beth.

I nodded, wondering how old the mansion really was. It had to be a century old, maybe two centuries. As we explored the stables, I worried that we might find something horrible, something that I didn’t want Beth to see. The adults had whispered about the old days, and I knew that the people of Camden hadn’t always been completely civilized. This basement seemed like just the kind of place where dark secrets would be hidden.

But all we found were empty storerooms and empty animal stalls. There were pitchforks and shovels and wheelbarrows and horseshoes.

Eventually, we found more stone steps leading further down into the Earth. We both stared at these steps and the ancient wooden door at the bottom. The door was obviously far older than anything I’d seen in the mansion before. It looked medieval. It was made of heavy dark wood. The thick, crudely cut wood planks were held together with rusty metal straps. There was no doorknob. Instead, a massive ring of black iron the size of a large man’s hand served the purpose.

Beth hugged up against me as we looked down the steps at that closed door. “What’s down there?” asked Beth.

“I have no idea.”‘

“I don’t like the look of it.”

I shook my head. “Me either. I feel like we are going back a century in time with each level we go down.”

We heard sounds back far behind us. They echoed from the stone walls. It was the sound of voices, and footsteps. I found a loop of thick rope and dropped it on the stone steps that led down to the ancient door. I had the beginnings of an idea.

I took a step downward, reaching toward the huge iron ring. Beth held me back.

“If we go down there Connor,” said Beth in my ear. “Eventually, we will run out of levels, and we won’t have any way to go back up. We’ll be trapped down there.”

“Maybe,” I said, “But I’ve got a plan.”

Chapter Thirty

The Dungeon

We pushed the dungeon door open. That’s what it was, really, I could tell just as soon as I pushed those groaning ancient hinges open. Rusty iron was everywhere, and what greeted us past that door could only be described as a prison. Cells with barred windows lined both sides of the winding passageway. Stone walls that perhaps had been hidden under the mansion for decades stood in dusty crumbling silence. Down here, it smelled very earthy, the way my parents basement had smelled when I climbed down into it as a tot. In a way, I found it comforting. Beth, however, was anything but comforted. A large dusty cobweb caught on her face and hair and she gave one of those shrieks that only girls can make. I shushed her, but it was too late. I heard shouts behind us.

“What’s your plan, Connor?” she asked desperately.

I look both ways down the corridor. The floor was so covered in dust that if we walked in it we would surely show which way we had gone. I took a plank that leaned against a wall and put it on the floor. I walked along the plank to the nearest cell door. It was locked, so I tried two others. Finally, one opened on stiff, groaning hinges.

“Quick, come along the plank and hide in here.”

She followed, but balked when we got to the cell. “What if they lock us in?”

I grabbed her hand and aimed the flashlight at the cell door’s lock. It had been torn out like a bad tooth. “I doubt they will be able to lock that,” I said.

“Did something escape from here?”

I shrugged, not wanting to tell her that was exactly what I thought had happened. She reluctantly went inside, shining her light everywhere as if she expected a dozen skeletons to jump out at her.

When she was inside, I trotted the other way down the corridor.

“Wait!” she cried, “Don’t leave me Connor!”

“Shhhh!” I said, “I’ll be right back.”

What I did was run back and forth a few times, stirring up the dust and leaving plenty of footprints going away from our cell. Then I came back and walked the plank to Beth.

We sat huddled in the cell for what seemed like hours, but which was probably only minutes. Beth played the light around on the walls. They were made of rounded river stones, like the level above us, but down here they were even more dank. In places, slippery moss grew down the walls where water trickled down from somewhere above. We found an old wooden table in the cell, with a stool sitting at the table. On the table was a quill pen like I’d seen at museums, and a loose leaf book with a thick cover that looked like it was made of leather.

“A book?” asked Beth. She picked it up and dust puffed up in our faces.

We heard voices above in the stables level. They were coming.

Beth and I cupped the flashlight to hide the light as much as we could and dragged the plank into the cell with us. We pushed the creaking cell door closed as quietly as we could. The broken latch didn’t let it go all the way shut, but it would look good enough from outside. Beth grabbed up the ancient dust-covered book and slid it under her arm. I frowned, wondering what kind of grim family secrets were in that book. We had a habit of not looking at our past too closely in my family.

We snapped off the light when we heard steps on the stairs. I heard a single, sharp bark, and I knew a new fear. If Danny or Thomas could sniff us out, all my work would be for nothing.

I was glad to hear a sneeze. It was a dog-sneeze, I felt fairly sure of it. A furry head poked down into the dungeon and I slipped back against the crumbling walls of our cell.

“Get a light down here,” said Danny in a growling voice. Sometimes, it was hard for us to speak when we were fully changed into animal form.

“I don’t think they’re down here, Danny,” said another voice, this one whiny. I thought it was Thomas.

“Get down here you chicken. I smell a rat.”

“It’s a dungeon, man, of course there are rats.”

“Not this big! Come on.”

More steps and a growing pool of light. They had a lantern of some kind.

“They’re down here, I knew it! Look at the footprints. Get everyone.”

“Now who’s scared of a rat?” chuckled Thomas.

“Okay we don’t need help. Follow me.”

They were in the hallway now. I could tell by the way the light was splashing the walls further away from us that they had taken the bait. They wandered further away, and still we waited. A few more kids showed up and followed them. When it was quiet again, I gave Beth’s hand a yank and we ran for it.

We burst out of the cell and ran up the steps. We pulled the door closed behind us, and I gathered up the rope I’d left on the stairs. I quickly tied one end to the loop of iron and the other to the stairway rail. They were trapped down there for now.

Beth and I took a moment to grin at each other. I hope it scared the heck out of them.

We rushed up the steps and spilled out into the room with all the horse harnesses when we ran straight into Sarah.

We almost knocked each other down.

“Connor?” Sarah stared at us and the dungeon door. She blinked. “Did you lock them down there?” she asked, and then she laughed.

I looked at her darkly. I put a hand out protectively in front of Beth, I did it automatically, without even thinking about it. “Don’t get in my way, Sarah.”

Her eyes took in the way that I was protecting Beth. She pursed her lips in a disgusted expression.

“Don’t worry. I’m not going to give you and your girly away.”

I softened my expression. “Thanks,” I said. “Could you play deaf for a while too and leave them down there?”

She giggled and shook her head at me. “One last great prank. Okay, Connor.”

“I owe you,” I said, and as I walked past her, I kissed her on the forehead.

Both girls gave me a bewildered look, and I felt a rush of embarrassment. What had made me do that? Not giving anyone a chance to think more about it, not even me, I ran out of the room with Beth right behind me.

One last prank, Sarah had said. Would this really be my last one?

Chapter Thirty-One

The Book

We found a new hiding place: the dormitories. Who would expect us to simply return to our rooms, the very heart of enemy territory? I figured it was foolproof and the last place they would look, but Beth was quite nervous.

“One of them will come back any second for a hairbrush or something.”

“This room was shared by Jake, Chris Anderson and I,” I said. “The only thing Chris Anderson would come back for would be a nap.”

She laughed quietly, but still seemed nervous. She paged through the book she had lugged up the stairs from the dungeon cell. I’d suggested she dump it a few times, but she had refused. I did get her to put it down for a while.

One of the reasons I chose this room was because of the secret snack supplies. Both Jake and Chris were chunky guys, and they could be counted on to have a stash of food somewhere. We found a bag of chips under Chris Anderson’s bed, but the big score was a full bag of peanuts and a full soda in Jake’s backpack. We ate this happily. Food always tastes best when you are really hungry.

After a few hours of waiting around with our fists shoved up against our cheeks, she began poking around with the book again.

“It must be getting dark outside,” I said, eyeing her and the book. “Maybe we should go have a look around.”

“You don’t want me to read this, do you?”

“Why don’t you put that book down, Beth?”

“What do you think might be written in here?” she asked, looking from the book to me, and then back to the book. She had it laid across her lap.

I hesitated. “Well, some of our family history isn’t very happy.”

“I’ve figured that out.”

“I can’t imagine that a book found in a hidden dungeon beneath our mansion could have a happy story in it.”

She nodded, looking at the book curiously. She polished off spots of dust that still hid in the creases of the leather cover. She opened the book, and my chest tightened. I thought about grabbing it out of her hands, but held myself back.

“There’s a title…” she said.

“What?” I asked.

She smiled. “You sure you want to know?”

“No,” I said. “Forget it. Just close it up again.”

“It’s called Alchemical Experiments.”

I raised my eyebrows. That did sound interesting. Alchemy was the study of half-magical sciences, things that normal schools taught you were all nonsense. In our family, alchemy was considered a legitimate pursuit. I slid closer to Beth. We both sat on Jake’s bed. I cocked my head to read the book with her.

She smiled and opened it up. I scooted close enough to read over her shoulder. There was a date written in flowing longhand script. It said 1782. Beth sucked in her breath. “Was there even anyone living in Oregon in 1782?” she asked aloud.

“Apparently,” I said. “Or maybe this book comes from somewhere else.”

She nodded and we began to puzzle through the book. It was more like a collection of essays than anything else, written on old crumbling parchment and piled in between the leather covers like a binder of loose paper notes. Some of the pages were torn or missing. Others were impossible to read or in foreign languages.

We found a clearly written essay at last. It was titled simply “The Beginning.” The first page had been stained so badly you couldn’t read it, but the second page grabbed our attention immediately.

* * *

…of course, being of sound mind and memory, this stranger’s story of my own creation seemed preposterous. I could quite clearly recall a family I’d grown up with, but not my early childhood, I will admit. The family that raised me had been an adopted one, or so they had told me. They had all been killed mysteriously one night soon after I’d come of age. I’d spent a century searching for the killers, but without success. I had to admit, however, that the stranger’s story about an alchemist he called the maker was more than an intriguing fantasy. His words disturbed me. I’d heard of alchemists, people who experiment with the thin line between science and magic. Sometimes people called them sorcerers, but others put them in a very different category. For this stranger to come along and inform me that my very long, secret life had started as an alchemical experiment which had gone horribly wrong I found unsettling.

The stranger’s knowledge of me and my secrets I found disturbing as well. I had long known I blacked out at nights sometimes, especially during the fullest cycle of the moon. I often found myself in a disheveled state in the morning, haunted by dark dreams. Sometimes, I later learned that bad things had happened during the night that I had no memory of, but which left me feeling strangely guilty.

Just looking at this stranger and hearing his story about me, with his intense gaze and looming eyes, made me want him to vanish. I didn’t want to think about what happened on nights when the moon was fullest. He became angry when I said as much to him, and I no longer.…

* * *

Here the paper became torn and unreadable.

Beth closed the book and looked at me.

“What are you doing?” I asked in exasperation.

“You sure you want to keep reading?” she said sweetly. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe we should stop now.”

I growled at her and opened the book again. Beth and I flipped through the delicate pages as quickly as we dared, looking for another scrap of the story. At last, we found it.

* * *

…how I learned that the stranger was indeed a cousin of mine, not through natural means, exactly, but a cousin nonetheless as we both shared the same maker, the Alchemist. The stranger has long since left me. He was barely alive, I should think, after our argument. A lesser man would not have survived at all. I was glad to see him go, but was still disturbed by his story. I made a solemn promise to myself that I would seek out the alchemist. Perhaps he may still cling to life even after centuries had passed. After all, I had continued to live without growing gray-haired and weak, so why would he not have taken the same alchemical baths and thus relieved himself from the burden of aging?

* * *

The essay ended there, and we both saw the signature. Beth and I gasped in unison. The name signed at the bottom of the page was Vater.

We looked at each other in shock.

“Vater wrote this?” whispered Beth.

I thought about it for a moment, and it all seemed to make perfect sense. “Of course, he did,” I said. “That story fits with what little I know of him. What gets me is that he might have been locked in down there. Do you think that he was a prisoner there? Do you think that was his cell?”

“The lock was broken…” said Beth.

I stood up and paced the room. I tapped my fingers on my chin. “One night, when the moon is at its fullest…”

“And Vater changed and became strong enough to break out,” finished Beth for me.

We heard a sound then, a strange warbling sound that rang through the mansion. We stopped talking and tried not to breathe while we listened for it again. We didn’t hear anything else for awhile, and relaxed.

“Well then, who really owned this mansion then, anyway?” I asked.

Beth looked at me. “The maker?” she whispered.

“The alchemist,” I said, nodding. It all made sense.

“Then he’s the one who built that freaky room…” said Beth.

“The one who made all of us, originally,” I said. The thought was so huge I couldn’t completely understand everything it meant. I felt like I’d learned my parents were really aliens. Perhaps, in a way, they really were.

The sound came again, and this time there was no mistaking it for what it was. It was the sound of howling, the sound a wild dog pack might make while hunting.

I knew in an instant what it was. Danny and Thomas had made it out of the dungeon.

Chapter Thirty-Two

The Hunt

We shoved the book under Chris Anderson’s bed and ran. This time, Beth didn’t try to take the book with us. I think she was finally spooked by it, the way I was, and didn’t really want to read any more right now.

“What are you then, genetic freaks? Mutations?”

“Rude people might call it that, I suppose.”

“We’ve got a dogpack of your relatives chasing us,” said Beth.

“Okay. You’ve got a point.”

We trotted quickly and quietly down the dimly lit hallways. We didn’t see anyone, but we could voices echoing from behind us. They coming closer. I began to run, Beth followed me.

“Where are we going?”

“Back to the place they searched first. The attic.”

We almost didn’t make it. There were footsteps and angry voices underneath the trapdoor just moments after we pulled it up. I wondered if the hanging string we’d used to pull the ladder down was swaying in front of their faces, giving us away.

If it was, no one seemed to notice. The voices came very close and stopped right under us.

“I smell them,” said Thomas in his dog voice. “Right here, and all down these halls. It’s a bit stronger right here.”

“He’s a tricky one,” said Danny. “Just like the dirty rat he is. I’ve always disliked him and now I know why. Dog’s hate rats. It’s only natural. Vater knew too. Vater knew right away he didn’t belong.”

Mouse, I shouted in my head. I’m a Mouse. Beth reached out and squeezed my hand as if she knew what I was thinking.

I fought to control my thoughts. My tail wanted to sprout again, I could feel it.

“What are we going to do if we catch them?” said Thomas.

“A dog’s teeth aren’t for barking,” said Danny. They laughed. The sound was a strange gargling noise coming from their animal throats.

I wondered if a rat’s fangs could match a dog’s if they were evenly sized. I bet they could. I bet that rats—I mean mice—only lost fights with dogs because dogs were bigger. I sort of liked the thought and felt my lips pull back in a snarl. I tried to stop the change, not wanting to scare Beth. My mouth suddenly felt very full of sharp teeth, but I didn’t think she noticed in the dark. I was alarmed, the change sort of snuck up on you, like a yawn. You would think of it vaguely one minute, and then the next you would be unhinging your jaws in a howling big yawn. Trying to stop the change was just as hard as stifling a yawn or a sneeze.

We heard snuffling sounds as they tried to pick up the scent. The batteries were dead in Beth’s flashlight. We huddled quietly in the dark. Hiding and knowing the people searching for me were very close always made my heart race. I could hear my blood pounding in my ears and wondered if a dog’s ears were sharp enough to hear it too.

“Do you think..?” asked Thomas after a few moments.

“Yeah. Leave the others behind to search the rooms. Come on, this way,” said Danny. They ran off with their claws clicking on the hardwood floors.

When they’d gone, I jumped up and dragged Beth to her feet.

“They know,” I told her.

“How did they figure it out?”

“The scent trail ended at the trapdoor, you don’t have to be a genius dog to imagine how we might have vanished. They will go around to take the stairs so they can stay in dog form and surprise us.”

We ran through the attic. I felt like the game was almost up. I was running out of gas, getting tired. We’d done pretty well, I thought to myself. We’d kept hidden for over twelve hours now. It was dusk outside. I had hoped that they would all stop to eat something, but they showed no signs of having a seven-course meal and giving us a break.

Bad thoughts came to me about the dungeon and all those dark, dusty cells. Who else besides Vater had been left to rot down there? Would we, possibly, be locked up down there if they caught us?

“What are we going to do, Connor? They are under us and coming up.”

“We go up to the roof,” I said.

We ran to one of the roof exits, one of those square small doors with the little door handles. An idea came to me like a thunderbolt. I knew right then why the doors up here were made that way.

“Look at this door handle, Beth,” I said.

“Okay…”

“If small people, or animals, lived up here they would be able to open these small doors. The handles were low enough so that even a smart housecat would have no problem working with them.”

“So you think the alchemist kept his smallest creations up here?”

“Yes,” I said. “And his most dangerous ones he locked down in the dungeon.”

By the time it was dark and the first stars poked out of the night sky we made it out onto the roof. The cool fresh air felt good. I wondered if Jake had made it home all right, and if things would get back to normal after this all blew over in a few weeks. Somehow, I didn’t think they would. Somehow, I knew that Vater’s return changed everything. I kept these thoughts to myself, however, not wanting to scare Beth any further.

We closed the small square door behind us and stretched in the snow, breathing the fresh night air. Right now the fresh air felt great, but I knew that after a few more hours out here we would be freezing.

“Connor,” said Beth.

“Mmm?”

“I think there’s something on the roof with us.”

A hulking shape moved down from the nearest roof peak and came toward us. We scrambled away. All I could think of was one thing: Vater had found us.

“Wait, children, waits you,” said a voice. It sounded strange, and had a hissing quality to it. I knew that voice and I stopped, but with one leg up to run. It was Waldheim’s voice.

“Bit cold up here for a walk, Dean,” I said as cheerily as possible. He was in lizard form and it must have been freezing up here for him. He was wrapped in heavy coats.

“Indeed,” he said. “I’ve waited up here for hours. I expected you to end up here at some point, after that adventure that left you on the balcony yesterday.”

I nodded. He came closer and we stepped back, out of lunging range.

He halted and looked at us. “Normally, I’m only in this forms when I’m angry, I know, and today is no exception.”

We watched him warily as he rose up, standing on his hindlegs with his tail balancing him from behind like a meercat.

“But I’m not angry with you, childrens.”

We watched as he pulled a backpack out of his coat and held it out to us. We didn’t come forward.

“Don’t blames you for being wary. A good instinct for any of our kind.” He tossed the backpack at our feet in the snow. “You’ll find some supplies there, a flashlight, some rope, food, a blankets. It isn’t much. Perhaps it will help.”

“Thanks,” we said.

“Harsh lessons you’re learning for ones so young,” he said and sighed. As he sighed, his eyes lost some of their yellow luster and his teeth shrank. He turned around and headed back over a roof peak.

“Good luck,” he said, and he was gone.

We dug into the backpack and were delighted to find sandwiches and a thermos of hot coco. Beth immediately pulled out the blanket and draped it over herself. I let her take it without protest. After all, I could always grow a coat of fur if I became too cold.

But still, I kept thinking about the blanket. Beth pulled it around her tightly, and I rubbed at the soft dark material. I looked around at the snowy rooftop. Slowly, I smiled.

“That isn’t your nice smile,” said Beth, eyeing me suspiciously. “Hands off the blanket, Connor.”

I shook my head, my smile turning into a grin. “I’ve got an idea.”

Chapter Thirty-Three

The Trap

The moon came out full and bright. There is a full moon for four nights every twenty-eight days. Thirteen full moons each year. In our family, we always knew the phase of the moon, like some people always seem to know the weather forecast. I could feel the burn of the moonlight on my skin. It made me feel kind of hot and itchy, despite the bitterly cold night air.

Beth didn’t feel any of this warmth. She continued to complain about the loss of the blanket right up until when Danny and Thomas came out of one of those small square doors and ran out into the crusty snow drifts. They spotted us almost immediately and Danny gave a single, loud bark.

Beth was in position behind me, closer to the door. She ran down the nearest slope toward me. When she got to the bottom, I gritted my teeth as she leapt across the flat section. It really was an amazing leap. She had told me she could do it, but I hadn’t really expected her to make a seven foot jump like that while sliding down a roof on bad footing. But she did, and landed easily on the far side.

Seeing Beth so close got the dogs excited, and they came on barking.

We turned and scrambled away, up a roof peak. We got to the top and turned to look back. There was a sort of valley between them and us now with the flat bottom that Beth had leapt over. Danny and Thomas didn’t hesitate. They rushed down the slope to the bottom. It was only at the last second that Danny hesitated. Maybe he saw the grin on my face. I couldn’t help but grin down at them while I watched.

The trap worked perfectly on Thomas, he went right into the blanket that we had stretched over an opening in the roof and dusted with snow. The ground seemed to swallow him up. He gave one of those “Yipe-Yipe-Yipe,” cries that young dogs do when surprised or hurt. He fell two floors, wrapped in a frosty blanket, and crashed down into an atrium below us.

Danny had a bit more time to try to avoid the trap. He slid down the roof on his butt, not able to stop himself. What he managed to do was leap at the last moment across the hole to our side. He scrabbled for a grip on the slippery roof, something dogs aren’t well built for. That’s when I came down the roof to meet him.

He snarled at me, giving me a mouth full of fangs. I snarled back, and to my surprise and his, my mouth was full of fangs too. I thought for a second my vision had blurred, but in a moment I realized it was the long white whiskers that had sprouted out of my face, which now grew into a snout. Just as Danny got his footing on our side of the roof, I reached him, and I gave him a hard shove with my forepaws.

He toppled backward off the roof and down into the atrium. The two growling figures scrambled amongst the bushes that had broken their fall.

“Are they hurt?” asked Beth, coming up behind me to peer down at them.

The two of them circled below us like dogs at the bottom of a tree. Danny limped noticeably. They looked up at me and growled something unpleasant to each other.

I kicked a load of snow down into their faces and gave a whoop of laughter. “They’re fine.”

Beth gave me a concerned look. I know she wasn’t quite sure what to make of this rodent version of Connor.

“Come on,” I said, reaching out a paw to her. She looked at it for just a second. Reluctance showed in her eyes. But then she took my paw and I pulled her up the roof slope. My claws could dig into the snow and climb the roof faster than I ever could have as a human.

“You did a great job making that trap, Connor,” she said, “That was very clever.”

“You did a great job as the bait. That was an amazing leap you made.”

“But what are we going to do now?” asked Beth. “They’ll just come back, with reinforcements.”

“I know,” I said. “It’s time to use that rope Waldheim gave us.”

Beth sucked in her breath and looked over the side. “It’s so far down, Connor.”

“Trust me.”

We made our way across the roof to the edge. It was the back of the mansion, closest to the woods. If we made it into the trees we could sneak back at any point during the night to win the race in the morning. Vater had not said we couldn’t leave the mansion, he had indicated very few rules, and so I wasn’t going to play by any assumed ones. I realized now that he had probably wanted it that way.

We heard a tiny door slam somewhere.

“Someone’s on the roof with us,” hissed Beth.

“It’s time to get out of here, they are closing in,” I said quietly.

We came up to a statue we’d seen before, a scary-looking snow-crusted thing that looked like a wild beast wrought in iron.

“I thought that thing was on the other side of the roof last time,” said Beth, not liking the look of it.

“Maybe it’s a different one, I said, and proceeded to tie the rope to its base.

I tossed the long length of it over the side. “You first, I’ll hold it,” I told her.

She looked at me and rope doubtfully.

There was another door slamming sound, and some thumping sounds somewhere over the peaks. I heard someone give a whoop, as if they had slipped on the treacherous snow-covered shingles.

“Go!” I hissed.

Beth went over the side. Again I was surprised by how light she was. She looked at me one last time with those super cute eyes of hers. “Don’t let go,” she said, and she was gone.

Before she had gone down ten feet, the statue moved behind me. A huge rough hand with claws like black iron landed on my shoulder. The claws closed and dug into my flesh. I was lifted, gasping, into the night air.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Meeting Your Maker

I turned to look into the face of the thing that had me, and I knew fear then like I never had in my life. It was Vater, but in his animal form. I knew in an instant then what he was, and what he always had been. His animal form was that of a wolf, of course.

Vater was a werewolf! I felt sure in my heart that he was the werewolf, the one that had given birth to a thousand dark stories over the centuries.

Vater’s lips curled over his sharp teeth into what I took to be a grin. “You’re cheating, rodent,” he said.

“You never said we couldn’t leave the mansion,” I said, grunting as I wrapped my paws around his huge arm and struggled. He might as well have been made of iron like that statue of him on the other side of the roof. His arm had no softness in it, nothing but fantastic strength.

He nodded, giving me the point. “True,” he said.

He reached down with the other arm and grabbed the rope. He yanked it. Up came Beth to dangle over the roof with me. Vater examined the two of us like a kid that has caught a pair of lizards by the tail.

Vater wrinkled his nose at her. He looped up the rope with his clawed fingers and drew her nearer. Beth tried to climb down, but he caught her hair with one of his two-inch long, hooked claws. He drew her closer to him, to that snout full of fangs.

To my surprise, he sniffed her and nodded his head. He gave her a slight shake, which pulled Beth’s hair and she screamed.

“Let her go!” I snarled at him. All four of my legs and my tail were wrapped around his right arm now, but he still had me by the scruff of the neck.

“I knew there was something about this one,” he said, eyeing Beth and snuffling at her. “She’s not one of mine. I know that smell.”

Another voice spoke up, smoothly, from behind Vater.

“I was going to tell you, Milord,” said Urdo. She stood relaxed at the top of the roof peak behind us.

Vater turned to face her. His snout twisted into a snarl. “She’s an elf!”

“Yes, milord,” said Urdo.

“I’ll not have her kind back here,” said Vater. I could feel his rising anger. He squeezed my neck uncomfortably. “This is my mansion now.”

He lifted Beth up and held her out over the four story drop to the snowy plain below.

“An elf,” he muttered, disgustedly. “No wonder I sensed something different about her.”

“What are you doing?” I shouted.

“You can stay, Connor,” he said. “You’ve impressed me. I’d say you are the best of the crop that I sowed here so long ago. I see myself in you. Today I declare you to be a full-fledged member of my clan.”

Urdo clapped her hands together, “Well done, Connor!”

“A good choice, Milord!” said Waldheim, who’d shown up from somewhere.

“You can’t drop her!” I shouted.

“She’ll be fine,” said Vater. “She’s an elf. Her kind don’t weigh anything, and they’re practically made of rubber. She probably won’t even break a leg. You are like me, Connor. She isn’t and she must go.”

“I don’t want to be like you! Look what happened to your own family!” I snarled at him angrily.

He looked, for the very first time since I’d met him, surprised.

“You dare, rodent?” he said, turning his dangerous gaze fully on me.

“The Stranger came and told you what you were,” I said. “He told you about the Maker. We’re not better than she is.”

“The book,” he said as if to himself. “I’d almost forgotten it. You are even more resourceful than I imagined.”

He dropped Beth then, over the side, without a word. She fell, clinging to the rope. It snapped like a whip as it caught her weight. He reached down for the rope to finish the job.

I bit down on his wrist, as hard as I could. I’m not sure what I was thinking, but I couldn’t let him hurt Beth.

Something huge and pink and sticky came out of nowhere and snapped around Vater’s wrist. It took us all a shocked second to realize what it was. Jake had snapped his tongue out and wrapped it around Vater’s wrist, in what I took as a bizarre attempt to save me.

After that I felt like I was strapped into a rollercoaster that had jumped the tracks. I heard wild shouts and a strange croaking sound.

I flew through the air and landed in the snow in a heap next to Jake.

“Couldn’t stay away, could you?” I said to Jake.

Jake’s tongue was still stuck to Vater’s wrist. Vater shook his tongue-wrapped arm about like a man who has walked into a mass of cobwebs in the garage. Jake couldn’t speak with his tongue fully extended like that, but he did look at me and grunt affirmatively.

I got up painfully, but quickly, and ran to where the rope holding Beth dangled over the side.

“You defy me to protect this creature?” asked Vater seriously.

“Yes, I do,” I said, pulling at the rope. I could feel his hulking presence behind me. But I didn’t care.

When I had her up on the roof with us, I turned to face the frowning patriarch of my family. He had one hand on his chin. The hand was bleeding, but he took no notice of that.

“Resourceful, tricky, willing to fight, and able to find loyal friends. Hmmm. I don’t want to throw them both out, but I can’t have open defiance,” he said.

“Milord,” said Urdo, stepping forward. Her boots crunched on the snow. “By clan law, he is allowed to declare her to be under his protection. You made him a full member of the clan, after all.”

“What?” said Vater, turning upon her. “I suppose next you’ll tell me I wrote that law.”

She inclined her head, giving the slightest nod. A tiny smile played over her lips.

Waldheim cleared his throat. “What good is a law, milord, if it isn’t followed? Even if you did write it yourself.”

“You’re on thin ice yourself, lizard,” growled Vater. “I know you gave them that rope.”

Waldheim studied the snow at his feet. “Remember that Romeo and Juliet were only thirteen,” he said quietly.

“Hmph! They were fourteen,” muttered Vater. He eyed everyone in turn. “Very well. I’ll follow clan law. But there must be no further defiance!”

He turned back to me. I had managed to get Beth up onto the roof with us. She stood behind me and we both looked up at Vater warily.

He nodded. “You may keep her as a ward, but there had better be no trouble. Somehow I’m sure there will be, but at least I’ve warned you.”

Chapter Thirty-Five

One Last Surprise

When my alarm went off for school, I was ready, but I gave no sign of it. I didn’t even hit the snooze button. I just let it ring.

It was less than a minute later that my sister Heather came into the room with her dastardly camera.

“Time for a new brother-blog update!” she said cheerily.

I had my head pushed under my pillow and had the blankets pulled tightly up to my neck.

“Get up little loser brother!” said Heather, “It’s show time!”

I moaned and wriggled a bit under the blankets, enticingly.

She took the bait and whipped them off me.

This was the golden moment I’d been waiting for. I sprang up, hissing and snarling, all fangs and bristling whiskers and long pink tail.

She screamed, and I will tell you from that day to this, it was the sweetest sound I’d ever heard her make. It was a long, wailing type of scream, the kind that went on and on.

Standing on my bed in a crouch, I faced her, while my tail whipped and curled about my legs like a snake. She backed away and dropped the camera. I sprang at her, hissing like a wild beast. I snatched up the camera and followed her with it.

She scrambled away with more terrified shrieks and I chased her to the bathroom. I was pleased to see her own cat’s tail begin to sprout as she ran.

“You’re a rat, Connor! A dirty rat!”

“Are you blind?” I shouted back. “I’m just a huge mouse!”

“What’s the difference?” she said as she slammed the bathroom door.

I stood outside and scratched my claws slowly down the bathroom door. She gave a little shriek on the other side. Wood splintered and I knew mom would be mad, but I didn’t care at this moment of sweet revenge.

Then I had a thought, and I walked off down the corridor and back to my room. I check the camera and grinned. Everything was recorded: Heather’s reaction, her desperate flight and those tremendous shrieks were all there.

“What are you up to, Connor?” asked Heather’s muffled voice from behind the bathroom door.

“I’ve got your camera.”

“Give it back.”

“Come out here and I will.”

“No.”

I messed with the camera a bit more and got it to play back the scene where she was shrieking and running. I laughed to see and hear it all.

“I’m going to set up a blog for this one myself. This is the best thing you’ve ever shot.”

“I’m going to kill you, Connor,” she said in her muffled, through-the-door voice.

“You’re too scared to even come out of the bathroom,” I pointed out reasonably.

Then I had a thought. And I nodded to myself after a moment, certain that my thought was correct.

“Heather, I just realized something!”

“What, you little puke?”

“You’re a cat and I’m a mouse! No wonder we’ve always fought our whole lives.”

I took the disk out of the camera and headed for the computer, whistling as I walked.

THE END

Bonus Sample:

The Birdlords

by

B. V. Larson

Chapter One: The Nest

Queen Orla built a very special prison just for me. My prison cell was a bird’s nest. Fitting, I suppose, since the Queen and all her Lords were indeed birds. Built by crows with loosely woven-together sticks, the nest sat on top of a giant beech tree. Arching over the nest like a leafy umbrella was a single branch which provided my only shelter. I had grown fond of that branch over the summer months as it provided several hours of shade during hot days.

The tree itself was vast. When I looked over the side of the nest, the tree stretched out below me like a green globe of rustling leaves. I have no idea how tall it stood, but it seemed to loom over all the nearby trees and to reach into the very sky itself. Thick of trunk and limb, it had grown for perhaps a century and stood on the edge of the grove that made up the Feathered City, where all the Birdlords lived in their fancy pavilions and tree houses.

Since I am a squirrel, one would think that being up in a high nest would not be much of a prison. Such thoughts would be correct, but for the fact that I was born a ground squirrel, not a tree squirrel. I had grown up in a burrow, safely tucked away underneath a tree, not on top of it! My family spent most of their time underground or perhaps foraging on the forest floor for nuts that the rich birds might have carelessly dropped from their tree estates, but never, almost never, did we venture up into the trees themselves. Our kind wasn’t welcome up there, not even as servants. They used the smaller birds and tree squirrels for that.

So the nest was indeed a frightening place to be trapped. My paws were built for digging holes, not climbing. Worse, I am deathly afraid of heights. And the Queen knows it. But the nest itself was not the worst of it. Thinking that the deadly fall that faced me should I try to escape was not enough, the Queen had made doubly certain I would not climb down. I was chained to the nest. A fine silver chain, no thicker than a stalk of grass but a thousand times stronger, ran from the branch that held up the nest to my mid-section. A thick ring of iron had been hammered into place and clamped tightly under my ribs.

I forever plotted my escape. I told anyone who would listen that I would escape. The crow jailors, of course, only cawed laughter at me. But the Queen, I think, believed me. She knew I was one of the best sneaks in the country... mostly because I was so good at bragging about it. That’s why she had built my special prison in the first place instead of putting me in the dungeons beneath the Palace Tree. Oh, how I longed for the dungeons! They would be a dream compared to my nest. Some days I dreamed of being stuck in a deep dark hole. In a dungeon there would be cool sandy soil under my paws and only a trickle of sunlight. But such was my skill at bragging, I had sat in this nest through much of the summer and into the rainy fall season.

Today I watched the skies closely, as I did every day, for a safe moment to work on my escape. These moments did not come often. The Feathered City was a busy place and there were almost always birds in the sky, and didn’t dare make the attempt at night. But two or three times a day the skies would empty with only a few very distant birds in sight.

When such a moment came up, I crawled to the edge of the nest and felt the terror of the long, long drop below me. Trying not to think about it, I did what I must.

I jumped.

I fell out of the nest like a rock dropped by an eagle. It seemed like a long fall, even though I knew it only took a second. As always, the chain rattled as it fell with me. It snapped tight, like a punch in the stomach. The ring jerked hard, tearing out fresh fur from my belly. I squinched my eyes and hissed through my teeth. After a moment the pain stopped and I was able to breathe again.

Then came the worst moment when I opened my eyes and saw the sick, dizzying world spinning slowly beneath me. As always, it took everything I had to unfreeze my limbs and slowly climb the chain back up into the nest. The effort always left me sore and dizzy and breathless. Slumping in the nest, panting, I finally got my breath back. I eagerly counted the chain links.

One hundred and thirty links. I let out a hiss of disappointment. The number had not changed in a week. The chain was attached to the branch beneath my nest and had been threaded up between the woven sticks. Each time I jumped, putting all my weight into it, I counted the number of links afterwards. There had been one hundred and fourteen the first day.

I knew that someday the spikes that held the chain to the branch would rip loose, and on that day the chain would not catch me. Someday, I would keep falling. Each time I aimed down at a thick patch of leaves and branches. They looked like they would catch me, but who knew? Maybe I would fall right through them and keep falling until I hit the ground so far below.

But every day I made a jump or two. Every day I counted the links. Someday I would be free—or I would be dead.

Until I escaped, I spent each day riding over the treetops. The tree often swayed gently in the winds. Even though it scared me, there was a certain beauty to the world from up here, I had to admit. Above me was a sea of blue skies, and below me was a second sea of green leaves. Each leaf fluttered and rattled in its own special pattern. For hours I listened to the numberless leaves purring in unison and tried to stare through them, boring into them with my vision. Sometimes I caught a glimpse of the Feathered City itself, far below me. Farther down than that, below the estates of the Birdlords, below the lowest finch’s birdhouse, I knew the ground must lie. I imagined the cool gloom of the forest floor where my kind scampered happily. Ah, how I wished to feel solid earth beneath my paws again.

Chapter Two: Bounderby

Often, crow patrols flew overhead in formation. They always cawed laughter at me. I flicked my tail at them, but they only laughed harder at my helpless anger. Sometimes, one would shift his path and sail over my head, occasionally bombing me with pebbles or twigs before he wheeled back to the call of his wingmen and flapped lazily away.

Once in a while the crows, who served the Birdlords as police and jailors, forgot about me for days. I knew they did it out of sheer laziness. On one such day when I had run out of both food and water, I had a visitor. My counselor, a Blue Jay named Bounderby, flapped up to my nest and greeted me.

“Hello, Tristan,” he said, cheerily enough. “I’ve come to discuss your appeals.” He perched, as all my visitors did, on the overhanging branch that served as my umbrella. As usual, he took a deep breath, puffing out his gray breast feathers before speeching on and on about processes and procedures and forms that needed filling out and other things that didn’t matter. I knew the Queen had no intention of letting me go, no matter what the law might say about it. While he chattered, I noted that the branch seemed to dip down a bit lower than the last time he had come by.

“Put on a few ounces, haven’t you?” I asked, stretching out on my nest.

He stopped mid-sentence, beak open. He fixed me with one black eye and then snapped his beak shut. His feathers puffed up and he ruffled them in annoyance.  “How observant,” he said coldly. “Winter is coming. It’s only natural, of course.”

Before he could continue his speech about filing an extension to an extension on my behalf, I jumped up on my hind legs. He took a sideways step on the branch. Yes, I could see now that it was definitely dipping lower. This bird had been eating well.

“Since you seem to be so good at gathering up a bite to eat, maybe you could give me some real help and get those crows to carry supplies up here,” I said. I showed him two avocado-skin buckets. One was for water, one was for food, and both were empty. He looked at them disdainfully.

“Have you been over-eating?” he asked me.

“I’m thin as a stalk of grass, and as you say, winter is coming on.”

“That tail of yours looks bushy enough,” he said.

“That’s fur.”

Here, Bounderby gave a little shudder, as if the very mention of fur disgusted him. Many of the Birdlords seemed to be sickened by details of ground creatures like myself.

“In any case,” he replied, “I’m not sure how a request for an increase in rations will be received.”

“I’m not asking for more food, I’m just asking for my weekly supply!”

“You’re saying the jailors are shirking their duties, then?” asked Bounderby.

“Exactly.”

“Hmph,” he said. “Hard to blame them, really. Must be quite a chore to flap all the way up here carrying those things.”

My tail flicked twice, in annoyance. “But that’s their job, and it’s your job to make sure they do it for me.”

Bounderby cocked his head. His blue crest of feathers rose and fell once. I knew this was his gesture of surprise. “Hardly,” he said. “I’m only concerned about how big of an embarrassment you have become. A client in prison, no matter how deserving, is a bad mark on my reputation. For me, you represent a personal failure.”

My tail flicked again. Sometimes it did that all by itself. I reached back and fluffed it with my paws. I glared at Bounderby. My ears flattened against my head. I could not think of anything to say. I wanted to bite his tail feathers off.

“Perhaps you could help me,” said Bounderby. “There’s no way you could, ah, simply tell someone what you did with the missing item after you stole it, is there? I’ve always urged you to confess. You would be surprised how much better you will feel! And the recovery of the item could possibly result in the reduction of your sentence.”

I took a step forward and he took a matching step back on his perch. At my approach he seemed uncomfortable, as if I were a walking bit of rotten meat. I could see him twitching his beak from side to side, which meant he smelled something unpleasant. I supposed the bad smell might be me. I had spent months up here with no proper sand or stream to in which to bathe. Right now, I rather hoped that I did stink.

“I told you before, I didn’t steal the Queen’s bracelet.”

“Indeed,” he said, clearly not believing me at all. He eyed the chain around my waist as if wondering if it would hold. I thought of the chain and the ring around my ribs that had painfully rubbed away chunks of belly-fur.

I looked him up and down appraisingly. I nodded my head finally. “Hmm… Yes. Definitely,” I said.

“What?” he asked.

“Fatter. You are definitely weighing down that branch. Better stay at the thick end, it might snap under you, you know.”

He snorted and puffed up his feathers again. “You seem as sneaky as ever. In fact, that gives me a thought.”

It was my turn to say “What?” but he ignored me.

“Yes,” he said aloud, clearly talking to himself. “A perfect match.”

“Perfect for what?”

“Never mind. I’ll get that food and drink brought up. If I’m right, you are going to need it. And mind those storm clouds, it looks like a bit of a blow is coming this way.”

I gazed over my shoulder to the west, towards the purple-blue mountains. I saw dark clouds boiling up on top of those snowcapped peaks. It was one of the first big storms of the season, by the look of it. I swallowed hard, scared at the very idea of being outside in a storm, much less being up in a treetop nest while it raged overhead. There had been a few rainy days over the months, but never a serious storm. I turned back to Bounderby and worked hard to appear uncaring.

“Yes,” I said in an easy tone of voice. “Looks like there might be a shower coming.”

Bounderby chuckled. “That’s the spirit! The Great Hawk knows you could use some of that animal scent washed off you before you meet the Judge! In any case, I’ve got to be going now. Best to batten down my estate before this blow hits tonight.”

Meet the Judge? his words echoed in my mind. I opened my mouth to ask what this was all about, but he took flight suddenly and vanished. I looked over the edge of the nest. He was already just a blue speck sailing over the treetops towards the Feathered City.

Chapter Three: The Storm

Drust, my crow jailor, was anything but pleased with me when he arrived just before dark. He clutched a bucket of water in one claw and a bucket of grain in the other as he flapped up to my nest. He was an old crow, and his walnut-husk helmet had real battle-scars in it. I knew that officers had offered him a new helmet, but he had always refused them, feeling prideful to keep his old dented one.

“Thanks, Drust,” I called cheerfully as he approached.

“Been complaining about me, eh rodent?” he cawed back. His beak was open and I saw his black tongue sliding around in his mouth. This was not a good sign, I knew, but I decided to try to keep things friendly all the same.

“Never!” I said, blinking at him as he flapped up even with my nest, and then with a grunt of effort, flapped higher still, until he was directly above me. “I just needed a bit to eat. I know what trouble it is for you…”

I got no further. With a click, his beak snapped shut. I felt a fluttering breeze from his wings, and then he released both buckets, dropping them on me like bombs. He cawed laughter as I scrambled to get out of the way. Then I realized I needed the supplies and I dashed to catch them. If I had been in better shape, I might have snatched the buckets by the handles, but as it was I missed the water bucket entirely. It exploded water into my face. It was all I could do to get a swallow down my dry throat before it soaked into the nest and was gone, dripping down onto the leaves below. The bucket of grains came down a moment later and landed on my foot. A yellowy shower of grain rained down with a hundred tiny tapping sounds all over the nest. I limped and scrambled around the nest, but most of the food sifted down through the woven sticks like water through a net. I grabbed every grain I could and shoved it in my mouth until my cheeks puffed.

I looked up and saw that Drust wasn’t done exacting his revenge. He leered at me and flapped to the leafy branch that provided my only shelter. He produced a length of twine from his military pack and looped it expertly around the branch.

I shook my head and tried to shout “no!”, but only a small squeak came from my full mouth. I chewed, but it would be a long time before I could talk. I wasn’t about to spit out my only dinner and let it fall away into the forest without eating it.

Chuckling, Drust worked to tie the branch down and then hauled on the twine, bending it away so it no longer hung over my nest. I grabbed for the dangling end of the twine. I almost reached it.

“Watch that! Dirty little squirrel!” said Drust, yanking the dangling line away. “I’ll drag you out into the sky and drop your brains on a rock, I will!”

I sagged back into my nest and chewed. I was mournful, but tried to look as if I didn’t care. Without the cover, I knew, hot days would fry my head and burn my eyes without relief. There would be no cover from the rain, either.

I thought about the storm and looked west towards the purple mountains, but the mountains were gone. All that I could see in that direction now was a marching wall of gray storm clouds.

“That’s right,” said Drust, watching me. “That fancy-pants Blue Jay of yours said something about you needing a bath. So you are going to get clean of your ground-dirt once and for all!”

I tried to look unconcerned, but failed. I gazed off to the west again. The gray wall of rain seemed closer.

“By morning, you’ll be the cleanest squirrel in the forest!” cawed Drust. His black eyes shined and he opened his cracked beak. “If you even see the morning, that is. Squirrels!” he scratched at the air in disgust with one claw, “good for nothing but nest fiber, the lot of you!”

With that, he flapped away. I could hear his strange cawing laugh as he vanished towards the city. There were fewer birds moving over the treetops now. Everyone was settling in to ride out the storm.

End Sample

Books by B. V. Larson

SEEKER SERIES

Blood of Gold

Blood of Silver

HAVEN SERIES

Amber Magic

Sky Magic

Shadow Magic

Dragon Magic

Blood Magic

Other Books by B. V. Larson

The Birdlords

Real Life

Lost Shores

Visit BVLarson.com for more books and information.

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