by T C Shelley
‘I’m not going to hurt you,’ Sam said. ‘Or anyone else.’
‘I believe him,’ Hazel said.
A teacher bellowed across the yard. ‘Amira Saluki, I cannot believe I just saw you push someone? Lunchtime detention.’
Wilfred helped Sam up and dusted him off. Wilfred’s bottom still wiggled.
The bell rang for the end of break. Amira gave a low, throaty growl at Sam.
* * *
They were already seated by the time he got to Maths, their three heads huddled together. Wilfred smiled, Amira scowled, and Sam couldn’t read Hazel’s face. It was somewhere in between.
After the fifteen-minute point, Sam was called to the teacher’s desk. As he passed Wilfred, the boy sniffed him deeply. Wilfred sat up straight, his eyes twinkling. ‘Chicken nuggets,’ he said. No one else looked; only Sam heard.
Wilfred leaned towards the Sniffer girls. ‘Sniff deeper,’ he said.
‘I got a hint of something earlier,’ Hazel said.
Wilfred grinned in Sam’s direction. ‘Yeah, it’s different when you take a deep whiff.’
Hazel peered at Sam and inhaled deeply. Her expression brightened too. ‘Go on, Amira.’
Amira peered at Sam. He knew she didn’t know about his super-hearing, so she wouldn’t have realised she’d hurt his feelings, but when she shook her head, he did feel wounded.
Hazel poked Amira until she huffed, ‘All right. All right.’
Amira sniffed.
Hazel poked her again. ‘Deeper.’
Amira frowned.
When the lunch bell rang, all the other kids dashed out, but Sam took a few more seconds to pack up his book. He felt heavy; his attempt to make friends hadn’t worked.
When he stepped into the corridor, Wilfred stood waiting for him and took Sam’s arm. ‘Come on. Amira’s in detention, but she doesn’t have to do it alone. Let’s go.’
He led Sam up the stairs to a corridor on the top floor that lay empty, as if students did their best to avoid it. Amira and Hazel sat inside. A teacher Sam didn’t recognise was poring over his marking.
Amira scowled. ‘Oh, is everyone coming for detention?’ She finished a mouthful of sandwich and then glared at him.
Wilfred and Sam took extra seats.
‘Who are you?’ the teacher asked.
‘I’m Samuel Kavanagh.’
‘The boy Amira pushed?’ The teacher’s eyebrows lifted.
‘It was an accident, sir,’ said Sam.
The teacher beamed at Amira. ‘You know, I thought so. It’s not like you at all, but Mrs Henderson said the boy looked hurt.’
Sam shook his head. ‘No, I was fine.’
‘Well, Amira, as you are my only detainee, I might just head back to the staffroom for lunch. I’ll talk to Mrs Henderson. Thank you for clearing that up, Sam. You lock the door after you, I’m trusting you all to not touch anything.’
‘No, Mr Lincoln,’ Wilfred, Hazel and Amira said.
As soon as he was gone, Amira leaned forward and sniffed Sam again. She pursed her mouth. ‘So tell us, then, what are you? When you first arrived, I got a strong scent. You’re something, you’re a bit monster? But lots of other things too.’
‘He’s a good boy,’ Wilfred said. ‘I don’t think we need to be scared of him.’
‘Hush, Wilfred,’ Amira said.
‘Shhh, let him talk, Amira. I think Wilfred’s right. You’ve been human so long it’s harder for you to tell, but Sam’s nice, I’m sure of it.’ Hazel looked at Sam. ‘You are nice, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, I think so.’ Sam nodded.
‘Why do you smell so off?’ Hazel asked.
‘I am half monster …’
Amira growled.
‘… but I’m half fairy too. Half fairy, half monster, but also human,’ Sam said.
‘Wow,’ Wilfred said. ‘Sounds cool. What’s that like?’
Amira elbowed him.
‘Ouch! Well, some people could question our humanity too. We know what being a mix is like, don’t we?’ Wilfred asked.
Sam relaxed a little. ‘So, what are you? You can see angels, and your noses are really sensitive, which is not like most humans. You’re not entirely human, are you?’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Amira said.
‘He’s not a normal human either, remember? I think it’s safe to tell him,’ Wilfred said. ‘And he’s surrounded by a glow. It’s really strong.’
‘Right, smart guy, shall we tell anyone else?’
‘Amira, you’re just being stubborn. You said yourself he smells nice when you sniff him more. Not just nice – there’s deep goodness there, isn’t there?’ Hazel asked.
Amira snarled. ‘I don’t care what he is. All I know is he isn’t one of us.’
Hazel hugged Amira until she groaned, then said, ‘Amira’s really sweet, but she’s very overprotective of us and all the humans about. It’s an instinct in dogs, you know. It’s hard to turn off, and we often need it. Some of us bring a little too much attention to ourselves.’ Hazel raised her eyebrows at Wilfred and patted his head.
‘So, what are you?’ Sam asked.
Wilfred took a deep breath. ‘We’re twin-souled.’
Amira studied Sam’s face, but she didn’t say anything.
‘Twin-souled?’ Sam asked. ‘What’s that?’
‘Both dog and human at once. Shifters.’
‘Like werewolves?’ Sam asked. He’d watched a few werewolf films with Nick.
‘Yuck! No!’ Amira said. ‘Not like werewolves. Shifters are completely different to ’thropes.’
‘Sorry, what’s a ’thrope?’ Sam asked.
‘Someone born human that gets infected by another ’thrope. A werewolf bites you, you turn into a werewolf yourself. Lycanthrope is the proper name for a werewolf.’
Wilfred continued, ‘And a were-bear is called a callistothrope, a were-bird is an ornithrope.’
‘Wow,’ Sam said. ‘So there’s more than werewolves?’
‘Uh-huh,’ Hazel said. ‘Were-otters, were-badgers, were-cats …’
‘Are they dangerous?’
Wilfred shrugged. ‘It depends on the animal they become or the person they were before. There’s a lodge of were-otters out in Hove. They just go swimming all night on a full moon. Those otters aren’t really dangerous, and they’re nice humans too.’
Amira jumped in. ‘Although there was that case where a were-beaver kept chewing up people’s houses. Beavers are normally nice, so this guy must’ve had a nasty streak when he was human. Most people are nice, so usually people who turn into bears and wolves and could hurt people on a full moon, they self-isolate. They have their own police system called the ’Thrope Control who help them sort all that out, and if they’re new ’thropes, the Control tracks them down and helps them adjust.’
‘Wow! And regular humans don’t know any of this?’
All three of them shook their heads.
‘So how are you different to ’thropes?’
Amira rolled her eyes as if she thought Sam was a bit thick. ‘Weres can’t control when they change, but shifters can, and we don’t forget ourselves when we’re in our animal form. We’re always the same person. When we look human, we call it being “upright”.’ Amira continued, ‘We smell like dogs because that’s what we are. Shifter dogs. Just like there are different kinds of weres, there are different kinds of shifters. There are even shifter wolves, but most of them live in Canada.’
Wilfred pushed his hand at Sam. As Sam watched, the hand shrank to a fuzzy black paw.
‘Shall we start again?’ Hazel asked. Both she and Wilfred gazed at Amira, waiting for her to approve.
Amira half-smiled.
‘Hazel Kokoni,’ Hazel said. She lifted her hair and showed Sam a furry beige ear. He chuckled.
‘I’m Wilfred Kintamani.’ The end of Wilfred’s nose grew black and shiny. He waved a hand over it and it was a human nose again.
‘Amira Saluki.’ Amira offe
red her hand. She gave him another half-smile.
‘Go on, Amira. Show him,’ Hazel said.
Amira grinned and Sam saw all her teeth sharpen into canines. She grinned again, and they were human teeth.
‘Samuel Kavanagh, but I can’t change anything.’ He listened. The corridor sounded empty. ‘Although I can do this.’ He jumped at the whiteboard, and his hands and feet stuck for a few seconds. He dropped again.
‘A human fly,’ Wilfred said. ‘How cool is that?’
The three shifters cheered. Even Amira.
Hazel leaned in to shake his hand. ‘It’s always hard to make friends when you join the human world. Shifters struggle to make friends with humans when we’re upright. The rules are so different. Humans don’t make sense, and they think we’re weird. They’re so inconsistent.’
Sam laughed at the relief of someone saying exactly what he thought. ‘I know. I’m really struggling to make sense of them.’
‘No one gets being this different, but I guess a fairy-monster might,’ Wilfred said. ‘When you’re a dog it’s easy. They say, Can I scratch your belly? What lovely ears you have. You’re so cute.’
‘So, are we friends?’ Sam asked, looking at each of the three in turn.
‘When I first met you your smell seemed wrong, but now I understand why, I like you,’ Amira said.
‘When I first met you, you growled at me and I was scared, but now I understand why, I like you too,’ Sam said.
Sam and Amira grinned at each other.
‘I like you too,’ Hazel added.
CHAPTER 6
‘We just got off on the mistaken toe,’ Sam said.
Michelle studied him. ‘Do you mean the “wrong foot”?
Sam opened his pad and scribbled out a line on the page marked ‘Idiom’. Beatrice bounced stars at him. He batted them back with his pen.
‘So, can they come over?’
Michelle teared up, looking at him. ‘So, what do you think of them, Nick?’
‘Weirdest, nicest kids at school. Seems appropriate they’d like Sam.’
Wilfred, Hazel and Amira showed up at his door on Saturday morning. They were in casual gear and their hair looked scruffier than ever, as if they all needed a good brushing.
‘Your street smells like Heaven and your house glows,’ Amira said. ‘It’s unbelievable.’
‘Wanna go for a walk? Huh?’ Wilfred asked. ‘I brought a ball.’ He held an orange tennis ball in one hand.
‘Sure,’ Sam said, and yelled back into the house. ‘Michelle! My friends are here!’
Richard and Michelle arrived at the door, Richard holding Beatrice, and grinned at the shifters. ‘Nice to meet you.’
‘Can we take the baby to the park?’ Hazel asked.
‘Really?’ Michelle said.
‘Oh, yes, the little ones are the best fun. So cuddly,’ Wilfred added.
Michelle looked at Richard. The line between her eyes deepened.
‘I will let nothing happen to her,’ Sam said.
Michelle’s face relaxed and her eyes shone. ‘No, you never would, would you?’
Richard nodded.
As Hazel strapped Beatrice into the stroller, Sam thought of something, and dashed up Mrs Roberts’s path.
Mrs Roberts answered the door, her mouth pulled down in a deep curve. ‘Can I help you?’
‘Hi, Mrs Roberts, I was wondering if I could take Hoy Poy for a walk.’
‘That’s very nice of you, but …’ she started. Hoy Poy ran out with his leash in his mouth, then dropped it at Sam’s feet so he could lick Sam’s hand. ‘It seems Hoy Poy would love to.’
After she closed the door, Sam heard her say, ‘Well, I never.’
In the park, between the hedgerows, as Beatrice sat in her pram while Wilfred smelt her head and smiled dreamily at the lovely baby scent (Sam loved that smell too), Hazel said, ‘Your mum was nervous about us taking Beatrice.’
Sam sighed. He liked that Hazel had called Michelle his mum. ‘Beatrice was taken by ogres, and it took a while for …’ Sam’s face felt warm. ‘For them to get her back.’
‘Beatrice?’ Amira stopped on the footpath. ‘Oh my goodness. You’re that Sam. From the newspapers.’
Sam’s face got hotter.
‘See. He’s definitely a good one.’ Wilfred grinned and started shrinking. Sam had seen the boy’s hand turn into a paw and his nose go black, but the sight of him fading away was unusual. Wilfred grew a black beard and moustache as he shrank, which spread across the rest of his face. His nose grew longer, and there amongst the boy’s clothes sat a black pup.
Hoy Poy screamed.
‘Really, Wilfred?’ Amira said.
‘Oh, come on,’ Wilfred said. ‘There’s no one about. I want to play.’
Hoy Poy sat down. ‘I may throw up.’
‘I want to play too,’ Hazel said. She peered up and down the lane, her hair changing to light fur as she did, her skin springing with beige fur, and her cute nose darkened to a deep brown while her pupils grew larger and larger until her whole eye was golden. In Hazel’s clothes sat an adorable beige pup.
Hoy Poy screamed again.
‘You did bring the ball, Sam?’ Hazel asked.
Amira flustered and shooed the pups away from their clothes, pushing the bundles into the undercarriage of Beatrice’s pram. Wilfred shoved his nose into Beatrice’s hand, and she fireworked sparkles at him. She liked puppies, that was obvious.
‘Go on, Amira,’ Hazel said.
The girl looked at Sam. ‘Wouldn’t you prefer I remain in my human form?’
‘He doesn’t mind,’ Wilfred said.
‘I really don’t,’ Sam agreed.
‘OK. This is so embarrassing doing it outside of home.’
‘We won’t tell,’ Wilfred said.
Sam picked up Hoy Poy. ‘It’s all right, I’m not going to change.’
Amira shrank too, but her long limbs turned into long furry legs, and she had to pull them out of her shirt fast before she got stuck inside. Sam could see it was harder for her; she didn’t become a small pup like Wilfred and Hazel. She became long and lanky, her heart-shaped face turning to a muzzle with heart-shaped beige markings, and her black hair to black fur. Finally changed, she stepped regally out of her pile of clothes and opened her mouth in a doggy grin. ‘I think somebody mentioned a ball?’
Even Hoy Poy liked that idea.
An hour or so later, the three shifters lay panting on the grass, while Hoy Poy curled up on Sam’s lap. Beatrice had laughed at the dogs, and they had made sure to give her doggy kisses and let her suck their ears, and now she slept in her pram.
‘So, what are you, that you can change like that?’ Hoy Poy asked.
‘Twin-souled,’ Wilfred said. ‘Two souls in one body.’
‘How’d that happen?’ the pug asked.
‘Go on, Amira. She tells it best.’ Wilfred rolled over so his four paws pointed at the sky.
‘She really is good,’ Hazel agreed.
The saluki pup sat up, regal and calm.
‘When the earth was young and time was fresh,’ Amira Saluki started, ‘humans and dogs were separate. They stayed with their own kind, but as is the way with the very young, children and pups would wander. Weaving, walking about in the wide spaces where we go when we look for something lost.
‘Dogs and humans are meant for each other. They did not know this in the first days and would avoid each other and yell and yelp when they crossed each other’s paths.
‘But one day a human child became lost wandering. It had been searching for something its heart yearned for, but it could no longer find its way back to its parents. A wild pup came across the child and recognised it as human, but felt no fear as it might have with a spear-carrying adult. It saw the child was vulnerable, and in the cold night, after the child fell asleep, the dog leaned its warm, furry body against the child’s back and kept it warm, and it kept itself warm too. If a predator came close the dog would growl. When mo
rning arrived, the child awoke to find itself warmly wrapped in the paws of a good dog.
‘At first the child was afraid. Humans told their young of children disappearing in the woods, leaving blood and torn clothes for memories, but the dog sniffed the child’s hand and the child patted the dog’s head, kissed it between its eyes, and they were friends.
‘The dog and child stayed together for many days in the wild, away from their camps. They played and hunted, picked berries which the dog tasted with one eye closed and its nose wrinkled. The child laughed. They swam in a pool and, at night, slept under a starry canopy, a mix of child skin and dog fur. They dreamed of playing forever.
‘One day the sun rose and the pup missed its parents and knew the child’s mother and father would miss it too.
‘It was time to go home.
‘The child was frightened; it did not know how to find its way home and it did not want to leave the dog. The dog laughed. It could easily find the child’s scent and its own path. It would show the child the way back to its kind.
‘The path was hard, not because of thorns or rocks or dangerous ground, but because neither dog nor child wanted to lose the other, and they knew the humans would not let the dog stay, nor would the dogs feel comfortable with the human among them.
‘One day the child saw its camp. Even in the distance, it could hear its mother’s wail and the anger of the people as they yelled at the fire.
‘The pair knew the child must go to its people alone, for fear of risking the dog’s life, and yet the child knew it would never be happy without the dog, and the dog whined for the same reason. But they could not go off into the wilderness and die together, which is what it would mean if they did not return to their homes. A dog and child are not always enough against all nature.
‘One more night, the child begged.
‘One more night, the dog agreed.
‘So, they hunted and played, although sadly, and when the sun set they curled into their fur-skin ball and each wept for loss of the other.
‘In the morning when the sun rose, the child leaned in to hug the dog and the dog moved its head to lick the child’s face and found they were one creature. Two souls in one body. They did not know what to do: neither could go home now.
