The Shape-Changer's Wife

by Sharon Shinn

  “And for you? How can you say it does not matter?”

  She shrugged. “It is not the same,” she said. “I have no instinctual terror at the touch of a man’s hand. I was not born hating and distrusting men—I was brought into the world with no thought of them at all. But for her it is different. It is worse. And she is so much younger. And I have had time to grow used to him.”

  “What are you saying?” he said. “What are you asking me to do?”

  She shook her head. “There is nothing you can do,” she said. “I know that. Or you would.”

  And his stomach lurched again. He carefully set down the tiny glass jar he had been wiping clean; it was too heavy for him to hold. “I would,” he said. “I would.”

  She sighed and sat down where she had stood, appearing, for the first time since he had known her, weary, discouraged and sad. Human. “Perhaps,” she said slowly, “we should have let her die.”

  “She probably would not have died with the toxins she had taken. She just would have suffered longer before she recovered.”

  “Then perhaps you should have given her the drugs she wanted instead of the drugs that would allow her to heal.”

  He stepped around the damp places where he had mopped, and settled himself beside Lilith on the floor. “I have never killed a human being,” he said slowly. “I don’t know if I could do it.”

  “She has the shape of a woman, but she is not a woman. You would kill a deer for food.”

  “For food,” he agreed. “But not—not—” He gestured, unable to complete the sentence.

  “If you came across a doe wounded in the woods, and you could not save her, you would kill her,” Lilith said swiftly. “It is the same thing.”

  “It may be the same thing,” he said, “but I cannot give her the potions that will let her die.” He was silent a moment, thinking.

  “I came to magic,” he said at last, “with joy. I thought it was a splendid thing to take the well of power that I found within me and shape it to marvelous uses. I learned to call up wind and control fire, to draw flowers from barren soil and divert rain to the desert. I learned to exorcise madness from men’s brains and to banish illness from their blood. I can create illusions, I can make a scrying crystal give me visions that are literal, that are true. And everything I learned made me happy—made others happy. And that is what I learned magic for.

  “But magic, I have discovered, it like any skill. It is not inherently good in itself. And some of it—yes, some of it is inherently evil. There are wicked spells, savage spells, enchantments that are so black that even to know them withers the heart just a little, taints the soul. And yet to be a great magician, to be a sorcerer of any ability or renown, those spells must be learned as well. For if a magician does not know them, they can be used against him—and what is magic, after all, but a man’s power to change the world while it is incapable of changing him?

  “I came to magic with joy,” he repeated, “but even as it turns joyless in my hands, I cannot look away from it. I must know it all, its breadth and its depth and its darkness. I am hungry for it, even as it sickens me. I am addicted to it.”

  “There is no hope for any of us, then,” Lilith said quietly, “if someone like you can be corrupted.”

  He put out his hand and lifted her chin. Her eyes stared back at his unwaveringly. He had never seen her face so sad. “No,” he said gently, “let me finish. I must have knowledge, but I do not have to use it. Cyril taught me that a long time ago. There were spells that he knew, that he would not use, that he would not even teach. He was like a farmer who owned a cache of weapons and kept them buried in the ground. I am that kind of person as well. Glyrenden has taught me how to change my shape, but I have always come back as the man I was before.”

  “Leave us now, then,” she whispered, “before he changes you as he has changed us all.”

  “I have told you already,” he said, bending forward, “why I cannot leave.”

  He kissed her lightly, a feather kiss, feeling the shape of her mouth long and distinct against his own. She neither responded nor pulled away. When he lifted his head, she was watching him, her face puzzled and her eyes questioning.

  “I love you,” he added, in case she did not remember. “If you wanted to be a woman, I would try to make you love me in return.”

  She came slowly to her feet, staring down at him. “But I do not want to be a woman,” she said.

  “I know,” he said.

  He was not surprised when she left the room without speaking again. He spent the rest of the day cleaning Glyrenden’s study by himself.

  Twelve

  EVE WAS BETTER the next day and Glyrenden had not returned. “Two good omens,” Aubrey observed over breakfast. “I am not a superstitious man, but I shall not overlook the portents.”

  Lilith glanced at him expressionlessly. It was probably his imagination, but she seemed wary of him this morning, as she had over dinner last night. “You speak in riddles,” she said.

  “I have something I want to try,” he said. “This might be a good day. I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

  She nodded and did not ask him where he was going or what he planned. From her husband she had learned that few men appreciate curiosity; or perhaps she had never been curious to begin with. Aubrey accepted a packet of food from Arachne and set out well before noon.

  He walked far and fast, deep into the forest, miles from the glade where he had first learned to be a shape-changer. For this particular exercise, he wanted to be removed from any familiar place, any clearing or acre that held the faint but unmistakable imprint of man.

  It was noon before he stopped. He was three miles from the nearest pathway that branched off the main road; he had broken his way through heavy undergrowth for the last six hundred yards, and he had come upon the smallest open clearing in the woods. Here, the close fraternity of trees was broken, and sunlight splashed down to the greedy grass beneath the thick interweave of branches. Perhaps, decades ago, another oak or elm had stood here shoulder to shoulder with its neighbors. Now there was an empty circle here in the heart of the forest, and Aubrey stood there, getting his bearings.

  To change something back, Sirrit had said, you must love the thing it had been before. Aubrey touched the rough bark of the tree closest to him, and thought about that.

  A tree is composed of the elements, Sirrit had said: earth, air, water, fire. A man, on the other hand, is only air and water.

  Aubrey lifted his face to the sun, deliberately analyzing the feel of its heat across his bones, the sickle of his cheek, the tight curve of his chin. Sirrit had been wrong about that. A man is air and water, but he is also fire as a tree is fire, taking his primordial spark from the distant, essential conflagration of the sun.

  And is he earth, too? Aubrey wondered. Man ate the fruits of the earth, giving him some alliance. Might he skip that intermediate step, and teach himself to take his sustenance directly from the rich, unadulterated soil?

  Quickly, Aubrey bent to strip off his boots and his woolen socks; then he unlaced, unbuckled and discarded every last item of his clothing. It was possible, he knew (he had been practicing), to change shapes and not be troubled by garments he had neglected to remove. But for this transformation he wanted nothing in his way.

  He dug his bare feet into the black soil, critically noting its composition. Generations of leaves, bits of bark, airborne debris, the remains of animals long dead; deeper still, the elemental compounds—nitrogen, nickel, copper, iron. He burrowed farther, feeling the striated layers of the earth ringing his ankles and his calves, touching, far beneath the placid surface of the ground, the secret, quick-running table of water.

  He raised his hands above his head, stretching his arms as high as they would go, and then higher, reaching for the sun itself. He spread his fingers, multiplying the surfaces upon which the sun could fall, till he offered twenty fingers, fifty, a hundred, an uncounted number, flat and shiny and marbled w
ith heliotropic veins. He felt the wind shake through him and set him to dancing through his shoulders and his elbows; but his torso remained stable, firm, rooted in the earth.

  He felt the slow drag of chemicals through the entire length of his body, pulled from the soil around his toes, up through the arteries of his legs, past his heart, through his shoulder blades, winding across his thin forearms, and bursting out through the very tips of his fingers in a bright, joyous explosion. He could not see shapes or colors, yet he was aware when the light faded, to be replaced by a blackness that was complete but unalarming. Again, the light, growing slowly, until there was nothing but light, simple and sufficient; then a gradual descent again into the serene, uncomplicated night.

  If his body had a pulse, it had slowed to this lazy, diurnal rhythm; the valves of his heart opened at dawn and closed again at sunset. If he breathed, it was through every pore of his body, and not through his useless, imprisoned lungs. He was not conscious of sleeping or being awake, but merely of existing; and the existence was composed of light and quiet ecstasy.

  It was five days before he remembered what he really was, and remembered how to become that again. The transformation was slow, reluctant and disorienting; he lay on the ground a long time as he reaccustomed himself to the sensation of blood skittering across his bones. Later, hiking back through the forest, he felt as uncoordinated and clumsy as a child first learning to walk. His breath came fast and short, and his heart troubled him with its insistent pounding. He paused once to rest, leaning his back against a massive oak, and he found his body almost unconsciously molding itself to the contours of that wellremembered shape. He forced himself to stand upright again, quickly, and resumed walking back toward the haunts of men.

  He had come to love trees too well, he thought, in a few short days. Or perhaps he had already loved them for longer than he knew.

  BY NOON, HIS own body no longer felt strange to him, and he strode along at a rapid pace. As always when he had mastered some new and difficult skill, he was pleased with himself, and his pleasure colored his entire outlook. The depression that had hovered over him lifted perceptibly; he actually whistled a little as he walked. He found that he was hungry, a rare state these days, so he stopped to make a midday meal out of the rations he had brought with him five days ago. The bread was stale and the dried meat very tough. He would look for fruit and other edibles as he continued through the forest.

  He was back on the main road, but still a good two hours from Glyrenden’s, when he spotted a fellow wanderer heading his way. “Hulloa there!” he called out, waving his arm. In his present mood of exuberance, he felt a universal benevolence and kinship with all mankind. He was delighted to see anyone.

  But the person he hailed recognized him first, and came to a dead halt in the roadway, waiting for him to approach. It was Lilith, and her face was pale with suffering.

  Instantly, concern erased his cheeriness. “Lilith,” he said in alarm, once he was close enough to see her face. “What’s wrong? What’s happened?” He came up to her and put his hand on her shoulder. She stared at him and did not pull away. “Lilith. Are you all right?”

  “You’re alive,” she said.

  He laughed, but kindly, because she looked so wretched. “Yes, of course I’m alive. I’m sorry—were you anxious about me? I didn’t think—”

  Suddenly she wrenched away from him. Her hands had flown to her cheeks; she looked at him over the barrier of her fingers. “You have been gone five days,” she said flatly. “I thought you were dead.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I didn’t realize you would worry. You have never worried about me before.”

  “I thought you were dead,” she said again. And it was then he realized that she was weeping—silently, hopelessly—surely for the first time.

  He took one quick step forward and swept her into his arms. For a moment he was conscious of the awkward, angled arrangement of her bones, and then she relaxed into his embrace. She seemed actually to melt into flesh and blood as her body leaned against his, as if she learned the textures and the substances from him. He felt her shoulders shake, and he felt her terrific tension as she tried to repress her sobs. He stroked her hair soothingly; he whispered wordless endearments and repeated his apology countless times. Yet a traitorous elation crept through him. She wept, and she wept for him.

  Abruptly she pulled back, not quite escaping the enclosure of his arms. Her expression was, at the same time, vulnerable and defensive. “You were gone five days,” she repeated. “I thought you would not come back.”

  He freed one hand to brush the hair from her forehead. And the unbelievable wetness of tears along her cheeks—he had to touch that, too. “Haven’t I told you that I will not leave you?” he murmured. “And didn’t you believe me?”

  “What were you doing?”

  He laughed softly. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  “What, though?”

  “Learning to love you better.”

  She shook her hand in automatic denial, but a faint, self-conscious flush rose to her cheeks. He laughed again. “I didn’t think it was possible,” he added, and drew her close again.

  He bent his head to kiss her, for the second time in his life— a real kiss this time, full on her mouth. She was tentative and shy as a girl who had never been kissed, but she seemed to like it; her mouth was pliant under his, willing to experiment. As he kissed her lips, they seemed to grow fuller, richer, more plush. Heat rose under her cool skin, almost vein by vein. She spoke a muffled phrase and pressed her body closer. Her hands were locked together behind his back.

  And then suddenly, she flung herself from him again, more violently this time. The force of her resistance pushed Aubrey back three steps and actually brought her to her knees.

  “Lilith,” he began, starting forward, but she jumped up and backed away from him. He froze.

  If she had been wretched before, she was wild now. “Oh, what have you done to me?” she cried.

  “What have I done to you?” he exclaimed. “What have I done—”

  “You have made my life intolerable!”

  “Lilith!”

  Kneading her hands on the front of her gray dress, she began to pace. “He changed my shape, but he didn’t change me,” she said over her shoulder. “Nothing touched me, nothing moved me; I did not care for Glyrenden or for any man. I looked like a woman, but I was what I had always been. He could not make me feel as human beings do.

  “But you—from the beginning, it was different with you. At first I thought it was just a matter of like or dislike—mild words, mild emotions. I thought you just made my life more pleasant—and I had certainly come to learn the difference between pleasant and unpleasant in my three years with Glyrenden. I don’t know how it happened that you became important to me. I don’t know when it began to please me to know that you cared for me. Or when it began to matter if you were alive or dead.”

  “I am glad that it matters,” he interposed quickly.

  “Well, I am not glad!” she retorted. “How can I live as Glyrenden’s wife—how can I stand to have him touch me again, now—now that I have learned to feel?”

  The sense of her words struck him like a blow; he saw precisely how he had betrayed her. He started to speak, failed, and tried again. “I did not mean—it was not my intention—to hurt you,” he said, stammering a little. “I was in love with you before I knew what you are. It is human nature to try and win affection from the creature that one loves. I did not mean to change you to do so.”

  She had stopped pacing. Now she stood still, staring down at the thick carpet of pine needles beneath her feet. Her face had grown dull and homely again; he was not sure she was listening to him. “Once the transformation starts, it cannot be stopped,” she said. “If I learn to love like a woman, I learn all the other things women know—hate and fear and passion, boredom and jealousy and all the rest. I become like all those other women.”
/>   “Never like them,” Aubrey interjected.

  “And I slowly lose the things I knew before,” she went on, still ignoring him. “I mistake the turning of the seasons. I can no longer understand the language of the wind. I cannot remember what it was like to stand naked under the winter moonlight and be coldly beautiful.”

  “But I love you,” Aubrey said. “What can I give you that will make up for those other things?”

  She shook her head; she would not look at him. “I do not want the things you have to give me,” she said. “I do not want to be changed, either by magic or by love.”

  “But you have been changed,” he whispered. “What will you do now?”

  The intensity of his voice caught her attention. She finally looked over at him, and what she saw in his eyes made her back away a step. “I will do what I have always done,” she said. “I will wait for him to release me.”

  “But he won’t! And it will kill you to live with him!”

  “What choice do I have?”

  He bounded forward, catching her hands before she could retreat again. “Come away with me,” he pleaded. “Leave with me today—now. There is nothing I need back at Glyrenden’s house—”

  She was shaking her head. She was twisting her fingers against his hold, but she could not free herself. “Aubrey, no—he will look for us—”

  “We can be in the next kingdom in three days’ time. Within a few weeks, we can be so far from here he will never find us. I am not so ill a magician—I can disguise all traces of our passage—”

  Her face had become obdurate; she made her trapped hands into fists. “I will not go away with you. I cannot leave him.”

  “Why?” he demanded. “Why?”

  “You can only change me more,” she said. “You cannot change me back. You cannot give me what I want.”

  He almost flung her hands back at her; she staggered a little before regaining her balance. “He will not give you what you want either!” Aubrey cried. “Would you rather be a miserable woman with Glyrenden or a contented one with me?”