Changer (Athanor)

by Jane Lindskold

  “Gone!” Isidro is saying, inspecting a space where hammocks once hung. “I never imagined they would be so courageous.”

  “They went by water,” Oswaldo states, indicating a tree stump. “Enough trees have been cut to make a decent raft.”

  “They could have bound it with vines,” Cleonice adds, “or with strips cut from those canvas packs. I told you that the machetes were an overgenerous gesture on your part.”

  Isidro is shaking, reeking of a mixture of rage and terror. “Cleonice, we needed to be able to state beneath a truthstone that we had given our prisoners what they needed to survive. No one but an Indian can survive here without a machete.”

  “And even they prefer to have one,” Oswaldo adds. “Stop passing on the blame, Cleonice. You’re being catty.”

  She sneers down her long nose, looking very catlike indeed. “Vera and Amphitrite will have gone with the current toward the sea. I could track by land. You two could take the plane.”

  “If they are clever enough to make a raft,” Isidro says, “I doubt they will expose themselves to surveillance from above. We had better track them from the boat.”

  “Ashore,” Cleonice insists, “I can catch their sign more easily. They are clever enough to hide it from casual view.”

  “True.” Isidro chews his lip. “There are only three of us and three means of travel. Although we are several hours ahead of New Mexico, we cannot spare the time to fetch reinforcements.”

  “We could radio from the plane,” Oswaldo reminds him.

  “No!” Isidro says. “This is athanor business. All our subjects are humans. We must kill them if they learn anything.”

  Oswaldo frowns. “I could magically alter their memories.”

  “Are you certain you could?” Isidro asks.

  “No.”

  “Then we have no choice. In any case, even if our subjects left Belém immediately, we would lose several hours waiting for them to arrive.” Isidro shakes his head decisively. “We must make do with what we have—at least until we learn more.”

  “I can’t fly solo,” Oswaldo reminds him.

  “I know. How about if we…”

  Whatever alternative he might have suggested is lost when the Changer emerges from the brush. Some vague sense of fair play has made him take the jaguar’s form once more, but fair play or not, the shapeshifter has heard enough. More refinement of a plan that will never be put into action is hardly necessary.

  Uncertain whether the threat is natural or not, Isidro un-holsters the handgun he wears at his waist, but he backs away from the jaguar before firing. Like bears, great cats have a stubborn tendency to fight on after what should be a fatal wound, and the big jaguar is very close indeed.

  Cleonice rips open her shirt, obviously preparing to shapeshift, while Oswaldo hefts his pistol in one hand, his feathered wand in the other. A voice from the treetops stops all three in mid-action.

  “Didn’t know we were with you, eh?” Anson A. Kridd calls merrily. Wisely, he has remained shrouded by the leaves, but even in human form he can climb easily.

  “You? Anson?” Isidro’s voice has lost its tremor now that he has a physical enemy to confront.

  “That’s right, and the Changer with me, clad in the lovely spots. Think again before putting your bullet into him, eh? The Sea King would never forgive you if you harmed both his wife and his brother.”

  Although Cleonice has locked eyes with the big jaguar, she has begun inching back toward the edge of the clearing.

  “What does it matter?” she answers. “We are doomed no matter what. Arthur cannot afford to forgive us. There is only one chance—to make him do so!”

  With her final words, her intent becomes clear. She dives into the concealing brush. When the Changer leaps after her, Isidro fires, his poorly aimed shot grazing the jaguar’s flank.

  Screaming feline fury, the Changer stumbles. Regaining his balance, he lets Cleonice go, jumping instead for the branches of the nearest tree, his claws raking great furls out of the bark, his blood spattering down to pattern the leaves.

  Seeking to avoid the jaguar now above him, Oswaldo rushes blindly into the center of the cleared area, but his attempted escape only brings him up short against the sinewy form of Anson A. Kridd. The Spider is naked, his brown body scratched from his rapid descent from the treetops.

  “Flight or fight, eh?” Anson says, plucking the pistol from Oswaldo’s grasp. “Old impulses, even for us.”

  Oswaldo brandishes his wand. “Back, Spider, or I will curse you!”

  “Bold,” Anson says, flinching somewhat as screams both human and jaguar make conversation difficult, “but you are not Lovern, to make stones walk.”

  He levels the pistol at Oswaldo’s temple. “And I am not the Changer, to fill my mouth with an enemy’s blood.”

  Oswaldo’s eyes widen, twins to his gaping mouth. “You wouldn’t!”

  “I would,” Anson says. “You have overstepped what is permitted, kinsman. Every athanor’s hand is raised against you.”

  He pulls the trigger then, once and then twice. The reports come so close together that they make one long shout. In the distance, a howler monkey hoots defiance.

  Lowering the pistol, Anson wipes a stray fleck of blood from his face and turns toward the Changer. The jaguar still bleeds from his flank, but the redness on his jaws and throat belongs to another source. Isidro lies twisted and dead on the sodden ground, his handsome face frozen in terror.

  “Messy but efficient,” Anson comments. “Are you unharmed but for the one shot?”

  The Changer wheels so that Anson can see another bullet graze, this one along his right foreleg.

  “You are fortunate he was so terrified he could not aim or plan,” Anson says. “Can you find sign of Cleonice?”

  The Changer sniffs both ground and air, then, mimicking a bird dog, points downstream.

  “When her fury and fear leave her,” Anson says, “she may remember the usefulness of airplanes. You check for the keys among her clothes. I’ll strip the weapons from these two.”

  Neither feel any particular pity or sorrow for the two who have just died. Old as they are, they have seen many of their own die. Unlike the younger ones, neither Changer nor Spider believe that any upon the Earth have any particular right to continued life.

  The Changer finds the keys to the Caiman, then licks his wounds until they stop bleeding. Anson collects guns, ammunition, and the ubiquitous machetes.

  “The others were right,” he says, “we may never find our quarry from high above. Cleonice has the advantage of us on land. Can you shift again?”

  The Changer licks his muzzle in the universal feline sign for “I’m starving.”

  “Then you must eat and we must travel. Come. The plane is too bulky, but we will lock it and hope it will await our return. Then I shall take to the river in the rubber boat and, when you have eaten, you can take wing and try to outdistance Cleonice.”

  The Changer’s response is to nod once and vanish into the brush. Without a look back at the two corpses, Anson follows more slowly, burdened with equipment they may not need but they dare not leave behind.

  Let the ants and the scavengers tend to the funeral.

  As far down the river as several days of determined rafting can take them, Vera and Amphitrite greet the same morning that saw Isidro and Oswaldo die with something like routine.

  While Amphitrite handles casting off and the first round of poling, Vera refreshes the fire, the coals from the previous night having been kept smoldering in order to burn various noxiously scented leaves that keep the even more noxious mosquitoes somewhat at bay.

  Over this fire, Vera boils water in an aluminum canteen from which the decorative nylon casing has been removed. When the water is boiling, she brews tea from leaves that Isidro’s handy little book has assured them are not poisonous. This is served with peeled mangoes, some Brazil nuts, and the remainder of the fish from the night before. They have learned to kee
p a portion of this from rotting by wrapping it in leaves while still raw and burying it in the wet mud over which their fire is built. There it bakes and is sealed from the air.

  Once breakfast is eaten, Vera takes over poling so that Amphitrite can tend to her ablutions. Then Amphitrite returns to her post, and Vera does the same. Once fed and vaguely clean they are ready to face another long day of heat, humidity, mosquitoes, and uncertainty.

  “Did you ever read Huck Finn?” Vera asks idly. She’s been busy sharpening shafts for her makeshift bow.

  “I’ve heard the story,” Amphitrite answers, “but I don’t know it well. Reading is one of those things that doesn’t work too well underwater.”

  Vera frowns and sucks at a place where she has nicked her finger. “It seems to me that you and Duppy Jonah have done without a great deal. You don’t have books, computers, fax machines, rapid transportation. In many ways, the modern improvements have passed you by.”

  “We do have the telephone,” Amphitrite says, “a useful thing, now that Arthur has chosen to reside in a desert. It was easier getting messages to him when he lived in Great Britain.”

  “I hadn’t really thought about how living underwater handicaps you and your people. If athanor are going to rely more on modern technology, we should find a way to hook you folks in.”

  Pausing between strokes, Amphitrite examines her pole. “We need to cut another one of these. This one has been chewed on by something. I wouldn’t trust it if I needed to do something more strenuous than guide us with the current.”

  “Take mine,” Vera suggests. “Or let me take over and you can scan the banks for the right kind of tree.”

  “I’ll keep poling,” Amphitrite offers, making the switch. “All land plants look rather alike to me.”

  “Fine, just don’t wear yourself out. We’ve a long day in front of us.” Vera sighs. “Again.”

  Amphitrite smiles at her. “Don’t get discouraged. Let us talk instead about the interesting point you just raised. Life beneath the sea has its own advantages. We have much property and, as humans have yet to learn how to live beneath the water, we are not in any great danger of discovery.

  “When we’re not administering our kingdom, Duppy Jonah and I have a great deal of fun. Some of the sea dwellers are quite old. There are athanor turtles and whales with fascinating tales to tell. Sometimes we go to Loch Ness and stir up the tourists.”

  Vera giggles. “I always wondered if that was you, but I never had the courage to ask.”

  “It was Duppy Jonah’s idea. He was a plesiosaurus long ago. I think he misses the age of dinosaurs. That’s the only time he lived on land.”

  “I didn’t know that he ever had,” Vera says surprised.

  “He tried it then, along with the Changer. The Changer took to land and never really returned to the oceans. Duppy Jonah made the opposite choice. One became a monarch, the other the ultimate vagabond.”

  “Would you really call the Changer a vagabond?”

  “What else is he?” Amphitrite barely manages to keep a teasing note from her voice, for, at the mention of the Changer, Vera has cheered up. “He not only has no fixed home or responsibilities—he has no fixed form!”

  “Still, he’s very loyal to Shahrazad.”

  “He is that.”

  “And he wants vengeance on whoever killed his mate.”

  “Perhaps he wants vengeance because the attempt may have been on him.”

  “Perhaps.” Vera sets her pile of shafts aside. “Pole over to the right bank. I see a stand of bamboo.”

  She rises to use the chewed pole to help steer them out of the current’s pull. When they close, she leans across to the bank and hacks away at a nice, sturdy cane.

  “Hard to believe,” she says when she is stripping off the leaves, “that this is a grass.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. There, will this pole do?”

  Amphitrite flourishes the bamboo cane. “Can you take about a foot off the top? I feel like I’m wielding a ship’s mast.”

  “Why don’t you trim it yourself? It’s my turn to pole.”

  “Fine.”

  Amphitrite sits and begins trimming. Several moments later, she utters a shrill shriek and leaps to her feet. The bamboo pole rolls into the water unnoticed.

  “What is it!” Vera exclaims, spinning to look.

  Amphitrite is beating at her leg where several bright red forms are moving. They are so tiny that Vera can hardly believe that they are the source of such evident agony.

  With another shrill cry, Amphitrite jumps into the river.

  “Watch out for the piranhas!” Vera yells, hurrying to pull her friend aboard.

  “Piranhas be damned!” Amphitrite exclaims, treading water a safe distance from the raft. “Watch out for the fire ants!

  Vera shudders and begins brushing at her extremities.

  “I’m going to splash the deck,” Amphitrite says in a tone that brooks no argument.

  “Splash me, too,” Vera says. “Can’t you do that from here? I’m worried about the piranhas getting you.”

  Amphitrite grins sheepishly. “We’ve got something new to worry about. You see, when I hit the water, the only thing I wanted was to be rid of my legs, they hurt so.”

  “You didn’t!”

  “I’m afraid so. I’ve broken Lovern’s spell. We’d better hope that the piranhas don’t think that mermaid smells appetizing, because I’m not sure I can haul myself onto the raft without sinking it. All my other forms are water creatures.”

  “Oh, my,” Vera says softly. “Oh, my!”

  On the private beach in Florida, Lovern is met by a stocky fellow of freckled complexion, with a very Irish pug nose and mop of red hair. He wears nothing but a pair of brilliant orange hibiscus-print shorts.

  “Himself sent me to take you to Him,” the man says. “I’m by way of being a selkie. I’ve brought you my granther’s pelt. ‘Tis just a loan, mind you.”

  “I understand,” Lovern says humbly. He has been watching the news channels, and the destruction caused by Duppy Jonah’s temperamental weather reminds him of Calcutta.

  The selkie motions for Lovern to come down to the shore. Two sealskins have been tucked in a tidal pool. The waters move them so that they seem to swim of their own accord.

  Lovern kneels to help the selkie pull them out. The wet pelt is heavier than he had expected, but he manages to pull it out without letting it drag on the sand.

  “Contrary to what the old mothers would have you believe,” the selkie says, “the pelts last better kept in water. ‘Tis a bit chill when first you’re being about putting them on, but it warms fast enough.”

  “Interesting,” Lovern says. Then, fearing that he sounds haughty, he adds quickly, “What’s your name, sir?”

  The selkie cocks a bushy eyebrow at him. “I’m no ‘sir,’ but the courtesy is welcome as offered. This life they’re calling me Connel O’Conaill. Once I was the self-same Conaill.”

  “I’m Ian Lovern,” Lovern says. He does not mention other names he has been called. With men and women drowned and desperate because of his folly, anything that might smack of a boast is beyond him.

  “Ready, then, Ian?” Connel asks. “Then just set granther’s pelt on that rock while I prepare you.”

  Lovern does so. “Is your grandfather still alive?”

  “That’s right enough. The pelts lose their virtue soon after the owner goes on.”

  “Are you selkies born as seals or human?”

  “Now that would be telling, wouldn’t it?” The selkie’s dark eyes twinkle. “First, Himself spoke that you should strip off everything about you down to the least bit of jewelry.”

  The selkie’s brown eyes are large and kind. His expression is sweet and a touch mournful, but Lovern has had enough doings with various branches of Celts over the centuries to know how quickly that mild mood can turn to storm.

  He strips, feeling self-conscious, for Connel’s gaze nev
er leaves him. When he has finished stacking his clothes and placing his rings, earring, belt buckle, and bracelet atop them, Lovern takes a deep breath. He has not been so bereft of supplements to his natural power since he was a small fey boy.

  “Now,” Connel says, “will you swear to me that you are indeed without any power but that which you were born to?”

  “Yes.”

  “Again tell me. I’ll warn you that Himself will have you flayed and given in gobbets to the sharks if you lie.”

  “I have nothing but the natural power that I was born to,” Lovern says firmly. “I am not lying.”

  “You’re a wise one—a wizard. I’ll be thinking that you know the binding power of an oath.” The selkie picks up his own pelt. “Let’s be about this. You start by draping the skin over your shoulders—make sure it falls smooth or you’ll pinch a fin. Then lift it over your head. When it touches your head, be ready to fall forward. Let the waves catch you.”

  Lovern takes the wet hide, some small part of him wondering if he is being toyed with, for the procedure seems so simple compared with his own elaborate enchantments. The selkie stands with his own pelt over his arm.

  “Excuse me,” Lovern says, “but can I store my clothing and tools somewhere?”

  The selkie strikes himself on the forehead. “I’m almost forgetting. Himself said the Land King has a safe in the house, and I’m to stow your gear there. Why don’t you put on the skin and practice some swimming while I run up to the house?”

  Lovern complies, quashing his nervousness with reminders of cottages turned to nothing but storm wrack, and land creatures bloating and drowned where the waters had risen.

  Almost as soon as he puts the head skin over his own, he feels the tingle of transformation. His upper body becomes far too heavy for his legs… No! Flippers. He falls forward and the waves rise to catch him.

  “There, you’re looking much more fine.” Connel sets his own pelt back into the tide pool. “Practice in the shallows and don’t be going too far out. Himself might just have sent some sharks out to welcome you if you’re after coming out without me.”