by Nina Berry
As I entered, Morfael didn’t bother to turn around, but everyone else’s eyes slid to me. I forced myself not to smooth my rumpled hair or rub my bleary eyes. November was smirking, as usual, but all the others looked carefully blank. I tore my eyes from Caleb and marched over to stand next to London on the mat.
Morfael was saying something about focus, but all I could think about was Caleb standing behind me. Stop it! Think about how you’re going to get home, not some annoying, gorgeous boy who can’t decide if he likes you or not.
I was last in line for a trip through a makeshift obstacle course. It included things like high parallel bars, a twelve-foot-high wall, a low table to crawl under, and tires to run through. Morfael did not speak, just tapped his staff to indicate the next person should race as fast as possible through the course.
“Why are we doing this?” I said under my breath to London as Arnaldo leapt surprisingly high over the wall, all gawky arms and legs.
“Some bullshit about how exercise integrates mind and body,” she whispered.
Morfael glanced at us sharply, and London shut down.
For an hour Morfael forced us through the course over and over again. Something squeezed the air out of my lungs whenever it was Caleb’s turn. He would hoist himself over the wall in one move, muscles flexing. Once, as he crawled under the table, his pants raked down to expose a lean hip bone, the skin there paler than his tanned face and arms. It was really annoying how that made me go all gooey inside.
Morfael made us do one more humiliating slog through the course, then said to our sweating faces. “Now you will effect your first shift of the day in the locker rooms with your cabin partners.”
“Shift?” I heard myself say. “Just like that?”
Morfael’s eyes bored into me. “After every one of you succeeds, you may have breakfast. Caleb, come with me.”
Caleb and I caught each other’s eye as he moved toward Morfael. “Good luck,” he mouthed.
I opened my mouth to say thanks, but he had turned away to follow Morfael back into the main part of the house. Did that mean we were still friends? Right now the only thing I understood was my wet noodle muscles complaining. My emotions were knotted up into a big, crazy ball, and I couldn’t tell one from the other.
The other kids were moving toward the back of the cave. Arnaldo and Siku pushed open a metal door that said MEN on it. November and London headed for the second door, marked WOMEN, and then we were in a locker room. The floor was the stone of the cave. The cheap wooden walls and lockers looked like they’d been purchased at Home Depot and erected by drunks.
November was already completely naked and heading toward the showers. I hastily looked away, but my eyes fell on London shedding her clothing with equal lack of concern. Her sweats fell off in seconds, and she padded after November, all lean arms and legs.
“I didn’t bring a change of clothes, or soap, or anything,” I said, averting my eyes.
“There are extra sets of clothes in each locker,” said November. Pipes squealed, and water splattered. “Raynard does the laundry on Saturday. Soap and towels in there.”
“Raynard?” I opened a locker and found a pile of gray sweats and socks, all neatly folded and smelling of lavender.
“Morfael’s tubby boyfriend,” November said. “He’s, like, a hundred years old and comes in every day to cook, clean, fix stuff.”
“Morfael has a boyfriend?” I couldn’t picture Morfael snuggling up to anyone.
“A hottie stick insect like him? How could he not?” November smirked.
I hauled off my drenched sweatshirt, shoes, and socks, then dithered at the thought of removing more.
“Remember how we had to practice taking our clothes off fast when we first got here?” November said, turning to London. “Easier for me since I get so much smaller and the clothes just fall off. Harder for shifters who get bigger like Siku. Word to the wise: Stock up on cheap undies.”
“You’re even faster when it’s cold outside.” London squeezed out the ends of her hair. November splashed water at her. London pretended not to notice.
I remembered how Caleb had draped his coat over me before helping me shift to human. He was a gentleman, I’d say that for him. “Do we . . . do we all shift in front of each other?”
“Well, it shouldn’t be that big a deal if we do,” said November. “You get used to nudity if you grow up around shifters.”
“You obviously don’t go to a humdrum high school,” I said. “All the girls hate changing in front of other people. Only the cheerleader types, you know, the ones with the boobs and no cellulite, like to walk around naked and show off.”
“Neurotic city,” said November, and I couldn’t disagree. “Not that shifters are so incredibly sane or anything.”
London snorted. “We’re all homeschooled,” she said. “No clubs to join, no dances, no new kids to meet. Just the same group you grew up with, every day, year after year.”
Maybe high school wasn’t so bad, after all.
November was smirking. “Looks like you bring out the chatterbox in London, Tigger.”
I forced myself to take off my bra and panties, blushing like an idiot. Neither of them noticed. I stepped into the shower and blasted a stream of hot water. It pounded into my overworked muscles, and I stopped shivering.
“So obviously the Council is letting you stay,” said November. “And we know the Tribunal is after you. Gory details are required.”
London looked interested too. “You actually fought the objurers?”
“Sort of,” I said. I had every ounce of their attention as I gave them an edited version of that long, horrible night. I finished by telling them what the Council had said when I tried to find out what would happen to the Tribunal’s enclave. “They told me it was none of my business!” I was getting angry again. “But it’s everybody’s business!”
London shook her long blackened hair under the water. “What do you expect them to do?”
“The tribes should join forces and go after the Tribunal,” I said. “Otherwise they’ll wipe out everyone.”
London frowned like I was talking crazy, while November rolled her eyes. “Oh, please, it’s every tribe for itself in shifter-land,” she said. “No matter how nice we rats try to be to other shifters, they just see us as prey. You can’t go against nature.”
“We’re not just animals,” I said. “We’re people too. And people can unite to fight a common enemy.”
November shrugged, as if it wasn’t worth discussing. She pointed at my waist. “You get those this morning?”
Feeling exposed, I looked down and saw the purple bruises arcing over my hip bones just as they had for two years, since I’d started wearing the brace. I forced myself not to rush over and grab a towel to cover them up. Just pretend it’s no big deal. “No, I’ve had those forever. I used to wear a back brace. The plastic is really stiff, and I had to wear it all day and night. It squeezed me so hard that these are pretty much permanent.”
November frowned. “But you’ve shifted since then, right?”
“Well—” I had to think about that, and decided not to count the shift in the river during what was probably a Morfael-induced hallucination. “Yeah, I shifted night before last, after the doctor said I didn’t need to wear the brace anymore. The first shift I ever did cured my spinal curvature.”
“It should’ve healed the bruises too.” London squeezed water out of her hair. “Shifting heals everything.”
“And she would know,” said November.
London glared at her. I looked down at the bruises, which looked exactly as permanent as they always had. “I don’t know. This is all so new to me.”
“You should ask Morfael. That’s just weird.” November turned her shower off with a squeak. “Okay, here we go. I’ll shift first.”
Great. Now I was weird to the weirdos in this school. “So, we shift now? Like, right here?”
“Yeah,” said November, padding over
to the supply closet for a towel. “Morfael tries to get us to shift three times a day.”
“Why three times a day exactly?” I asked.
November, now dry, stood unself-consciously naked in front of a full-length mirror, running her fingers through her short brown hair. I couldn’t help staring, she was so confident. She had to be less than five feet tall, short-waisted and creamy-skinned with a flat chest, slender legs, and a surprisingly round, firm butt. “Most shifters under twenty can only manage to shift to and from their animal form every eight hours or so.”
“But if you skip the morning shift, you can do it twice in a row later,” London added. “Or three times in a row at the end of the day. Morfael wants us to be able to do it at the drop of a hat.”
My stomach sank.
“And at least one of those times, he makes us hunt in animal form or find a hidden object in the back caves, stuff like that.” November smiled at my discomfort in the mirror. “Once you’re in action, it’s harder to keep hold of your human side, so we work on that. And believe me, we rats want you guys to keep hold of it.”
“You’ll get the hang of it,” said London. “Don’t let Ratty scare you.”
“I’ve only ever shifted voluntarily once,” I said. “And that was a dream.”
“Once?” November’s mouth turned down for the first time since I’d met her. “You better not keep everyone waiting while you fumble around. We won’t get breakfast till everyone’s done it, and I’m hungry.”
“Thanks,” I said. “No pressure.”
She studied me; then a smile broke over her face, showing all her sharp, tiny teeth. “Look, I’ll show you, okay?”
“Okay,” I said, not sure what she meant.
“Nobody stands between November and a meal,” said London. She lowered her voice to a stage whisper. “She gets cranky when she’s hungry.”
“At least I’ve got a reason,” said November. “Now, look. I’ll talk you through it until I can’t talk anymore. And I’m good at talking, as everybody knows. So . . .” She stood in a wide stance, hands on her hips, her hair dripping onto her bare shoulders. “Some part of us is connected to Othersphere, right?”
News to me, but it made sense. I nodded.
“For me, it feels like a window, like inside me there’s a faint breeze blowing in from somewhere”—she waved her hand in the air—“out there. We rats, we’re good with our noses, you know? We can identify the tiniest molecules, and to me, this breeze in my soul smells delicious. It smells like candy.”
Her eyes sparkled. “Candy’s my favorite thing ever. So if I want to shift, I feel the breeze.” She closed her eyes and inhaled through her nose. “And I imagine the smell of gummi bears and lollipops. There it is.” She inhaled again. “Now I’m going to follow that scent, right through the window, and you see me—”
Her voice cut off as the air around her vibrated. Her nose got pointier, and she shrank into something about a foot long and furry. A large, glossy brown rat stared up at me with dark, beady eyes. A thick pink tail added another eight inches to its length.
Goose bumps covered my skin in spite of all the hot water streaming over me. “Wow.” Was that what it looked like when I shifted? There had been no cracking of bones or rending of flesh, the way werewolves changed in the movies. A wiggle in the air, a brief glimpse of her body morphing, and November had become a rat as big as a house cat.
She scuttled over to one of the benches in front of the lockers and leapt up onto it, chirping loudly. Her little pink paws pulled on her whiskers, then stroked her ears. Chattering away as if we could still understand her, she turned 360 degrees. Her skinny little rat arms caressed the fur on her sides, as if showing off her sleek, dark brown, pod-shaped body. For a moment it was like I’d stepped into an animated movie for kids, where animals talked, sang, and made you dresses for the ball.
She closed her beady eyes, still cheeping, and the air around her warped again. Her tail vanished, and she grew taller. A naked human girl stood before us, her hair still wet.
“. . . just follow the smell of this world back through the window. It smells like a damp basement with a touch of bacon. And here I am.” She’d finished in English what she must have started saying as a rat. She grinned, putting her hands on her hips. “See? Not so hard. I’d ask London to talk you through her shift now, but she’s about as helpful as a silver bullet.”
London grabbed a towel, her hair hanging down around her face. “Go to hell.”
“At least she’s got a vast vocabulary,” said November.
London’s mouth became a hard line, her eyes averted. I knew how she felt: like she’d been shoved to the margins and marked “loser.” November was too sexy, too gregarious to understand. And I needed to hear what London had to say if I was going to start getting a handle on shifting.
“You’ve done this way more than I have,” I said to London. “And if you have a hard time with it, I’ll probably learn even more from you than from November. You know, if you don’t mind. I’d really appreciate it.”
“Fine. Fuck it.” London finished drying off and threw her towel in the hamper. “I have to shift anyway.”
“Holy crap,” said November. “One kind word and London crumbles like a cookie.”
“Shut up, varmint,” London said, padding to her locker.
I turned off my own shower and grabbed a towel, glad to be covered up once again. As I sat on the bench and November put on her clothes, London stood stiffly and closed her eyes. “So,” she said, “it’s like there’s a wolf off in the distance, running away from me. I don’t want to follow her, but I know that’s the way I have to go.” Under her eyelids, I could see her irises shifting, as if she was searching in the darkness.
“She’s huge, all silvery gray, with eyes like big blue lamps. Sometimes I think it’s my mother, but when I get close, I can see it’s not.” She inhaled sharply. “She’s so fast. She’s getting farther away. I wish she’d just disappear, but I want to graduate from this goddamned school before I die, so I have to run and run . . .”
She lifted her head as if looking at the ceiling through her closed eyes, the long column of her throat exposed. Her fists clenched, and the atmosphere trembled. Then her fists weren’t fists, but huge gray paws. A wolf with silver-gray fur and penetrating sky-blue eyes dropped to all fours where London had been, not three feet away from me.
She took a step forward on her long, rangy legs, her wet, black nose sniffing. She stood nearly three feet high at the shoulder, larger than any normal wolf, her ropy muscles bunching effortlessly beneath her thick coat. I drew back without thinking, my heart thudding.
November laughed. “Now you know how we rats feel. Don’t bite her too hard, London.”
The wolf turned her glowing gaze and growled at November, the fur along her spine ruffling upward.
“Laurentia, I mean, Laurentia,” said November, throwing a nervous smile at me. “When she’s in wolf form, it’s better to humor her.”
London snarled, baring long, sharp teeth.
“Yes, I know you have bigger teeth than I do.” November backed up a couple of steps. “But remember, now, you’re not a wolf made hungry by a morning workout and shifting. You’re Laurentia, a wolf-shifter who will now turn back into a girl so we can hurry up and have a normal breakfast.”
“She wouldn’t . . . eat you,” I said, staring at the huge animal in front of me. “Would she?”
“Of course she wouldn’t,” said November. But she swallowed hard.
I took a step toward the wolf. London. She fixed her gaze on me. There was an alien wildness in those intense blue eyes that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. “That’s not why she won’t do it,” I said. “You won’t do it because it’s wrong. Right, Laurentia? You knew that before you shifted, and you know that now.”
The wolf considered me for a long moment; then she sat down. November took a deep breath in relief.
“Are all wolf-shifters this bi
g and gorgeous in their animal form?” I asked.
November raised her voice to an annoying whine. “Wolves are so magnificent, so elegant, so mysterious. Ugh.” Her voice slid down to normal tones. “Bunch of romantic bull leftover from fairy tales and nature documentaries. All of our animal forms are bigger and more impressive than regular animals, including the rats.”
I looked over at London. “Think we touched a nerve there. Do rats have an inferiority complex?”
London slid her laserlike gaze to November, her eyebrows twitching slightly.
“You try being hunted for generations and told you’re filthy and slimy all the time and see how you feel!” November slammed her locker shut. “Hurry up, London. My stomach’s growling.”
The wolf’s mouth opened in what looked like a panting sort of laugh; then she nodded and shut her eyes. I watched carefully for a long minute as nothing happened. London opened up her eyes and yipped in what sounded like frustration.
November gave an exaggerated sigh. “Now who’s got the inferiority complex?”
“Wait, let’s think about this,” I said. “What does she have to do to get back her human form?” I thought about how London chased down her wolf form in order to shift to it, how she’d described that wolf in beautiful terms and didn’t seem to think of it as being herself. Now that she actually embodied that magnificent animal, maybe she didn’t want to give it up. “You have to let her go,” I said to London. “At least for now. She’ll still be there, waiting, the next time you look for her. Let her go. You’ll find her again.”
London let out a small whine and closed her eyes again. November frowned at me, as if trying to figure out what I meant by all that. The air around the wolf altered, and London stood there once more in her human form. Her brows were furrowed, as if she was thinking hard. She didn’t look at me as she started to get dressed.
“Okay, Stripes,” said November. “Your turn.”
CHAPTER 16
I should’ve been eager to jump into shifting, to learn all about becoming a tiger. But now that the time had come, my heart was pounding unevenly, and my mouth went dry.
