He said, “I want to try again.”
She replied, “I thought you might. You’re not completely unlike your uncle.” She stood up and brushed herself off. “Watch me,” she said. And try to hear me after I’ve changed. It will help put you in the right mindset.”
She transformed, and began grunting at him. He tried to hear what she was telling him, but he couldn’t quite make it out. Unconsciously, he began pulling in his power, using it to try and hear her. He almost didn’t notice that his whole body was transforming, only that her words were becoming clear.
“Good!” she said. “Now that is a handsome shape, and fits you well.”
Gwydion tried to look down at his shape, but his tusks and his proximity to the ground hindered him. But he felt more energetic as a boar, and he asked Ruchalia about it.
“We swine have greater endurance than humans,” she said. “It’s something to keep in mind as you shape shift.”
“I’m not up to it tonight, but what other animal do you think I should try?”
“A squirrel,” she said after a moment. “That will help you learn about size changes, and will provide a good contrast to some of the animals you’ve been before.”
She led him to another pine needle bower, and they curled up together. “Thank you,” Gwydion said. “For everything.”
She nuzzled him and said, “You’re welcome.”
They spent the next week practicing shapeshifting, until Gwydion could do it at a moment’s notice. He found that he could change the style of his clothes if he worked at it, and also found that carrying different things gave him a slightly different look when he became an animal. Ruchalia laughed at his insistence that it was all important, but Gwydion was imagining running across Dyfed as a wolf or a stag but still having his harp and his sword when he needed them. When he told this to Ruchalia, she said, “You think too small.”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“I mean, why stick with a wolf or a stag?” she said. “You could be a squirrel of course, but go further: try a salmon, or a whale, or a falcon, or a frog.”
“So any living thing is possible?”
“Possible, but not necessarily a good idea.”
Gwydion sighed. “Okay, explain it to me.”
“No, I will not,” she said. “Turn into a squirrel, and tell me if you can understand why some living creatures would be dangerous to become.”
“Okay, I will.” It took him a few tries, but soon he had shrunk down and grown a huge tail. Looking up at everything was momentarily distorting, and he looked around quickly and scampered up the nearest tree. He looked down to see Ruchalia looking up at him.
He could just understand her words, although it sounded disjointed in his new ears: “How feel you?”
He began chattering at her, although he didn’t know if she understood squirrel. He told her he was fine, but hungry, and there were nuts he had to find and store, and didn’t she know winter was coming?
He stopped, unsure of where all that had come from. The squirrel brain was trying to tell him to hurry and scurry, but he forced himself to sit still. The effort made him shift back to human form, sitting on a small branch that quickly broke under his weight. He only fell three feet, but it still bruised his backside as well as his ego.
Ruchalia was laughing at him, and she became human to help him up and brush him off. “What happened?” he asked.
“You spontaneously shape shifted,” she answered.
“No, I meant when I was a squirrel. It was like all the sudden I had no control over my thoughts.”
“And to a certain extent, that’s exactly what happened.” Ruchalia turned back into a boar and began trotting off. Gwydion also changed, and quickly caught up with her. “Your brain is like your clothes,” she said. “It does not go away, but it’s not exactly present, either. But how accessible it is is somewhat dependent on your shape. As a boar, you feel quite rational and coherent. But what about when you were a deer?”
“I was more rational at first,” Gwydion said. “And it faded with time, so that when Math came for me, I barely remembered my name.”
“That’s how you get trapped,” Ruchalia said. “It is easy to remember yourself as some creatures: ravens, cats, pike. They all have a fairly high self-awareness, which means you will too. But you want to avoid becoming a worm, or an ant, or a newt, or a minnow. In general, the smaller the animal, the more mindless, although there are exceptions. Wrens are very intelligent, for instance, while gulls are only clever when trying to steal food.”
Gwydion sighed again. “There’s so much to this. I feel like I’m never going to get the hang of it.”
“I know it seems that way,” she answered, “but mostly you just need practice. And self-control. Remember, there are some things that override rationality in any creature: hunger, fear. Sex.”
Gwydion was suddenly very aware of how desirable she was, and if he hadn’t been paying attention, he would have tried to seduce her immediately. Instead he said, “How did you do that? I swear you didn’t change a thing, and yet suddenly all I could think about was mating you.”
She chuckled deeply. “It’s a skill, just like any other. As a boar, it is mostly a mental projection, and I see who responds and how. As a human, it would be the sidelong glance, showing just a little more skin at my throat or on my leg... I think you get the picture.”
“Very clearly, yes,” he said. He forced his thoughts back to the topic at hand. “But even hunger can be overcome, correct?”
“Nicely sidestepped,” she said. “Yes, most things can be overcome if you have the willpower.”
“The more self-awareness, the more willpower,” Gwydion mused. “So I should avoid becoming a plant, I’m guessing.”
“Mostly, yes,” she said. “Trees are the exception, but there are some dangers inherent to it, of course.”
“Of course,” Gwydion said dryly.
“You wanted to know all this,” she said.
“You’re right, and I’m sorry,” he said. “Please, tell me about becoming a tree.”
“Well, with a tree,” she said, “the danger is not so much losing yourself, although that can still happen. The bigger danger is in losing track of time.”
“How do you mean?”
They had come to a small river, and she paused to drink. Looking up, water running from her mouth, she said, “I haven’t talked so much in an eon, I don’t think.”
“And I haven’t listened this closely ever,” Gwydion said. He took his own drink, and then followed Ruchalia up to a grassy bluff overlooking the water. They lay down side by side in the warm sun. “The danger in becoming a tree is losing track of time,” he prompted.
She snorted and shook herself slightly. “Just daydreaming,” she explained. “Now, about being a tree… Look down there. Do you see that patch of birch trees? And a little further back, there is a grove of oak?”
“Yes, I see them.”
“Okay, let’s say you become a birch,” she said. “They live about 50 to 75 years, which is very close to the lifespan of a typical human, yes?”
“Barring ill-luck, yes,” Gwydion said.
“Becoming a birch is a simple matter of experiencing life as a tree,” Ruchalia said. “But those oaks will live from three to four hundred years. If you are not prepared for that kind of perspective, it can distort your sense of time. You become an oak, and when you shape shift back to human, what you thought was a fortnight, or maybe a month, has taken years to everyone you know. Some are particularly bad about this: you think you’ve become an olive tree for a day, and a decade has passed to everyone you know.”
Gwydion looked at her. “Is that how you live your life?” he asked. “Everyone you meet is dead and gone before you know it?”
She looked at him with a crooked smile. “You have the makings of a very wise man.”
“Me?” he said in surprise. “I can barely comprehend all that you are telling me, and I have struggled
with the simplest principles.”
“But wisdom is more than knowledge, and more than self-control,” she said.
“Tell that to my uncle.”
“I did, many times,” she said. She rolled over on her back, twisting her torso in contented scratching.
“How did he resist you?” Gwydion asked. “I know that I will not be able to for much longer.”
“Ah, but the resistance is part of the game,” she said. “As for your uncle… he thought mating me would violate his principles.”
“How would it not?” Gwydion asked.
“There are rules for humans, and there are rules for deer, and there are rules for wolves,” Ruchalia said. “Did you consider the doe you mated, her feelings or her wishes in the matter?”
“Well, no.”
“But according to your uncle, that should have been your first thought. Except that you weren’t a human when you did that, and even if you had been well trained, some instincts are impossible for some animals to overcome.”
“And that’s why I fought the big buck,” Gwydion said.
“And as a wolf?” Ruchalia said. “You had your choice of mate, right up until the mating. Then all other bonds were excluded. Even now you are concerned that your mate will not be able to move on after your disappearance, that she will not be able to bond with another wolf. Again, this is perfectly normal as a wolf.”
“And now that I am a boar?”
Ruchalia shrugged. “Boars are normally fairly solitary, so we feel inclined to mate when we get a chance to. But we are not driven to it, and no matter how much I wanted your uncle, I respected his right to say no. Anything else would have violated my principles.”
“And then there are humans, who are not supposed to mate unless bonded first, in marriage, preferably.” Gwydion watched the river below for a while. Finally he stood and shook himself. “It’s all too much for me right now.”
“You are dealing with a lot,” Ruchalia said. “And I don’t know how much time you have to figure things out.”
“Days,” Gwydion said. “Not decades.”
That night, as they lay together in their pine bower, Gwydion said, “My uncle will be here soon, I think.”
“How do you know that?”
He shrugged. “It’s a feeling, mostly. Kind of like a storm that’s gathering.”
“Is going home so bad then?”
“Not at all,” Gwydion said. “It’s just that this time with you has been more instructive than any I have known, and I will be sorry to see it end.”
She rubbed against him. “I don’t think your instruction is quite complete, do you?”
“You don’t ever give up, do you?” he said.
“Should I?”
He began rubbing back. “No,” he said, nuzzling under her chin. “No, you shouldn’t.”
They made love several times, including once as humans, at his request. Ruchalia said she enjoyed it, and Gwydion didn’t doubt it, but he was sure that she preferred mating in her form just as much as he preferred mating in his.
He said as much to her while sunning themselves in a meadow. “What would you expect?” she replied.
“It never occurred to me when I was a deer or a wolf.”
“Did you ever consider those mates as capable of taking another form?”
“No,” Gwydion answered.
“And they never considered it about you, either,” she said. “I have seen you in several forms, and I have seen you in the most enticing of all: as someone who has trusted me with your pain, and your hopes, and your secrets.”
“Is this love, then?”
Ruchalia did not answer for a long time. When she finally did, she asked him, “What would you give to stay here with me?”
The question was not what he expected. “I don’t know,” he said. “I never thought about it.”
“But you do have to think about it,” Ruchalia said. “If it were love, the answer would have been immediate and unequivocal.”
“And I would have given everything to stay.”
“Maybe, maybe not. But you would have known.” She spent a few minutes scratching an itch. “Love is usually uncompromising, and has as much to do with sex as digestion does with eating.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Digestion and eating are certainly connected, wouldn’t you say?” she asked. “But while digestion is why you eat, it has nothing to do with the pleasure of the palette. And in a similar way, you could savor food and spit it out, and digestion would never happen.”
“So love follows from sex…”
“Not quite. It’s not a perfect analogy.”
“But sex and love can be intertwined?”
“Yes, and they often are, especially when it’s not just sex, but mating,” she said. “How many girls do you think you have bedded?”
“What? I don’t know. Maybe a couple of dozen?”
“And was it about making them feel good, or about making you feel good?” When Gwydion didn’t answer, she nodded. “I’m not judging you. Just showing you that you were not looking for a physical expression of your deepest feelings, you were looking for fun.”
“So what about us?” Gwydion said.
“There is love,” Ruchalia admitted, “but probably not how you conceived of it.”
“Why not?”
She turned to him, and once again he was impressed with the weight of her age and all the experience that entailed. This time, however, she did not stop, but forced him to see himself next to her, very callow and immature, and very, very young. He squirmed at the recognition. “Then what do we do?” he asked.
Ruchalia returned to the sow he knew. “Go home,” she said. “Find a nice human girl closer to your own age and experience. Enjoy your youth with her, but be true to yourself and your principles. And when it becomes love, you will know it.”
Gwydion stood and looked at the sun that was setting behind the trees. It occurred to him for the first time that it wasn’t the sun of his world. He could not tell the difference, but he felt sure it was there. “It’s time for me to go home, I think. Can you teach me how to cross worlds?”
“I can,” Ruchalia said. “Are you ready, or would you like to wait?”
“I may as well do it now,” Gwydion said. “If I stay much longer, I may forget why falling in love with you would be so bad.”
“Become human,” she said. “That is your natural form, and will make it easier to find the bridge across the Pale.” When he had done what she asked, she said, “Now imagine your own room at home, every detail you can remember.”
“Okay,” he said.
“Now you are going to pour yourself from here to there, kind of like shapeshifting, but on the outside, not the inside.”
Gwydion felt his power flow outward, and saw a ghostly image of his room appear in front of him. “Like that?”
“Very good. Now just step from here to there. You might have a moment of vertigo, and it might feel like you’re being stretched across a great distance, but it passes quickly.”
Gwydion turned and knelt down to give her a hug. He wished for a moment that he could see her as a human again, but did not ask, and if she knew, she gave no indication. Instead, she snorted and nuzzled against his chest. He stood up, and without looking back, stepped across the worlds.
His room was not quite as he remembered. Someone had cleaned up, and it was cold for lack of a fire. He felt somewhat discombobulated, and lay down on the bed. The room started to spin, like he had had too much to drink, and he stood up again, hurrying to the chamber pot before throwing up everything in his stomach.
It took him awhile to feel normal, and he lay on his bed with images and feelings from his different shapeshifting swirling through his mind. After some endless time his mind cleared, and even though he knew he had not assimilated everything yet, he felt well enough to clean himself up, and begin the climb up to Math’s tower.
His uncle showed no surprise when
he entered in through the door. “Welcome home, nephew.”
Gwydion bowed deeply, but said nothing. Math gestured him up to the dais. “Look through these windows,” he said. “The winds enter here from every corner of Glencairck and beyond. Can you hear them?”
Gwydion looked out at the mountains, but at first all he could hear was the normal sound of the wind. He thought for a moment that he could hear words, but nothing distinct, more like a crowd of whispering people. He strained to hear more, but finally shook his head in frustration. “Nothing,” he said.
“You’re using your ears too much,” Math advised. “What you’re trying to hear goes beyond sound.”
Gwydion almost started to complain that it was impossible, but then he had a very clear image of talking with Ruchalia. Wondering if it was something like that, he took a deep breath and opened himself to the wind.
“And you’ll be a blithering fool to your last breath!”
The voice was not Goewin’s, but it was a woman’s. There was some mumbling, and then he heard the woman again. “Nothing but excuses! Worth less than the spit you put into them!”
He began to hear other voices. Few were as clear as the first, but they began to rise above the level of muttering, and caught snatches of conversation coming from all direction. Math nodded at the wonder on his face, and said, “Welcome to a new world.”
Chapter 8: Transformations
Gwydion walked across the courtyard towards the hall, amazed by the sounds of the wind. He felt as though his ears had been stuffed with cotton before, but Math had pulled it out. He heard whisperings of men, true, but he also heard the voices of the air itself, teasing the earth and tickling the trees. Just as he went through the doors, he wondered if he would be able to sleep with all the noise.
The hall was bright and crowded as usual, but the wind here was different. It had a fat and stuffy voice that knew little of outside. It smelled of beer and smoke, and lapped at the roast on the table. Gwydion heard it murmuring to its mother, the fire, complaining that it wanted to see the world. And he felt tendrils calling from the roof as they fulfilled that dream.
Wizard's Heir (A Bard Without a Star, Book 1) Page 8
