“Here—or there? Choose now, child.”
With an inarticulate cry, she stumbled toward the stones—
And found herself standing alone on a grassy hill.
After several hours of walking in wet, soggy tennis shoes, growing more spacey by the minute from hunger, she was beginning to think she’d made a mistake. Somewhere back behind her she’d lost her raincoat; she couldn’t remember when she’d taken it off. There was no sign of people anywhere—there were animals; even sheep, once, but nothing like “civilization.” It was frustrating, maddening; there was food all around her, on four feet, on wings—surely even some of the plants were edible—but it was totally inaccessible to a city-bred girl who’d never gotten food from anywhere but a grocery or restaurant. She might just as well be on the moon.
Just as she thought that, she topped another rise to find herself looking at a strange, weatherbeaten man standing beside a rough pounded-dirt road.
She blinked in dumb amazement. He looked like something out of a movie, a peasant from a King Arthur epic. He was stocky, blond-haired; he wore a shabby brown tunic and patched, shapeless trousers tucked into equally patched boots. He was also holding a strung bow, with an arrow nocked to it, and frowning—a most unfriendly expression.
He gabbled something at her. She blinked again. She knew a little Spanish (you had to, in her neighborhood); she’d taken German and French in high school. This didn’t sound like any of those.
He repeated himself, a distinct edge to his voice. To emphasize his words, he jerked the point of the arrow off back the way she had come. It was pretty obvious he was telling her to be on her way.
“No, wait—please—” she stepped toward him, her hands outstretched pleadingly. The only reaction she got was that he raised the arrow to point at her chest, and drew it back.
“Look—I haven’t got any weapons! I’m lost, I’m hungry—”
He drew the arrow a bit farther.
Suddenly it was all too much. She’d spent all her life being pushed and pushed—first her aunt, then at school, then out on the streets. This was the last time anybody was going to back her into a corner—this time she was going to fight!
A white-hot rage like nothing she’d ever experienced before in her life took over.
“Damn you!” she was so angry she could hardly think. “You stupid clod! I need help!” she screamed at him, as red flashes interfered with her vision, her ears began to buzz, and her hands crooked into involuntary claws, “Damn you and everybody that looks like you!”
He backed up a pace, his blue eyes wide with surprise at her rage.
She was so filled with fury that grew past controlling—she couldn’t see, couldn’t think; it was like being possessed. Suddenly she gasped as pain lanced from the top of her head to her toes, pain like a bolt of lightning—
—her vision blacked out; she fell to her hands and knees on the grass, her legs unable to hold her, convulsing with surges of pain in her arms and legs. Her feet, her hands felt like she’d shoved them in a fire—her face felt as if someone were stretching it out of shape. And the ring finger of her left hand—it burned with more agony than both hands and feet put together! She shook her head, trying to clear it, but it spun around in dizzying circles. Her ears rang, hard to hear over the ringing, but there was a sound of cloth tearing—
Her sight cleared and returned, but distorted. She looked up at the man, who had dropped his bow, and was backing away from her, slowly, his face white with terror. She started to say something to him—
—and it came out a snarl.
With that, the man screeched, turned his back on her, and ran.
And she caught sight of her hand. It wasn’t a hand anymore. It was a paw. Judging by the spotted pelt of the leg, a leopard’s paw. Scattered around her were the ragged scraps of cloth that had once been her clothing.
Glenda lay in the sun on top of a rock, warm and drowsy with full-bellied content. Idly she washed one paw with her tongue, cleaning the last taint of blood from it. Before she’d had a chance to panic or go crazy back there when she’d realized what had happened to her, a rabbit-like creature had broken cover practically beneath her nose. Semi-starvation and confusion had kept her dazed long enough for leopard-instincts to take over. She’d caught and killed the thing and had half eaten it before the reality of what she’d done and become broke through her shock. Raw rabbit-thing tasted fine to leopard-Glenda; when she realized that, she finished it, nose to tail. Now for the first time in weeks she was warm and content. And for the first time in years she was something to be afraid of. She gazed about her from her vantage-point on the warm boulder, taking in the grassy hills and breathing in the warm, hay-scented air with a growing contentment.
Becoming a leopard might not be a bad transformation.
Ears keener than a human’s picked up the sound of dogs in the distance; she became aware that the man she’d frightened might have gone back home for help. They just might be hunting her.
Time to go.
She leapt down from her rock, setting off at a right angle to the direction the sound of the baying was coming from. Her sense of smell, so heightened now that it might have been a new sense altogether, had picked up the coolth of running water off this way, dimmed by the green odor of the grass. And running water was a good way to break a trail; she knew that from reading.
Reveling in the power of the muscles beneath her sleek coat, she ran lightly over the slopes, moving through the grass that had been such a waist-high tangle to girl-Glenda with no impediment whatsoever. In almost no time at all, it seemed, she was pacing the side of the stream that she had scented.
It was quite wide, twenty feet or so, and seemed fairly deep in the middle. Sunlight danced on the surface, giving her a hint that the current might be stiffish beneath the surface. She waded into it, up to her stomach, hissing a little at the cold and the feel of the water on her fur. She trotted upstream a bit until she found a place where the course had narrowed a little. It was still over her head, but she found she could swim it with nothing other than discomfort. The stream wound between the grassy hills, the banks never getting very high, but there rarely being any more cover along them than a few scattered bushes. Something told her that she would be no match for the endurance of the hunting pack if she tried to escape across the grasslands. She stayed in the watercourse until she came to a wider valley than anything she had yet encountered. There were trees here; she waded onward until she found one leaning well over the streambed. Gathering herself and eying the broad branch that arced at least six feet above the watercourse, she leaped for it, landing awkwardly, and having to scrabble with her claws fully extended to keep her balance.
She sprawled over it for a moment, panting, hearing the dogs nearing—belling in triumph as they caught her trail, then yelping in confusion when they lost it at the stream.
Time to move again. She climbed the tree up into the higher branches, finding a wide perch at least fifty or sixty feet off the ground. It was high enough that it was unlikely that anyone would spot her dappled hide among the dappled leaf-shadows, wide enough that she could recline, balanced, at her ease, yet it afforded to leopard-eyes a good view of the ground and the stream.
As she’d expected, the humans with the dogs had figured out her scent-breaking ploy, and had split the pack, taking half along each side of the stream to try and pick up where she’d exited. She spotted the man who had stopped her easily, and filed his scent away in her memory for the future. The others with him were dressed much the same as he, and carried nothing more sophisticated than bows. They looked angry, confused; their voices held notes of fear. They looked into and under the trees with noticeable apprehension, evidently fearing what might dwell under their shade. Finally they gave up, and pulled the hounds off the fruitless quest, leaving her smiling catwise, invisible above them in her tree, purring.
Several weeks later Glenda had found a place to lair up; a cave amid a tumble o
f boulders in the heart of the forest at the streamside. She had also discovered why the hunters hadn’t wanted to pursue her into the forest itself. There was a—thing—an evil presence, malicious, but invisible, that lurked in a circle of standing stones that glowed at night with a sickly yellow color. Fortunately it seemed unable to go beyond the bounds of the stones themselves. Glenda had been chasing a half-grown deer-beast that had run straight into the middle of the circle, forgetting the danger before it because of the danger pursuing it. She had nearly been caught there herself, and only the thing’s preoccupation with the first prey had saved her. She had hidden in her lair, nearly paralyzed with fear, for a day and a night until hunger and thirst had driven her out again.
Other than that peril, easily avoided, the forest seemed safe enough. She’d found the village the man had come from by following the dirt road; she’d spent long hours when she wasn’t hunting lurking within range of sight and hearing of the place. Aided by some new sense she wasn’t sure that she understood—the one that had alerted her to the danger of the stone circle as she’d blundered in—she was beginning to make some sense of their language. She understood at least two-thirds of what was being said now, and could usually guess the rest.
These people seemed to be stuck at some kind of feudal level—had been overrun by some higher-tech invaders the generation before, and were only now recovering from that. The hereditary rulers had mostly been killed in that war, and the population decimated; the memories of that time were still strong. The man who’d stopped her had been on guard-duty and had mistrusted her appearance out of what they called “the Waste” and her strange clothing. When she’d transformed in front of his eyes, he must have decided she was some kind of witch.
Glenda had soon hunted the more easily-caught game out; now when hunger drove her, she supplemented her diet with raids on the villager’s livestock. She was getting better at hunting, but she still was far from being an expert, and letting leopard-instincts take over involved surrendering herself to those instincts. She was beginning to have the uneasy feeling that every time she did that she lost a little more of her humanity. Life as leopard-Glenda was much easier than as girl-Glenda, but it might be getting to be time to think about trying to regain her former shape—before she was lost to the leopard entirely.
She’d never been one for horror or fantasy stories, so her only guide was vague recollections of fairy-tales and late-night werewolf movies. She didn’t think the latter would be much help here—after all, she’d transformed into a leopard, not a wolf, and by the light of day, not the full moon.
But—maybe the light of the full moon would help.
She waited until full dark before setting off for her goal, a still pond in the far edge of the forest, well away from the stone circle, in a clearing that never seemed to become overgrown. It held a stone, too; a single pillar of some kind of blueish rock. That pillar had never “glowed” at night before, at least not while Glenda had been there, but the pond and the clearing seemed to form a little pocket of peace. Whatever evil might lurk in the rest of the forest, she was somehow sure it would find no place there.
The moon was well up by the time she reached it. White flowers had opened to the light of it, and a faint, crisp scent came from them. Glenda paced to the pool-side, and looked down into the dark, still water. She could see her leopard form reflected clearly, and over her right shoulder, the full moon.
Well, anger had gotten her into this shape, maybe anger would get her out. She closed her eyes for a moment, then began summoning all the force of that emotion she could—willing herself back into the form she’d always worn. She stared at her reflection in the water, forcing it, angrily, to be her. Whatever power was playing games with her was not going to find her clay to be molded at will!
As nothing happened, her frustration mounted; soon she was at the boiling point. Damn everything! She—would—not—be—played—with—
The same incoherent fury that had seized her when she first changed washed over her a second time—and the same agonizing pain sent blackness in front of her eyes and flung her to lie twitching helplessly beside the pool. Her left forepaw felt like it was afire—
In moments it was over, and she found herself sprawling beside the pond, shivering with cold and reaction, and totally naked. Naked, that is, except for the silver cat-ring, whose topaz eyes glowed hotly at her for a long moment before the light left them.
The second time she transformed to leopard was much easier; the pain was less, the amount of time less. She decided against being human—after finding herself without a stitch on, in a perilously vulnerable and helpless form, leopard-Glenda seemed a much more viable alternative.
But the ability to switch back and forth proved to be very handy. The villagers had taken note of her raids on their stock; they began mounting a series of systematic hunts for her, even penetrating into the forest so long as it was by daylight. She learned or remembered from reading countless tricks to throw the hunters off, and being able to change from human to leopard and back again made more than one of those possible. There were places girl-Glenda could climb and hide that leopard-Glenda couldn’t, and the switch in scents when she changed confused and frightened the dog-pack. She began feeling an amused sort of contempt for the villagers, often leading individual hunters on wild-goose chases for the fun of it when she became bored.
But on the whole, it was better to be leopard; leopard-Glenda was comfortable and content sleeping on rocks or on the dried leaves of her lair—girl-Glenda shivered and ached and wished for her roach-infested efficiency. Leopard-Glenda was perfectly happy on a diet of raw fish, flesh and fowl—girl-Glenda wanted to throw up when she thought about it. Leopard-Glenda was content with nothing to do but tease the villagers and sleep in the sun when she wasn’t hunting—girl-Glenda fretted, and longed for a book, and wondered if what she was doing was right . . .
So matters stood until Midsummer.
Glenda woke, shivering, with a mouth gone dry with panic. The dream—
It wasn’t just a nightmare. This dream had been so real she’d expected to wake with an arrow in her ribs. She was still panting with fright even now.
There had been a man—he hadn’t looked much like any of the villagers; they were mostly blond or brown-haired, and of the kind of hefty build her aunt used to call “peasant-stock” in a tone of contempt. No, he had resembled her in a way—as if she were a kind of washed-out copy of the template from which his kind had been cut. Where her hair was a dark mousy-brown, his was just as dark, but the color was more intense. They had the same general build: thin, tall, with prominent cheekbones. His eyes—
Her aunt had called her “cat-eyed,” for she didn’t have eyes of a normal brown, but more of a vague yellow, as washed-out as her hair. But his had been truly and intensely gold, with a greenish back-reflection like the eyes of a wild animal at night.
And those eyes had been filled with hunter-awareness; the eyes of a predator. And she had been his quarry!
The dream came back to her with extraordinary vividness; it had begun as she’d reached the edge of the forest, with him hot on her trail. She had a vague recollection of having begun the chase in human form, and having switched to leopard as she reached the trees. He had no dogs, no aid but his own senses—yet nothing she’d done had confused him for more than a second. She’d even laid a false trail into the stone circle, something she’d never done to another hunter, but she was beginning to panic—he’d avoided the trap neatly. The hunt had begun near mid-morning; by false dawn he’d brought her to bay and trapped her—
And that was when she’d awakened.
She spent the early hours of the morning pacing beside the pond; feeling almost impelled to go into the village, yet afraid to do so. Finally the need to see grew too great; she crept to the edge of the village past the guards, and slipped into the maze of whole and half-ruined buildings that was the village-proper.
There was a larg
er than usual market-crowd today; the usual market stalls had been augmented by strangers with more luxurious goods, foodstuffs, and even a couple of ragged entertainers. Evidently this was some sort of fair. With so many strangers about, Glenda was able to remain unseen. Her courage came back as she skirted the edge of the marketplace, keeping to shadows and sheltering within half-tumbled walls, and the terror of the night seemed to become just one more shadow.
Finally she found an ideal perch—hiding in the shadow just under the eaves of a half-ruined building that had evidently once belonged to the local lordling, and in whose courtyard the market was usually held. From here she could see the entire court and yet remain unseen by humans and unscented by any of the livestock.
She had begun to think her fears were entirely groundless—when she caught sight of a stranger coming out of the door of what passed for an inn here, speaking earnestly with the village headman. Her blood chilled, for the man was tall, dark-haired, and lean, and dressed entirely in dark leathers just like the man in her dream.
Werehunter (anthology) Page 3
