Shapeshifter's Guide to Running Away (Spellchasers)

by Lari Don

  The dozen curse-hatched who were in human form stood watching, shivering, as their winged army was torn from them.

  “I’ll drop them in the mouth of the Spey,” said Theo. “They’ll be waterlogged and unable to fly for a while. But they won’t drown.”

  Corbie ran at him. “I will revenge myself on you!”

  Theo pulled the earth out from under Corbie – just the small patches of earth his feet were touching.

  Corbie sprawled on the ground, and Theo stood over him.

  “No, you won’t revenge yourself on me. You can’t. I’m too powerful. You must learn your place on the helix of magic. And your place is at the very bottom. If you disturb the balance of the curse arc again, I’ll return, and next time I won’t make your crows cold and wet. Next time I’ll do something much worse. So go back to your dismal wood, wait for your bedraggled army and get used to keeping your head down. And don’t you dare bother me or my friends again.”

  Theo stepped back. The thin crow-girl pulled Corbie to his feet.

  Corbie flung himself at Molly instead. “Trickster, liar, mother-murderer!”

  Theo sighed. “Right, that’s it.”

  He linked his fingers in a tight curve, and fragments of soil and grit shot up from the ground to form egg shapes, encasing each of the remaining curse-hatched.

  Now the curse-hatched were shut inside twelve huge gritty eggs. Theo lifted his right hand and gave the nearest egg a gentle push.

  The dozen dirt eggs rolled along the ground in the direction of Stone Egg Wood. Molly could hear muffled yells coming from inside as the eggs rolled faster and faster.

  “Earthbound,” murmured Theo.

  “Trapped forever inside gritty stone eggs,” said Innes. “Neat.”

  “Not forever,” said Theo. “The shells will crumble when they reach home. They’ll be fine.”

  “Not completely fine, I hope,” said Beth. “They wanted to kill me. Mind you, so did Molly. I thought… I thought we were friends. Why did you choose me?”

  Theo crouched by Atacama and sliced through the sphinx’s ropes, though Molly couldn’t see a knife in his hands.

  Molly sat beside Beth. “I’m sorry I scared you. I needed to get their attention away from Theo, to give him a chance to use his plait. I had to choose you, because you were furthest from him.”

  Beth nodded. “That makes sense. But I still heard you say it. And that will be hard to forget.”

  Theo said, “Can I cut you loose?”

  Molly held her hands up to him. And realised she was still holding the baby bird. It cheeped at her. Her curse-hatched was small and warm and fluffy. And she had kept it safe.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  “Yuck.” Beth stared at the small bird. “Another one.”

  “It’s only a baby,” said Molly.

  Innes said, “So it hasn’t pecked out any eyes. Yet. What should we do with it?”

  Molly put it gently onto the ground. “I could take it to my aunt’s cottage and let her hens bring it up.”

  But the bird started flapping and waddling after the gritty eggs, towards Stone Egg Wood.

  “It’s a homing crow,” said Innes.

  Molly nodded. “That’s probably best. I can’t hurt it, but it would be hard to love it.”

  Theo cut the rope round her wrists with a blade of pale flame. Then they were all free, rubbing their wrists and paws, and eyes.

  Innes said, “So, that’s what a full-strength elemental magician can do with his stored power. Post hundreds of crows in a net to the coast, rip the power of flight from shapeshifters and make it night during the day. All without breaking sweat or turning into a toad. Impressive. How do you do it?”

  Theo smiled. “I simply use the power of the world around me. Air, gravity, particles, waves… It’s just the manipulation of physics.”

  “That’s how my dad describes shapeshifting.” Innes sighed and glanced at the sun. “We’d better go. He’ll be turning back very soon, and I only have five minutes to persuade him to make that promise.”

  His friends followed Innes to a high rock above the river. They sat a few paces away as Innes stood on the rock and looked into the deep pool below.

  The water rippled and bubbled, and a glistening grey stallion leapt onto the rock.

  The horse flung its front hooves in the air and kicked at Innes, who ducked out of the way. Then the horse changed into a tall man, with jutting eyebrows and long dark-grey hair.

  He grabbed Innes by his shoulders and shook him. “You ungrateful treacherous little… Shame on you! How dare you trap me in a rock? Do you know how uncomfortable that is? Do you know how slowly thoughts move through stone? Don’t ever do that to me again.”

  Innes pulled free and stepped back. “It will happen again, very soon. You’ll be turned to stone once more in…” he glanced at the sun, “four minutes.”

  “What?”

  “You’re still cursed. You’ll be free of the stone for five minutes, every five days. You can’t leave the riverside, but you can move and stretch and breathe. And you can lift the curse, during those five minutes, if you promise you will never break the rules, never hunt and kill and eat our neighbours again.”

  His father shook his head slowly, like it was still as heavy as rock. “Innes? How could you do this? How could you put prey above hunters?”

  “I’ve felt like prey myself a few times this week, and it’s not fun. Please make the promise, Dad. It’s simple. Promise, then come home.”

  “Promise to obey rules that deny our essential nature? Never. You’re betraying your father, your family and your own future as a hunter. Lift this curse now, or I will never forgive you.”

  Innes stood firm. “I won’t lift it. But you can, by making that promise.”

  “I will never make that promise. I will never change my mind.”

  “Neither will I.”

  Molly watched them, their arms folded, their faces hard and unhappy. She knew there was nothing she or anyone else could do, no one they could outwit or defeat, to solve this problem.

  Innes and his father stared at each other in a long cold silence. Then suddenly Innes’s father stamped his foot and yelled, “Next time I rise from that water, you’d better be ready, son, because you will be my next prey.”

  “I might not be here. When you change your mind, you can make your promise to the river, the rocks and the clouds. I’ve met the Keeper who will hear you, and been in the chamber where your curse will shatter, once you meet the conditions. I don’t need to be here. This might be your last chance to look me in the eye and make me that promise.”

  “Coward. Victim. Prey!”

  His dad shifted into a horse, reared up and kicked at Innes’s head. But the kick never reached him. Because his father was already a grey granite horse, rearing on the edge of the river.

  Innes sighed and shoved the horse with his shoulder. It toppled into the water.

  “He’s safer in the river,” Innes said quietly. “Safer and less obvious.” He sat on the rock and stared at the water covering his father.

  Everyone else moved over to sit with him.

  Beth put her hand on his arm. “Innes, now I’ve seen how unreasonable your dad is about hunting, I know you didn’t have an easy choice. I’m sorry.”

  Atacama said, “Your father might change his mind next time.”

  Theo said, “It’s a strong curse, for a good reason. You should be proud of it.”

  Innes didn’t reply to any of them.

  Molly tried to think of something helpful to say. Then she rose to her feet. Talking wasn’t going to cheer Innes up.

  “Come on, kelpie. I’ll race you.”

  Molly remembered how she’d shifted in the throne room. She hadn’t made or heard a sound. So she knew that this time, she simply had to choose to change into her other self.

  She knew that the curse and the hare were now part of her.

  “Race you,” she repeated. “To that pale rock an
d back.”

  Innes looked up. “Will you let me win this time?”

  “No. Of course not. If you want to win, you’ll have to run faster than me.”

  She leapt and she ran. A brown blur of fur. And the white horse galloped beside her.

  They ran, neck and neck, all the way. They turned at the quartz pillar and raced back together. And they skidded to a halt on the edge of the river.

  The hare and the horse stopped at exactly the same moment, in a dead heat.

  Molly didn’t win.

  Innes didn’t lose.

  Innes grinned.

  And past her fur and whiskers, no one could see that Molly was smiling too.

  Chapter One

  When Molly heard her neighbours’ cat miaow, she shrank instantly, feeling the familiar flash of heat through her bones.

  But when she ran from the noise of the cat, she felt an unfamiliar weight and length whipping around behind her. Did she have a long tail?

  She didn’t have time to worry about what shape she’d shifted into, because she realised she wasn’t running fast enough to get away from a cat. She wasn’t leaping and sprinting, she was scuttling and dashing.

  Why was she moving so slowly, so weakly?

  She glanced round. Yes, she did have a tail. A long, brown, furry tail. At least she wasn’t a rat.

  But beyond the tail she saw something far more worrying.

  The fluffy white cat from next door. Poppet. The cat Molly fed and played with when the Connors were away.

  Poppet was stalking her. Belly low, paws stretching forward, eyes fixed on that ridiculous tail.

  Molly could run to a gap in the fence, which normally shifted her back to her girl form, but which might not this time, because the rules of her own personal magic seemed to have shifted today. Or she could hide from the cat now and shift back later, when she wasn’t in immediate danger.

  Her tiny body decided for her. She desperately wanted to hide. So she darted towards a hole under the shed, which was usually much too small for her. But as a mouse or a vole or a shrew or a whatever she was, she might fit inside.

  She ran as fast as she could, on these spindly short legs, with that nonsensical tail and her light body too close to the ground, feeling exposed and vulnerable on the thin winter grass of her back garden.

  Suddenly she was aware of the heat and speed of the cat behind her. She felt the air move round her tail as the cat pounced.

  Molly veered to her left as the cat’s shadow passed over her. The cat’s body crashed down onto the patch of grass Molly had been scurrying across a fraction of a second before.

  The cat whirled round, trying to work out where her prey had gone, and Molly kept running.

  She’d learnt two ways to run in the last four months. Full speed ahead in a straight line, to beat her friend Innes in races. And tricksy leaping and dodging, to evade predators.

  So she didn’t run straight towards the shed. Even with the smaller body, weaker legs and lesser speed of a tiny rodent, she moved like a hare across the grass: running fast, slowing down, leaping left, dodging right, constantly changing speed and direction.

  It wasn’t likely that Poppet had ever met a mouse who moved so unpredictably, and Molly kept just out of reach of the cat’s claws.

  She reached the hole and dived in. She slid right to the back, her tiny heart beating, snug and safe in the cramped dark space.

  ***

  Molly Drummond was used to suddenly becoming small and fast. But suddenly becoming small and slow, that was new and scary.

  The noise of a cat had never triggered her curse before. And she’d never become a long-tailed rodent. Normally dog noises triggered the curse; normally she became a hare. But nothing was normal today.

  Poppet’s paw prodded at the entrance to the hole. Her hot fishy biscuity breath filled the space. The cat was too big to get in, though, and Molly was too far back to be dragged out, so she knew she was safe.

  As she crouched, panting and shivering, she wondered what had just happened.

  She’d been cursed last autumn by an angry witch, so she turned into a hare (like a bigger stronger faster rabbit) whenever she heard a dog bark or growl. She stayed a hare until she crossed a boundary, usually the boundary between gardens or farms.

  She’d learnt how to control the curse, so she could shift into a hare whenever she wanted to, for speed or size or even fun. But she still had to cross a boundary to become a girl again, so she was now an expert on land boundaries in her own Edinburgh neighbourhood, and boundaries in and near the town of Craigvenie, in Speyside, where she’d been cursed.

  Molly’s curse had been stable and manageable for months, apart from a few days last year when the witch had altered her curse so it was harder to shift back. Until today.

  So she’d better go north, to see if the Craigvenie friends whose curses she’d lifted last year could help her, and to work out why her curse had become more dangerous. But she couldn’t go to Speyside until she got out from under this shed and became a girl again.

  Molly shivered as she watched Poppet’s paw withdraw at last. If the rules or strength of her curse had somehow changed, perhaps crossing a boundary wouldn’t shift her back?

  She crouched in the dark, wondering what it would be like to be this trembling and terrified creature forever. Trying to cross a boundary was the only way to find out. Even if there was still a cat out there.

  She moved to the entrance of the hole, her whiskers snuffling and jerking. She couldn’t smell cat breath. She couldn’t sense animal heat or hear a huge heartbeat.

  Poppet had probably given up. It was probably safe.

  Molly hesitated. She didn’t want to leave the security of this dusty dark hole. She gathered up all the courage she could find in her tiny shaking body, dashed out and ran for the gap in the fence.

  A white shape leapt from the shed roof, bounded onto the top of the fence and landed on the grass, paw slashing down to trap the tiny form on the ground.

  And Poppet scratched the knuckle of Molly’s human thumb.

  The cat backed off, white fur standing up along her spine.

  Molly smiled. “Sorry to give you a fright, Poppet.”

  She climbed over the wooden fence and ran to her back door, hoping the cat wouldn’t miaow before she got inside.

  She rushed into the living room. “Mum! Dad! Can I go to Aunt Doreen’s next week, for the February holidays?”

  Her mum said, “Again? You stayed with Doreen last tattie holidays and complained the whole way up the A9. But then you pestered us to take you up at Christmas, and now you want to go again next week? What’s in Speyside that you can’t get in Edinburgh?”

  “My friends in Craigvenie,” said Molly. But she was also thinking about the magic she’d found up north. She needed a chance to break this curse or it might kill her before she got to secondary school.

  She looked at her dad. “We play in the woods, by the rivers and in the hills, like you did when you were wee.”

  He smiled. “It’s a good place to grow up. If the snow holds off, I’ll drive you there.”

  So Molly went upstairs to pack, and to work out how to avoid cats as well as dogs for the next three days.

  Chapter Two

  Molly said hi to her Aunt Doreen and bye to her dad, who was having a scone before driving home, then she threw her bag into the tiny sloped-ceiling bedroom and went back outside to fetch her bike from the boot of the car.

  She cycled through Craigvenie and ran through the wood to her best friend Beth’s house. Beth’s Aunt Jean said, “She’s gone up into the hills with Innes and Atacama. They’ve just left, you might catch them.”

  Molly cycled fast on the road leading towards the snow-topped mountains in the distance, then more slowly over the moorland paths.

  If Innes had galloped enthusiastically the whole way, she’d never have caught up. But eventually she saw her friends ahead of her.

  Beth, the dryad, with her silver
jewellery glinting in the cold sunlight, purple hair and black clothes. Innes, the kelpie, in his blond-haired, jeans-wearing boy form, rather than his white-maned horse form. And Atacama, the sphinx, looking like a puma-sized black cat, apart from the small wings on his back and his long almost-human face.

  “Hey!” Molly yelled. “Wait for me!”

  When she reached them, she jumped off her bike and laid it in the heather.

  Beth hugged her. “We didn’t think you were coming back until Easter.”

  “I need your help, because my curse has gone weird. Come over to this burn and I’ll show you. It’s a boundary, isn’t it?”

  They all nodded.

  Molly stood on the edge of the narrow burn. “Atacama, make a cat noise.”

  “Don’t be so insulting.”

  “Just as an experiment. Please.”

  He purred, lighter and softer than his normal big cat rattle.

  Molly became a mouse, jumped into the shockingly cold water, paddled across and pulled herself out on the other side, as a girl.

  She turned round. Beth looked worried, Innes was frowning and Atacama had his usual stony calm face.

  Molly said, “Now, Beth, hoot like an owl.”

  Beth made a long eerie noise like the owls that swooped through her birch trees at night.

  Molly shifted into another tiny rodent, with less tail. She wondered if she was a vole as she swam back across the burn.

  “It’s not just rodents,” she said, after she’d shifted to a girl again. “Can you do a smaller bird, Beth, a thrush or something?”

  Beth sang a quick trill of notes.

  And Molly became something she’d never been before. Something legless and spineless. She felt fingers pick her up and carry her over the boundary, then she fell to the ground.

  “A worm?” snapped Beth. “Really? You wanted me to turn you into a worm?”

  Molly shook her head. “I expected to become a snail: that’s what happened when I heard birdsong in the garden on Thursday. Anyway, this is how my curse has gone weird. Whatever predator I hear, I become its prey. Mousey things, creepy crawlies, all sorts of little edible creatures. It’s risky being too far from a boundary, because I can’t sprint as most of these animals. Though sometimes it might be fun. Can anyone do a convincing wolf?”