by Sharon Shinn
I check the patient’s vitals, listen to her lungs, and manage to induce a cough. My diagnosis is tracheal bronchitis, and she’s a pretty sick little girl, but some oxacillin and prednisone ought to help her mend quickly enough. I give her an injection, which she endures with utter stoicism, then I offer her mother a choice.
“I can write you a prescription for pills you’d need to administer daily. She looks like she’d be pretty good about taking them,” I say. “But if you’re planning to be in the area for the next few days, I can give her shots till she’s well.”
“But she’s okay? She’s not—” She doesn’t complete the sentence, but it hangs in the air: She’s not dying? “We’ve been on the road for a week, and she just kept getting worse—”
“She should be fine,” I say gently. “Better if you stay put for a while.”
The woman sags against the table and buries her face in her hands. “I would. I would. But we—I don’t know where we can go, and I—it’s just been so hard, it’s so much harder than I thought it would be—”
I can’t help glancing at the dark-haired girl, who’s pressed up against the wall as if she’s hoping she’ll turn into some kind of vaporous matter that can leak right through the plaster and wood and into the night air outside. Her eyes are fixed on her mother. For a moment, her stony expression holds, then she presses her lips together, pushes away from the wall, and comes over to give her mother a hug. “Everything will be all right once Desi is better,” she says. I can’t tell if she believes it. I can tell that she’s said some version of this sentence maybe a thousand times in her life. Everything will be all right. Just wait and see.
“Let me give you some tea and maybe a little dinner and we can talk about your options,” I say quietly.
The girl gives me a sharp look. She’s not used to random displays of generosity, and she’s already wondering what the catch is. But the woman takes a deep breath that’s just this side of a sob and nods. I hand the daughter one of the rag blankets I keep in a basket and say, “Let’s all go to my kitchen. Take this and make a bed for Desi. She probably needs water and a little food, too, and then a place to sleep. Come on. You all look like you’re starving.”
In a few minutes we’re settled in the kitchen. The Dalmatian is curled up in the corner, the blanket beneath her and Scottie lying close enough to provide warmth and comfort. The three of us are seated at the table, where I’ve set out bowls of microwaved soup, fresh rolls, and mugs of tea. It’s the most unalarming scene you can imagine, so I figure it’s safe to say the scary things.
“So the dog’s name is Desi,” I begin.
“Desdemona, actually,” the woman answers.
“Very pretty,” I approve. “What about the two of you?”
“Helena,” the woman says, gesturing at herself. “And this is Juliet.”
“And are all of you shape-shifters, or just the dog?”
Helena drops her spoon with a clatter. “What?”
Juliet stiffens and stares, but doesn’t speak.
I continue to calmly eat my soup. “Shape-shifters. People who transform into animals and back. Desdemona is one, but I don’t know about you two.”
Now Helena is staring as hard as Juliet is. “How do you—why do you—”
“That’s who Janet treated when she owned this practice. That’s what half of my patients are. I recognize them in animal shape.” I smile slightly. “Not always in human shape.” They still don’t seem ready to trust me, so I add, “I’m one, too.”
“Ohhhhhhhh—” Helena lets her breath out in a long sigh. “Oh God. So that’s how you know.”
Juliet doesn’t stop watching me, but the quality of her gaze goes from hostile to considering. “Mom isn’t,” she says. “But I am. Desi and I are twins.”
“Do you turn into a Dalmatian, too?”
She nods. “But hardly ever. Three days a month. And Desi is human three days.”
“The same days?”
“Sometimes. Usually we have one day where we overlap and we’re both human.”
“Those must be special days,” I say.
She nods again, but doesn’t elaborate. I think there must be a whole dense, intense, wonderful and sad story behind her determined silence.
“We’d been living in Massachusetts,” Helena says. “And it was going okay, but I started getting depressed. So I thought we’d go to New Mexico and stay with my sister for a while. But then Desi started getting sick, and I didn’t know what to do, and I remembered that I’d brought the girls by to see Janet, oh, eight or ten years ago. They were just little then. I didn’t even know if she’d still be here.”
“No, she’s been gone about five years. But she trained me, so I can look over both the girls before you go.”
Helena gives a heavy sigh. “I don’t know if that damn car can make it all the way to New Mexico, to tell you the truth. And my sister—well—I mean, she has to take us in, right?”
Juliet flicks an unreadable look at her mother, then returns her attention to her soup.
“You can stay here awhile, if you like,” I say. “I have an empty trailer and that’s what it’s for—to give shape-shifters a place to live when they’re sick or in trouble.”
Now Juliet’s face gets that sharp look again, while Helena’s just looks eager. “I could pay you,” she says. “Not very much, but maybe I could get a job.”
Juliet’s voice is challenging. “Why would you be so nice to us? We’re strangers.”
“Juliet!”
“People were nice to me when I needed help.”
“We could steal things,” she warns me.
I glance around. “Not much here to take that’s worth any money.”
“We could murder you.”
“Juliet! The things you say!”
“I suppose you could,” I agree. “But I’m going to live a short, odd life anyway, so at least I’ll live it trying to do good things instead of holding back when people need me.” I sip my tea. “And the truth is, I could use your help. I have a bunch of animals that I care for on the property, and when I change, I worry about them. I have friends who can cover for me—but only if I have enough warning to call them. And lately, sometimes I don’t get much warning. If there was somebody else living here who could feed and water the puppies and the rabbits and the birds, well, that would ease my mind.”
“We could do that,” Helena says eagerly. “Juliet loves animals.”
I look at Juliet. By her expression, she doesn’t love animals. And she doesn’t trust strangers and she’s worried about her sister and she’s tired of being stronger than her mother but she doesn’t think she has a choice. My guess is that she’s about fourteen, but she’s already been forced to function as an adult for far too long.
“We could try it for a couple of weeks, see how it goes,” I say softly. “If you guys don’t like being here, or I don’t like having you, you can move on. But if you decide to stay, Helena can look for a job in town and Juliet can enroll in school, and Desi can just hang out here on the property. I don’t need rent money, but I do need your promise that one of you will feed the animals anytime I’m not able to.”
“Of course! Absolutely,” Helena says.
“What do you change into?” Juliet asks.
“It could be almost anything. Lately I’ve been an orange tabby more often than not—but last time I was a dog. No idea what it will be next time.”
“How often do you change?”
I shake my head. “That varies, too. Hard to predict.”
“That kind of sucks,” Juliet says.
I laugh. “It totally sucks. Which is why I need friends.”
“Everybody does,” Helena answers. But Juliet’s face hardens and she looks away.
So I might become the first friend she’s ever had.
* * *
&nbs
p; It takes about an hour to get them settled into the trailer and then, even though it’s pretty late by now, I walk Juliet through the barns and enclosures, pointing out all the animals and outlining their care. When she starts to look a little overwhelmed, I say, “Just remember two things. Give all of them water, even if you aren’t sure what to feed them. And Bonnie’s number is programmed into my cell phone, which I’ll leave lying on my kitchen table. Call her if you need any help.”
“How will I know you’ve changed? I mean, if you could be any animal—how will I know it’s you?”
I’ve never had to think about this question before, and it makes me laugh. “I don’t know! I guess I’ll follow you around until you realize I’m there, and you can actually ask me. ‘Karadel, is that you?’ And then I’ll bark or meow or something and you’ll know.”
“All right.”
“I’ll see you in the morning. Come for breakfast and we can go over everything I told you tonight.”
“All right. And—thanks. You know. For all of it.”
I want to pat her on the arm and tell her everything will be just fine, but she already knows it won’t. So I just say, “Hey, we all take our turns helping each other out. Your turn’s coming.”
“Can’t wait,” she mutters, and turns toward the trailer. I head for the house, but call out cheerfully over my shoulder, “Talk to you in the morning!”
Of course, I don’t talk to her the next day, because I shift overnight.
* * *
The pain of impending transformation wakes me around one in the morning. My hands shaking, I text Celeste, Bonnie, and Joe, informing them of my new tenants and letting them know that I won’t be available for a while. Then I scribble a note for Juliet and leave it on the kitchen table along with the cell phone. That’s all the prep I can manage before I run outside into the cold night, doubled over with agony. I drop to my knees and clutch my head in my hands, fighting back nausea and despair. When the transmogrification finally occurs, I’m so relieved to be out of pain that I merely lie there a moment, panting, before I extend my right forearm and try to determine what I’ve become. Thick brushy fur, sinewy leg, clawed and padded foot. Oh, this can’t be good.
I push myself to all four feet and trot around to the side of the house, where I propped up a small mirror last week for just this purpose. The perimeter lights barely extend this far, but the moon is shining brightly, and anyway, my eyes are marvelously adapted for the dark.
I’m a wolf. Not Cooper’s solid black, but a grayer creature with a white face and black-tipped fur. No wonder Scottie didn’t accompany me outside; no wonder the puppies, locked inside the barn for the night, have started a frightened chorus of howling. I imagine the bunnies are cowering in their cages as well, and any small nocturnal creature that happens to be awake right now is slinking off to the safest place it knows.
A wolf. Swell.
It’s different being a wild animal. Especially a predator—a fox, a coyote, an eagle. When I’m a dog or a cat, something with thousands of years of domestication built into my evolution, I have a greater affinity for humans. I like to be around them, take food from their hands, sleep curled up on the ends of their beds. I’m more social, maybe, more trusting.
When I’m wild, more feral instincts take over. I’m at a higher state of alert, jumpier, more inclined to melt into the woodlands and live by my wits. I have a harder time connecting to the Kara at the core.
I’m more inclined to run away and never come back, leaving all my unsolved human problems behind me.
In fact, I have a strong desire to do that right now—jog off the property and disappear into the patchy treeline just to get away from the smell of civilization. I’m not exactly hungry, but I’m already thinking about food, and the odor from the rabbit hutch reminds me of how many delectable treats might be found just off the edge of the property. I’m still human enough that I have no intention of trying to break through the cage and snack on the creatures that have been so long under my care—but wild enough that I can imagine just how delicious they would taste if I did.
Every instinct in my body, civilized and feral, shrieks at me to leave.
But I ought to stay, to let Juliet know what I’ve become.
The dilemma leaves me agitated and on edge, and I’m not really thinking clearly. With a snarl at my own reflection, I turn away from the mirror and lope across the back of the property, away from the animal enclosures and their rich scents. I will stay away until daybreak, finding somewhere to sleep away the rest of the night, and return in the morning.
And if I forget, or can’t bend my body to my will, then so be it. Juliet can muddle by as best she can, or call Bonnie for help, or break down in tears and beg her mother to leave as soon as they can load the car. I can’t worry about it.
I see a flash of movement in the distance, a small shape darting from a cluttered field toward the shelter of an oak. I bound across the field, thinking of nothing but the hunt.
* * *
As with my most recent transformations, my time in animal state is short, but turning human again presents a few logistical problems. That is, less than thirty-six hours later I wake up in broad daylight, more than a mile from my house, buck naked on a chilly October morning. Well, hell.
It’s too cold to simply sit there, shivering and waiting till nightfall, so I just have to make my way homeward and hope my new tenants aren’t too freaked out when I show up nude and dirty and covered with scratches. I’m only a little worried about running into a concerned citizen—a hunter or a hiker or some misguided bird-watcher—who would either run shrieking in the opposite direction or believe me to be an assault victim and come to my aid by calling the cops. I’m some distance from any major roads and I know all the back ways to my property. So it’s not total strangers I’m concerned with. I just don’t want to embarrass Helena and her girls.
I make it without incident to the border of my property and pause a moment in the shade of a flaming maple to assess the situation. There’s no one immediately visible in the open area, which is good—but Joe’s truck is parked next to Helena’s white car.
Which is bad.
He has come here to help out while I’m gone or to await my return, either way determined to show me that he wants to support my alternative lifestyle. Though I am not ready for him to be quite this supportive. I don’t mind so much that he will see me naked, since we’ve been heading in the direction of clothing-optional for a couple of weeks now, but I’m not ready for him to see me so raw from my animal state, still marked by traces of wildness. There is a scent, an aura, a patina that clings to me for a few hours after I change back. I feel like I am waking up from a bender and I am not yet completely myself.
Or I am entirely myself and have not yet had time to reset the filters that help me make it through normal human interactions.
Either way, I don’t want to see him. But I’m cold and my feet hurt and I’m on the edge of miserable, so I have no choice. I push myself away from the tree and dash the final fifty yards as fast as I can manage.
Someone has left a blanket on the porch, and I snatch this up moments before all the doors on the property seem to open at once—the one to the barn, the one to the trailer, the one to the house. Juliet, Helena, and Joe.
I stick one hand out of the blanket that I have hastily wrapped around my body, and I wave a little frantically at the women. “I’m back—I’ll talk to you as soon as I’ve showered,” I call, then I turn toward the kitchen door.
“Hey!” Joe says, sounding delighted to see me. Jinx is frisking at his feet, and he greets me with a few friendly barks. I can see Jezebel and Scottie sitting more sedately inside.
I pause long enough to scratch Jinx on the head, but I don’t make eye contact with Joe when I straighten up and push past him into the house. “I am not talking to you until I’ve cleaned up,” I say. “D
o not follow me out of the kitchen.”
“You want something to eat?” he shouts after me.
“Yes! I’m starving! Carbs. Bready things.”
Twenty minutes later I’ve showered away my latest adventure, brushed my teeth, pulled on jeans and a sweater, and tied my wet hair back in a ponytail. I’m still ruffled, but human. It’s an improvement.
I head to the kitchen, where I can smell toast and oatmeal. Joe doesn’t listen when I ask him to keep his distance, but apparently he pays attention when I talk about food.
“God, I’m so hungry,” I mutter, plucking a piece of bread from the toaster and cramming half of it into my mouth without waiting for butter or jelly. He’s pulling a pot off the stove and spooning a big mess of oatmeal into a bowl, but he turns to give me a smile. As soon as I’ve swallowed the bread, he leans over to kiss me, not even bothering to set the pan down first. I’m still annoyed that he’s here, but I have to admit the kiss is nice.
“I’ve missed you,” he says.
“We have to talk,” I say, “but first I have to eat.”
He’s already set a place for me at the table, and my plate is filled with all the things I crave most when I first shift back—bread, cheese, eggs, fruit, the quickest foods to deliver carbs and protein in a few hearty bites. I gobble down the oatmeal first, since it’s steaming hot and he’s sprinkled it with brown sugar and raisins.
Harder and harder to hold on to my irritation when he’s doing such a good job of easing me through the transition.
It’s not a proper mealtime, so he’s not eating anything, but he sips a soda and watches me. I think he’s trying to gauge my mood. Or maybe he’s just cataloging the unfamiliar expressions and mannerisms I exhibit when I’m so fresh from changing.
“My mouth is full,” I say around a big wad of toast. “You talk.” Jinx is sitting as close to me as he can, his face hopeful, so I toss him a small chunk of cheese. I know, I know, but Joe doesn’t stop me; it’s pretty clear Jinx is used to getting scraps from the table.
“I had a chance to visit with your new tenants when I got here last night,” Joe tells me. “Interesting family. Juliet was wonderful with the animals, by the way, especially the puppies. Didn’t talk much, though.”
