I thought I was alone in the woods. Alone, I could remove my patch without having to worry about moral repercussions. Alone, I could finally see, rather than live in the mind-aching blur that I have always had to put up with- for The Common Good.

But what I loved seeing without handicap were leaves. With my patch on, they were a dissatisfying green blur, all intricacies lost, in the way that The Grapes of Wrath was completely lost on my English class last year (Me: "It's beautiful, inspiring, it shows you why we need unionizing, and what a taste of decadence can do to people!" Class: "I'm bored"…). But with my patch removed I could see the creases, the droplets of dew, the little caterpillars. Every leaf a separate entity.

As long as there was no one nearby…

I lifted up my eyepatch. The world was illuminated. The world was complete. Ah, bliss! That cloud, the grass! The forest was so ideal- so full of life, and yet devoid of the kind of creatures harmed by the evil magic of my right eye.

Or So I Thought!

As I soaked in the picturesque lanscape, my reverie was shattered by a strange cry.

AAAHH!

I quickly replaced my eyepatch, my fingers uncoordinated and shaking. 'Are you stupid, Anne?' I thought bitterly to myself as I looked around for whomever I had injured. 'Just for your own aesthetic pleasure? It's too dangerous!'

"Where are you? Are you… okay… whoever you are?" I called out kind of frantically. When I was first cursed, I had accidentally killed… someone.

I heard, in my head (!), Rachel? Rachel, I'm

Feebly, then the voice dying. That sealed it: I finally went over the edge. Voices in my head? Insane! A symptom of positive schizophrenia: deluded thinking! But as I mourned the loss of the last vestige of my sanity, something distracted me.

A red-tailed hawk fell out of a tree. I recognized it because a few years ago I had been utterly fascinated by birds. All I drew, all I watched, all I thought about. I'm that kind of person. I find passions and quickly attach myself to them, then burn out on them and feel depressed until I find a new one.

I heard a weird groan in my head. 'Christ,' I thought. 'I killed it!'

I ran over and heedless of common sense, cradled the wounded bird in my arms. "What should I do with you? Where's the vet?" I moaned, trembling and ambling through the woods. And then the weirdest thing happened. Honestly. It blew my mind.

This hawk opened its glaring, incisive eyes quickly and leapt sluggishly out of my arms. The feathers on its wings turned pink, and the wings stretched into arms. The beak distorted into a nose and mouth.

"Holy cow!" I cried. "The hawk is turning into a person!"

I watched the rest of the transformation, transfixed. When the process was done, I really wanted to run away, but I also felt reverence for this magical being. I wanted to pay my respects. Plus, part of me still loves birds. Beautiful creatures.

"Are you a magical being," I began, once I had gathered my bearings, "Or are you a mortal like me, stuck with an otherworldly curse?"

The boy looked at me stonily, but there was also extreme panic in his eyes. "I… uh… what just happened?"

"I don't know, really," I said quietly. "You were a bird. By mistake, I, kind of, zapped you."

"With what?" he asked. Then quickly: "Never mind. Come with me. This is big. This is trouble. Yeerk."

I noticed him look at me funny when he said that word, 'Yeerk', like he was addressing me with it.

"What?" I said, nonplussed.

And then that jerk clubbed me in the head! Really hard. 'You shouldn't do that, concussions are really dangerous,' I thought as I sank into unconsciousness.

When I woke up, I was tied up and blindfolded. I was terrified. I heard murmurs around me and struggled. Nothing! I tried to scream. Just a muffled "Unnf!" Nothing that would get the police's attention.

"She's awake," a male voice said.

"This is wrong, guys," a female voice said. "I know she saw …him… morph, but how do we know if she's a Controller?"

Another male voice spoke. "She didn't respond to the word 'Yeerk'. You'd think she would have said 'Andalite!' like everyone else."

I struggled and screamed more.

"We have to let her out."

"No!" a fiercer female voice. "She saw him. We let her out, if she's a Yeerk, we're dead. If she's not, she knows too much. She'll have to die."

At that I stopped squirming. I didn't want to die. I didn't care about anything at that moment except for my own survival.

It seemed like they were holding a vote to see if I should be trusted. After some debate and name calling, the group decided to unbind me.

Someone starting taking off my blindfold. I shook my head frantically and protested, hoping they would get my message: 'Watch out for the evil eye!' I grunted and groaned.

Soom the gag on my mouth was off. "I can explain!" I said. "I'll tell you anything you want to know, just don't kill me! And don't take off my blindfold yet. I don't feel my eyepatch- well, it's just not safe. Undo my hands."

Whoever was attending to me did so. Once I had use of my hands I untied the bandanna over my eyes. No eyepatch. I wondered where it could be. For now the bandanna was okay, but it lacked the protective spells of my eyepatch. And my eyelid was no good. To keep my eye squinted shut without a patch of any sort burned like acid on my eyelid. Altogether not the best feeling ever.

I tied the bandanna around my right eye jauntily, but I knew that in a few hours it would fall apart.

And if I had been sitting on a chair I would have fallen off of it. Fortunately, I was on a bale of hay, so all I did was wobble a bit. A strange, blue minotaur with a killer tail!

"Gaah! What! What is this place? Am I asleep?" I said.

"Nope," said this short boy.

"Uh, okay, that was rhetorical. But who are you? What is going on? Why am I here?" I asked in rapid succession.

After making sure I wasn't a Yeerk (it was weird—one of them turned into a dog and then sniffed me a bit and said in that voice in my head, Nope, she's no Yeerk. Human.

The Animorphs quickly told me their story. Elfangor. Box. Powers. Aliens.

After Jake (I met them all, yay!) finished the story, they all looked at me expectantly. Tobias the bird who clubbed me, up in the rafters. Rachel the very pretty one. Cassie the nice one who untied me. Marco the one who made obnoxious jokes. And Ax, the giant blue Andalite.

"Hey, did you guys find an eyepatch around?" I asked.

Marco threw up his hands in disbelief. "We tell her there's an alien invasion. We offer her morphing ability-"

"At least after we get to know you, Anne," interrupted Jake.

Marco continued, "And what's your response? Your eyepatch. Honestly!"

"No really, guys. My right eye has an evil curse on it, and if I can't find my eyepatch, you'll all die. And I might too. We need it."

They all looked at me like I needed my meds, badly.

"Really! Ask, uh, Tobias!" I said and pointed to the bird-boy.

Is that what happened? She was just in the woods and then took off her eyepatchm and suddenly there was this pain- the bird ruffled its feathers. Let's get that patch.

Tobias left to find it with his super-acute hawk eyes. Five minutes later he was back with it. Good thing, because the bandanna did the weird melting thing that unblessed cloths do, and my eyelid was starting to kill. It was hard to make conversation with a screaming pain in your eyelid.

"So, do you go to the high school?" Rachel asked.

"Not yet," I responded. "I just moved here like two days ago."

Then Tobias was back.

"Ah, thank you," I cried and quickly put on the patch.

Then, I told them my tale.

My father works at a clothing manufacturer, and ofter has to deal with things outside of the company. So one summer, when I was thirteen, he brought my mother and me to Japan for his business trip. I had been hanging out at a sacred temple, but I got bored. I started exploring the temple and I fell down these stairs. Down and down I fell, and then suddenly, this spike coming right for me! A burial marker! I saw the red characters on the spike mingle with my blood for an instant, and then…

Some strange, mystical creature saved me. Gave me The Blessed Eyepatch. But it told me, YOU HAVE FURTHER WORK TO DO. LEAVE ON THE PATCH AND ACCEPT THE SACRIFICE.

"The Ellimist?" Cassie said, to no one in particular.

I shrugged. "I don't know what that means," I admitted.

"This is Erek the Chee. He and the other androids spy on the Yeerks," said Rachel as some random boy burst in through the door.

"What" began Erek the Chee.

"Don't worry, Erek- she's one of us, I think," Jake said.

Erek looked at me with surprise ripe on his countenance. I probably would have been surprised, too, to find out that this normal-looking, pale kid was a robot. That is, if I hadn't been informed of an alien invasion, almost killed a bird/human, and oh yeah, been knocked out, bound and gagged and left to rot on a bale of hay for a while. I was resigned to surprises. Then Erek dropped his hologram.

"What is this place?" I yelled, hiding behind Marco. He was the closest.

"I am literally a chick magnet," Marco declared. Rachel shoved him.

Anne saw me morph, Tobias said. And she's not a Yeerk. So we have to make her an Animorph. She knows too much.

"I kind of just stumbled into this mess. But I have a magical eye that bears destructive power, so maybe I'll be helpful. I can just look at a Yeerk… a Yeerk pool, did you say?"

They nodded.

"Well then this is good news, Anne," said Erek. "We've received some special information, and maybe you can help on this new mission."

END OF CHAPTER ONE!