Chapter 15
"This should suit Asha," said Ferdie.
"What is it?" she asked.
Ferdie had led us to a rather dilapidated old shed at the bottom of one of the paddocks. He'd at last pulled on some clothes - some muddy white jeans and an old polo shirt. He was now holding up a small cardboard box with holes punched in the sides. A light thumping and banging could be heard from within.
"A crow," said Ferdie. "I found it in the garden last night, I think it's got a hurt wing. I thought maybe we could all acquire it as a first morph and use it to fly to the zoo."
"Why would a crow suit me?" Asha asked suspiciously.
"You're a chav, aren't you," replied Ferdie. "And crows are the chavs of the bird world."
Asha looked as if she was about to punch him, but then she relaxed and smiled. "That's right!" she said. "I'm a chav and I ain't bovvered about what no one thinks!"
"Kewl," I said. "Let's get on with this then. We shouldn't waste more time than we have to."
We each put our hands into the box and acquired the crow. It wasn't a particularly nice experience, the stupid bird was obviously pretty annoyed at being cooped and kept pecking and biting as I put my hand in the grab it. But it calmed down as it entered the acquiring trance, and the other three were able to acquire it without much hassle. Ferdie released the bird into the field. Its wing didn't look too good, but it looked as if it could survive. Crows are tough birds.
"Right then, I assume-" Just then, something occurred to me. "Have you guys managed to morph clothing yet? Ferdie, I take it you haven't?"
"Uh, only the sexy undies you saw me wearing earlier!" he said.
"Only the stuff we wore on the ship," said Philip.
"Ain't either." Asha.
"Well," I said. "I've discovered that you can morph tight stuff." I pulled up my tee-shirt and showed them the leotard I wore. "Anything skin tight. I don't think you can morph shoes or anything like that though."
"Great," said Philip. "Five thousand miles, and no shoes. How are we going to survive?"
It was a rhetorical question, but Ferdie answered anyway. "We'll have wings, old boy!"
I waited as the guys went up to their room to grab some skin tight clothing. Ferdie stole a leotard from his sister and threw it to Asha. "Front page of Vogue, I'm sure!" he laughed.
The guys said their good-byes to their parents, telling them they were going on a camping trib in the mountains,and met Asha and I in the grand old hallway. They were taking a while. I'd experienced first hand what it was like to say good-bye to your parents when you don't know when you'll next see them is. I felt tears prickling at my eyelids. I quickly blinked them away. There would be time for mourning later. I trembled, partly from the terror of the situation, partly from the cold. The two of us were wearing only our morphing outfits, shivering in the drafty old house. I expected the guys to be wearing the same, but as I heard Ferdie's voice, I glanced up at him coming down the staircase, a triumphant look on his face.
"Oh, damn right!" he shouted in glee.
I looked at their so-called morphing outfits. Philip was wearing a set of brightly coloured cycling shorts and a tee-shirt, and long socks pulled halfway up to his knees. I resisted the urge to start laughing, but then again, I probably looked just as bad as his did. Ferdie, too was wearing a tight cycling tee-shirt. But I noticed he was also wearing tight white riding breeches – and long leather riding boots. Oh come on! Don't guys listen to a word girls say?
"Ferdie, I thought I said we couldn't morph shoes!"
"Well," Ferdie smiled. "You were wrong. I just tried doing a horse morph, wearing these, and they were fine!"
"What? How!"
"Well, they're about fifty sizes too small for me, so they are very tight. But they're also pure leather. I think maybe natural material – you know - stuff that's made from something that used to be alive – works better than man-made material. My cotton breeches morph better than my tee-shirt, too, which is nylon."
"Oh," I said, rather annoyed I hadn't worked this out for myself. "Lucky you."
I wanted to run back to mine and find some natural-material shoes of my own, but something told me there wasn't time.
"We'd better get going," I said. "We should aim to acquire some morphs and set off before it gets dark."
"Sure thing," agreed Philip. "The sooner the better."
"Ok, let's find somewhere out of sight to morph these crows and get on our way. Ferdie or Philip, can you guide us to your uncle's zoo?"
"Should be fine," said Ferdie. "I mean, we usually go by car, rather than air, but hopefully I can find it!"
We morphed in Ferdie's bedroom, ready to fly out through the open window. It was a huge, spacious room, with high ceilings and panelled walls. A big four poster stood against one wall. Posters of female models and eighty's rock bands were pined in front of original paintings of generations of forefathers, their dogs and their horses. We had put the clothes we'd arrived in at the back of Ferdie's wardrobe (solid mahogany, just for the record). We wouldn't be able to take any clothing with us when we set off. I took a deep breath, motioned to the others to begin the morph, and started to concentrate on the image of the crow.
I had to admit, this was probably the weirdest morph yet – weirder, even than morphing the Andalite. I began to shrink, faster and faster, as if I'd never stop. My hair was sucked up into my head. My bones hollowed and changed direction. My feet were the worst bit. The skin on my legs became covered in horrible grey scales, spreading from my toes to my knees. The toes themselves fused themselves together, and reformed as long crow claws, each with a disturbing black claw at the end. Ughh. My heel bone stretched and stretched into a back claw. My face was changing too, I noticed. My mouth and nose were becoming harder and harder, stretching outwards into a sharp beak. My eyes slid lower and further apart, each side of my beak, increasing my field of vision. My body was becoming shorter and squatter, a stubby tail growing out of my rear. My arms too, were changing. They were growing – becoming longer and longer, so long, that I couldn't hold them up anymore. Then the bones hollowed too and I could lift them.
"That is disgusting!" said Ferdie. "You look lok amplu tik- " His voice slurred as his mouth formed a bird's beak. --You look like a plucked turkey,-- he repeated, having crossed the line to thought-speak.
I looked down at my morphing body. He was right. I did look like a plucked turkey. A small, fat turkey, with no feathers and mostly human arms. Suddenly, I felt a tickling over my body. I recoiled in horror as sharp, elongated cones grew out of my skin, all over my body. Then the cones grew darker, thicker and softer, and I relaxed as I realised they were feathers. The feathers on my arms – or wings – grew longer as they adapted themselves for life in the air. I looked at the others. They had just about completed their morphs, although none of them seemed to have looked as bad as mine had. Philip's had even looked quite graceful, he'd managed to grow huge black wings from his back before starting on the rest of his morph, so that he's looked like some kind of mythical creature. Ferdie was just morphing his beak and flapping his new wings noisily. The last of Ashas' feathers popped up from her skin. I gave a squawk. We were fully crow.
