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SEVEN
I slept until evening, warm and dry in my own bed.
The second I woke Aftran's focus was on me. For the tiniest instant when I tried to sit up nothing happened.
And then I was moving. I got up, went downstairs. Made a sandwich. Ate it. Hugged my mom. Talked about the barn with my dad. Aftran didn't say a word to me the whole time, and I ignored her presence as much as I could. After an hour or so I went back to bed. And couldn't sleep.
«I need to look for that weapon.» Aftran said into the silence. «It would be advantageous to keep it in reserve.»
«You want to go looking for a dracon beam on the ocean floor? At 10pm on a Wednesday night?»
«While your memories of the dolphin suggest it's an excellent body, no. I want to start in the river, by that cave,» she said. «Handheld dracon weapons are heavy enough that the current may not have carried it that far.»
Even if she'd already known that, my knowledge reinforced hers. My memory provided context about the river's course and how much runoff would cut the channels in the ground that I'd seen a few days ago. I shivered; the motion came through more subdued than normal, barely moving my body.
«So, what, you just sneak out past Tobias and Ax and whoever else is out there tonight, and go wading into a cold, fast-moving river?»
«Yes.» Aftran said.
«That sounds terrible.» I said.
Aftran's focus turned to me. I got impressions: cracking a window, morphing squirrel, getting to the closest cornfield and demorphing in the stalks. Morphing to owl and taking off.
«Risky.» I said, because I had the sinking feeling this madness was happening tonight whether I wanted it or not. «Prey animal.»
«Just leaving from your window as an owl has too high a risk of discovery,» she said unhappily.
I nodded slightly. «It does.» I thought; squirrel was a real risk. Too small, prey to too many species. It would be smart to minimize the time in that morph. So squirrel to skunk, and wait until the forest to morph owl. If she was doing this stupidity I wanted it done right.
My body sat up. Afran crept out of bed and to the window, slowly unlatching the lock, staying quiet, then even more slowly opening the window itself. I'd removed the screen months ago.
I started shrinking.
«So this is happening?» I asked, resigned, as my jaw bulged out. As weird as morphing was, it was doubly weird to not be controlling the power myself. I noticed more of the weirdness. It bothered me more.
When Aftran turned to watch my tail come sprouting out of my spine, building on itself like a sped-up plant time-lapse, I tried to close my eyes. Aftran popped them right back open before they'd gotten halfway shut.
And then the squirrel instincts and the hyperactive fear surfaced. Watching her slam down instantly on both and get total control in well under a second gave me a pervasive feeling of unease.
I shot up off the floor without warning, straight up the wall to the window. I was over the sill, squeezed through the open gap, and across the back porch roof in seconds.
Aftran flipped me underneath the eave, hanging from one of the decorative wood pieces. It was huge to me; a wood beam the size of a sewer pipe. She looked around, alert, wary. I cut my eyes wider, to the left and up.
«The left cornfield is closest,» I commented. She knew already; she'd known as soon as I had the thought, but that wasn't the point.
She took off. Down one of the wooden porch supports and onto the ground. Motoring across the large open side yard. The cornstalks looked like slender, regimented skyscrapers as I got close.
And then I was past, running between stalks. She slowed me down almost immediately. Stopped. Fifteen minutes later my skunk body waddled out of the farthest cornfield, away from the treeline and into the forest. She remorphed again, this time to owl. My skin prickled in the night air every pass through human form.
She found the cave. landed in front of it. Demorphed, stood there. «Wolf?» She asked.
«Why are you asking?» I asked, thrown and wary. «Why— why are you being so nice to me?» It caught me off-guard how much that was bothering me. «You're acting… totally different.»
I didn't like it. I didn't trust her sudden change of heart. I didn't trust how she suddenly bothered to ask for my input. It hadn't mattered before.
«We have an agreement.» She said simply.
My uneasiness increased. «Just like that?» I asked, dubious. My confusion had a bitter, sardonic edge to it. «Just like that.» I scoffed, anger surfacing. «If only I'd known it was so easy.»
«Would you prefer I didn't honor your wishes?» She asked, tone sharp. «Would you honestly prefer that?» She was silent for just a second. «You set the terms, Cassie; I can read your thoughts. I knew exactly what I was agreeing to.»
I didn't answer. My disgust and distrust were so strong that I just basked in them for a long moment. My reaction felt right. Justified. A gut instinct.
I lost myself in the feeling so much that it wasn't until I started to fall forward on all fours that I realized what she was doing. A few minutes later, I was a wolf. A few minutes after that, I was a very soggy, sad, wet wolf who wanted very much to get out of the cold river.
She searched. For hours. Nothing. My personal opinion was that the thing was at the bottom of the outer edge of the estuary, probably already covered in four inches of sand. Unfindable.
She wouldn't give up. She waded out of the river twice, remorphed wolf. Waded back in. Walked further down when she couldn't find anything.
As she searched farther and farther down, the water turned swift. Rapids up ahead gave way to a white edge and thundering noise. Another waterfall. I hadn't even known there were this many on the way to the ocean.
I was feeling the exhaustion from both of us as she swept the riverbed too close to the rapids a few moments later.
«Not that—» I said, just as she stepped wrong. Both my front legs slipped down into deeper water. I lost my footing.
In seconds the water swept me along over a hundred feet. I didn't scream; I was too exhausted. She spat something I couldn't understand, in another language. A moment later I did understand it and wished I hadn't.
She kicked my legs, paddled furiously. Tried to swim at an angle to the current. It wasn't enough; I could hear the roaring of the falls.
«Second time in a week.» I said bitterly, already knowing I was going over. «Same river. I really appreciate being back here, Aftra- oh. Oh no. Wow.»
The falls I went over were maybe a thirty-five foot drop. They fell onto rocks, not water, and formed foaming, spraying rapids that constantly soaked the edges of a tiny grassy meadow. The foaming water poured down a sloped rock face and reformed the river below. I took all this in during the split-second that I tipped over the waterfalls' edge.
And then I was falling, spinning, getting sprayed with water as solid rock rushed up from below. I took a breath, relaxed, tried not to brace for—