“No problem,” Skylar said wryly, then grabbed my arm and started running. I managed to get a firm grip on Kaliyan before we rocketed out of the park and down the street, darting in and out of the sparse traffic in order to get to our unknown destination.
I was out of breath in seconds. “Where’re we…going?” I gasped. A faint response drifted back on the wind, but I couldn’t really hear it. I sighed. “Can’t…hear you. Say…again.”
“He said ‘You’ll see,’” Kaliyan offered from behind me. I nodded my thanks and directed my efforts towards keeping up with Skylar, who was running faster than I’d ever seen anyone run before, towards…the nature preserve!
Finally, we screeched to a stop at the bottom of the bridge, Kaliyan huffing, me gasping for air, and Skylar leaning nonchalantly against a wooden fencepost. “Jeez,” he commented, “did I really wear you two out with a short jog down the block?” He then winked, so I took it as a joke.
When I regained some of my breath, I stood up straight and asked, “We’re going into the preserve?” Skylar nodded. “Why?” I started to ask, then realized that a lycan would need some privacy to change forms; he wouldn’t want to be spotted either changing into a wolf or in his birthday suit.
The lycan in question had already removed his shirt—revealing a very distinct 6-pack—and was beckoning for Kaliyan and I to follow him over the bridge. We did, and were soon emerging from behind a tree to see a larger version of the wolf I saw, all those years ago.
“Cool,” Kaliyan breathed.
I nodded. “Very cool.”
My friend and I watched as the wolf moved silkily towards us, then bowed its head and grinned a wolfy grin. Then a strange guttural noise came from the creature.
Kaliyan’s face twisted in confusion. “‘Hi’?” she guessed, and the wolf nodded its large head. “Oh, so you’re talking to us.” Another nod. “Okay.”
“How did you understand him?!” I asked, amazed; I hadn’t heard anything but a strange grunt. Kaliyan shrugged, then gave me a sly smile. I immediately understood. “You—” I began, then stopped and thought the rest of my message. You read his mind, I thought to her. She nodded. And you want him to think you’re some wolf-understanding prodigy or something, or just don’t want to tell him? She shrugged. He knows that you’re telepathic, Kaliyan.
She heaved a huge sigh, then thought, I know. I could only hear it because she pushed it at me, and it wiggled its way from her mind into mine. I smiled. “Anyway, thanks, Skylar. You can change back now…I don’t want you to get stuck or anything.”
“Haha, like the Animorphs,” Kaliyan shouted. “They can only stay in a certain form for 2 hours or they change permanently.”
I rolled my eyes. “You would think of that,” I scoffed, then listened very carefully as Skylar emitted another series of sounds. I looked at Kaliyan and thought, Any ideas?
“He says that he’s been doing this—changing into a wolf—for over 10 years and that sometimes he’s been in that form for days and weeks. He won’t get stuck.” She smiled proudly, then turned back to Skylar. “Right?”
The wolf nodded his head again, then closed his bright turquoise eyes, which matched that of Skylar’s human form. He seemed to concentrate.
A few moments later, his eyes opened, and they were wide with panic. He grunted and barked out a message, this time directly to Kaliyan; he’d figured out that I couldn’t understand him. “He says that he…” Kaliyan began, then broke off. Her expression became bewildered. “What do you mean you really can’t change back?! I thought you said—”
Skylar barked loudly, his furry eyebrows pulled down low over his eyes. “Emily, are you a fate-shifter?” Kaliyan asked me rhetorically, then answered her own question with a, “Um, no. She’s not. Any more pointless, weird questions?”
The wolf’s huge head was lowered to the ground as two huge eyes slid shut. I thought I saw a glimmering tear slide from one of the eyes, but a second later it was gone, so I couldn’t be sure. “I’m so sorry, Skylar. I don’t know what I did…but I wasn’t trying to get you stuck or anything.”
I knelt down beside the giant dog and put a ginger hand on his neck, stroking it like I would a normal canine. “We’ll get you back to normal,” I promised, my voice a little raw for some reason. “I swear on my life, we’ll find a way to get you human again.”
Skylar’s head rose up, carrying my hand with it, and he gently leaned his head into my stomach. Suddenly a thought made its way into my head, and it wasn’t mine or Kaliyan’s. Thanks, it said, and it sounded exactly like the boy in front of me.
“S-Skye?” I whispered, slipping into the nickname with ease. “Was that you?”
I heard Skylar laugh in my head. Yeah. You didn’t think I’d be mute when I was in wolf form, did you? Wow, you humans really are naïve. There was another chuckle, seeming to echo, then Skylar sobered up a little bit and decided to inform me a little more.
It’s pretty much like in that stupid book, Twilight, except it’s not just to members of my Pack, and it’s not all of my thoughts. Basically, when I’m in this form, I’m a one-way telepathic, and that one way is outwards. Get it?
“Got it,” I said, expecting him to say just what he did: Good.
Kaliyan sat beside me and asked, “Is he, like, talking in your head or something? Like I do?” I nodded mutely, staring into Skylar’s vibrant eyes. “That’s cool. So how can we get him to not be a giant wolf any more? Do you have any ideas? ‘Cause I sure don’t.”
“Nope,” I said, tearing my eyes away from Skylar’s. “I’ve got nothing. Maybe we could stop by the library or something, later, and get some information on lycans…”
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A loud groan escaped my lips as I shut what seemed to be the millionth book I’d looked through so far. “This book’s crap, too,” I called to Kaliyan, who sighed and set her book on top of our stack. Lycans: The Research of Carolina Dilauro was the title.
“Ditto here,” she said dejectedly, opening up yet another manuscript. I did the same.
We’d been going through book after book about lycans, werewolves, shape-shifters, and more, but so far had found absolutely nothing that we needed. They were all about ways to cure yourself of lycanthropy and how to become a lycanthrope and such; there wasn’t a word about a lycan or shape-shifter getting stuck in his/her other form.
I pulled another paperback off the shelf and dubiously opened it up, paging to the table of contents and scanning it quickly. I then flipped to the ‘Ailments’ section, and skimmed through that. I wasn’t very focused, as my thoughts were that this would be useless as well, but I immediately snapped to attention when I saw a heading that read Morphing difficulties.
Then I quickly read the article beneath it, sure that this was the answer.
One morphing difficulty, and most probably the most common, is being what some call ‘crippled’ or ‘frozen’ in one form. This can be extremely wearying, as being stuck in one form is quite awkward, especially when you’ve been a shape-shifter for quite a while.
There are only three known specialist in the area of shape-shifting that knows anything about this, and only one that knows the cure, and he refuses to tell anyone—including me, your author—anything about it.
His name is Doctor Anthony Kingston, and he can usually be found at his tree-top home near the Amazon River in Brazil, although I don’t recommend going to visit him unless you’ve got a real, live shifter who’s caught in a form, in which case, let them go themselves, and come to me with pictures of them shifting (if you got some before they became frozen, that is).
There are only three known specialist in the area of shape-shifting that knows anything about this, and only one that knows the cure, and he refuses to tell anyone—including me, your author—anything about it.
His name is Doctor Anthony Kingston, and he can usually be found at his tree-top home near the Amazon River in Brazil, although I don’t recommend going to visit him unless you’ve got a real, live shifter who’s caught in a form, in which case, let them go themselves, and come to me with pictures of them shifting (if you got some before they became frozen, that is).
I leaned over to Kaliyan and tapped her on the back. “Hey, Kali,” I whispered, “I found someone who could help Skylar. His name is Doctor Kingston—” I pointed to his name, “—and he’s supposedly an expert on shape-shifters and this particular…phenomenon, where the shifter gets stuck in one form. It’s just in Brazil, which isn’t all that far away. South America, at least, so not overseas.”
“Okay, so who’s gonna get our parents to buy this and let us go to the Amazon River?” Kaliyan asked, after reading the passage.
That I didn’t know. “I volunteer you,” I said, grinning, “but maybe—”
All of a sudden the intercom bleeped, and a lady announced that we should come to the front desk. We leapt to our feet, abandoning all the books except for the one with the information on Dr. Kingston, which I stuffed into my trusty hobo bag. Then we ran to the front to see an extremely random man standing there.
“Hello, girls,” he said with a strained smile, then took Kaliyan’s hand and dropped a slip of paper into it. She held it up to her eyes, read whatever it said, then nodded at me, looking a little amused.
We followed the guy out onto the street, where he stopped in front of Skylar.
The man took a deep breath. “This, um, wolf,” he began, sounding uncertain about Skylar’s species, apparently, “wrote for me to retrieve you from the library. I’m not sure how he gained the intelligence required to write, and I won’t inquire about it, as I’m not quite sure that I’d like to know.”
He paused. “My name is Isaac Mayer, for future reference, and I’m…well, see for yourself. Here’s my card.” He handed me a business card, which I stuck into the lycan book to mark the page that I wanted. It’s got tons of purposes, I thought to myself with a smile.
“Thanks, Mr. Mayer,” I said, really meaning it. “We, um, trained him to be able to—”
Mr. Mayer held up his hand. “No, no, I said that I didn’t want to know, my dear,” he said with a warm smile, “and you may call me Isaac.”
“Well, then, thank you very much, Isaac. Whatever our…dog needed us for, I’m sure that it was an emergency.” I directed this last fragment towards Skylar, along with a meaningful look. “Anyway, we should probably be going. Thanks again.”
Isaac nodded firmly, then strode away.
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