child shape. I still tended to default to it, though I preferred the child shape these days. More fine control and nuance. But I had not been fully conscious when I took form in the mortal realm, and so I had become the cat.
Yet that shape was clumsy when I tried to rise, and something about it … felt wrong. I wasted no time trying to understand it, simply became the boy instead — or tried to. The change did not go as it should have. It took real effort, and my flesh remolded itself with molasses-slow reluctance. By the time I had clothed myself in human skin, I was exhausted. I flopped where I had materialized, panting and shaking and wondering what in the infinite hells was wrong with me.
“Sieh?”
The voice that had summoned me from the vague place. Female. Familiar and yet not. Puzzled, I tried to lift my head and turn to face the voice’s owner, and found to my amazement that I could not. I had no strength.
“It
is
you. My gods, I never imagined …” Soft hands touched my shoulders, pulled at me. I groaned softly as she rolled me onto my side. Something pulled at my head, painful. Why the hells was I cold? I was never cold.
“By the endless Bright! This is …”
She touched my face. I turned toward her hand instinctively, nuzzling, and she gasped, jerking away. Then she stroked me again and did not pull away when I pressed against her this time.
“Sh-Shahar,” I said. My voice was too loud and sounded wrong. I opened my eyes as wide as I could and stared at her, buglike. “Shahar?”
She was Shahar. I was certain of it. But something had happened to her. Her face was longer, the bones finer, the nose bridge higher. Her hair, which had been shoulder length when I’d last seen her — a moment ago? The day before? — now tumbled around her body, disheveled as if she’d just woken from sleep. Waist length at least, maybe longer.
Mortal hair did not grow so quickly, and not even Arameri would waste magic on something so trivial. Not these days, anyhow. Yet when I tried to find the nearby stars to know how much time had passed, what came back to me was only a blank, unintelligible rumble, like the jabbering of memory-worms.
“Cold,” I murmured. Shahar got up and went away. An instant later, something covered me, warm and thick with the scents of her body and bird feathers. It should not have warmedme, any more than my body should have been cold to begin with, but I felt better. By this point I could move a little, so I curled up under it gratefully.
“Sieh …” She sounded like she was regaining her composure after a deep shock. Her hand fell on my shoulder again, comforting. “Not that I’m not glad to see you” — she did not sound glad, not at all —“but if you were ever going to come back, why now? Why here, like this? This … gods. Unbelievable.”
Why now? I had no idea, since I had no idea what
now
meant. Of
then
, I remembered less thoughts than impressions: holding her hand, holding Deka’s hand. Light, wind, something out of control. Shahar’s face, wide-eyed with panic, mouth open and —
Screaming. She had been screaming.
Some of my strength had returned. I used it to reach for her knee, which was a few inches from my face. My fingers slid over smooth, hot skin to reach thin, fine cloth — a sleep shift. She gasped and jerked away. “You’re freezing!”
“I’m
cold
.” So cold that I could feel the room’s moisture beginning to cling to my skin, wherever the blanket didn’t cover it. I pulled my head under the blanket, or tried to. That pulling sensation again. It held my head in place, though I could move somewhat against its tension. “Demonshit! What is that?”
“Your hair,” said Shahar.
I froze, staring up at her.
She pushed at my arm, then pulled up a lock of hair for me to see. Loose-waved, dark brown, thick, and longer than her arm.
Feet
long. I couldn’t move because I was half tangled in it.
“I didn’t tell my hair to get that long,”
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