Page 48

T here was shelter under the trees but rain came through the leaves anyway.

Sky was aware of it falling and licked drops from her nose, but her fur was thick and she was warm.

The pack had ambled back to their normal area and were settled in groups, missing the sun, wondering if there would be snow.

One of the young males twitched in his sleep as he chased deer in his dreams.

Sky couldn’t sleep. There was a churning inside her and she felt different.

The lethargy which had been increasing for some time had faded and something nagged at her memory.

The urge to do something, to allow something.

She felt uneasy. Looking at her paws, she wondered why they fascinated her, what she expected them to do.

She could feel the flow of her blood and thoughts. They were altering.

Her heart-rate was slowing and her ligaments and joints felt loose. She felt the urge to make a noise that was not a wolf noise and felt confused. The senior female had woken and was watching her. Mind your step , said the look.

Sky remembered the humans. Not the human she saw all the time, but the ones whose smell made her feel happy and excited and sad and frightened.

Her pulse, her blood continued to change.

Her thoughts became less sharp and more confused.

The senior female was watching her but she could no longer be certain what the look meant.

She remembered Simon. He was waiting for her.

She remembered Rose. Perhaps Rose was waiting too.

She remembered Andrew and blinked as she recalled the hand on her scruff and the sharp feeling under her skin.

She tried to lick the place but the movement felt awkward.

She felt the rhythm of the world in her bones and it was not full moon.

She was not restricted anymore. If she chose she could shift.

And then Sky realised that she could not quite remember how to control the change.

It was starting to happen and she was in the wrong place.

She rose to her feet and started to lope through the trees in the direction she had gone before, picking up pace through the damp undergrowth as her body tried to alter.

Quick quick she thought, you cannot move fast enough as a human .

The bracken crunched under foot, small stones and roots bruised her paws but she sped up.

At the fence, she stopped, panting, feeling the fur recede and the limbs change.

She hooked her front paw onto the loathsome thing round her neck and pulled it over her head then took a run at the fence.

On her third attempt she managed to clear the top and fell to the other side.

She curled up under the tree and waited, her breath coming in hard gulps, the tail, the fur disappearing, her forelimbs turning into arms. Rain fell between the leaves above her and this time, there was nothing to keep it from her skin.

She became cold. The rain ran off her skin but left her chilled, it soaked into her hair.

Below her, Simon’s bungalow seemed empty, its windows and back door closed.

Sky sat up and smelled the air, but her nose didn’t work properly.

She couldn’t be certain if anyone was around.

Tears started to trickle from her eyes but she shook them away.

Her wet hair slapped on her bare shoulders.

She sniffed again and looked harder. The other building had a window open and she could smell Rose.

She couldn’t smell Simon. Her heart calmed. Rose was there but not Simon. She breathed deeply and looked in the roots of the tree to see if any clothes had been left. Nothing. But then, it wasn’t full moon. Rose wouldn’t be expecting her.

In the sun or in the warm night, the walk across the meadow had seemed nothing, but in the rain and naked, it looked a long, exposed way.

Sky ran, awkward on two legs, her knees buckling.

The rain hurt her skin, jabbing at her. She got through the back gate somehow and looked through windows and banged on the door but she could sense that no one was at home.

She smelled the air again. Her hair was stuck to her head and shoulders and water ran from it down her cold cold skin.

She looked at her skin and it was a strange colour, a sort of blue and she was shaking.

Music came through the air from the other place.

Rose must be in the other place. The paving and tarmac were hard under her soft human feet but she ran across them anyway.

The window was open but there was a covering across it on the inside.

She banged anyway. Her heart thudded again.

What if it wasn’t Rose? What if it was that other human, the one who had called the witches away the first time, the one who had taken Rose and left her with Andrew the other time.

Sky thought, Do I need to be afraid of him? And then she thought, No.

The music stopped and she banged on the window.

Nothing happened. She knew someone was inside keeping very still.

She banged again. The covering was pulled back and there was Rose.

Sky stood in the rain, her arms across her chest, hair in her eyes, her feet sore and frozen.

She tried to speak but her teeth clattered and nothing came out.

‘Sky!’ Rose’s eyes opened wide. She disappeared from the window and reappeared at the doorway a bundle of something in her hands. ‘Come in, quickly!’

She bundled Sky up in big cloths. Not blankets, different, softer and rougher at the same time. The rainwater absorbed and she started to feel a little warmer.

‘You weren’t in your home,’ accused Sky, her teeth chattering.

‘Why didn’t you transform after you’d found me?

’ asked Rose. She wrapped another cloth around Sky’s head and hesitated, looking round the hall of this different place as if deciding whether to go into one of the other room.

Then she put a coat over Sky and took her back across the road to her own place.

‘I realised I could shift,’ stuttered Sky.

Rose took her into that strange room at the end of the house with the smooth shiny objects. She fiddled with something and water was pouring from the ceiling into the large hollow thing. The room became warm and steam came from the water.

Sky frowned at it, unnatural and strange smelling like all the water coming from those shiny tubes.

‘I realised I could shift,’ she repeated, ‘but I’d forgotten how to control it. I felt the changing and I had to run here as fast as I could before it happened. And you weren’t here.’

‘I’m sorry. I’m not telepathic. Rob let me use the studio to do recording while he’s out teaching.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Come on, get those things off and get into the shower.’

Sky eyed the steaming water and recoiled.

‘Trust me, it’ll warm you up. If you want soap and shampoo, they’re there.’

Sky felt blank.

‘Look, I’ll show you.’ Rose took a lump of something and rubbed it on her hands under the water until it bubbled, She rinsed it off and then did the same with a viscous liquid from a bottle. Sky sniffed Rose’s hand and curled her lip.

‘That explains why you all smell so strange,’ she said.

‘Then don’t use them, just warm yourself up under the water and then wrap yourself up in towels and my dressing gown and come out when you’re ready. I’ll heat you something to eat. ’

Sky reappeared in the kitchen a few minutes later.

She had managed to get the dressing gown on but wrapping her head eluded her and strands of her hair dripped where they’d escaped the towel.

She had had no idea how to stop the water running.

Rose handed her a bowl of something brown and went to turn the shower off.

The thing she called her phone made a loud sudden bleep. Sky jumped.

‘It made a noise,’ she said when Rose came back.

Her towel was unravelling and she prodded the stuff in the bowl.

It was hard to say what it smelt of. She could still taste the hot water with its metallic tang and she licked her lips to try and get rid of the flavour.

It was hard to imagine the food she’d been given would make things any better.

‘It’s a message from Rob,’ said Rose, as if that was supposed to mean anything. ‘He’s just got back and found my cello there but not me.’ She fiddled with the phone and put it back on the table.

It bleeped.

Rose picked it up again and said ‘Now he wants to know why I’ve stolen his towels.’

‘Can you communicate with your fingers?’ said Sky.

‘Not exactly.’

Sky took a tiny taste of the food and pulled a face. ‘How can you eat this?’

‘I can’t. It’s oxtail. Sky, do you mind meeting Rob? He’s a friend.’

Sky found a lump of something in the liquid and picked it up. She poked her tongue out to touch it, then with a grimace put the spoon down but left her tongue out for a moment in the hope the flavour and sensation would disappear.

‘Where’s Simon?’ she said.

‘He’s not here,’ said Rose. ‘He’s gone away for a few days, I’m really sorry.

’ The phone bleeped. ‘Rob’s got lunch you might like.

He says he’ll bring us some to ransom his towels.

’ Sky watched Rose’s face. It was different.

There was a softness about it and some of her alertness had disappeared.

If she was a wolf, she would be fairly unreliable.

Whatever her mind was focussing on, it was not useful.

‘I’m glad Simon’s not here.’ said Sky.

‘Really?’ Rose put the phone down again and wrapped Sky’s hair up properly.

‘I was surprised to change,’ Sky went on. ‘I wasn’t ready. I need to think and there is never time to think. Will you help me Rose?’

‘Yes of course, but what’s the matter? I don’t really understand. I thought you were desperate to see Simon. ’

‘I am, but I feel… I want to try being human for a while before I see him again. Without him confusing me.’ She didn’t meet Rose’s eyes.