It’s Tuesday, which seems to occur once every seven days, almost like a schedule… It’s time for another entry in this shapeshifting bonanza, following the OG skinchanger, Sadie!
I promise not to type like that again. … For a week or so.
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The Shape of Family
Part Eleven – Clash
by Rick Cook Jr
The crash to the floor jangled Sadie’s entire body, rattling her frame and sending her into flittering moments of unconsciousness. She should have taken Ursatrundle’s form, fought it out, but subtlety was the game and so she had hidden among the folds of Jeffrey’s trousers as the lowly woodmouse Finkscuttle.
And all she could do was wait. Jeffrey didn’t know she was hitching this ride, and Renee still had no idea she was anything but a horse they left topside. Jeffrey stopped moving under the weight of the savage beast, but his chest rose and fell.
After the girl screamed, she fled up the dark, dank corridor. The creature shifted from man to shadow, swept her up, threw her in the corner while he dragged Jeffrey to the soldiers as Father Enole once more, trussed him up like a pig, and then smiled at them all. He didn’t seem able to sense Sadie’s presence, and she was glad of that. She watched him from the fold of Jeffrey’s pantleg.
“You’ll live a few more hours now, with a second bearer of my children. Well, maybe not you, with that steel in you. I’ll need a few more minds to feed the hungry little fellows. You,” he snapped at Renee, and she cringed back. “I can knock you out, carry you kicking and screaming as I did once before, or you can come willingly to be with your mirror.”
Renee held the blanket tighter about her shoulders and chest, screwing up her courage. “Take me to Marie.”
The creature smiled a loathsome, oily smile, and beckoned for her to follow.
They disappeared up the corridor and Sadie held her fear in check. She had to make a move, but what?
The soldier Jeffrey accidentally stabbed wheezed and coughed up blood. The sword stuck fast in his chest and he wasn’t long for this world. She crawled out and ran to the other soldiers, nibbled on their bonds. Not actual rope as she feared, but a tough, viney substance that she realized were roots. Hard to break but easy enough to whittle down with sharp rodent incisors. The man she started on shifted, swatted at her with feeble, bound wrists.
“Get gone, vermin! I’m no one’s meal.”
The injured soldier fell to his side, hitting his head on a rock as he fell. He mumbled incoherently, spewing blood.
The soldier couldn’t kick or otherwise lay hands on Sadie, and she didn’t have time to go changing and alerting the beast to her presence. She was wasting valuable minutes just fighting with this man. So she gave up on him and went to the dying soldier, chewed through his bonds while the others watched, eyes wide, mouths agape.
The man only grabbed for the sword in his chest when the bonds snapped away, pulled it out with a sickly squelch and splatter of blood, then turned to his companions. “His light still shines upon us. In the darkness he guides our… our sharp metal.” And he fell over dead, sword clattering to the ground. The others cried out for their friend, but more than that, they held their hands out to the little mouse as best they could while she chewed through the roots. She freed the first and he grabbed Jeffrey’s sword, cut the rest of their bonds, including Jeffrey’s, and then stared at Sadie.
“I don’t know what’s going on, but thank you,” he said. He let out a little laugh. “I’m talking to a mouse.” He stifled the laugh and they fled, leaving Jeffrey there, one holding a wounded arm and gut, the other limping from a break but bearing up well even so.
And then she was alone with an unconscious man. Alone in a den of shifting evil. What was she doing? She should flee, leave these people to their fates. She couldn’t stop this creature, had no idea what it truly was. And if she died here, her nephew died a captive in the capital.
And yet.
Jonathan had screwed up. It was his fault he was caught. The Winged Riders were only doing their duty, flying into danger to protect each other, to do… whatever their mission had been. She felt a kinship with them despite their ill treatment of her, their ideological differences.
She wanted them to live and they most certainly wouldn’t without her help.
I’m sorry, Jonathan. This has to come first.
She left behind the Finkscuttle form, glad to be shorn of the whiskers. If taking on weight as Shadowdancer had been strange, losing nearly all her mass to become a mouse had been like losing herself entirely. The wild mix of pain as bones expanded, muscles tore; the pleasure of becoming something else rippling over new skin, new nerves. Fur fell away in tiny clumps, pink skin ripped to be replaced with pale human flesh. She stood on shaky legs in the dungeon of the demon, wondering just what she should do next.
A sword unsheathed and glinted in the mushroom glow. Captain Claymonte stepped forward, followed by her Wings, aiming the wickedly sharp blade at her throat.
“Step away from my traitor, you hellspawn. His life is mine!” And she swung for Sadie’s neck.
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Check back in next week for another Claire chapter!
Panning For Clouds 