Creatures

Chapter Twelve

Urdo lifted her head as if she heard a distant call. I thought I heard something, but couldn’t be sure. Urdo twisted her long neck around without moving the rest of her body. She looked up into the gray daylight that came in through the slit in the sky.

I wanted to ask her if she heard something, but she so obviously did that I couldn’t bring myself to ask a silly question like that. Beth and I glanced at each other and shrugged.

Finally, she turned her head around again to face us. “You two are of interest. I must leave you for now.”

She walked over to the tiny square door and put the silver key in the lock. It clicked.

“Um,” I said, “Shouldn’t we be going down to the basement? Everyone will be getting ready for the Hussades.”

She smiled at me with half her mouth. “I doubt you will be missed.”

It was my turn to frown. The Hussades were obstacle challenges and the competition required you to change your shape in various ways to cross the obstacles. Her remark indicated that we wouldn’t be important because we couldn’t change into anything. I crossed my arms.

Then she did something quite unexpected. She turned into a hawk.

First, her head narrowed. Then her face extended forward, poking out at us. The nose grew to a point, then became harder and longer and began to curve downward into a beak. The beak shifted from pink to whitish gray. Her nostrils became tiny slits on the top of the beak.

I could hear Beth breathing next to me, quick, shallow puffs of fright. Her hand groped for mine and clasped it. I didn’t say anything, I was too stunned. I was as surprised and amazed by the process as Beth was. I knew people changed, everyone did it, but for us it was like changing your clothes. It was something you did in private. You simply didn’t stand in front of people and openly shift your form. Doing so would allow others to see all the intermediate forms, sometimes odd, embarrassing or disgusting sights would emerge during this time.

The black, stretchy clothes Urdo wore beneath her cloak accommodated her new shape easily. Specially designed, they fit her in either form. As a hawk, she didn’t shrink in size as Sarah did when she became a blue jay. She became a huge hawk of human weight with a wingspan of perhaps twenty feet or more. The wings grew into sight, arching up over her back. They loomed up higher than her head, and then she folded them down on her back again.

“Connor,” whispered Beth. She squeezed my hand very hard.

I squeezed back lightly, but didn’t say anything. I felt it was best that we simply stood there quietly.

Feathers were sprouting everywhere now. They were reddish brown and long and thick. Since she was bigger than any natural hawk, those feathers were over a foot long and they rustled as they popped out of her skin. Her beak opened and we watched her teeth recede in her mouth.

She shook off her boots one at a time. Yellow wrinkled skin covered her taloned feet.

She opened her wings and snapped them once, experimentally.

We backed away reflexively, up against the roll top desk. Beth still gripped my hand.

“That was most unusual, Principal Urdo,” I said diplomatically.

She looked down at me. Her eyes had the same hard glint in them they always had. In any form, she seemed to have the cold predatory eyes of a hawk.

“Things have changed, little thief,” she told me. The words sounded deeper coming from her altered throat.

I was immediately upset. I didn’t like to be called a thief by anyone. I’d never stolen a thing in my life. It wasn’t fair. I opened my mouth to protest, but she brushed past us. She hopped up onto the brass tube of the telescope. Her talons scrabbled a bit, but she managed to climb up the polished tube. When she reached the roof, she ducked her head down, folded her wings tightly and squeezed out into the open sky.

“She’s leaving us,” said Beth.

Once out in the open, Urdo unfurled her great wings and gave an unearthly screaming cry. I’d heard hawks before, but only at a distance and only from their relatively tiny beaks. This cry was like that of a dinosaur. It was long and loud and full of pride. Beth and I both hunched down our heads and clasped our ears.

She took off then, with powerful strokes of her wings. In a moment, she was gone.

We ran to the slit and craned our necks, but she was nowhere in sight.

“Where’d she go?” asked Beth.

I went to the tiny square door and tried the knob.

“We’re locked in,” I said.

“What?” cried Beth. She tried the door too. She looked at me in horror. “What have you gotten me into?”

“I don’t know,” I told her. “The grownups are acting strangely. I don’t really understand it. But I bet it has something to do with Vater coming back.”

“What happens when he comes home?”

I shook my head. “He hasn’t been here since before I was born. None of the young people really know. I’m sure it will be a happy time. We’ve always celebrated the very idea of it every year.”

“Connor,” said Beth grabbing both my hands in hers. “This might all seem normal to you, but I don’t like how this is going. What are we going to do if we are stuck in here?”

“We could mess around with the telescope some more,” I suggested.

“Forget that. You got me into this Connor. You have to get me out.”

I looked at Beth. Her face was drawn and full of fear. These weren’t her people. To an outsider, our ways were always scary.

I looked around the room and saw no way out other than the door. Then my eyes landed on the slit that led out onto the roof.

I’d always been good at slipping through tight spots.