B. Larson - Creatures

“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.

I had to drag Beth through the wide slit that allowed the telescope to poke outside. After a struggle with clothes catching on gears and twisting our bodies to fit through the narrow space, we finally made it. She felt surprisingly light when I pulled her after me, as if she only weighed half what I did. Once we are outside on the snowy side of the dome, we half-fell, half-slid down onto the roof.

The outside air was fresh, but bitingly cold. We didn’t have our coats, we’d left those down in the entry area. The roof wore a thick coat of snow. The scrolling woodwork along the eaves was iced like a cake. We stood on a relatively flat spot, but there were peaks and adornments everywhere around us. I grabbed hold of a crouched gargoyle’s iron wings while I brushed snow from my legs.

“How did you wriggle out of that tiny hole so fast?” she asked, brushing herself. She looked up at the observatory dome and the tiny slit we’d come through. It was less than a foot wide.

“I’m not sure how I managed to pull you out, you don’t weigh much do you?”

“I guess not,” she said. She frowned. “What seems odd to me is that you are definitely bigger around than I am and I’m the one that almost got stuck.

I shrugged. “I’ve always been able to get through tight spots like that. One time, when I was little, I got under the house and crawled everywhere down there with the spiders until my parents coaxed me out. They were very upset and I was very dirty.”

“I’ll bet,” said Beth. “What are we going to do now? I’m cold.”

I looked around and my initial excitement at having escaped the Forever Room faded. It was cold, icy and windy up here. “I suppose we have to find another way down. There has to be a roof access door somewhere.”

“Brrrr,” said Beth. She crossed her arms tightly and pulled her head down.

“We’ll get up on that high platform and have a look around,” I said, pointing.

She followed me as we picked our way across the roof. The worst part was crossing the slanted roof sections. They were icy and steep. More than once, we slid into valleys between the peaks and had to start over. I made sure we didn’t get too close to the edge. That way there was no chance we would fall off.

While we struggled across the roof like mountaineers crossing frost-covered hills, Beth talked.

“You never did really explain Hussades to me. What the heck are they, exactly?”

“It’s rather like crossing this roof,” I said. “Except with a lot more variety. It’s a race through an obstacle course. The big difference is that the players change their shape so they can do better in the race.”

“I thought it was impolite to change in front of others,” she said.

“Yes. There is a tent to change in. You only change once in secret, that’s part of the game’s strategy. You have to choose your form to beat your opponent’s form. That’s what makes it exciting, because the opponents are always different for each race.”

“So, why don’t the flying types always win?”

“Well, the courses usually have some trick for them, like a flaming hoop or two you have to dive through. If you have feathers, this can be a problem. You will have crispy wings very quickly.”

Beth thought about that for a few moments. I looked at her face. It was red from the cold, but I could see the gears working in her mind. She was a thinker, I could tell.

Slipping and scratching at the icy shingles, we managed to reach the top of a high platform. A big statue stood up there. I couldn’t quite make out what the statue was supposed to be, the snow caked up on it so much you could only see a few bits poking out. What we could see were snarling lips and a single clawed hand. The hand stretched toward the sky with every finger extended. The claw-tips were curved hooks of black iron, and I decided right away we didn’t want to know what else was hidden under that white blanket of snow. I didn’t want Beth to see anything… scary. She didn’t need to know everything about my family just yet.

“So, couldn’t you just be so small you could dart through the center of the flaming hoop?” she asked.

I smiled. Her mind was still working on Hussades. “Yes, but if you are very small, you often have trouble with pushing open a big door or something like that. Every form has its advantage and disadvantage, but the better you are at morphing into different shapes the more options you have.”