“I got your note.” The master stopped before her, looking around at those assembled. “What’s this about?”
“Well…it’s better if we show you.” The woman stepped back, her gaze becoming intense as it held his. She grabbed the edges of her shiny green robe-slash-gown, a hideous sort of garment embroidered with fake pearls and bright strings and a few ill-placed tassels, and peeled it off her shoulders. It dropped and pooled at her feet, leaving her nude in the dwindling light of evening.
A swell of magic had me taking a step back. I’d rather not be randomly attacked because she mistakenly thought I was challenging her. Her form morphed into a sleek gray wolf with slightly glowing hazel eyes.
The breath went out of me. I found myself taking a step forward, my eyes searching her for deformities.
“But…the curse,” I said as the master walked around her, clearly searching for the same thing.
“After you freed our animals,” said another woman, this one in her mid-thirties with tightly coiled black hair and sepia eyes that matched her skin tone, “a few people couldn’t control their animals’ need to regain their fur. They shifted.”
She stepped out of a plain white robe, her swell of power making me step back again. Her form changed into that of a honey badger, a damn good animal to have on your side and a horrible opponent if one was your enemy. Very similar to dragons, actually. Less moody, though.
“As you see,” piped up a red-faced man, his eyes a strange fawn color and his features a little too close together, “shifting within the curse hasn’t affected them like it did you, sire. It hasn’t affected any of us like that.”
His swell of power wasn’t so great as the others as he transformed into a hawk-type bird and flapped up into the air. He swung toward me, battering me with the tips of his wings.
“What the—” I waved my hand at him, then ducked when he persisted, losing my shit just a little. When he still didn’t fly away, I did a quick panic run in a circle, slapping my hands above my head, trying to get the accursed thing to bugger off. “Get it off, get it off!”
Surprised laughter rose from the crowd.
“He’s trying to find a perch.” A woman in the crowd stepped forward and put out her arm.
“A perch, fine.” I slowed down from my hunched jog and smoothed back my hair, attempting for a little decorum as I straightened up. “Just leave me out of it.”
The master was looking at me like he didn’t know whether to be angry, annoyed, or amused.
I used the pad of my index finger to wipe each side of my mustache along my upper lip. Mediocre butler, on duty.
The wolf shifted back, breathing heavily but not too taxed from quick shifts. She picked up her robe and pulled it back on.
“It seems the only issue with shifting right now,” she said, “is a change in eye color pigmentation. For some of us, the color has changed to that of our animal’s fur or coat or scales, and others have developed pigmentation similar to their human skin. We have no idea why. It has changed for everyone, though. Like yours.”
“Scales?” the master asked.
She nodded, looking to the side. A woman in loose, flowing garments like the others stepped forward, dragging a tall boy with a gangly body. His back was bowed, like he knew he’d done something wrong, and he stared at his feet. I was no master at guessing ages, but he barely looked sixteen, just old enough to shift.
“My son, your highness.” She offered a slight curtsey and addressed the master through tight lips. “He was told not to shift. I told him twice, and he heard it from our council, too. I told him that it might kill him. But did he listen? No.”
“It seems the boy is a dragon, your highness,” one of the others said. “His parents are both in the big cat family, as were their parents—”
“His grandfather on his father’s side, rest his soul, was a bear, actually,” the mother said.
“And his shift?” the master asked, looking intently at the boy. “It went well? His wings were intact?”
“Yes, sire.” The woman manhandled her son to get him to turn around before pulling up his shirt, exposing his back. An emerald-green stripe of scales cut down each side. “His eyes are now the same color as these scales, but otherwise he is fine. He could’ve died”—she took a beat to glare at her son—“but he succeeded in shifting on his own.”
“It hurt,” the boy grumbled.
“Yes, because you did it without guidance, you moron!” The woman slapped him upside the head. Clearly she’d been worried for her boy, and now that she knew he was fine, she was taking her fear out on him. My mom used to do that to me all the time when I was a kid.
The master leaned his weight from one foot to the other, looking intently at the boy. No emotions crossed his face, but my heart went out to the guy. This new dragon would need guidance to take to the sky, and the master could no longer offer it. He could no longer soar with his kind. He’d paid a helluva price for his father’s mistakes.
“We think, your highness,” the woman said, entwining her fingers in front of her, “that the suppression magic was what affected your shift. It stands to reason. Without it, we are free to shift without complication.”
“I see.” The master paused for another beat, looking over the gathering. “Give it a bit more time. Let’s see what happens with the other villages. If it is as you say, we’ll plan a first shift for the strongest of our youth. If all goes well, we’ll lead more of them through it. Start educating them now. Talk to them of the shifter ways. We need to get them up to speed.”
“Yes, sire. And…sire…” She squeezed her hands together before minutely rolling her shoulders. She’d had a good act going up until now, but suddenly her nerves were showing. It made me feel a bit better about the way my bowels twisted into knots every time I had to talk directly to the dragon prince. “Marcus—the boy there—is quite tall for his age. He’s taller than his father was. We have a few more boys and girls like that. Taller than the others. Stubborn youths, some of them. I wonder…” She lost steam, her words fading away.
The honey badger shifted back into her human form, putting on her robe before taking up the thread of the conversation.
“Folklore suggests that when a people are in great peril, a swell of dragons are born to defend them. It is the goddess’s way of defending her people.”
“Wolves can defend just as well,” someone grumbled, then grunted, probably elbowed to shut up. I would’ve agreed with him…if wolves could fly. Or breathe fire. The dragons had us there, and they knew it, the arrogant bastards.
“In times of peril, the dragons will rise,” someone murmured.
“Most of these youths were already born when the curse came into effect, though,” someone said.
The master slid his gaze my way.
I lifted my eyebrows in question, not able to read his…anything, really. I never knew what he was thinking.
“This kingdom was in turmoil long before the curse,” he finally said, swinging his golden gaze back to them. “We’ll know the truth of it soon.”
“Yes, sire,” the woman said, and she and her friend both curtsied. The gangly boy got shoved back the way he had come.