beyond funny now; I mean, my tongue was the least visible part of me—and flicked it out to see if that had happened, but I couldn’t tell. I could taste the air, though. I could taste everything in it, minerals and salt and fat, fresh rain. Houses miles out. Horses and sheep, dogs and cows and foxes. People.
It was then that I realized that Rue had been wrong about this Turn, too. There was no suffering. There was only wonder.
If I was a monster, then by the stars, I was a glorious one. Jesse had told me once that I was a beast better than any other, and now I knew it to be true. If the shark-hunters or lance-bearers came for me, I’d chew them to chum. Maybe I’d do it, anyway.
I slitted my eyes at the clouds. Just looking at them made me hungry in a way I’d never felt before. Ravenous, but not for food.
For flight.
I crouched down, got ready to spring, and beat my wings.
I made it as far as the treetops before losing control and crashing back to the ground, taking out another oak and a grove of ferns.
I tried it again.
Again.
All right. Flying was turning out to be stickier than the Turn, but that was fine, too, because I had the rest of my life to practice.
I settled into the mud and examined my talons. Shiny gold, sharp as razors, and I could dig them as deep as I wanted into the flesh of the earth.
I smiled, or tried to. I laughed, but no sound came out.
I flipped around and rolled in the mess of the clearing, ripping out what was left of the grass, getting filthy, feeling as gleeful as I’d ever been. When I decided to stop, I was panting, sated somehow, so I stretched out my neck and rested my chin in the mire and let my eyelids sink not-quite closed.
Only then did they emerge. Two boys, their faces sketched ashen in the dark, both of them in slickers. They approached me from opposite sides of the clearing with oddly identical gaits: halting, cautious, moving sort of crablike sideways with a palm held out in front of them—as if to ward off my temper, which to my mind was a very good thing.
The blond one reached me first. He touched me carefully on the neck. His hand felt like cool fire.
I opened my eyes all the way again, studying him.
Then the brown-haired one, still mimicking the other. Another hand on me, higher up, though, and his palm felt like pure heat.
“Lora.” Jesse smiled. “Lora-of-the-moon.”
“Good God,” whispered Armand.
And with that, I Turned back into the schoolgirl they both knew, only one standing nude in the mud.
• • •
I thought I’d at least have the filth of my roll left covering me, but apparently when I Turned, I went stark clean.
Jesse got his slicker off first. The sleeves flopped past my hands and the hood obscured half my face.
“How did you know?” I asked, pushing back the hood.
Jesse only smiled again.
Armand said, “You—you called me.”
He sounded bewildered. Even wearing his raincoat, he looked like he’d gone for a swim in a sea of debris. I brushed a soggy clump of leaves from his shoulder.
“No, I didn’t.”
“I heard you. I heard you clear as anything.”
“Yes,” agreed Jesse, as the rain flattened his hair and turned his shirt translucent. “I heard you, too.”
“I didn’t call either of you,” I insisted. “I don’t know what you mean.”
Armand scowled. “I was in bed, and I heard you say my name. Like you were right there in the room with me. And then I …”
“What?”
“He was pulled,” Jesse finished when Armand didn’t. “Just as I was. Pulled out here by instinct to this place to be with you. To witness what you had become.”
What I had become. I was a what now. I pressed both my hands over my heart, feeling its reassuring beat. Humanlike.
Jesse touched his lips to my cheek. “I told you I would be with you when it happened,” he said softly. “Well done.”
“Yes,” said Armand, hollow. “Congratulations.”
I went to my knees. I didn’t want to, and as soon as I started to buckle, they each had me by an arm, but I still went down. Slowly, irrevocably, into the squishy suck of mud that didn’t seem nearly as wonderful now as it had a few minutes past.
“Did you eat?” Jesse asked, just as Armand said, “Are you going to faint?”