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fectly shaped hoof, and I m no godsdamned
good at business matters. I gestured help-
lessly to the grandeur around me. Why
waste all this on me?
I& I like you, Naef. Bitter tongue,
nasty little knife collection all of it. You re
nobody s victim. You re quick with that
smart mouth of yours, and you re& you just
seem incredibly brave to me. He gave a dis-
gusted whuffle. Insane, sometimes, but
brave. Can t we spend a year together and ir-
ritate each other in complete good will? Hon-
estly, I ve been looking forward to it. Is that
wrong?
I lost my hunger abruptly and stood,
uncertain. What to do with praise? What to
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do when someone beautiful tells you that
you re not repulsive? Well, this body was ob-
viously made for something besides sex.
I m& . I looked down at my perfectly
formed feet.
What s wrong, Naef? His voice was
both puzzled and gentle, and I couldn t look
at him.
I m& . And I couldn t even finish that
sentence. I had sound, whole legs and a
straight spine and clear skin. I didn t even
know what I was anymore. And now,
Aerie-Smith was trying to tell me that I had
never been that bad to begin with. My brain
was reduced to chaos and rubble, and I
didn t even have my malformed backbone to
keep me stalwart enough to pull myself clear.
There s an hour til sunset. I ll be
back.
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And for the first time in my life, I ran
away.
Running was glorious. No pain. Abso-
lute freedom from pain. I ran blindly, half-
laughing, half-shouting, and looking where I
was going only far enough to not end up
smashing into a tree. The island was full of
them, great ferns and fruit trees, since it was
a temperate, tropical place, and I ran until
the act of running filled my brain, until my
lungs lived only for my next breath, until all
words were superfluous to the blurring
greenery in my vision. Until I almost hurled
myself off a cliff.
I wasn t aware Aerie-Smith had fol-
lowed me, but there he was, on all fours, his
waistcoat still buttoned around his chest,
roaring at me from the edge of the cliff until I
skidded to a halt and sat down abruptly,
gulping in great breaths of air.
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When I d recovered myself, I stood up
and dusted off my bruised bum, then walked
gingerly over to the edge of the cliff. It was
neither as high nor as steep as the cliffs I was
used to near my home village, and my heart-
beat eased from tympani to snare drum as I
tried to calculate how big an idiot I had been.
I probably would have survived the tumble;
it was more like a steep hillside than a cliff,
but it wouldn t have been fun, and the dunk
in the ocean would have been a shock, that
was for certain. As it was, it would be a pretty
place to watch the sunset on some other
day.
Gods, I snapped to myself, I m no
better than a brainless girl in a storybook,
needing rescue every page or so. I turned to
Aerie-Smith, who was still a lion with a
waistcoat, on all fours, and looking at me
with a decidedly irritated snarl on his inhu-
man face. Thank you, I muttered. I had no
idea you were even following me.
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The rumble from his chest was exasper-
ated, and I realized that I had him at sort of a
disadvantage. He couldn t talk in this form.
Well, good. He had me at a disadvantage
daily. It was a relief, for once, to be the more
articulate of the two of us.
Should we walk back? I asked, putting
a bright front on my face, and even a lion can
roll his eyes in disgust. He was a bloody great
cat; I m sure lions in the wild were not high-
er than my chest, but he was. As it was, he
took two steps in front of me, went down on
his shoulder, and looked back at me imperi-
ously. There could be no mistaking that
damned arrogant nod of his, but I was hav-
ing none of it.
Not even, I said succinctly, if I had a
club foot and a twisted spine.
He roared. Not the warning sort of roar
he d given me to stop me from going off the
edge of the cliff& embankment, but a full-on,
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I ll eat you, you bloody stupid prick if you
don t get on my back now, godsbedamned if I
won t! bark of fury.
I curled my lip at him and walked right
on past him. You don t scare me, I
muttered. If you d wanted to eat me, you
would have done it on board the ship when
the monkeys stopped cooking.
The snarl he emitted next was pure
fury, and I was not prepared for what
happened next. I had my back to him, so I
couldn t see the exact mechanics of it, but I
think he changed form, threw me on his
back, and then changed back. It s the only
way to explain how I came to be hanging on
to his mane for dear life as he ripped through
the trees and underbrush to get us back to
the villa.
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