book title

Danny dutifully pulled the car over even though he hadn’t heard a thing. He was really worried about his wife. They had recently made the decision to stop pursuing fertility treatments, and Holly was taking it hard. They were embarking on this road trip to clear their minds and begin the healing process.

As soon as they came to a stop, Holly jumped out and cocked her head to hear better. She ran into a wooded area by the side of the road and began spinning in circles, trying to determine from which direction the faint sound was coming. She called to her husband, who was standing by the car, frozen like a statue.

“Danny, help me find the baby!”

“Honey, please,” he pleaded, “get back in the car. I think you’re imagining it.”

“No!” shouted Holly. “I’m not crazy. I hear a baby crying.”

She began racing through the woods, stumbling on tree roots, zigzagging back and forth, furiously trying to locate where the cries were coming from. Danny watched by the side of the road, tears stinging his eyes, sure his wife was having some sort of mental breakdown.

Just as he summoned the courage to drag her back to the car, Holly screamed, “Honey, come quickly!”

Hidden in the hollow of a tree was a brand-new baby girl with golden hair and cerulean eyes. She was wrapped in a pink blanket. A note was pinned to the blanket, which Holly read out loud. “Dear Holly, please take care of my baby girl. I’m counting on you.”

The note was signed Kala. As soon as Holly finished reading the note, it burst into flames. Holly dropped the ball of fire and watched as the burned particles gently floated to the ground.

Shaking his head in disbelief, Danny asked, “What just happened?”

With a smile spreading across her face, Holly gushed, “Our prayers were answered.”

Danny stood with his mouth hanging open, unable to speak. When he finally found his voice, all he could think to say was, “Uh, Holly…we don’t even have a car seat.”

Holly whipped out her phone, googled the nearest Baby-Mart, and hopped into the backseat of the car, cradling the infant in her arms. They soon arrived at the store, where they bought all the supplies they would need to travel with a baby and headed straight home.

They spent the entire return trip discussing how they would present this to their families. They decided the best thing to do was to say Holly had been pregnant all along but was too nervous to tell anybody because of her past miscarriages. Everyone believed them.

They named the baby Mikaela, and right from the start, they knew there was something different about her. She was a fussy baby, and Holly spent hours each day bouncing her, pacing back and forth, singing lullaby after lullaby, trying anything to soothe her.

Each night, Holly would drop into bed exhausted, and sometimes just as she was drifting off, she could swear she heard barking.

Mikaela hit the terrible twos with a vengeance; almost anything could incite a tantrum. It was just after her second birthday, as Holly was trying to soothe a particularly bad episode, that she realized she was embracing a dog.

Holly screamed and shook so badly that she almost dropped the small puppy. She didn’t know what to do. Her precious baby girl had transformed into a tiny golden retriever.

Holly collapsed on the couch and began to gently pet Mikaela, her mind racing to come up with a logical explanation. By the time Danny arrived home, Mikaela had transformed back into a toddler. Holly met her husband at the door and broke into sobs as she told him the story, knowing he would think she was losing it. He didn’t.

“I knew something weird would happen one day,” Danny said, “but holy cow, Holly, this is a humdinger.”

He went into the kitchen and brewed a fresh pot of coffee before sitting down at his desk. He popped open his computer and spent the entire night scouring the Internet looking for an answer. By the morning, he knew.

With his stomach in knots, Danny tiptoed into the bedroom and gently shook his wife awake. He put his arms around her. “Our Mikaela is a metamorph.”

Holly bolted upright and furrowed her brows. “Mikaela is a what?”

“A metamorph,” whispered Danny. “A shapeshifter.”

Holly’s eyes flew open. “You mean like those aliens on Star Trek? Is Mikaela an alien?”

“No,” Danny sighed. “She’s actually from Scotland, a sparsely inhabited island off the northern coast.” He took a breath. “We had always hoped to understand a little bit more about Mikaela’s birth, and now we know. Her mother must have been a metamorph as well.”

Holly dropped back down on her pillow and put her hands over her face. She had a lot to think about.

Danny called in sick that day and went to see his brother who knew how to access websites few others could find. The two siblings spent the morning researching metamorphs and discovered the name of a shaman who professed to be an expert. Holly called him immediately and pleaded for an emergency appointment. Then they packed up the car and drove twelve hours to meet him.

By the time they knocked on Dr. Jamison’s door, both Holly and Danny were exhausted and terrified. The doctor met them at the entrance and took Mikaela out of her mother’s arms. He escorted them into an examination doom and gently placed the toddler on the table.

It didn’t take long to confirm the diagnosis. Mikaela was indeed a metamorph, although in her case, she was a mixed-race one. Evidence indicated that while one parent was a metamorph, the other was a human. That explained why she could shapeshift only into a dog.

The doctor asked Holly questions about Mikaela’s temperament, explaining that there were both good and bad metamorphs. He declared that based on her difficult infancy and toddlerhood, Mikaela was a bad one.

Holly’s ears began to burn. She looked directly into Dr. Jamison’s eyes and began stomping her foot. “No!” she bellowed. “Dr. Jamison, you are a fraud. My Mikaela is good!” She stormed out of the doctor’s office clutching Mikaela in one hand and pulling Danny by the collar with the other.

Over the next few years, Holly devoted herself to helping Mikaela deal with her temper. She discovered that relaxation was key to preventing transformations. Holly studied meditation and deep breathing and poured every ounce of her heart and soul into helping her daughter. Nobody was going to tell her that her little girl was bad.

After a while, Holly became an expert at predicting Mikaela’s moods, and when she detected a foul one coming on, she would take her daughter’s hands and say, “Kalee, let’s practice our breathing.”

As Mikaela grew older, Holly taught her many different relaxation techniques, and by the time Mikaela was six, she could fully control her transformations. As soon as she felt a fit coming on, she would turn on some music, close her eyes, and practice breathing just like her mother taught her.

That’s not to say Mikaela never had a lapse. Sometimes, when she didn’t get her way, she would transform into a dog and sit in the corner and growl. She knew her parents hated it, and she did it to irritate them.

When Mikaela turned seven, Holly enrolled her at the local elementary school, confident she was ready, and for the first few months, everything went smoothly. Mikaela loved school and made her first real friend, a little girl named Sara.

One day, as the two of them were sitting on swings in the schoolyard, the class bully came up to Sara and called her ugly. Mikaela clenched her fists, jumped off the swing, and bit the bully in the leg so hard he needed stitches.

The lunch aide grabbed Mikaela by the arm and dragged her to the principal’s office. When Holly arrived at the school to pick her up, Mikaela looked at her mother and grinned, “Mommy, I didn’t transform.”

Mikaela was suspended for the rest of the year, and the doctors could not figure out why the boy’s wounds looked like a dog bite.

On her twelfth birthday, Mikaela woke up to the smell of blueberry pancakes wafting into her bedroom. She jumped out of bed and raced downstairs, excited for pancakes and presents. She had been campaigning for an iPhone, and as she opened her last gift, her face fell. She hadn’t gotten one. She looked at her parents and grumbled, “I’m protesting. I am going to transform into a dog and stay that way until I get that phone.”

Holly shrugged her shoulders. “Okay, Kalee, that’s fine, turn into a dog. See if I care. But it’s Saturday, and I’m visiting Grandma at the nursing home, and you’re coming with me. You can’t stay home with Daddy this time.” She put a leash on the now mid-size golden retriever and dragged her out of the house. Too stubborn to transform back, Mikaela let her mother lead the way.

When they arrived at the nursing home, they went straight to the memory care unit where Holly’s mother lived.

“Hi, Mom,” Holly said, “I have a special surprise for you today. I brought our dog.”

Holly’s mom, who was often agitated and combative on visiting day, began petting the dog and calmed down immediately. She looked into the dog’s eyes and said, “Kaylee, is that you?”

Mikaela climbed into her grandmother’s lap and began licking her face. The three of them spent a wonderful afternoon together, and Holly’s mom was more interactive than she had been in months. It was that afternoon that Mikaela discovered she had a special gift for easing the emotional pain of others.

Over the years Mikaela volunteered at her grandmother’s nursing home as well as the local group home for autistic children, sometimes as herself and sometimes as her alter ego. When she graduated school as a psychiatric nurse, nobody was prouder than Holly, who felt grateful every day for the gift of Mikaela.

On the night of Mikaela’s graduation, Holly had a vivid dream. A beautiful woman came to her and said, “Thank you for taking such good care of Mikaela and always believing in her.”

A single tear leaked out of Holly’s eye as she whispered back, “Thanks for choosing me.”