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Clara felt much better after tea and a muffin. Selina did not bring up the smelling incident while they were eating, but she did think very hard about what had happened and what it might mean. When she thought Clara had had time to recover from her shock, Selina broached the subject with her again.
“Clara, I’ve been thinking about what happened earlier,” she started. “When you had your eyes closed, you could smell the way an animal would, couldn’t you? Like, when you are in dog form, for instance.”
Clara looked at her aunt thoughtfully. “I guess so,” she said. “If I’d smelt those things when I was in dog form, I would’ve thought it was completely normal. Wow, do you think it’s a new aspect of our gift? Being able to smell like an animal, but while I’m in human form? Do you think I could do it again? Whenever I want?” Clara’s eyes lit up. She thought about all the times it would be useful to have such an ability in human form. Then her expression fell. “But what if I can’t switch it off?” she asked. “What if it’s like that all the time?” She was horrified at the thought.
Aunt Selina patted her hand reassuringly. “I don’t think it works like that, Clara,” she said soothingly. “After all, you haven’t had that problem with any of your other abilities. I think you can choose to switch it off and on, in the same way you choose to hear animal thoughts, or you choose how and when to transform.”
“Oh,” said Clara, relaxing a little. What Selina was saying made sense.
“I also think it’s possible the ability goes beyond your nose,” said Selina, smiling at Clara, who appeared confused. “I mean, it probably affects your other senses too. Your sight, hearing, taste, and touch.” She paused to let that idea sink in.
“Oh,” said Clara again, struggling to get her brain around this new idea – the implications were huge.
“Why don’t you try it?” asked Selina, gently.
Clara peered around the kitchen, and out of the window. She concentrated on the trees beyond the garden gate. At first, they looked just as they always had. Then, as she concentrated, her eyes focused like a telescope and she homed in on a small bird sitting quietly on one of the inner branches of a tree just beyond the garden wall. It had a grey head, an orange chest, and its wings had flashes of black and white. A male chaffinch. Beyond the chaffinch, Clara could see every line and crack on the bark of the tree trunk. She gasped. She wanted to try to look further, but was hampered by the thickness of the trees.
Instead she brought her focus back into the cottage. She closed her eyes and concentrated on what she could hear. She heard the usual creaking noises as the house expanded and contracted with the heat of the day, but then she started to hear a tick, tick, tick, which she identified as coming from her watch. Then the trickling of water in the pipes in the walls; the hum of electricity; and finally, the scratching, scurrying noises of hundreds of tiny pairs of feet. Clara shuddered. She didn’t want to know what the source of that sound was.
Clara turned to her aunt, beaming. “Mission well and truly accomplished,” she said cheerfully. “A complete success.” She was bursting with happiness and couldn’t help skipping up and down the garden for a while before flopping into a chair, hot and breathless.
Selina poured them a glass of lemonade and sat beside her niece while Clara described what she had seen and heard. By the end Selina was envious of Clara’s abilities, but tried not to let it show, instead saying they would be late for dinner if she didn’t get a move on and would Clara give her a hand. Still on a high, Clara was oblivious to her aunt’s feelings, and agreed enthusiastically.
In bed that night, Clara was still thinking about her new abilities. She kept trying them out just to prove she could. She couldn’t wait to show them to Luke. Then she remembered she and Luke weren’t speaking. She felt a wave of loneliness wash over her. She fell asleep with a deep, sad sigh.
And woke up a couple of hours later, screaming in terror.
***
Clara looked around wildly, not recognising where she was. It was pitch-dark, and she was sweating and shaking. Selina opened her door and swept into the bedroom, enveloping Clara in a comforting hug and rubbing her back to ease her shuddering.
“What’s the matter, darling?” Selina asked. “Did you have a bad dream?”
“I... I don’t think so,” said Clara shakily. “I don’t remember.”
Selina continued to hold Clara, rocking her gently and murmuring soothingly into her ear. “It’s all right, hush now, you’re safe, nothing’s going to hurt you,” Selina murmured, and slowly but surely Clara’s shaking ceased, and she started to breathe normally again. When she was calm, Selina pulled away and peered at her niece. She brushed Clara’s damp fringe away from her forehead.
“What do you remember?” Selina asked gently. She needed to find out what had upset Clara so she could go back to sleep.
Clara looked blank for a moment, then shuddered. “I heard a scream.”
“Yes, dear, that was you, you screamed. You nearly gave me a heart attack,” said Selina, grinning crookedly at Clara.
But Clara shook her head. “No,” she said. “Not me. Outside. It came from out in the woods.”
“What kind of scream?” asked Selina, worriedly. “A person?”
“No,” said Clara, her shoulders slumping. She finally recalled what had frightened her. “It was a mouse. It was caught by a fox, and it screamed. I must’ve heard it in my sleep and it woke me. I automatically reached out to it with my mind, just as – just as...” Clara couldn’t finish the story, but Selina suspected she knew what had happened next to the poor mouse.
“Are you sure you weren’t dreaming? Are you sure you actually heard the mouse scream?” she asked.
“Absolutely sure,” replied Clara. “First there was the scream, then I identified it as being a mouse.” She swallowed, feeling a little sick.
“All right,” said Selina, stroking Clara’s hair. Clara had begun to shiver again. “Do you remember, Clara, the exercises we used to do to close your mind to animal thoughts so you could get some sleep on the nights leading up to a full moon?”
Clara nodded.
“Well, why don’t we see if the same principle can work now?”
Clara stared at her aunt doubtfully. She didn’t see how building a wall in her mind was going to stop her ears from hearing.
“Just try it,” suggested Selina. “Your ears will still hear, but maybe you can train your brain to ignore what you’re hearing.”
Clara sighed. It was worth a try. She lay down and closed her eyes to concentrate on the task. After a few minutes she’d built a solid wall in her mind, which she hoped would stop it from reaching out to any animals nearby. She also hoped it would work for her other senses too.
Realising that Clara was still too tense to fall back to sleep, Selina encouraged her niece to breathe deeply while she gently massaged pressure points on Clara’s face and shoulders. Eventually Clara’s breathing became relaxed and it deepened as she slipped back to sleep. Selina sat and watched her sleeping niece for a while before returning to her own bed where she lay, half asleep, waiting to see if she would be roused by screams once more.
***
Clara slept soundly for the rest of the night, but the mouse incident had given her such a fright that it was still vivid in her thoughts the next morning. She wondered how she might prevent it happening again. She thought that, to avoid being awoken in the night, she should be as active as possible during the day so by the time she went to bed she would be so exhausted nothing would wake her.
Thinking this wasn’t a bad idea, if only to take Clara’s mind off things, Selina encouraged Clara to go out and about on her own, to explore the countryside and get some fresh air and exercise. While out, Clara often shape-shifted into her favourite black collie dog and roamed far and wide, going much further than she ever had before. Occasionally she transformed, after carefully making sure she was completely alone, into other animals. One day she transformed into a buzzard and soared high up into the sky. Another day she transformed into a squirrel and revelled in running up tree trunks, scampering along branches, and leaping from tree to tree. And on another day, she transformed into a chestnut pony and joined some other ponies as they galloped and frolicked in their field.
Clara enjoyed these transformations so much she didn’t notice that, as the days went by, she was spending more and more time in animal form. Selina saw, though, and began to worry Clara was spending too much time transforming as she first missed lunches, then didn’t come home for dinner. When Selina asked her where she’d been, and why she’d been so late, Clara merely shrugged dreamily and said she’d lost track of time.
Selina frowned, concerned. “That’s not good enough, Clara. You’re spending too much time in animal form. Have you forgotten the story I told you about your ancestor, Martin?”
Selina had Clara’s full attention. Yes, Clara remembered the story of her ancestor who had the gift of shape-shifting a long time ago, even before the Gypsy curse, and who spent so much time in animal form that he forgot he was a human, and one day he just never came home.
But that won’t happen to me, thought Clara. I have it all under control.
“Martin thought he knew what he was doing,” Selina said slowly. “It took his mentor to see how dangerous his behaviour had become. And he didn’t listen to his mentor – and look what happened.”
Clara chewed her cereal slowly and thoughtfully. “Okay, Aunt Selina. I’ll be more careful,” she said. She then cleared away her breakfast things and said “See ya later” as she trotted out of the door.
Selina sighed. She just hoped her niece knew what she was doing.