Gifford
Before G had time to be surprised about Jane’s transformation, something scratched at the barn door. G partly drew his sword from its sheath. (Not that he was really any good with a sword, but G was masterful at this particular bluff—to act like he could fight. Sometimes the act was all that was needed.)
“Who’s there?” he called out, his heart hammering.
There was an urgent whine in response.
G opened the door and Pet flew in. She let out a couple of shrill barks, ran out the door, ran back to Gifford, ran outside, and then stared out into the night, one paw lifted, frozen.
“What’s she trying to say?” G asked Jane-the-ferret. Jane responded by scurrying up G’s leg, then up his shirt, then snaking around his neck and ending up on top of his head.
At this point, G realized he’d just asked a ferret what the dog said.
With his Jane hat in place, G squinted into the darkness, trying to figure out what had gotten Pet in such a fluster. Pet ran a few yards out, turned, and panted at G. She leaned even farther away from the barn as if she would take off in that direction if only G would follow.
“Pet,” G said. “Remember the bad soldiers. Right now is not a good time to travel, especially when I’m not a horse, and therefore we have no speed.”
Pet darted back inside the barn, and with a flash of light, suddenly she was a girl.
A naked girl with long, tangled blond hair.
Naked.
With no clothes on.
“I caught His Majesty’s scent!” she exclaimed.
A soft tail swept across G’s cheeks and came to rest right in front of his eyes, but G could still see the flash of light as Pet transformed back into a dog.
He stood there for a long moment, flummoxed.
“Did you see the . . . less formally attired girl who was just here?” he asked Jane. She dug her claws into his head. “Did you have any idea Pet was a girl? Although she didn’t look very comfortable as a girl. She didn’t make any motion to cover herself.” This time, Jane scratched his face. “Not that I noticed.”
Pet emitted a high-pitched bark again and pointed her nose outside the barn, and it wasn’t until that moment that G remembered she had said words. While standing there. Naked.
“You caught King Edward’s scent?” G said.
Pet barked twice and ran back to the door.
“We can’t go now,” G argued. “It’s too dangerous.”
With another flash, she was the naked girl. “We have to go now! It’s already faint, and the rain will make it worse.” She flashed to the dog again. This time, Jane hadn’t had a chance to cover his eyes. How did Pet switch forms so easily, when G, and now Jane apparently, were governed by the sun?
He’d have to focus on that later.
“Pet, we have no supplies.”
The dog growled.
“All right, all right. We go now.”
G grabbed his cloak and saddlebag, removed his lady from his head to set her on his shoulder, and they followed Pet out into the night.
Pet was a fast tracker. With her nose to the ground, she slipped along, somehow maintaining a swift pace without breaking contact between her nostrils and the dirt. G tried to keep up. At least the moon was especially bright tonight, making it easier for G to keep from stumbling.
They had to stop often so that G could catch his breath. During one of these rests, with ferret-Jane asleep around his neck, Pet flashed into a girl and stood before him. “Why can’t you just change?”
G averted his eyes from her southern hemisphere, and then from her northern hemisphere, and then decided the only safe place to look was the stars.
“I can’t control it. It’s a curse. When the sun’s down, I’m human. When it’s up, I’m a steed.” Okay, steed was probably pushing it.
Pet groaned. “Get yer house in order.”
“My house? I have no house.”
“Not the one over there,” she said, pointing in the direction of London. (He could see her pointing out of the corner of his eye, even though his gaze was still averted.) “Your house in here.” She poked his forehead and then his chest.
“Ow,” G said. Her fingers were incredibly strong. “Ow. How am I supposed to—”
But she flashed back to her dog form and began running again before he could finish his question.
They ran and rested and ran again. Breathless and panting, G longed for the sunrise, partly because it would give his human feet a break, and partly because Pet seemed thoroughly unimpressed by his long-distance running, and she refused to hide it.
Then Pet stopped and looked around, confused. She sniffed in one direction, then the other, then the other . . . and didn’t pick one. She sniffed out every possible path, and even up the trunks of a few trees, and then she lay down and whimpered, her brown eyes drooping at the corners.
“What’s the matter, girl?” G crouched down and stroked Pet’s head.
A flash of light, and Pet was a girl, and G was still crouched over her, stroking her hair. It was a move that definitely breached the boundaries of propriety. He leapt back so quickly he almost threw Jane-the-ferret into the trees.
Pet-the-girl looked like she might cry. “His Majesty was traveling with one other person. I was tracking both of their scents.” Her nose wrinkled as if she found the smell of this mystery person unpleasant. “But His Majesty’s scent, it . . . it stops. Something bad happened here.”
Before G could ask her to explain, she flashed back into a dog. She seemed more comfortable that way, as if she could better manage her despair in that form.
G felt his little ferret shaking on his shoulder, and knew that Jane must be fearing the worst for Edward.
“He’s okay,” G whispered, then faced the dog. “Pet, we’ll follow the second scent. If it doesn’t lead us to Edward, it will certainly lead us to answers.” His wife trembled again. “But I’m sure it will lead us to Edward.”
Jane gave a ferrety nod and flattened herself, ready for him to start running once more.
G wasn’t nearly as excited to be reunited with Poor, Dear Edward as Jane was, though.
He wondered if that made him a bad person.
Several hours later, and after a too-brief nap, G became a horse, and Jane became a girl.
He wondered what they were going to do with no saddle (which they’d left in their rush from the barn), but Jane didn’t hesitate to climb up on his back.
(At this particular era in time, it was scandalous for a woman to ride with no saddle. It would be considered reprehensible—and possibly justification for a prison sentence—for a woman to ride with no saddle on a horse who is really a man. Even if that man were her husband.)
No one had ever ridden G before. It was a strange, but not entirely unpleasant sensation to feel Jane’s weight on his back, her legs gripping him around the middle.
“Do you mind if I hold on to your mane?” she asked, in as proper a voice as she would’ve used at a dinner party when asking, “Would you mind passing the butter?”
G held his head back toward her in response.
She took a handful, but she didn’t hold too tightly.
“Let’s go find Edward, Pet,” she said to the waiting dog. “This scent must lead us to Helmsley.”
Yes, G thought a bit glumly. Let’s find Edward.
They walked for hours, until he felt Jane slump against his neck and then slip dangerously to the side. G lurched the opposite way to counterbalance, and she was able to right herself.
“I’m sorry,” Jane said. “I’ll hold on tighter.”
They needed food, G thought. Neither of them had eaten more than a few bites of dried meat for almost two days. Everything from the saddlebag was gone now, and the bag itself left behind because even that small weight would slow them.
“We need food,” Jane said, as if she’d read his mind.
But in order to get food, they would have to forage (none of them had experience), or they would have to hunt (none of them had ever killed an animal), or they would have to head closer to civilization (where there might be soldiers who wanted to kill them). And he couldn’t do any of these things in his current state. All he could do as a horse was try to walk evenly.
“I’ll find something,” she announced. G stopped, and she slid from his back. He waited as she wandered off, returning a few minutes later with a small handful of dark purple berries. “I gathered all I could find. They’re Dorset berries. They’re safe. I read about them in Poisonous and Nonpoisonous Berries of the Wild: the Joys of Surviving England on a Budget. At least, I think they’re the safe ones. The pictures in the book weren’t very clear.”
With that shining endorsement, she laid the berries out on a piece of cloth, divided them up into three even groups, placed one pile in front of Pet and another in the palm of her hand. She lifted it to G’s mouth, and he ate them, trying desperately not to chomp off one of her fingers in his excitement over food.
Jane looked at her hands, now covered with horse slobber. “Gross.” She wiped her palms down G’s flank. “You can have that back.”
Then she ate the other pile.
“We’ll need to go to a village,” she said, her lips stained purple.
Again, exactly what G had been thinking.
Soon enough they hit a road, and it was only a little while after that they came upon a small town, centered around a giant tavern with a wooden sign above its door that bore the silhouette of a mangy-looking dog. It was nearly dusk and the three weary travelers had no money and nothing to trade with, so they stayed at the edge of the forest to come up with a plan.
Jane loved coming up with plans.
She climbed down from G and put the cloak over his back, anticipating the change. Then, she crept up behind a tree and peeked around the edge of the trunk to survey the village.
The sun touched the horizon. In a flash, G was a man. He held the cloak around him and jogged over to Jane.
There was a brightness in her eyes and a smile on her face that made his heart lift.
“There’s a storehouse in the back of the tavern,” she said excitedly. “I saw a man loading dead rabbits and cured beef inside.”
“Oh. I’m sure they lock it up. We’d have better luck if I broke into a house.”
“We’re not going to steal it!” She shook her head, as though she couldn’t believe he would suggest such a thing. “I just meant they have food. And we can get some. By we, I mean you. You’ll have to go in there and do something in trade.”
G imagined standing in the corner, reading poetry for a different group of strangers, a ferret riding on his shoulder. He imagined the ferret biting him if she didn’t like the poem. Not that he’d had a chance to prepare anything. Or bring a page with anything. The first time he’d read for a crowd, he’d meant to recite the poem from memory—he’d gotten to “all the world’s a blah” before his mind went blank—and he’d mumbled a few words that vaguely rhymed and then fled.
“I’m not sure that’s the best course,” he said. “My skills are somewhat limited, thanks to my daily horse diversion, and I haven’t— In a while— I mean—”
Jane blushed bright red. “Anyway, we’re married. And do you think anyone would really pay you for that?”
G blinked a few times before it hit him. She meant—ah—consummation. And that no one would pay him for it sounded something like an insult, but there was no time for offended feelings now. “Oh, ah, I don’t— Rather, I haven’t—”
“Never mind that.” Jane waved the topic away. “Don’t do whatever you were thinking about doing. Just clean some tables or scrub the floor. Taverns always have dirty floors, don’t they? What with the sloshing ale and the vomiting.”
Jane seemed rather overcritical of taverns in general.
“I see. I can do that.” He started down the hill, but she stopped him. Probably good. He was wearing only the cloak, he realized.
“Wait! I’m going with you.”
“But you’re about to change,” he pointed out.
“I’ll go as a ferret. In your boot.”
“Jane,” he protested. “This could be dangerous. We don’t know what to expect in there. I won’t be able to concentrate if I’m worrying about you.”
“But—”
“Please. Stay here and stay safe.”
She frowned and looked like she was about to protest, but then with a flash of light, her clothes fell to the ground and she was a ferret.
G took the clothes and dressed. They were still warm from the heat of her body, and still smelled of her faint perfume. He was tempted to take a moment to breathe it in, but Jane-the-ferret was edging toward his boot. “No, darling. Stay here. I’ll come right back. I promise.”
She stopped, let out a long ferret sigh, and deflated until she was lying flat on the ground. She looked unbearably bored.
“Consider taking a nap,” he said. “You’ve earned it.”
The inside of the tavern was well lit and filled with men and women in plain but sturdy clothes, most covered with some kind of fur, as though everyone worked with animals. They didn’t have the look of farmers. An odd stink rode under the scents of roasted meat and bread, but the food made his stomach grumble loudly. It was all he could do to keep from launching himself onto the nearest plate.
Conversation died as everyone stopped what they were doing and turned to look at him.
“Ah, hello.” He gathered his courage. This was just like reading poetry, but subtract poems and add people casually placing hunting knives and daggers on their tables. One of the women was filing her fingernails into sharp points, like claws.
Just like reading poetry.
G regathered his courage and strode to the far end of the room, toward the bar. He had to squeeze in between two burly men with tear-shaped scars on their faces. They all smelled vaguely like wet dog. A young man at the end of the bar leaned forward and smirked at him in a decidedly unpleasant manner.
The bartender eyed him. “What do you want?”
“I—” G had never needed to admit to not having money before. “I don’t suppose you have any work that needs doing around here?”
“Work?” This fellow clearly had not so much brain as ear wax.
“I could clean the tables or scrub the floor.”
The bartender pointed to a haggard-looking serving wench, who scowled at him. “Nell here does that.”
“Or I could peel potatoes. Or carrots. Or onions. Or any root vegetable, really.” G had never peeled anything before, but how hard could it be?
“We have someone who does that, too,” the man said. “Why don’t you push off. This isn’t the place for you.”
G would have suggested yet more menial tasks he’d never attempted, but at that moment, he put together the hints: the wet-dog smell; the fur on everyone’s clothes; the defensive/protective behavior when he, a stranger, entered.
That, and they were eating beef.
Cow.
Possibly that village’s only cow.
All at once, he knew. This was the Pack.
“Er, yes, perhaps I should be pushing off, as you suggest—” he started to say.
“Rat!” Someone near the door lurched from his chair, making it topple over behind him. “There’s a rat!”
It couldn’t be Jane, he thought. He’d told her to stay put.
“It’s not a rat, you daft idiot,” cried another. “It’s a squirrel!”
“It’s some kind of weasel!”
Bollocks. It was his wife.
“It’s dinner, that’s what it is.” That was the man directly to G’s right. “And he’s a spy. Asking all those questions about vegetables.”
“She’s clearly a ferret!” G yelled as he lunged toward the dear little creature dashing about on the floor. But Jane was too far away and everyone was suddenly moving, weapons in hand as they rushed toward G. He tried to dart to one side, but the man who wanted to eat Jane for supper threw out his arm and caught G in the throat. G immediately dropped and gagged.
Over the thunder of footfalls on hardwood and shouts of “Get the rat!” Gifford heard the most terrifying sound of all: a loud shriek, followed by silence.
Someone had stepped on Jane.
G shoved himself up and pushed through the group until he reached his wife, who looked like she was preparing for another good scurry. Nothing broken, then. Probably. Hopefully. G grabbed her up in his arms.
From the exit, a series of loud barks sounded: Pet.
G tucked the ferret against his chest and turned to flee. There were a half dozen people in the way. He curled his shoulders around Jane and ran head-on into them, barreling through the press of people and—after a few bright bursts of light—dogs and wolves. If there’d been any doubt before that this was the Pack, it was gone now. But somehow, in spite of the various daggers and swords they slashed at him, G finally made it to the door.
Pet was on the other side, snarling and biting at those who would follow (gosh, we love that dog), and she stayed back to give G time to escape. He ran as fast as he could as a man, and after a few minutes he found himself alone in the forest, just a shuddering Jane against his chest. He let himself slow down. It was then that he finally registered the stabs of pain in his arms and legs. He must have been cut during the scuffle.
G dropped to one knee to catch his breath, and relaxed his hold on Jane. “Well, at least no one will ever say that our married life has not been exciting, right, my dear? But I thought we agreed that it would be for the best if you stayed in the woods.”
She didn’t respond.
All at once he became aware of the blood soaking the front of his shirt and how unusually quiet she was.
Jane was never quiet.
She was hurt.
G threw off his cloak, laid it on the ground, and placed the ferret on top. It was too dark for him to see anything besides the outline of her small body and her breath coming in fast, short gasps. He ran his fingers down her side and discovered a long, deep gash. He tore a piece from his shirt and wrapped the cloth around her, hoping to stanch the flow of blood.
“Jane?” His voice shook. “Tell me you’re all right.”
Of course, ferret-Jane couldn’t answer. She just looked up at him, limp in the bundle of the cloak. A tiny whimper escaped her.
Brush crackled and G whirled, but it was Pet.
In a flash of light, she was a naked girl. “The other dogs won’t follow.” She flashed into a dog again, came over, sniffed at Jane, and whined. G closed his eyes and bowed his head.
“Jane. Jane, you stubborn girl.” He carefully picked her up and cradled her against him. “I’m going to get you to Helmsley. Don’t leave me before then, Jane. Don’t leave me. Go, Pet!”
The dog took off and G followed her, running like he’d never run before. He ran flat out for at least ten minutes, and then he kept on running, because Jane was depending on him, and now it was his turn to save her life.