Holly's Secret E-Book

Katja Brandis

• Herausgeber: Arctis US
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Serie: Woodwalkers
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 322

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

After his final battle against the vengeful Andrew Milling, cougar shapeshifter Carag is happier than ever to have his friends Brandon and Holly by his side. But ever since Holly's new guardian threatened to take her out of Clearwater High, the red squirrel shapeshifter has been acting very strange. When thefts start happening around town, Carag is immediately on the alert: Is Holly involved somehow?

Leseprobe

Katja Brandis

Woodwalkers

Holly's secret

Translated from the the German by Rachel Ward

Drawings by Claudia Carls

W1-Media, Inc.

Imprint Arctis

Stamford, CT, USA

Copyright © 2023 by W1-Media Inc. for this edition

Author: Katja Brandis

Original title: Woodwalkers. Hollys Geheimnis

Cover and illustrations by Claudia Carls

© 2017 by Arena Verlag GmbH, Würzburg, Germany.

www.arena-verlag.de

First English-language edition published by W1-Media Inc./Arctis, 2023

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,

electronoic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without

the prior permission of the publisher and copyright owner.

The Library of Congress Control Number is available.

English translation copyright © Rachel Ward, 2023

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher and copyright owner.

ISBN978-1-64690-622-2

www.arctis-books.com

I have my first Clearwater High study expeditions under my belt now and—I can hardly believe this, but it’s true—a wolf-walker is one of my friends. I’ve even given Tikaani my cell phone number.

Of course, when I lived as a puma, I had no idea what these weird flat things were, or why the humans kept tapping them with their fingers, or even talking to them.

So, one day, I decided to find out.

I could never have guessed how badly that secret mission into the human world would go . . .

Hot Water

It was spring and the snow on our territory was slowly starting to melt. Bright green, juicy grass was shooting up on the wide plains, dotted with yellow, red, and purple flowers. On a hill high above them stood a thicket of pine trees, where my sister Mia was teasing a large black beetle, constantly stalking it, and pouncing on it. Wanna play push the beetle? she called, the thought passing soundlessly from her head to mine. Or shall we have a jump-off?

My father stood up, stretched his long, cinnamon-colored body, and yawned, showing his fangs. You’d do better to come and hunt wapiti with me, Carag. It’s time you learned to catch big game.

Sorry, what? I’d only been half listening because I was lying on the cliff edge, peering down through the branches into the valley. Not many humans lived in our territory, which they called Yellowstone, but some of them had a base near here. I could see the gray-brown roofs of scattered houses, and cars driving up and down a road.

Humans were mysterious and powerful. Sometimes they stank, and at other times they acted like headless rabbits. With the best will in the world, I had no idea what they found so fascinating about hot water shooting up out of the ground. Right then, more people than I could count were gathering down at that spot in the valley, near one of those hot springs. There, they sat on longish pieces of wood and waited patiently for the event to begin. I betted they had those flat, rectangular polished stones with them, the ones that fitted into the palms of their hands; I couldn’t get my head around those. People stroked the things, or talked to them; sometimes they pointed them at something else, or at themselves . . .

Sheesh, Carag, you’re so boring these days. Disappointedly, Mia swiped at me with her paw, claws retracted.

I hit back lightning-fast and bared my teeth. Well, you’re childish. Push the beetle? I haven’t played that since I was five!

My mother pushed her way between us. That’s enough. We’re going hunting now. Come on!

I’ll come another time, my paw hurts, I lied, licking my forepaw and hoping my parents wouldn’t notice the way my heart was racing. If things went as planned, I’d be down there in a flash, without anybody finding out who or what I was. Otherwise, the humans would try to kill me.

My father gave me a funny look. I twitched. Had he guessed? Maybe . . . He’d often been down or irritable lately. In the old days, he used to play boisterous jumping games and roughhouse with us—when had he stopped doing that?

Without another word, he turned to go.

See you later. Don’t catch fleas! Mia called out, and I growled after her, then she flitted silently away through the trees.

Not long after that, I set off too. As a puma, I crept to our nearest cache of human items. There, I transformed and pulled my clothes from the pile. Sadly, they weren’t great. There was a hole in the shirt and the shoes were too big for me. I started out by carrying the shoes and walking barefoot down the path to the valley. A couple of ants scurried over my toes and one bit me. It was their bad luck that I now had these practical human hands again. I flicked the ant off my foot and it went flying into the bushes.

The gray stuff that humans made their roads from felt warm under my feet as I walked cautiously toward one of the biggest buildings. It towered above me, with walls in brown-flecked stone and large glass windows, and people were constantly going in and out. Fortunately, the only person who took any notice of me was a child, half my size, who was staring suspiciously. Could she sense in some way that I was different, that I wasn’t really human? Rats, I’d forgotten to put the shoes on! And my feet were currently looking alarmingly furry—that wasn’t good!

The girl was tugging at her mother’s sleeve, trying to make her look at me. But luckily, the mother was busy talking to another woman. I hurriedly crouched down and forced my feet into their leather wrappings. If I was quick, I’d manage it before . . .

“Mom! Mom, look at that boy over there, he . . .”

Silkily, I got to my feet, just as the woman asked, “What’s the matter, Lydia?” and the girl pointed at me. But by then I was no longer barefoot, and the woman’s eyes glanced past me. Phew.

Old Faithful Visitor Center, I read, then jumped as something moved above me. It was only a large piece of cloth fluttering from a metal pole.

Stop acting like an agitated chipmunk! I told myself. The cloth, which had red-and-white stripes, and white stars on a blue background, clearly wasn’t dangerous even if I had no clue what it was for.

I watched the people walking into the big house for a while before trying to enter it myself. Trembling with nerves, I pulled at the door, and it worked. I was in! I looked around in astonishment, sucking in the air, which smelled strange and artificial. Cautiously, I walked right across the room and laid my hand on the huge windowpane that was as clear as spring water yet as solid as stone. People were strolling around, all studying a sign, on which I spelled out: Estimated eruption time: 5:10 p.m. They then walked back outside and sat down, keeping their eyes fixed on the place where the hot water was due to appear.

Without a word, I sat down among them, listening in fascination to the things the people were saying. What in the world were vacations, shares, and terrorists?

When the water finally did shoot out of the hole—a hissing white fountain as tall as a tree—they all stared and exclaimed “ooh” and “ah” and “whoa, awesome!” Not me though. I kept my mouth shut . . . and watched the humans. I’d seen more geysers than sea eagles, and that was saying something ’cause there were lots of those around here.

Most people held up their flat, polished things and pointed them at the geyser. Curiously, I craned my neck. But even with this close-up view, I was none the wiser. Clearly, they weren’t weapons, as I’d thought that time in the supermarket. Were the humans trying to ward off evil spirits with them? My mother believed in that stuff . . .

“Hey, what’s your problem?” the girl sitting beside me asked. She had yellowish hair that looked kind of fake and an unpleasantly shrill voice. She nudged the guy she was with. “Mark, this kid’s been staring at me the whole time . . .”

It took a while before I realized that she meant me. “I, uh . . .” I stammered, not knowing what to say.

The young man next to her looked as though his muscles were about to burst out of his T-shirt. But he only had eyes for Old Faithful. “This is so cool, look, Victoria! Wow.”

She crept a little farther away from me and whispered in her boyfriend’s ear: “What the heck, Mark, are you even listening to me?!”

“What?” Now the guy with the muscles did turn and look at me. “Who’s staring at you? Him?”

“Yeah, him, like I said.”

I hurriedly looked away and my human face felt weirdly hot. Surreptitiously, I felt my cheeks. Was I getting a fever now or something?

“So, kid, what d’you want?” the man growled, his eyes torn between glaring at me and glancing back at Old Faithful, which was still hurling its boiling water up into the air, over and over. “Leave my girl alone, you hear? You’re too young for that stuff anyway.”

I plucked up all my courage and said: “Sorry. All I wanted was to look at this thing . . .” Hesitantly, I stretched out a hand and touched the flat rectangle in the girl’s hand.

Big mistake! She snatched it away and her face twisted into a grimace. “Mark! He’s trying to steal my phone!”

“Aw, crap. I’ve had about enough of this.” The man pushed his girlfriend aside and his hand shot out to grab me.

Luckily, he was pretty slow. By the time his hand landed, I was somewhere else. I had to get out of here—I’d messed up and there was no changing that!

I ran blindly—not toward the buildings, but toward the hills. By the shortest route. People started to scream as I jumped over the barrier and ran. What was their problem? Seemed like Old Faithful had finished the show.

Even through the shoes, I could feel how hot the ground was. No wonder my mother had always told me to avoid the water-spewers. And I would’ve done just that, but not right then, because two men in gray uniforms were bearing down on me from either side. Rangers! They looked anything but pleased—had touching the rectangular thing been that bad? Owl pellets, they had guns on their belts!

I sped up, splashing through steaming puddles that stank of sulfur, my eyes scanning for an escape route. The rangers were gaining on me, yelling: “Hey, kid, are you nuts? Stop right there, this minute!” It was no use, I’d have to get even closer to the mouth of the geyser to escape them.

And I could feel the ground vibrating. This wasn’t good. Old Faithful was gearing up for an encore! More and more people were shouting, but I could hardly hear them in my efforts to get away.

Whoosh! Just a few feet away from me, boiling water shot out of the ground. I ran like I hadn’t done since an eagle plunged toward me with outstretched talons when I was a cub. I had to be far enough away by the time the water came raining down again. I stumbled but stayed on my feet, then threw myself to the warm, swampy ground and rolled, instinctively covering my head with my arms. Hot spray prickled my skin. I heard the water drum on the ground. Not far away. But far enough. I wouldn’t get scalded. It was just horribly wet.

“Don’t move, we’ll rescue you!” somebody shouted.

Don’t move? Was he soft in the head? In one fluid movement, I was up and running again.

But then, on the other side of the bare, yellow-gray geyser zone, an old woman blocked my path. She looked wider than she was tall, had long gray hair, and was wearing sneakers. I was about to run past her, but suddenly, she called out: “Hey there! What did you run off that way for?”

Nobody had asked me that until now, and her voice sounded intrigued, not angry. I glanced curiously at her, slowed down and stopped. Then I looked around at the rangers. They hadn’t given up the chase, but they were still a safe distance away. And they hadn’t drawn their weapons either, which was somewhat reassuring.

The woman smiled at me and instinctively I smiled back, even though my clothes were smeared with mud and I stank so badly of sulfur that I could hardly stand it.

“I just wanted to look at a . . . uh . . . phone,” I said shyly. “But then people got mad.”

“You can have a look at mine, if you like,” the woman said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. She pulled the cell phone out of her pocket and held it out to me. “The latest Android, with a few new apps. But you can’t get Wi-Fi everywhere around here.”

None of that meant a thing to me. But I didn’t care. Hesitantly, I tapped on the smooth surface—it wasn’t stone, but glass—and the colorful symbols moved, changed. It looked amazing. But before I could ask even one of the thousand questions lined up inside me, the old woman said: “Better be off now, boy.” When I turned around, I saw that the rangers had caught up. And now there were five of them. That made me a little nervous.

“Thank you,” I said, handing her the thing back, and beat it, as fast as I could in those lousy shoes. One fell off, as if it had no desire to come any farther through the mud with me. “Owl droppings!” I hissed, picking up the shoe and taking off the other, then ran on barefoot, the leather things in hand.

Humans were nice, I’d just made too many mistakes!

Even then, I knew that I’d be back.

Nobody was able to catch me. After a short detour via a stream where I had a thorough wash, I made it home to find a portion of fresh wapiti waiting for me. Fortunately, nobody asked any suspicious questions.

* * *

Nowadays, I know perfectly well what the rectangular things are called. I even have a smartphone myself, though I don’t use it very often. But today I was actually required to use it in class—if not exactly the way the manufacturers intended. It was a Handling Difficult Situations lesson, and a really tricky one at that. Mr. James Bridger was of the opinion that we needed to be able to use our phones in an emergency, even if we were in our second shapes.

“Imagine needing to call for help but you can’t because you’ve got no fingers,” he explained.

Easy peasy, exclaimed my best friend Holly, who was already in her pine squirrel form. Despite just having gotten another F in math, she was hopping cheerily about on her home screen like the professional tap dancer we’d recently seen on TV. Sadly, she was having a bit too much fun dancing, and the number she’d just typed was way longer than the one on the board.

“You’re about to call someone in China, Holly,” Mr. Bridger said with a frown. “Just don’t touch the green button or things could get expensive.”

I can’t do it, Lou moaned, although it wasn’t like her to complain. The prettiest wapiti in the world hadn’t even managed to dial one number correctly, and her long brown ears were twitching nervously.

Just keep trying, said Wing, one of the raven twins. It was easy for her to speak—she could use her long, pointed beak to peck at the symbols and numbers effortlessly. Ms. Clearwater had deliberately provided old cell phones, so it wouldn’t matter if they got damaged. My claws weren’t the tools for the job, so my screen now had quite a few nose prints on it. I’d managed to open the weather app, but that wouldn’t be much help in an emergency.

I kept trying, the frustration making me snarl, until Leroy, the skunk-walker spoke up: When you do that, Carag, I get scared. Is that really what you want!

No way! I quickly quit the snarling. A scared skunk would spray and nobody wanted that . . .

Coward! mocked alpha wolf Jeff, giving me a disdainful stare. He and the rest of his slightly reduced pack were busily poking at their screens with noses and paws.

Just don’t listen, Holly advised, climbing up onto my head and covering my ears with her tiny paws. Or trying to, anyway. She could only block up one at a time. Those bottom-snufflers better stick to howling at the moon, not being jerks to people!

Very true, I replied, doing my best to ignore Jeff and his pals.

Beside me, Brandon was trying his best to open up an app without destroying the entire screen. But as a bison he weighed almost a ton and his hooves were bigger than my human hands. If he stepped too heavily on his device, he’d be left with nothing more than a heap of splinters.

I know how to do this! he announced triumphantly, sticking out his rough, wet bison tongue and licking over the cell phone.

Mr. Bridger beamed and scratched his face with its three-day stubble. He was a coyote-walker and found it hard to keep his hair under control as a human. “You’re on the right track, Brandon, keep going!”

Lou and a few others immediately copied Brandon’s trick, and by the end of the lesson, almost everyone had managed at least to dial 911. Even me.

Finally, I said with relief, and Mr. Bridger’s eyes met mine. We both knew that I was the most likely to need this skill.

Foxes, Sausages, and an Unpleasant Visitor

Every time I remembered my life-and-death battle with the powerful puma-walker Andrew Milling, I shivered and the ridiculous little hairs on my human arms tried to stand on end. I’d declined to help him . . . and in response he’d tried to have me kidnapped, then sent his goons to abduct my sister Melody. He’d been trying to silence me, to stop me warning people about him. Involuntarily, I stroked the scars on the scruff of my neck, where he’d seized me with an almost deadly bite. I could still clearly feel them, just like the healed wounds on my arms and shoulders. Yes, with the help of my friends, I’d managed to defeat Milling . . . but it was a funny feeling not to know where he was now, or what he was planning. Somehow, I didn’t believe he’d given up—he was driven by his hatred for humans, and now I was sure he hated me just as much. I’d done the unthinkable—spilled his blood. Before that, I’d been an annoyance: his chosen crown prince, who’d refused to wear his crown. But now? He’d never forgive me for this defeat.

After class, when the bell rang for recess, Holly dashed off saying “I’m gonna get a glass of nut milk.”

Brandon was holding his smartphone at arm’s length, by the tips of his fingers. “I’d better go to the boys’ bathroom and wash the drool off this thing,” he said.

“I’ll wait here. See you later,” I replied, leaning against the firstfloor banisters, from where you could look out over the entrance lobby. But I suddenly realized that someone was coming up behind me. It turned out to be Theo, the caretaker and school driver. He rested his arms on the railing beside me. As usual, he was wearing a black roll-neck sweater and jeans spattered with paint and oil. He’d pushed up his sleeves and I got a good view of the tattoos all over his forearms.

“Heard anything from Milling lately? You know, since your fight on the mountain?” he asked. I couldn’t help remembering that until very recently, he’d been Milling’s spy in this school.

“Nothing,” I replied, with mixed emotions. “But I don’t know that that’s a good sign.”

“To be honest, I’d say not,” mused Theo. “Last time I was with his guys, just before I told them where they could stick it . . . I got the idea that Andrew was excited . . . Just after you left him, he’d gained a new ally, someone very special. A great step forward, apparently. Presumably a future deputy, second-in-command, or something.”

“Really?” I turned my head and stared at him. “To be what he wanted me to be? Did you hear any rumors about who it was?”

“No . . . but Andrew and the others often used to talk about Clearwater High around that time. Too often for it to be coincidence.”

I felt as though I’d eaten a lump of rotten venison. What did that mean for me? For all of us here at the school? “I guess there’s no point in you keeping an ear out now, is there?”

“Definitely not.” His furrowed face grimaced. “I’m out of there. And obviously I haven’t heard a thing from Andrew since.”

“Obviously.” I was now sure I could trust him. He could have betrayed us while we were rescuing Melody, during our battle on the mountain, but he hadn’t. He really had turned away from Milling and his pals.

“Just be careful, okay?” said Theo.

I nodded. I was allowed out of school without bodyguards again now, and I could go on study trips too. The North American Woodwalkers’ Council had given Milling a sharp rap on the knuckles over Melody’s kidnapping. But sadly, although the Council had two jails designed to look like ordinary private zoos and was meant to hold woodwalkers who’d committed serious crimes—after all, they’d have had little difficulty escaping from any human prison—Milling was too influential to have wound up in either of them.

Ms. Clearwater had at least managed to get a no-go zone set up around her high school though. That mangy mountain lion wasn’t allowed anywhere near it, or me, and neither were any of his associates. So it was all the more worrying that his plans seemed to be linked to the school in some way.

“Carag, c’mon, hurry up or we’ll be late!” Holly tugged me away by the sleeve. “Isn’t Animal Communication your favorite subject these days?”

“Er, yeah,” I mumbled, with a hurried good-bye to Theo—I was still shaken up by his news.

Animal Communication was new this term, and I considered it a very useful class. My last camping trip with the Ralstons, for instance, would’ve been way less stressful if I’d been able to speak a bit of Bear. Sadly, I didn’t seem to have much talent for languages, but that didn’t appear to concern Mr. Julian Goodfellow, our new teacher who was fresh from California, and who somehow managed to be strict yet kind at the same time. Almost the whole class liked him.

“May I have your attention please, ladies and gentlemen?” Mr. Goodfellow smiled cheerily at us. “Following on from Moose, I will now give you a brief introduction to the language of red foxes. True foxes, mind you, not fox-walkers, with whom we can easily communicate from mind to mind.”

Holly’s mouth twitched upward at the corners. I knew why: a fox could practically never catch a pine squirrel, and laughing at them from high out of reach was one of her favorite games. By contrast, Nimble’s nose quivered nervously. “Foxes? Do we have to?” murmured the rabbit-walker.

“Know your enemy!” whispered Nell, the mouse-walker sitting next to him. “I’ve met foxes in New York, they’re gross, especially when they . . .”

“Quiet, please!” Mr. Goodfellow tidied a strand of his neatly parted blond hair and took such a deep breath that his roundish belly was sucked in. Then he stretched out his chin, opened his mouth and barked out a high-pitched, hoarse “Hwaauh, hwaauh, hwaauh!” I stared in amazement. He was a grizzly-walker, but he spoke Fox with no trace of an accent!

“So, ladies and gentlemen, what did I just say?” Mr. Goodfellow looked around mischievously. Total silence. Dorian, the cat-walker, was lost in thought as he studied his manicured fingernails, Nell was fiddling with one of her many beaded braids, and Tikaani, who was an arctic wolf in her second shape, was staring darkly at our new teacher. Not that that signified much—she often looked like that.

Hesitantly, I raised my hand. We’d had a vixen for a neighbor in our old territory, and I’d picked up a little vocab. “You told your partner to get their butt home pronto, because it’s dinnertime?”

“Very good.” Mr. Goodfellow beamed at me and then turned back to the others. “Well, I hope the rest of you were paying attention last time! What’s Moose for ‘to be honest, I’ve had enough of you’? Jeff?”

Jeff was lounging in his chair, looking bored. “Dunno, and I don’t really care, either.” The rest of his pack were clearly impressed by this nonchalance—Cliff and Bo were glancing at him with admiration.

“I see. And I presume you don’t really care about your oral grade either?” Mr. Goodfellow jotted something down in his little black notebook. “Viola, will you give it a try?”

Viola, the goat-walker nodded with a shy smile. We waited eagerly. She shut her eyes a moment, then wailed “yoohoooo” followed by a dull “ugh-ugh.”

Mr. Goodfellow raised an eyebrow. “Nice try, Viola, but sadly you just told a bull moose to kindly eat his hoof. That is not the same thing and would probably get you into trouble.”

“I’ll try again.” Viola was persistent. This time she gave a loud, snorting hoot.

Our new teacher scratched his chin. “Hm, that sounded more like ‘would you wash my droppings for me?’ Pitch your voice a little higher.”

Somewhat abashed, Viola pitched her voice higher.

The teacher beamed. “Wonderful! That was great! Please practice that for next time. Okay, let’s go back to our new Fox vocabulary . . .”

However interesting I found the class, I couldn’t concentrate properly. I’d had good news as well as the unsettling stuff. Joy and excitement were bubbling up inside me like a mini-geyser. Mr. Bridger had promised to drive me north next weekend, to my real family’s new patch, a three-day journey away for a puma. I’d soon see my parents again! After two and a half years of missing them and my sister Mia terribly.

But I was a little scared too. I was sure my mother would be happy, but Mia had said my father still hadn’t gotten over me living mainly in my human form. How would he look at me when we met?

I could still hear our last conversation echoing in my head.

Why can’t we shape-shifters live as both, as humans and as pumas?

You have to choose one, Carag. Both isn’t possible.

And then the terrible fight when I decided to go to the humans and to live among them. I’d have so much to tell him when I saw him again. How much he meant to me. That I knew I could never be a human. That I . . .

“Carag? Kindly repeat what I was just explaining.”

I jumped. “Eh, what? Er, sorry, pardon, I should say.”

Mr. Goodfellow’s sky-blue eyes looked amused as he said: “Lou, could you tell our absent-minded friend here what we have just been discussing?”

Lou’s expression was apologetic as she caught my eye. She didn’t like being asked to lecture me, and that made my heart flood with warmth. “We were just discussing the role of body language in fox communication.”

“Oh, right, okay,” I babbled, hoping that nothing more would be expected of me. It would be just my luck if I’d been asked to make an idiot of myself in front of Lou and the class, crawling around on the floor to demonstrate some behavior or other.

But fortunately, Mr. Goodfellow left me alone after that. I spent the rest of the period wondering what to take my family when I visited them. What did the human world have to offer them? In the end I had a few flashes of inspiration. I was glad when the bell went again.

“That was sooo interesting,” Holly said. “I’ll have to ask Mr. Goodfellow how to say ‘get out of here, you mangy flea’ and ‘ha ha, can’t catch me’ in Fox.”

Brandon snorted and lobbed a corn kernel into his mouth, then crunched it loudly. “That rhymes—another few lines and you’ll have a whole poem to recite to the fox.”

“I’m sure he’d love that,” I said before dashing away to the kitchen. Sherri Malila, the Native American Clearwater High cook and nurse, always had a supply of delicious smoked sausages. They were small but super addictive. I planned to take my family a whole load of them. I’d have to pay her for them, of course, but I’d saved up some money from holiday jobs. You couldn’t get sausages like them in the mountains!

“Thirty?” Sherri’s mouth dropped open to reveal her powerful front teeth—she was a beaver-walker. “Are you expecting a famine?”

I rapidly explained why I wanted them, and she beamed from ear to ear. She nodded, waddled to her larder, and handed me a large, glorious-smelling paper bag. “Okay, here, these are all I have. That’ll be fifteen dollars. Have a nice time with your family, and don’t gorge yourselves.”

I smiled back. Not likely—the four of us had once polished off a whole mule deer in one night. I hurried back to my room to stash the sausages in my wardrobe before English and history with Mrs. Calloway.

Unfortunately, on my way I met Bo. He was the omega wolf—at the bottom of the pack—and as a human, he was small, with a sharp, pinched face. His nose twitched greedily as he sniffed the bag of sausages. “Ooh, what are those tasty things you’ve got there?”

I stopped. “None of your business!” I snapped back. One thing was certain, I couldn’t let him see where I hid my present . . . I’d have to wait until he’s gone.

Even without a watch, I knew that I was now very late for the next class. And Mrs. Calloway wouldn’t stand for lateness. She was a rattlesnake, and even in her human form, there was no messing with her. As a cub, I’d nearly stepped on a rattler once while I played, and my father only just whacked the snake away in time before it bit me.

I raced down the stairs to the ground floor and took the hallway toward the classrooms, nearly colliding with a thin man in a brown jacket. He had angular glasses with reddish-brown rims and was gripping a briefcase tightly. “Oh, sorry,” I said. I was about to continue running when I noticed two things. One, I’d never seen this guy before and I was pretty sure he didn’t belong here. And two, I couldn’t sense any hint that he was a shapeshifter. Owl droppings, he was a human! What if he wandered into Mr. Ellwood’s Metamorphosis classroom in the middle of a lesson? Or saw one of us in our second shape?

Trying to look as casual as if I’d been planning to do this all along, I headed for the blue button on the wall beside the red one for the fire alarm—the human alarm. I pressed the button and immediately an ultra-high note that only we could hear wailed out through the building.

An Alarming Morning

I could hear crashing from one classroom and a squeal from another. Must be a few people changing as fast as they could. An inquisitive face peered around a door, then hurriedly drew back.

“Could you tell me where to find the principal?” the stranger asked, straightening his glasses as he eyed me. He had a thin, humorless mouth and eyes the exact color of rotten wood.

“Um, I think she’s away on a lecture tour right now,” I said.

Yes, that was right, I remembered now—she was on the East Coast, speaking in schools there about eagles, while watching out for other shape-shifters.

The man frowned. “So who is standing in for her?”

“Mr. Ellwood is the deputy principal.” What did this guy want? I smelled danger, somehow, but I didn’t know why. An icy shiver ran down my spine. Could this be the very special ally that Milling had recruited? A human? No, no way—he hated humans!

“Well then, kindly take me to him.”

I waited patiently for a “please,” but it didn’t come. That didn’t fit with the ideas of “politeness” we’d learned in Human Studies. I was liking the man less and less.

“What are you waiting for?” the man snapped, looking at his watch. “I don’t have much time.”

I longed to snarl at him, but all I said was: “Come this way, sir.”

I needn’t have bothered though—at that moment, a classroom door flew open and Mr. Isidore Ellwood—Lou’s father and our Metamorphosis teacher—came shooting out, like a groundhog out of its burrow.

“What’s going on here?” he boomed irritably. “Carag, you . . .” Then he saw our visitor and immediately adopted a friendlier tone. “Oh, hello. Welcome to Clearwater High. Can I help you?”

I was clearly no longer needed here, and was already missing class, but I stayed and listened. I could hardly believe my ears.

“My name is Crump,” said the stranger curtly. “I am Holly Lewis’s new guardian.”

In my days in the mountains, I wouldn’t have had a clue what that meant, but now I knew more than I ever wanted to about state provision for orphaned children and teenagers.

“In my opinion, it is high time I started to take care of her,” the man declared. “It seems to me that she has been seriously neglected here.”

I stared at him in surprise. I’d known that Holly had no parents—they had been killed by a predator while out and about as squirrels—and that she had never been adopted, so she had nowhere to go home on weekends. But I’d had no idea that there was someone responsible for looking after her. She’d never mentioned it, anyway.

For a moment, Mr. Ellwood looked just as astonished as me. But he narrowed his eyes and said, “Carag, could you fetch Holly out of class please? I think we’re going to need her. Bring her to my office.”

I nodded silently.

Many pairs of eyes turned toward me as I entered the classroom late—and all Juanita’s eight spider eyes were staring too, from her usual place high up in a corner of the room. Mrs. Calloway was at the board, wearing an elegant, silvery-blue dress. When I made no move toward my place next to Leroy, she gave me an enquiring look. “Why did the alarm go off? Do you know anything about it, Carag?”

“A visitor turned up, a human,” I explained hurriedly. “He’s with Mr. Ellwood at the moment . . . I’m supposed to take Holly to them.”

Holly had been jittering around on her chair beside Wing, and now she jumped up, beaming. “Seriously? A visitor? For me? It’s about time!”

It was like a stab in the heart. “Uh, yes, but . . .” I began, holding the door for Holly to storm out. Her wild, auburn hair billowed in the draft of air.

We ran to the deputy principal’s office. “What d’you mean, ‘but’?” asked Holly. “Who is he? Is it someone who wants to adopt me? Or someone from the newspaper? Or . . .”

“Why from the newspaper?” I asked. “You have to do something amazing first before you get in the newspaper.”

“Yeah, that’s true.” Holly scratched her head and looked worried. “He’s not from the police, is he?”

I laughed, despite my mood. Holly had light fingers and a bad habit of picking all kinds of stuff from people’s pockets. “No, no, don’t worry. You haven’t stolen anything lately, have you? This guy is your new guardian.”

“Oh, right.” Holly’s steps slowed. “My old guardian was a really good nut. He sent a check every month for school fees and pocket money, and apart from that, he didn’t get involved. I hope the new one’s the same.”

We’d reached the office. I stopped, my heart hammering. “Good luck,” I said, holding the door for Holly.

“Is it that bad?” She looked anxiously at me.

“Ah, there you are, young lady—sit down!” Mr. Ellwood’s voice rang out. A moment later, the door was shut in my face.

They were bound to be waiting for me in class. But my feet stuck to the floor like I’d stepped in honey. They just wouldn’t move. Of course, I could hear everything that was said, despite the closed door. Even as a human, my ears were mighty sharp.

“So, Mr. Ellwood, since my predecessor retired and moved to Florida, I have taken on this girl’s case . . .”

“Hey, I’m no case!”

“. . . and after viewing the files, I am horrified by the utter lack of progress that Miss Lewis is making. All her recent reports are catastrophic and her grades make me doubt that she is getting an adequate education here . . .”

Holly interrupted, “But . . . I’m just no good at schoolwork. It’s all because of that crappy orphanage where nobody ever . . .”

“Holly! Watch your language and stop interrupting!”

“Okay, okay, fine. I just wanted to say that in the orphanage, nobody ever cared whether I learned anything or not.”

“But you have been here six months now—if you were getting decent teaching, your grades would undoubtedly have . . .”

 “Very well, Mr. Crump. What do you suggest?” Ellwood’s voice was as dry as withered leaves.

Crump again, sounding annoyed: “Holly, stop rocking that chair, you’ll go over backward any minute!”

I couldn’t help smiling. No, she wouldn’t—she had perfect balance. But the smile faded as Crump continued.

“I have already made enquiries at a highly regarded boarding school on the East Coast, to see if they have a place for Miss Lewis. Until then, she will transfer to the public middle school here and be given remedial tuition. There is also highly effective medication available for hyperactivity these days, and it seems to me that that would also be appropriate for her.”

My belly felt loaded with stones. Medication? Holly? And how could she cope at a normal school where nobody knew how to relate to woodwalkers? And the East Coast was over a thousand miles away! If she went to that other school, we’d never see her again.