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  “He’s gonna do it,” said Jake.

  Then, suddenly, he scampered forward running on that wire. I could tell he wanted to make it through all at once.

  He made a mistake, however. Have you ever seen a monkey run? They often run with their tails high in the air. His tail reached too high and touched the coils. A brilliant purple spark jumped down his tail. All his fur stood on end and he gave a surprised squeak. He tumbled off and fell down to the mats.

  The buzzer sounded. He was out.

  We all craned our necks. We saw him jump up and run out of the course like his tail was on fire, even though it was only just smoking slightly. A round of hooting laughter mixed with applause went up from the entire room. Now, all eyes turn back the Beth. The surprising thing was that she managed to cross the dominoes at all. But she did it, proving her step really was light, as I had noticed. Everyone from both teams was impressed. Generally speaking, human bodies are not as good as animal bodies when it came to matters of speed and balance. But Beth made it, and with a good deal of straining managed to open the heavy door on the far side. One more point clicked up for blue on the scoreboard.

  But she was no match for the wire and the Tesla coil. She didn’t make it to the coil itself. She couldn’t even hold herself up on the cable. She just let herself fall, and we all clapped. It had been a great effort. She had taken it slow, and it made it further than anyone else on our team.

  I looked around and was a bit surprised to see that only Sarah and I were left.

  “Okay,” said Sarah. “Now it’s my turn.”

  I shook my head. “No, I’m going next.”

  “What?!”

  “We don’t know what is at the far end, after the coil,” I explained. “It could be another door. You can’t open a door as a five-ounce bird.”

  Sarah shook her head. “You’re nuts,” she said. “But you’re in charge.”

  I didn’t even bother with the tent. I just went to bottom of the beam and waited for the horn to sound.

  Chapter Twenty

  Surprises

  When Danny came out of the tent, it was my turn to be surprised. He was just his normal self. It wasn’t a dog all. There was no hint of the Rottweiler he could become. His teeth weren’t even long, curved fangs. He often grew just the fangs so he would look like a vampire.

  As we crouched down, I wondered if Beth’s performance in human form had impressed him. I certainly knew that human form was better than dog form to get across that tire swing and that high wire act through the Tesla coil.

  Urdo walked out to stand between us. She had her hands on her hips, and she turned her head to look at each of us. We looked intense, we wanted to win. She gave one quiet nod of approval.

  The horn sounded and the race was on.

  I scrambled up the balance beam as quickly as I could. I was surprised to feel how slick the surface was. I wondered how some of the contestants had ever made it up in the first place. The rubber soles of my sneakers made it relatively easy. Danny and I made it to the top and into the next room.

  “Two points, red team.”

  I gritted my teeth, it had been a photo finish, but I guess Danny had been ahead as far as Urdo was concerned. We jumped for the tire swing at about the same moment.

  Instead of climbing into the central hole of the tire, I got up on top of it and stood up on it. After a few swings, I took the leap and landed on my knees on the far ledge. I was ahead of Danny this time. I scrambled into the tunnel.

  “Two points, blue team.”

  In the room with the holes I hesitated chewing my lip. I took a few tentative steps forward trying to remember where I had seen people step before, where it was safe. I took a few more steps, and then Danny burst out of the tunnel and ran in a blur of speed and leapt for the far side. My jaw dropped open, because Danny was a dog.

  A great booing erupted for my team.

  “Cheater!”

  Urdo raised her hand for quiet. “The tunnel was dark. No one saw him change. No rules broken. Two points, red team.”

  There were more boos from my side, but they were subsiding.

  Deciding not to fall further behind, I took a risk and ran along some narrow ridges between the open holes. I made it without finding any new ones, mostly by luck. I came out of the next tunnel into the room with the dominoes. A great wave of new jeering had erupted.

  “He did it again!” came a cry from somewhere, I think it was Sarah.

  Indeed, Danny was human again. He just used his dog form to get across that one obstacle faster than I could.

  I tried to put all of this out of my mind and focused on getting across those darned dominoes.

  I barely made it. Behind me, dominoes crashed and fell. Somehow, skipping from one of the next, I managed to get across. Danny made it too, he was good, I had to give him that. He beat me, mostly because he had had a head start from the previous room.

  Suddenly, I was aware of a funny sensation. I felt feverish. My mother had always warned me that I would get heatstroke one day, whatever that was. I wondered, as I felt a rush of heat going through my body, if this was the moment my mother had always predicted.

  Tired now, breathing hard, sweating, I crawled into yet another cloth tunnel. It was dark inside, and it seemed even hotter. It seemed close, like the tunnel itself was shrinking around me. I peeled off my shirt, tearing it in the process. Then I heaved myself up and kept crawling.

  Everyone gasped as I entered the next room and grabbed hold of the black cable running through the shimmering Tesla coil.

  “He’s changed!” someone cried.

  “I don’t believe it!”

  I looked over at Danny to see if he had figured out a new way to bend the rules. But I saw nothing unexpected. He was in his normal human form. He had taken hold of the cable and wrapped himself around it and was hanging underneath it. He was shimmying through the coil.

  I did the same, reaching out my paws and grabbing the cable. I shimmied my body out toward the coils. Somehow, it still didn’t register in my mind…

  “What is he?”

  “I don’t know, but he still has his pants on.”

  I almost lost my grip. I looked at my paws. Yes, I had paws now.

  They were furry on the back, but with palms and claws. I realized I had actually changed! I couldn’t believe it! I didn’t know right away exactly what I was, but clearly it was some kind of mammal. That in itself was a relief. Just having changed into anything was a relief. What a time for it to happen, too.

  Whatever I was, it certainly made navigating that wire several times easier than it would’ve been with my normal hands and feet. My tail helped too. Yes, I had a tail. Looking back down my body and seeing it, I knew the truth. It was long, and it was pink, and it was snakelike. It tapered to a point at the end.

  I was a mouse. Or maybe a rat. Maybe-I hoped not, even as I thought of it-I was a possum.

  Danny had no chance of beating me at that point. Rodents are good at climbing along wires. Andy could have beaten me, but he had gotten his tail zapped. At that thought, I made an effort to control my tail and wrapped it around the cable behind me so the same thing wouldn’t happen to me. Then I got down to the business of the race again.

  The crowd was making a lot of noise now, more than any of us had made up until that point. They were cheering, and jeering, whistling and just plain screaming.

  I had almost made it across when I looked over at Danny to see how he was doing. In the same moment, he looked across at me, probably to see what all the hullabaloo was about. That was a mistake for him. Because when he saw me, and my new form, he slipped. One of his legs dipped down and his ankle touched the coils. There was a flash and a buzzing sound.

  Danny made a strange whooping sound and fell.

  The crowd was going wild, but I ignored them. Paw over paw, I made my way to the finish. I ignored the crackling electricity that made my new 2 inch thick fur stand on end all over my body. I ignored the cheers
and jeers. I focused on crawling across that wire.

  I made it. At the far end, I pushed open the final door. It was heavy. Sarah could not have made it first. I propped it open and crawled out.

  “Two points, blue team. Entire course finished. Double-score, blue team.”

  I stretched out, panting. The kids had all gone wild, either cheering or booing. I was very tired, and my only thought was that my new whiskers tickled my face abominably. I wriggled my face and rubbed at my nose-I guess I should call it a snout-with my paws. My whiskers felt like pencils coming out of my face. Those long, white shoots of coarse hair, as thick as straws, were going to take some getting used to.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Victory

  Exactly as I’d hoped, Sarah flew the rest of the race as our finisher and put us ahead on points. We won with a comfortable lead, 38 to 32. After the congratulatory back-claps and huzzahs were finished, things quieted down and I went to find Beth.

  “Beth?” I asked, looking at my feet, which were paws now. “What am I? A mouse?”

  Beth tilted her head to one side. “Maybe, Connor,” she said, and I thought I heard a waver in her voice. “I think you’re at least half-mouse.”

  Jake came up. “You really had a plan,” he said, shaking his head. “I’d thought that was all just bluff. What plan, a surprise change in the middle of the course, breaking all the rules just like Danny did.”

  I smiled back at him. Maybe I should have told him that he’d been closer to the truth with his first thought, that I’d gotten lucky. But why pop his bubble? I rarely got a chance like this. In fact, I’d never had a chance for glory like this.

  “What are you exactly?” Jake asked, bemusedly. “Long-tail, whiskers, but you don’t look entirely transformed. There is still some human left in those paws with opposable thumbs. And in your eyes. Definitely a rodent, but which one?”

  “I’m going with mouse,” I said.

  Jake nodded. “Smart move. No one likes a… You know.”

  I knew. Rat. I winced at just the thought of it. I looked back at Beth. She wasn’t looking at me anymore. She was looking off toward the obstacle course. A sudden pang of worry hit me. What if Beth didn’t like me anymore? What if Beth couldn’t get over my change?

  I tried to urge my body to change back. I shook myself, then closed my eyes and concentrated. Nothing seemed to happen. I wasn’t in control of the change yet. Some people never learned to control it and changed at the oddest times, such as when they were asleep or when the moon was full in the sky. Some of us became more animal than human and couldn’t even live with normal people. I hoped for my sake I wasn’t going to grow up to become one of the wild ones.

  I opened my eyes again and caught Beth staring at the long claws that curved over the ends of each of my toes. She looked away quickly and rubbed her face. I licked my teeth. My teeth were strangely sharp and my tongue was raspy, long and pink. She was definitely having a hard time with this. How could I blame her?

  “Line up!” came the command from Urdo. It was time for the final team to team handshake. It was a bit awkward to walk on my hind legs in my rodent body, but I forced myself to do it. I wanted to look as human as possible.

  As we went through the line, the kids on the other team whispered things to me as they slapped my hand.

  “Good move,” said one.

  “Congrats on the change,” said another, “It was about time.”

  Danny came up and smiled at me. He still had a Rottweiler’s fangs. “All you did was cheat worse than I did. I should have known you’d be a rat.”

  “Sniffed any good butts lately?” I muttered back to him.

  Thomas came next. “Dogs eat rats, you know,” he said.

  “I heard your parents had you fixed,” I said to him. “That’s probably why you tanked back there on the course.”

  I was pleased to note that both of them had stopped grinning after talking to me. A hand pushed me lightly from behind. It was Beth. “Did you have to go and make it worse? I swear, Connor, if you see a smoking pile of wood you like to throw gasoline on it.”

  I pouted. At least, I think that’s what my face did. What does a pouting rodent look like? I’d have to look in a mirror later to find out. Secretly, I was pleased that Beth was still talking to me. Maybe she could get over this little matter of my smelling like a hamster cage. I thought about what she said as we lined up back at the edge of the tumbling mats. She was right of course, my mouth and my tricks were fun, but they always got me into trouble.

  What had Urdo called me? The trickster. Born under the Sign of the Thief. Well, I’d never stolen anything, but I guess turning into a rodent shouldn’t have been a surprise.

  As she walked along, inspecting us, Urdo paused in front of Danny, and then me. She gave us each an appraising up-down look. She seemed pleased. I thought to myself that she would soon be presenting us to Vater. As the school principal, I supposed our performance would reflect upon her.

  “The purpose of the Hussades is to train you for your future,” she said seriously. She always said everything seriously. “Some of you have made complaints concerning the bending of certain rules. Imaginative thinking is a survival skill. It was always been rewarded in this game-and in life.”

  It was in the bathroom that I finally changed back. Maybe it was because it was a private place. Or maybe it was because I really didn’t want to relieve myself as a giant rodent. That was just too much for my first day out.

  When I came out of the restroom Jake grinned at me. He had lost his toad form right after the race. He looked as relieved as I felt.

  “You did it buddy, you’re no mundane, everyone knows that now.”

  “And everyone’s happy except for Beth.”

  Jake raised his eyebrows at me. “Ahh,” he said. “So that’s how it is.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing. I hope it works out.”

  I felt my face turn a shade redder, but for once kept quiet. I decided to change the subject. “Can you believe we won?”

  “Frankly, I almost can’t. My folks will be very happy. I need to thank you and Beth for helping me out. I don’t feel so bad about being a toad now. I can work with it.”

  I grinned at him. “That’s really Beth’s doing. She’s great, isn’t she?”

  He nodded. “I really hope she sticks with us. She’s great for the team. If she can get over our crazy world and Sarah can get over the competition, we will all be better off to have her.”

  “But if she’s a mundane…” I worried. I told him about Urdo and our little trip through the Forever Room and across the roof.

  “So that’s why she made you team captain!” said Jake. He gave a long low humming sound. “She wanted to see what you could do.”

  “I don’t want to see Beth kicked out of our town.”

  “She’s not going anywhere,” said Jake confidently. “There is something special about that girl. Just like Urdo said about both of you.”

  “Speaking about Urdo, she’s quite a mystery,” I said.

  “She sure is.”

  “I’ve been thinking about the Forever Room and the things we saw up there. Any chance you would like to check them out?”

  He eyed me with a sidelong glance. Finally he sighed. “I swear if you weren’t my friend I would lead a very boring life.”

  I grinned at him. “Okay. We go on recon tonight after lights out.”

  Jake shook his head, but I knew he would come.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Whispers

  The worst everyday part of a kid’s life is knowing people are talking about you. Whispering. You can’t hear what they are saying, but you know it can’t be good. Why else would they whisper? You look at them and they just stop talking and stare back for a moment, or look away, avoiding your eyes.

  I’d finally changed and everyone had to talk about it. I’d won the Hussades match my first time out as a team captain and everyone had to talk a
bout that, too. Then there was the little matter of whether my change mid-course was a cheat or not. I think if Danny hadn’t done it before I did, I would forever be called a cheat. But how could they say that now, after Danny had bent the rules first?

  “Don’t let it get to you,” said Sarah in my ear. “You’ve surprised them. They had you down as a loser and now you look like a winner and they are having a hard time swallowing that.”

  She smiled at me. It seemed to me that since I’d changed, since I’d shown I had a power, she was friendlier than ever. I wondered if that meant she felt I was okay now, that I wasn’t someone to feel sorry for. I shook my head. I had to stop thinking all these bad thoughts.

  I smiled back at Sarah. “Thanks for all your help today, Sarah. You scored the winning run.”

  She shook her head. “You opened that last door. You had the plan, you were the leader. And your plan worked.”

  My smile faded just slightly, but I didn’t think she noticed. My plan had been to tell them I had a plan so they had something to believe in. I think it worked, that part at least. They had all done their best. Perhaps, if they hadn’t believed in me they would have just given up and despite my best efforts we would have lost anyway.

  After dinner we were sent to the dormitory wing of the mansion, three floors of small bedrooms and narrow corridors. I’d half-expected to meet Vater that night at dinner, but he didn’t show up. They had the big throne-like carved oak chair at the far end of the highest table set up for him, but it had remained empty all evening. They even brought out the birthday cake, just as they did every year, and set it before the empty chair. This whole thing set me to thinking. I had so many questions I longed to ask, but somehow you knew you weren’t supposed to ask questions about Vater.

  “Sarah?” I asked her in a low voice that was almost a whisper. “Have you ever seen a picture of Vater?”

  “You know I haven’t,” she said, blinking. She looked surprised at this sudden turn of conversation.