Changer (Athanor) (4 page)

Rebecca
>> We don’t pay very high taxes either!!!  We can handle what we pay and if we’re to own property we must be in human databases.

Demetrios
>> True.  But what about our dues to the King?  What are those if not taxes??  An extra tax.

Rebecca
>> Bronson says that the King’s help in securing our land is worth years of dues.

Demetrios
>> Still… There’s more to life than having good hideouts.  What about being able to experience the joys of life?  I miss beaches and moonlit glades.  

Rebecca
>> Don’t you have a glade at your place?

Demetrios
>> Sure, but one patch of greenery gets old after a while.  I long for the freedom of the world.  Anyhow, fauns are cute, not monstrous like dragons.

Rebecca
>> Or sasquatches???  Don’t fool yourself.  Fauns look like medieval depictions of the devil, at least some people think so.

Demetrios
>>  You’ve got a point.  Sorry.

Rebecca
>> Do you really think the Moderator can give us that freedom?

Demetrios
>> He says the human world is ready to accept us—more than that—it yearns for us.  I agree.

Rebecca
>> I wish I was so certain…

When evening comes, the Changer uses the waning light to survey his haul.  Pawing through, sorting and counting, he is impressed with the value of what he has collected.

In cash, there is something in the neighborhood of a thousand dollars—mostly in one- and five-dollar bills, although there are bills of larger denominations.  There are several fifties with sequential serial numbers.  These, he remembers, came from a wallet he found dragged by the current in a narrow mountain stream.  He had flown the wallet to a postal drop and left it, but had kept the money for his troubles.

In addition to the cash there is almost a hundred dollars in American coins and a smattering of foreign currency (mostly Mexican, although there is some German and British).  He also possesses fifteen rings, numerous single earrings, five necklaces, and about a dozen bracelets.  Since he has a good deal of cash, he decides to leave the jewelry.  Some of it is merely costume jewelry, but he has lived long enough to see the trash of one age become the valued antiques of another.

Finally, there is the pure junk, including large quantities of broken glass and countless twists of scrap metal.  Much of the latter is chrome from automobiles, but there is also copper, aluminum, steel, and brass.  He turns an automobile antenna over with his paw, recalling the day his raven self had proudly ripped it from an elderly auto.

Some of the broken glass is far lovelier than the jewelry.  Teal green, ruby red, various shades of blue, and delicate lavender, it recalls to him his mate of several seasons, a she-raven who enjoyed foraging for treasures in the ruins of a burned house that was at the heart of their nesting grounds.  He had kept much of the glass out of memory of her, and he does not discard it now for the same reason.

The money makes his current task easier, but it does not solve all his problems.  Even with something like a thousand dollars in his possession, he cannot stroll stark naked onto the Martinez ranch and expect to be spoken to man to man.  No, first he will need clothing, but without clothing he cannot enter an establishment to purchase clothing.  Without much regret, he decides that first order of the night (after he has fed his daughter) is to steal something to wear.

Stealing does not bother the Changer overmuch.  As he sees it, humans take property too seriously and life too lightly.  Therefore, after he has introduced the girl pup to some of the joys of mousing, he shifts into owl form and goes seeking human attire.

He has never paid a great deal of attention to human fashions, but memories from his coyote years reassure him that blue jeans and a button-down shirt are still considered reasonable menswear.  Underclothing would be nice but can wait until he can carry it.

Choosing a course that will carry him away from the Martinez ranch, he comes across a trailer court.  Most of the folks who reside in this place apparently economize by hanging their laundry out to dry.  In the darkness, the owl examines each of the clotheslines.  From a particularly overloaded line, he takes a long-sleeved Western shirt and a pair of jeans.

Immediately, he realizes that he has chosen poorly.  The shirt is light, but he will not be able to carry the jeans any distance.  Dropping these on the ground with a silent apology to their owner, he takes a pair of khaki shorts and a tee shirt.  These he can lift, although he will need to rest frequently.

As he wings away, the Changer considers what any who glimpses him might think.  Had he possessed shoulders at that moment, he would have shrugged.  Everyone in the Southwest knows that witches can turn themselves into owls.  A sighting of an owl carrying off a shirt and a pair of shorts would add to local legend, nothing more.  Certainly there would be nothing to indicate that once again the Changer walks among humankind.

Stowing the stolen clothing in an isolated copse at the edge of sprawling pasture many miles from the Martinez ranch, he hunts mice and makes his plans for the morrow.  Then he returns to his daughter and sleeps as a coyote beneath the juniper bush.

In the morning, daughter fed and cautioned not to stray too far afield, the Changer assumes the form of a particularly magnificent raven.  His beak is large, horny, and slightly curved.  His plumage is black, but the light reveals highlights of green, blue, and even purple.  With a wingspan in the area of four feet, an elegant wedge-shaped tail, and a bright eye, the raven knows himself the king of birds, bowing not even to the eagle or the hawk.

Pleased, the Changer grasps his stash of bills in one clawed foot and launches into the sky, croaking farewell to his coyote daughter.  A few flaps of his great, dark wings and he is en route to his hidden clothing and closer to the vengeance his inhuman heart craves.

The e-mail message is anonymous: “You’re missing a story both sensational and true!  Does the name Arthur Pendragon mean anything to you?  He’s living right here in Albuquerque, reigning in secret for all to see.”

Chris Kristopher, junior reporter for the
Albuquerque Journal
, runs a hand through his brown hair.  He is about to delete the message when he glimpses another line farther down the screen: “If you don’t believe me, it’s your great mistake.  Look up Pendragon Productions!  That’s all it’ll take.”

Chris sets a search program running and is rewarded when a webpage takes shape on his screen.  Even in a commercial art form dominated by amateurs, this page is badly designed. Blurry photos are captioned in glaring turquoise.  The text is presented in solid blocks of tiny print almost impossible to read.  Hot links to other pages proliferate.

The business of Pendragon Productions is listed as “outreach and support.”  Arthur Pendragon is president, Edward Zagano vice president, Vera Tso secretary and treasurer.  Each hot link connects to information about various government projects, some local, some statewide.

Despite his initial reluctance, learning that there really is someone calling himself Arthur Pendragon trying, however ineffectually, to influence public opinion, awakens Chris’s journalistic fervor. He composes an e-mail message of his own.

“Bill: Check out a business called Pendragon Productions…”

2 

Go where he will, the wise man is at home,
His hearth the earth—his hall the azure dome.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

T
he Changer does not put particular care into crafting his human form, since he does not plan to use it more than this once.  Instead, after studying the stolen clothing, he draws a basic human male design from his repertoire, alters it by adding a few inches of height and a bit of breadth to the chest, and dresses himself in his pilfered attire.

No longer a wild creature, the Changer stands as a young man with medium-length sandy blond hair and light blue eyes.  His complexion is fair, touched with freckles.  About his eyes are faint lines as if from squinting at the sun.  Since he could not steal shoes, the Changer compromises by toughening his feet.  Placing his money in his pocket, he walks to the highway.

As he trudges roughly north, he tries to thumb a ride from the passing vehicles.  Either the thumb-out gesture has gone out of style since last he tried this, or humans have grown more cautious, but he walks three miles before a truck slows.

After his ride drops him off in Mountainair, the Changer locates a general store.  There he purchases a pair of sneakers, socks, a comb, jeans, a shirt, underclothing, a roll of tape, and an inexpensive wallet.  The clerk is quite willing to throw in a medium-sized cardboard carton and a stack of old newspapers.  Mountainair is not a large town, but it does include a garage alongside of which is a used-car lot.

Dickering is not his favorite sport, but he has millennia of practice, so without exhausting quite all of his money, he purchases an elderly sedan.

Now he has clothing, money, and transportation.  He will speak with Martinez, gather up his daughter, and head into Albuquerque.  He wonders what the orphan coyote will think of the city, wishes that he could explain more clearly what is happening.  He shrugs.  One problem at a time.

He only stalls the car three times before he feels confident driving his purchase.  After filling the gas tank, he heads back south toward the Martinez ranch.  As the little sedan carries him effortlessly across lands he has traversed more laboriously on wings or pads, he reflects that, whatever else they have done, humans have mastered the art of transportation.  The cost, needless to say, is isolation from their world.