Aela Darkwood's Arc

Chapter 17 of 22

Morning came slow through the canopy. Aela sat by the cold fire pit and pulled her shirt closed. It was torn at the seam where she had shifted last night without thinking. Her boots were somewhere in the ferns. Her pack was open beside her, half its contents spilled from the run. Every time she'd changed shape in the last two days, she'd left clothes on the ground behind her. "This can't keep happening," Aela said. "We had to double back twice yesterday just for my coat." Kalen crouched by the pit and stirred the ash to see if any coal still lived. "No. It can't." Lyra came out of the trees with an armful of deadwood. She dropped it and sat cross-legged in the dirt. "Then we teach you." "Teach me what." "To bring your clothes through the shift." Lyra pulled up her sleeve and tapped the swirling mark on her palm. "It's not a spell. It's a habit. You hold the cloth in your mind the way you hold your bones." Kalen stood and shrugged out of his jacket, then put it back on. "Watch." He shifted. Gray fur, low shoulders, the jacket gone. He shifted back. The jacket was on him again, buttoned the same way. Aela stared. "You never showed me that." "You had bigger problems." Lyra pointed at Aela's shirt. "Try. Small first. Just the shirt. Feel the weave against your skin. Don't let go of it when the rest goes." Aela closed her eyes. She found the shape of her wolf under her ribs. She reached for it, then reached for the shirt too, the rough cotton at her collar, the loose thread at the cuff. She shifted. The shirt hit the dirt. She shifted back and picked it up. "No." "Again," Kalen said. She tried four more times. Twice the shirt stayed. Both times her jeans didn't. Lyra didn't laugh. She just kept saying the same thing. Hold it. Hold all of it. It's yours. On the seventh try, Aela stopped thinking about the cloth as separate. She thought of herself dressed. That was the shape. Shirt, jeans, boots, all of it, the body she walked around in. She shifted. The wolf stood on four feet in the ferns. No pile of clothes. She shifted back. Everything was on her. Even the boots, laced. "There," Lyra said. Aela sat down hard. Her hands shook a little. "That's it. That's how you live like this." "That's how," Kalen said. Lyra leaned back against a log. "So. No hunter tonight. No witch at the door. What do we do now?" Kalen looked at Aela. "South. The witch is still out there. But we don't have to run today." "Then we plan," Aela said. "Where we sleep. What we eat. How we find her before she finds us." Lyra nodded once. "Good. First thing that's felt like a plan in weeks."