Evening came, and with it the cool and the dusk. The sandspit crawled in the evening wind, granules moving in rolling rivulets, making new ripples as they slid away from what lay beneath. Something was being uncovered here beside the river. Several somethings.
One had wings. One had webbed feet. Both were man-sized, with heads slightly larger than one might expect. One was sleek and furred; the other had feathers. Both of them slept.
One shape stretched and turned, half unfurling a wing. One moved a foot, stretching long-nailed toes apart, revealing the webbing between them.
An eye at the end of its stalk came back down the river, peering, peering, back and forth, back and forth, look-look, listen-listen! It stopped dead in the water. Afar, Great Crawler, Lord God Orimar’s monitor picked up the image, compared it to acceptable images, and screamed anomaly. The eye went closer to shore, raising itself higher on its stem. What it saw was true. There were anomalous beings upon the sandspit. The monitor compared the images to others it found in Files. Here was a bird, a not-bird, an angel maybe, a huge feathered something resting on the sand, a gylph. And there, there beside the bird was an otter, maybe an otter, maybe something else, a seal, perhaps (Files refers to ancient catalogs of beasts, looking for the right one). The eye wasn’t sure, except that they lived. Their chests moved up and down. They breathed.
They had no business there. Not the otter-seal, not the angel-gylph.
The eye pulsed a scream for Great Crawler, Lord God Breaze. The scream was picked up by Chimi-ahm, Great God Clore, who sent eyes of his own to see. Lord God Subble Clore looked and did not believe, saw and could not convince himself it was real. These beings were a trick. A delusion. Somebody feeding false images down the line toward him. Somebody being stupid.
The beings opened their eyes. They stared into the little sensors hovering over the water without seeing them, conscious of something dreadfully different, perhaps wrong.
Afar, Legless God Orimar Breaze howled rage and resentment at this nonsense. There were only two classes of beings: adorers or persecutors. Someone, probably Clore (who else would be as hostile?), was setting a trap for him! He made circumferential accusations and received tangential denials. He confronted and was confronted in return. He shouted. (He believed he shouted, he was convinced he shouted, though those he shouted at were unaware of it. How does a circuit shout? How does a pattern convey fury?)
“No,” Bland replied from some distant node. “No, Breaze. All imagination. It’s in your created world, no doubt, a dream.”
“No,” transmitted Thob from a node more distant yet. She believed Breaze was lying, but she chose to pretend to take the matter seriously. “Something you remember from some old mythology, Breaze. Why would I waste time manufacturing angels.”
They were playing games with him, Breaze thought. Perhaps they had even arranged the escape of the prisoners! Perhaps they were plotting against him!
But in the node near the Deep, Clore summoned all his powers and made certain demands upon the network, certain demands upon the great factory in the Core. The very presence of these anomalous creatures demanded violent and definitive response. They had intruded upon his world, and he would kill them. He would kill the former captives first. Then he would find the other escapees and kill them too. Also, and most particularly, he looked forward to the long slow killing of the two men who had stolen the prisoners, during which he would find out if Breaze and Bland and Thob had put them up to it!
Furry self tried to move his eyes without moving any of the rest of him. This was not himself, not his own self, soft skin, tender hide, throbbing jointure, thub-a-thub of heart, huff of lungs, not any of that, something other than, else. This was dream time, asleep time, but without sleep’s certainty and ease. Oh, no, this was wakening and he was afraid to look.
“What are you?” asked a voice, Nela’s voice.
His head turned of itself toward the voice (he hadn’t willed it to move at all) and saw a feathered creature there, not Nela, even though the voice had been Nela’s voice. Why then was Nela’s face atop this being? This bird-type being, this winged thing, fluffed and sleek with feathers? Why Nela’s face scanning its feathered arms and legs, Nela’s face weeping, mouth stretched wide in a rictus of some unanticipated feeling. Joy? Probably not.
“Bertran!” she cried, and the sound was unmistakably terror.
He didn’t tell himself to move, and yet there he was leaping up to take her beneath his left arm where she belonged, where she lived, where she had always been, she half crouching, trying to get into her accustomed position, all the time crying, “Bertran, Bertran,” as though he were far away, not here beside her. “Bertran,” she cried again, as one bereft. “Hold me!” Even as she cried for him to hold her, she pushed the other thing away, tried to fight the furry thing off, to thrust this stranger away, to escape from it.
He held her, though he was as terrified as she, at her appearance, at her violence, at his own being lost in this strange skin, inside this strange body. He shuddered in a spasm of terror, and she broke away to fall huddled on the ground, screaming as though this separation were some new violation.
She crouched nearby, her eyes shut, panting an echo of his own heaving breath, making similar panicky noises.
“Nela,” he shouted in near hysteria, trying to control himself. “You … we’re changed, that’s all. We’ve been changed.” He shut his eyes tightly, not to see her, not to see himself. If he could not see, it was less dreadful!
“Change me back!” she screamed. “Change me back!”
“You hated that box,” he yelled, eyes still
