Changelings, it seemed, were their own entertainment. Interspersed with the feasting and dancing, the revellers joined in all sorts of games. Shrieks of laughter were coming from a circle where a precarious sculpture of counter-balanced monkeys was forming, each new joiner climbing over the heads and limbs of the others to form the next row. From the numerous spectators nursing small hurts, Ilsa could guess this wasn’t the first attempt.
At the visibly drunker end of the street, two hulking gorillas wrestled as bets were placed among the spectators. Ilsa’s eyes grew wide. No party she had ever attended had included competitive fighting among the entertainments, but then again, no party she had ever been to had been held among Changelings. The mind became a duller, more instinctive thing in the body of an animal. Ilsa conceded that if she were a gorilla – a drunken one at that – she might find it fun to wrestle someone too. She wondered what Alitz would make of it.
But the biggest event was unfolding in a space in the middle of the street. Revellers were taking turns to walk into the centre of the circle and showcase their most impressive transformations. As Ilsa watched, a hooked-nosed, greying woman stepped forward, and with a surprisingly wicked grin, folded in on herself until she was a tangle of smooth scales on the floor. Amidst the shrieks of delight and alarm, the tangle writhed grotesquely, and from its folds emerged the black eyes and triangular head of a python. As she raised her head, swaying uncannily and flicking her black tongue, she began to unfurl. The murmurs grew louder and turned into gasps as coils of the snake kept revealing themselves, like scarves out of a magician’s cuff, until all twenty feet of her was uncoiled in the middle of the street. She raised her emerald head higher and took a serpentine bow to the raucous applause of the party-goers.
Next was an unassuming man who cracked his neck one way, then the other, screwed up his face in concentration, and transformed himself into a pure white peacock, unlike any Ilsa had ever seen.
Since coming to the Witherward, she had confirmed much of what she’d learned for herself about her magic, including the fact that a Changeling could only become an animal as it existed in nature. Bigger, if they were gifted with their magic, and as beautiful and fast and strong as they could muster, but they could not create, or amalgamate, only imitate. The albino peacock below wasn’t just a showcase of the man’s magic, but of his history and experience; the things he’d seen and learned. He drew an awed gasp from the mesmerised crowd as he spread his tail feathers in an arc, and was mobbed with questions when he stepped out of the circle.
The crowd began to rumble with thunderous shouts and applause as they parted to make way for a third competitor. Into the circle, arms raised in pride as she played the crowd, stepped a stocky, matronly woman of about fifty. She did a lap in front of the spectators, shouting encouragement as they chanted her name.
“Millie! Millie! Millie!”
Ilsa couldn’t help but lean forward over the edge of the roof to get a better look as Millie took her place in the centre of the circle. A few of the onlookers encouraged the rest to step back as they pressed in, kids pulled into arms and behind legs to keep them from approaching.
And then Millie shifted. She fell to all fours as she swelled with a motion like bread rising. At the point Ilsa thought her skin might burst, it hardened and darkened to a wrinkled, grey hide. The lower part of her face appeared to melt and drip as it elongated, all in a flash.
Within a single second, Ilsa knew what she was witnessing. Within two, Millie was an elephant.
The roar of the crowd couldn’t drown out her trumpeting as she raised her trunk triumphantly. Ilsa barely suppressed the urge to join in the applause, but she could see them now – six large hunting dogs with noses to the ground. The wolves were on the street, combing their way through the crowd, and they knew her scent. She wouldn’t be safe on the roof for long; they would have hawks in the air soon, if they didn’t already. But between sneaking out and finding the party, Ilsa was on too much of a high to be escorted home now. She still had a mission to fulfil before that happened.
She turned back into a sparrow, flitted to the other side of the roof, and dropped into the next street in her mousy human disguise. She only had to evade her pursuers long enough for them to realise she was no longer on the High Street and then she planned to double back. She’d had her eye on a tray of iced cakes that were circling.
But Ilsa had barely moved before a prickle on the back of her neck made her turn around. There was nothing there but a deserted corner where two houses met, but Ilsa hadn’t picked pockets for years without learning when she was being watched. Music and laughter drifted from the High Street, amplifying the silence of where she stood – or masking the sound.
A strange instinct struck her.
“Eliot?” she called down the street, a vivid image in her mind of a panther stalking from the dark.
But there was no reply. If one of the wolves had found her, surely they wouldn’t be playing this game. Not waiting to find out, Ilsa picked up her skirts and headed in the
