“Okay, let’s shift,” Hudson said. “Professor Atkins is going to be out here in a minute if we don’t. You know he hates getting his shoes wet if he has to walk out here.”
Hudson had a point. I put more space between myself and my friends. My dragon took up more space every time I shifted. She was already twice the size of an elephant and I suspected she wasn’t done growing yet. Even though a rumbling purr was audibly emanating from my chest now, I held myself back and waited for my friends to shift before I went.
Gracie changed into her extra-large butterfly. She was as big as a cat. The butterfly began flying circles around a spot on the ground. Delightful purple flowers began to sprout.
Hudson and Willa shifted into his wolf and her doe simultaneously. There was something beautiful about animages shifting and becoming one with their animals. I couldn’t help but notice the irony of a wolf and a doe standing side by sad. Hudson wagged his tail at me.
“I didn’t know wolves were so friendly.” He lifted his lip in a fake snarl. I shook my head at him. It was my turn to shift.
As soon as I reached for my dragon she was there, waiting to be released. I cried out as she surged through me, taking over my body. Before the flash of light faded, I was completely in my dragon shape. My dark gray scales rippled as I sucked in a breath. I’d never shifted so fast before. My friends now looked like dolls below me. Willa’s tail had flown up in alarm, but she stayed where she was. The first time we shifted together her doe ran across campus in fear. It was hours before she came back. I lowered my head, so I was eye level with Hudson and lifted my reptilian lip in my own snarl. He put both of his front paws on my nose and licked me right between my scaled eyes. I snorted and jerked my head back. Yuck.
My senses tingled when I felt more eyes on me. I glanced up toward the rest of the class. Professor Atkins had his eyes locked on us. When he noticed me watching, he tapped his wrist like he was wearing a watch. The message was clear: quit fooling around and get on with it. I nodded my head. Message received, Professor.
I was too wound up to focus on magic. Instead, I opened my wings and flapped them a few times. The gust of wind from my huge wingspan blew Gracie a couple of feet away from her plot of flowers. Oops. The apology I tried to give came out as a growl in my dragon form. I always forgot I couldn’t talk like this. I stretched like a cat, pushing back on my front legs and then all the way through my back and tail. I slammed the spiked end of my tail into the ground and tugged. A huge hunk of dirt came flying out and soared across the field. I purred happily. Destroying things gave me great satisfaction.
Birds soared overhead, and I watched them. Deep longing filled me. How nice would it be to soar away? Somewhere warm with sun and sand. At least as a dragon I wasn’t cold anymore. The fire inside me warmed my body all the way to my silver clawed feet.
Dad’s words from my last lesson echoed through my head unbidden.
“You really need to start focusing on your magic, Sophie. Flying, and spitting flames, and tearing stuff up is always fun but there’s more to being a dragon animage than just the physical parts.”
I sighed, and it came out as a rumble. He was right. It would be nice to play with new magic. But how was I supposed to connect with it? It didn’t help that everyone was very vague about what kind of magic each animage had. We were always told it was because animages needed to discover magic on their own, but I thought that was a load of bull. They were just hiding the fact that they didn’t really know. More and more I was starting to suspect the Academy was just a fancy place to corral all the animages until the adults were sure they weren’t going to loose their crazy magic on unsuspecting humans.
Something whispered in my sensitive ears and I whipped my head to look over my shoulder. None of my friends were looking at me. I lowered my head and scratched my ears with one of my front feet. There it was again, a whispering. It tickled my ears, and I sneezed. A small flame shot out of my mouth, landing a few inches from Willa. She fled across the field, white tail up, her doe running in long bounding leaps. Oops, again.
Before I could change back to human form and apologize, the field rang with the sound of a terrified braying. Someone was in trouble. I whipped my head around just in time to see a lion take a huge leap and grab onto the back of a zebra with its claws. The zebra brayed again.
Instinct took over. I leaped into the air and landed hard next to the two fighting animages. Without pausing to think, I grabbed the lion with one of my clawed feet and threw it across the field. I smelled blood—salty and metallic. The blood was streaked across the black and white hide of the zebra on both shoulders.
I froze in between the zebra and the lion. The crackling of the fire within me drowned out all the other noise around me. I was torn between wanting to stop the lion and wanting to attack the zebra like prey. Terra. The zebra’s name was Terra. My mind circled around the idea like a snare. She’s not an animal, she’s an animage. She needed to be protected.
Professor Atkins voice broke through the crackling in
