The Departure Read online

  "Did you ever read Hatchet by Gary Paulsen?" I asked Karen.

  36 "No."

  "I did. I wish I'd paid more attention. I'm not exactly an expert on wilderness survival tactics. Besides, we don't seem to have a hatchet. Guess we'll just have to take our best guess and walk out of here."

  Karen looked solemnly at me. "My ankle is hurt. I can't walk."

  I took a deep breath. I was mostly revived now. I could feel my hands and feet again. And my brain was starting to work a little better, too.

  "Karen, what were you doing there in the woods to begin with?"

  She didn't answer. She just looked at me.

  I felt a new kind of chill. "The other night, someone was behind the barn, looking up at my window. That was you, wasn't it?"

  She said nothing.

  I felt an awful dread begin to well up inside me. I felt like I couldn't breathe.

  "Why were you following me? Why were you spying on me?" I demanded, trying not to panic, but already feeling the terror growing inside me, churning my stomach, squeezing my heart.

  Karen sighed. Then she cocked her head and looked at me quizzically. Like I was some interesting specimen of insect and she was an entomologist.

  "You interest me," she said.

  37 "There's nothing interesting about me. Really."

  "Sure there is. See, if I'm right about you, then you can fly away from this place anytime you want. If I'm right about you, you can also . . . let's just say, make a few changes . . . and kill me."

  I forced an awful fake laugh. "What on earth are you talking about?"

  "Oh, nothing on Earth," Karen said. "At least that's what everyone believes. Humans can't morph. Only Andalites can morph. Only an Andalite could become a wolf and rip the throat from my brother's host body and leave him dying."

  38

  I guess Marco would have been cooler, more glib. Maybe Rachel would have just attacked. I don't know. But I'm not Marco or Rachel.

  I stared, breathing stopped.

  "I have no idea what you're talking about," I said.

  Karen smiled a small, triumphant smile. "I followed you after that battle. You separated from the others and went your own way to that farm. I saw you loping along as a wolf one minute, then I lost sight for a few minutes. But when I caught up again, there was no wolf. Just you. Seemingly a human girl."

  "What do you think I am? A werewolf or some-

  39 thing?" I asked, trying out my desperate, fakey laugh again.

  "I don't know what you are," Karen said. "Not for sure. That's why I followed you. See, everyone knows there's a band of Andalite warriors here on Earth. It makes sense that they would try to pass as humans. But everyone also knows no Andalite can stay in a morph more than two hours. And I've seen you in this human morph for more than two hours at a time."

  I shrugged and put on a baffled expression. "Okay, whatever. Maybe the cold water messed up your brain a little or something. Maybe we should just focus on getting you some help."

  "I know you're not an Andalite who's been trapped in a morph because you morphed that wolf the other night. So that leaves two possibilities. Either you are an Andalite who has somehow figured out how to defy the two-hour limit. Or. . ."

  "Or what?" I couldn't help asking.

  "Or what some of us have suspected for some time is true: There are humans who can morph."

  I shrugged. "Are you like one of those X-Files people?" I asked.

  Karen smiled. "If you're an Andalite, you'll just demorph and kill me. This little human body would be defenseless against your tail."

  40 "Now I have a tail?"

  "If you're a human who can morph, then you'll morph something nasty and kill me that way."

  "So, wait a minute. Let me get all this straight. In this little fairy tale of yours, I'm capable of destroying you either way, right?"

  She cocked her head in a very human gesture. "You'll think you can," she said. "And whatever you do, I'll have proof."

  I stood up. I'm not exactly tall enough to tower over anyone or look very threatening. But still, Karen should have looked just a little bit nervous. Instead she looked smug. Cocky. Like she was just waiting to see what I'd do.

  I stuck out my hand. "Come on, crazy girl," I said, "let's get started. It may be a long walk back."

  There was a flicker of doubt in those cool, green eyes. She ignored my hand and tried to stand. Halfway up, her left leg buckled and she fell back heavily.

  "My ankle is badly injured," she said. "I'm afraid I can't walk."

  I looked down at her and ran through my options.

  In this forest there were bears and wolves. The bears wouldn't a ttack her as long as she stayed out of their way. But the wolves might, if

  41 they were hungry enough. The woods around us looked empty, silent. But I have been a wolf. I know the awesome power of their senses. I was willing to bet that at least one wolf pack already knew we were there. They'd heard us, they'd smelled us.

  If they were hungry enough, they'd come by to check out the unfamiliar smell. If they came and saw a helpless kid, unable to walk, defenseless . . . well, wolves aren't man-eaters by nature, but they are programmed to take down the weak and sick.

  And if the wolves didn't get her, there was the cold night and the hunger. If I walked away now, the human-Controller named Karen could very possibly not survive the night. Killed by nature's hand.

  One thing was certain. If Karen made it back to her fellow Controllers, knowing what she knew, none of my friends were safe. She knew I was an Animorph. Or had been one. It would be easy for her to find out who my friends were. To take them, one by one, and make them submit to infestation. Make them into Controllers.

  All it would take was one: me, Jake, Rachel, Marco. It didn't matter. If the Yeerks controlled one of us, all our secrets would be theirs.

  They would learn of the hidden colony of free Hork-Bajir up in the mountains. They would

  42 learn about the Chee - the peace-loving androids who sometimes helped us with information.

  If Karen came out of this alive, Jake, Rachel, Marco, Tobias, and Ax would all be caught and made into human-Controllers or be killed. The Chee would be annihilated. The Hork-Bajir would be recaptured.

  All hope for human freedom might die. Unless . . . unless Karen was destroyed right here, right now.

  I turned away and walked to a dried-out, fallen tree. I grabbed a long, forked branch. I levered my weight against it and worked it till it splintered and cracked.

  It was a strong, stout branch. Three feet long, thick, with a fork at one end. I gripped it tightly and carried it back to Karen. One swift, sure blow to the head. That's all it would take. I could knock her out and leave her tied up with her own shoelaces and let nature do the rest.

  I saw the apprehension in her eyes.

  "Here," I said. "This will make a good crutch. Wait here while I find some smaller sticks to make a splint."

  43

  We were not in a good position. Night was falling. We were somewhere in a forest. We had no tools and no matches. Everything around us was damp, maybe too damp to burn. And what I could see of the sky, looking up through the trees, was filled with dark clouds scudding on a stiff breeze.

  "This will hurt," I said. I had found some sticks the right length. I had removed my belt. Fortunately, I never listen to Rachel on matters of fashion, so I had a good, strong, practical leather belt.

  "Your pants will fall down," Karen said, sounding like a kid again.

  "Yeah, right. I seem to have gained a little

  44 weight since I bought these pants. They're plenty tight. Or maybe they shrank. That could be it." I placed the sticks carefully around her lower leg and down over her ankle bone. Then I wrapped the belt loosely. "Okay, I'm not going to tighten it a lot, because your ankle is going to swell up. But I have to tighten it some. I want to keep your ankle immobilized. On the count of five, okay? When I get to five, I'll yank it. One . . ."

  I yan
ked the belt.

  "Aaahhh! Hey! What happened to five?"

  "You would have tensed up on five," I said. "This way I caught you while you were relaxed."

  "A trick."

  "For your own good."

  Karen snorted. "Now I know you're an Andalite. Typical Andalite arrogance. The only race in the entire galaxy that makes war 'to help people.'"

  I stood up again and stuck out my hand. This time, Karen took it. "Come on," I said. "We have to get moving."

  I helped her to her feet. She winced in pain as she placed weight on the bad ankle. I leaned over awkwardly to grab the crutch. "Here. Try this."

  She stuck it under one arm. "Which side? The side with the bad ankle, or the other side?"

  45 "I don't know," I admitted. "I don't work with humans much."

  "Ah? Ready to stop pretending and admit what you are, Andalite?"

  I laughed. A real laugh this time. "I work with animals. I know how to set a broken leg on a deer or a raccoon or a wolf. I've never done a human before."

  Karen peered skeptically. "Ah, yes. The barn full of animals. Of course. What a perfect cover for an Andalite. All those animals right there so you can acquire their DNA for morphing."

  "Whatever you say, kid," I muttered. "Let's try moving."

  "Where are we going? Which way is civilization?"

  "I don't have a clue. But it doesn't matter. We're not trying for a way out, not tonight, anyway. We need shelter."

  "What? If you're going to try to kill me, go ahead and do it. No need to drag me off to some secluded spot."

  "Karen, what could possibly be more secluded than this?" I waved my arm around at the tall trees.

  "Okay, if you don't have the stomach for killing me, let's walk out of here. My leg is fine." She took a couple of wincing steps.

  46 "Look, I'm sorry you think I'm some space alien. I'm sorry you think I want to kill you. But the truth is, if we try and walk out of here tonight, we could end up dead. It's going to rain. Maybe even storm. You ever been in a forest in the middle of a storm? The ground will be mud. Lightning hitting the trees. Flash floods in the gullies. Cold. No way to build a fire. You wouldn't like it."

  Suddenly Karen erupted in a rage. "Why do you keep up this stupid game? I know what you are capable of! I know what you did. You could morph to that wolf and easily kill me and then run out of these woods. Why are you playing this game?!"

  I waited till she was done yelling. Then I said, "I see higher ground over that way. Maybe low hills. I can't tell, peering through these trees. Maybe we'll find a cave over there. At least we'll be away from this river. It could rise during the night, with rain and all."

  But Karen wasn't listening anymore. She was staring up at a tree.

  "What is that?" she asked in a worried voice.

  I followed the direction of her gaze. There, lodged in a crook of an elm tree branch, was a crumpled, ripped body. The sweet face with the big eyes was lolled to the side.

  "It's a young deer," I said.

  47 "What's it doing up there?"

  "The animal that killed it put it there for safekeeping."

  "What kind of animal does that? A wolf? A bear?"

  I shook my head. "No. But a leopard does."

  49

  I read a book by this hunter once. He had hunted lions. He'd hunted tigers. He'd hunted bears. But he said of all the dangerous animals a man could hunt, nothing was as dangerous as a leopard.

  They were smart, adaptable, cunning, and ruthless. They were the ultimate hunters.

  Human hunters, professional, experienced hunters armed with high-powered rifles and telescopic sights, had waited in trees for hours for a leopard to return to the place where it had stashed a kill. They had waited with eyes wide-open, nerves tingling, guns at the ready . . . and had suddenly felt the faint tingling warning that they were being watched. And they had turned to

  48

  find the leopard sitting right behind them in the tree. The last thing they ever saw.

  "A leopard? Are you kidding? This isn't Africa."

  "One escaped from a sort of private zoo," I said.

  "From a private zoo? So it's probably tame, right?"

  "It put a man in the hospital," I said.

  All the while I swept my eyes back and forth through the trees. It could be watching us. It could be watching us right now. It could have our scent in its nostrils.

  I took a deep breath. Then another. I saw nothing. Which proved nothing. I wouldn't see the leopard unless it wanted to be seen.

  "Maybe we better build a fire," Karen said. "Wild animals are scared of fire."

  "Yeah. Lets get to some shelter, then build a fire," I agreed. There was no need to tell Karen that she was wrong: Fire doesn't frighten most predators. Certainly not leopards. In African villages, leopards come right into the village, right into the huts, right past the fires, and drag dogs and pigs . . . and children . . . away.

  "Let's get moving," I said tersely.

  I started walking, slowly, waiting to see how well Karen could keep up. She couldn't. Not very well. She took a dozen steps and caught her

  50 crutch on a root and fell down. I helped her up. On the second try she went farther before becoming entangled in a bush.

  All the while the shadows deepened around us. Already we could see no more than a hundred feet through the trees. We had to move faster. I put my arm around Karen's shoulders.

  "Keep your filthy hands off me, Andalite!" she spat.

  I didn't remove my arm. "You know, I don't know who these Andalites of yours are, Karen, but you sure seem to have a grudge against them."

  She laughed. "We don't exactly get along with Andalites."

  "Who is 'we'?" I asked, to make it seem like I didn't already know.

  We started walking again. Karen was beginning to get the hang of the crutch. I kept looking up at the trees. Leopards often kill by dropping from a tree onto an unwary prey.

  "Who is 'we'?" Karen echoed. "We are the Yeerks. The Yeerk Empire."

  "I see. So you Yeerks and these Andalites don't like each other." The ground sloped upward. It was a gentle enough slope, unless you were trying to walk with a bad ankle and a tree branch for a crutch.

  "The Andalites are the busybodies of the

  51 galaxy," Karen said. "Always sticking their noses in other people's business. We have a right to expand. We have a right to advance. But you Andalites don't see it that way, do you? No, the whole galaxy has to belong to the mighty Andalites."

  She was trying to provoke me. She was trying to get me to make some answer that would give away the fact that I was not a normal human girl.

  "So if I'm an Andalite, and these Andalites are such rotten people, why am I helping you?" I asked.

  Karen considered for a while. "I don't know," she admitted.

  "Well, maybe you're just totally wrong about me, have you considered that? Maybe I'm not a werewolf or an Andalite or anything but a normal girl."

  She said nothing to that. We walked on through darkening gloom. I began to pick up small twigs and sticks that looked fairly dry.

  We reached the base of a sort of low ridge that cut straight across our path. It was no more than fifty feet high for the most part. We turned right to follow along the ridge because going left was rougher terrain.

  Vast rocks jutted up out of the earth. Fallen leaves covered the slope. Scraggly trees clung to the slope and larger trees lined the ridge itself.

  52 Then, all at once, it was raining. The rainfall clattered noisily down through the leaves of the trees. Within minutes I was as wet as I'd been when I came from the river.

  "In there." I pointed.

  "I don't see anything."

  "Behind those bushes, that shadow. That may be a cave."

  It would mean forcing my way through a thicket of brambles. Karen wouldn't even be able to attempt it until I'd made a path. And the cave might not even be there.

  Or worse. There might be a cave that was al
ready taken by a bear or even a mother wolf, raising a family.

  "Use your tail," Karen said. "You'll cut right through."

  I sighed noisily. "How about if I just push my way through? I'll need your crutch to knock some of the bushes down. Why don't you sit on that rock?"

  Karen sat on the rock. I took the crutch and began beating away at the bushes. I deliberately made as much noise as possible. If something was living in the cave, I wanted it to be warned. You don't want to surprise bears. You just don't.

  As I got closer, it became clear that there really was a cave. I looked around in the dirt to

  53 see if I could spot any tracks. But with the rain, who could tell?

  I glanced back. I could barely see Karen. She certainly could not see me. The smart thing to do was to morph now. Maybe the wolf again. The wolf's nose would instantly know whether there was anything in the cave.

  I crouched low. I focused my mind on the wolf DNA that was a part of me. And, with a Controller no more than twenty feet away, I began to morph.

  54

  I felt my legs dwindle in size, but not weaken. I felt my chest and shoulders swell and become large. My face began to bulge outward.

  If you're not an Animorph, don't use the power,

  I heard Jake's voice in my head. It startled me, it was so clear in my memory.

  / won't. That's what I'd said.

  You'll want to. But if you do, you run the risk of getting caught. Those risks are acceptable if you're going to help us. But if you're not in the fight anymore, you can't use the weapon.

  I said I wouldn't morph anymore, Jake. I'm not a liar.

  I stopped morphing. I was still half-human.

  55 But I was also half-wolf. And already my hearing was more acute than any human hearing.

  I heard the sound of the bushes being parted. I heard the sound of a dragged foot and a slight gasp of pain.

  Karen! She was trying to spy on me.

  I demorphed as quickly as I could. At the same time, I pushed ahead, shoving my way through the bushes with the crutch. No choice now. I couldn't morph. I'd promised Jake I wouldn't. Besides, I'd almost gotten caught.