The Encounter Read online

  I said.

  Marco mused.

  Cassie reminded everyone.

  Jake advised.

  They drifted back from the shore of the lake. I stayed behind. I no longer have a time limit to worry about.

  The Yeerk ship was creating a warm updraft, so I spread my wings wide and rode it up. The two Bug fighters were still circling low and slow. On the shore all around the lake, the bogus Park Rangers and the few Hork-Bajir kept up their patrols.

  Then I saw her.

  I know to human eyes, every hawk looks pretty much alike. But I knew right away it was her—the hawk I had freed from the car dealer.

  She, too, was riding the thermal, a thousand yards higher than me. Without even really thinking about it, I adjusted the angle of my wings and soared up toward her.

  She saw me, I was sure of that. Hawks don’t miss much of what goes on around them. She knew I was coming toward her, and she waited.

  It wasn’t like we were friends. Hawks don’t know what friend means. And she certainly did not feel any gratitude toward me for saving her from captivity. Hawks don’t have that sort of emotion, either. In fact, in her mind there may have been no connection between me and her freedom.

  Still, I soared up to her. I don’t know why. I really don’t. All we shared was the same outer body. We both had wings. We both had talons. We both had feathers.

  Suddenly I was afraid. I was afraid of her. And it was insane, because there I was, floating above an alien spaceship so big it could have been turned into a mall.

  But it was the hawk that frightened me.

  Or maybe not the hawk herself. Maybe it was the feeling I had, rising up to meet her in the sky.

  The feeling of recognition. The feeling of going home. The feeling that I belonged with her.

  It hit me in a wave of disgust and horror.

  No. NO!

  I was Tobias. A human. A human being, not a bird!

  I banked sharply away from her.

  I was human. I was a boy named Tobias. A boy with blond hair that was always a mess. A boy with human friends. Human interests.

  But part of me kept saying, “It’s a lie. It’s a lie. You are the hawk. The hawk is you. And Tobias is dead.”

  I plummeted toward the ground. I folded my wings back and welcomed the sheer speed. Faster! Faster!

  Then, with eyes that Tobias never had, I saw the wolf pack below. And I saw the danger before them.

  CHAPTER 10

  My four friends stood stock still. They were staring with deadly focus at five other wolves.

  The two packs had run into each other. Between them lay a dead rabbit. It was the other pack’s kill. My friends had stumbled into them. Now the two alpha males were locked in a deadly dominance battle.

  One of those alpha males was Jake.

  The other was an actual wolf.

  Jake had human intelligence on his side. But if it came to a fight, the other wolf had more experience. He hadn’t gotten to be the head wolf in his pack by losing fights.

  I would have laughed if I could. It was ridiculous! But at least it took my mind off the female hawk. Off the feeling that drew me to her, that called out to me, even while Yeerk ships zipped in a deadly dance through the air.

  Then it hit me with a shock: The time! They’d been low on time when they’d left the shore and started back. How much time had elapsed?

  I swooped down low. I demanded.

  Jake snapped tersely.

 

 

  I yelled.

  Cassie said.

  Suddenly the other big male snarled and took a step forward. Instantly Jake bared his teeth still further and stood his ground.

  The dead rabbit lay between them, only a few feet from the vicious teeth on either side.

  I said.

  No answer. Everyone was so tense they were quivering. At any second this would explode into all-out gang warfare of the wolf variety.

  I knew what I should do. But it went against every instinct in the hawk’s brain.

  And Tobias the human wasn’t exactly thrilled, either.

  I flapped up to gain a little height. I would need the speed. Then I locked my eyes on that rabbit and prayed that I was as fast as I thought I was.

 

  Down I shot. My talons came forward.

  “Tseeeeer!” I screamed.

  Zoom!

  A wolf on each side.

  A dead rabbit.

  Thwack! My talons hit the dead animal and snatched at the fur.

  I flapped once, twice. The rabbit came off the ground.

  The big wolf lunged. I could feel his teeth rake my tail.

  I flapped for all I was worth, scooting along the ground, half-carrying, half-dragging the dead rabbit, with the wolf racing just inches behind me.

  Rachel cried.

  I yelled.

  Fortunately, when he isn’t being an idiot wolf, Jake is quick and decisive.

  I dropped the rabbit just as the wolf caught up to me.

  SNAP!

  Jaws that could kill a moose scissored the air a tenth of an inch from me. I’m telling you, he was close enough for me to count his molars.

  I felt the tiniest bit of a breeze. It was enough. I opened my wings and let the breeze lift me up and away.

  I said.

 

  I said. Tail feathers grow back.

  I caught up with the others. They were moving as fast as wolves can move. Time was running short. I didn’t know exactly how much time. It was one of the continuing problems of morphing. Even if you could wear a watch, you wouldn’t want to. A wolf or a hawk with a watch looks slightly suspicious.

  I said. I was tired. Very tired, after the long flight here and not one but two close calls involving wolves. The hawk in me just wanted to find a nice branch with a view of an open field and take a rest. But I knew I couldn’t.

  I gained a little altitude, not too much. Just enough to spot one of the Park Service trucks. The Controllers were off somewhere, but there was a clock in the dashboard.

  I stared at the number in disbelief.

  It had to be wrong! It had to be!

  CHAPTER 11

  I wasn’t tired anymore.

  At top speed, I raced back to my friends. I felt sick. I felt like my heart was going to burst.

  They had missed the deadline! It was too late. Too late, and they would all be trapped. Like me. Forever.

  I screamed as I closed in on them.

  Thought-speak is like regular speech. It gets harder to hear the farther away you are.

  Maybe the clock in the truck was off. Maybe five minutes one way or the other wouldn’t matter.

  There! I saw them. Four wolves moving relentlessly toward the distant city.

  I screamed as I shot like a bullet over their heads.


  Marco demanded.

 

  That got them going. I landed, exhausted, on a branch.

  Cassie was the first to begin the change. Her fur grew short. Her snout flattened into a nose. Long human legs swelled and burst from the thin dog legs.

  Her tail sucked back in and disappeared. She was already more than half human by the time the first changes began to appear on the others.

  I urged them.

  Jake demanded.

  I said. It was a lie. According to the clock, they were already seven minutes too late.

  Too late.

  And yet Cassie was continuing to emerge from her wolf body. Skin was replacing fur. Her leotard covered her legs.

  But the others were not so lucky.

  I heard Rachel cry in my mind. Her morph was going all wrong. Her human hands appeared at the end of her wolf legs. But nothing else seemed to be changing.

  I looked, horrified, at Marco. His normal head emerged with startling suddenness from his wolf body. But the rest of him had not changed. He looked down at himself and cried out in terror. “Helowl. Yipmeahhh!” It was an awful sound, half human, half wolf.

  This was worse than I had feared. I figured they could be trapped as wolves, like I had been trapped as a hawk. But they were emerging as half-human freaks of nature.

  They were living nightmares.

  Cassie ran from one to the next. “Come on, Jake, concentrate! Focus! Rachel, bear down, girl. Picture yourself human. See yourself like you’re looking in the mirror. Fight the fear, Marco!”

  I saw Marco roll his human eyes up and stare at me. His gaze locked on me. It was like he hated me. Or feared me. Both, maybe.

  I didn’t move. If Marco needed me so he could concentrate, that was fine.

  But it sent a shiver of disgust through me. I suddenly saw myself as they all must see me: as something frightening. A freak. An accident. A sickening, pitiable creature.

  Slowly, slowly, Marco began to emerge. Slowly, slowly, the human body appeared.

  Rachel, too, and Jake. They were winning their battles.

  “That’s it, Jake,” Cassie urged. She held his hand tight between both of hers. “Come back to me, Jake. Come all the way back.”

  I watched Rachel. She still had a small, shrinking tail. Her mouth still protruded. Her blond hair was still more like gray fur. But she was going to make it. The clock must have been fast. A matter of five minutes one way or the other had determined their fates.

  I was glad they had made it. They were all human again.

  “We did it,” Jake gasped weakly. He lay on his back on the pine needles. “We made it.”

  “That was close,” Rachel said. “That was way too close. It was so hard. It was like trying to climb up out of a pool of molasses.”

  “I’m human again,” Marco muttered. “Human! Toes. Hands. Arms and shoulders.” He checked himself all over.

  “Ha ha! That was close!” Cassie exulted. She gave Jake a hug. Then I guess she felt self-conscious, because she ran over and hugged Rachel and Marco.

  They were all laughing, all giggling with relief.

  “We’re okay,” Jake sighed.

  I was happy for them. Really I was. But suddenly I didn’t want to be there.

  Suddenly I desperately didn’t want to be there. I felt an awful, gaping black hole open up all around me. I was sick. Sick with the feeling of being trapped.

  Trapped.

  Forever!

  I looked at my talons. They would never be feet again.

  I looked at my wing. It would never be an arm. It would never again end in a hand. I would never touch. I would never touch anything … anyone … again.

  I dropped from the branch and opened my wings.

  “Tobias!” Jake shouted after me.

  But I couldn’t stay. I flapped like a demon, no longer caring that I was tired. I had to fly. I had to get away.

  “Tobias, no! Come back!” Rachel cried.

  I caught a blessed breeze and soared up and away, my own silent, voiceless scream echoing in my head.

  CHAPTER 12

  It was late when I returned to what was now my home.

  After I was first trapped in my hawk body, Jake had removed an outside panel that led into the attic of his house. I flew in through the opening. It was a typical attic. There were some dusty old cardboard boxes full of Jake’s and Tom’s old baby clothes. There were open boxes of Christmas lights and decorations. There was a chest of drawers with a top that had been scarred by something or other.

  Jake had opened one of the drawers in the chest and packed it with an old blanket.

  It was nice of him. Jake has always been a decent guy. In the old days he used to protect me from the jerks at school who liked to beat me up.

  The old days. When I still went to school. How long ago had it been? A few weeks? A month? Not even.

  There was a Rubbermaid dish in a corner where no one was likely to see it. I was hungry. I clutched the dish with my left talon and pried the lid off with my hooked beak.

  Meat and potatoes and green beans. The meat was hamburger. I don’t know how he arranged to get the food. His mom probably thought he was sneaking scraps to his dog, Homer.

  I hadn’t told him yet, but I couldn’t eat the vegetables or the potatoes. My system couldn’t deal with much except meat. I … the hawk … was a predator. In the wild, hawks live on rat and squirrel and rabbit.

  I ate some of the hamburger. It was cold. It was dead. It made me feel bad to be eating it, but it filled me up.

  But it wasn’t dead meat that I wanted. I wanted live meat. I wanted living, breathing, scurrying prey. I wanted to swoop down on it and grab it with my razor talons and tear into it.

  That’s what I wanted. What the hawk wanted. And when it came to food, it was hard to deny the hawk brain in my head. The hunger I felt was the hunger of the hawk.

  I flopped and hopped up into my drawer. But it was soft. And what my hawk body wanted was not the warmth and comfort of the blanket.

  Hawks make nests of sticks. Hawks spend their nights on a friendly branch, feeling the breeze, hearing the nervous chittering of prey, watching the owls hunt.

  I hopped up out of the drawer. I couldn’t stay there. I was so tired I was past being able to rest. I was restless.

  I flew back out into the night. Hawks are not usually nocturnal. The night belongs to other hunters. But I wasn’t ready to rest.

  I flew aimlessly for a while, but I knew in my heart where I was going.

  Rachel’s bedroom light was still on. I fluttered down and landed on a birdhouse she had deliberately nailed out there for me to land on when I came over.

  I rustled my wing softly against the glass. I scratched with one talon.

  A moment later the window slid up. She was there, wearing a bathrobe and fuzzy slippers.

  “Hi,” she said. “I was worried about you!”

  I asked. But I knew the answer.

  “We weren’t very sensitive this afternoon,” she said. She spoke in a whisper. We couldn’t let her mother or one of her little sisters overhear her having a one-sided conversation with no one.

  I said.

  “Come inside. I have my bedroom door locked.” I hopped in through the window and fluttered over to her dresser.

  Suddenly I realized something was behind me. I turned my head around. It was a mirror. I was looking at myself.

  I had a reddish tail of long, straight feathers. The rest of my back was mottled dark brown. I had big shoulders that looked kind of hunched, like I was a football lineman ready for the snap. My head was streamlined. My brown eyes were fierce as I stared over the deadly weapon of my beak.

  I turned my head forward, looking away from my reflection.

  “What do
you mean, Tobias?” I wish I could have smiled. She looked so worried. I wish I could have smiled, just a little, to make her feel better.

 

  “Wh — What … How do you mean?” she asked. She bit her lip and tried not to let me see. But of course, hawk eyes miss nothing.

 

  “You belong with us,” Rachel said firmly. “You are a human being, Tobias.”

  I asked her.

  “Because what counts is what is in your head and in your heart,” she said with sudden passion. “A person isn’t his body. A person isn’t what’s on the outside.”

 

  I could see that she wanted to cry. But Rachel is a person with strength that runs all the way through her. Maybe that’s why I came to see her. I needed someone to be sure. I wanted someone to let me borrow a little of their strength.

  She went over to her nightstand and opened the drawer. She rummaged for a minute, then came back to me. She was holding a small photograph. She turned it so I could see.

  It was me. The me I used to be.

  I said.

  She nodded. “It’s not a great picture. In real life you look better.”

  I echoed.

  “Tobias, someday the Andalites will return. If they don’t, we’re all lost, all the human race. If they do come back, I know they’ll have some way to return you to your own body.”

  I said.

  “I am sure,” she said. She put every ounce of faith into those three words. She wanted me to believe. But I could see the tears that were threatening to well up in her eyes as she lied.

  Like I said, hawks don’t miss much.

  CHAPTER 13

  Talking to Rachel helped. A little, anyway. I spent the night in my drawer in Jake’s attic.

  I spent the next day flying around, waiting for my friends to get out of school. In some ways, I realized, my situation wasn’t all bad. For one thing, I had no homework. For another, I could fly. How many average kids can hit forty miles per hour in level flight and break eighty in a stoop — a dive?