Tales of the Shapechangers

Kassandra’s ever-alert animal self woke her in the night. She automatically increased the sensitivity of all her senses, then dropped them to a merely human level as she identified what had alerted her. It was a change in the faint vibration coming from the hammock beneath her.

The change had been brief. She still swung lightly in a cool breeze on the deck of a Karanthian sailing ship. Two crewmen in the bow talked quietly. One laughed. The wooden ship creaked as the sea rocked it. Waves lapped quietly against the sides of the ship. There were the usual odors of tar and salt and dead fish and sweaty men and all the other scents of a wooden ship in a warm shallow ocean.

The part of her that supplied extrahuman knowledge told her that the threat was still days away. She let herself sink back into sleep. She needed only a few hours each night and could easily go for months without it, but she took a sensuous enjoyment in sleeping. Besides, it was near three hours before first light and there was nothing interesting to do till then.

A flea migrating from the rest of the ship landed on her naked thigh. It was instantly killed by her skin, as automatically and without notice by Kassandra as her immune system handled germs, viruses, cancerously mutated cells, and any other threat to her health.

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Her time sense woke her when she wanted to awaken: just as the sun’s rim peeked over the eastern horizon. Kassandra lithely slipped from the hammock and into her brief white tunic, then expertly stowed the hammock away. She padded forward barefoot.

At the bow Captain Kedogras inclined his upper body in a miniscule bow in her direction.

“Sleep well, Kassie?”

“As always. You?”

“Not so good. Twisted my back a bit. Or it cramped.”

“Turn around.”

The captain obliged. She laid a hand on his neck and commanded his body to fix itself. It began to do so. A sigh escaped him as the pain began to diminish. She massaged the cramped muscles briefly to help the process along.

She dropped her hand and he turned back to her. This time he bowed deeply to her and murmured, “Thank you, Goddess.”

She ignored him. Twenty years ago she would have corrected him once again, but her annoyance had worn to nothing against his stubborn insistence on addressing her as a goddess. She was immortal and had many extrahuman powers but knew herself human.

The vibration that had been with them for days was still there, thrumming lightly against the soles of her bare feet — so lightly that an ordinary human would not have noticed.

Shucking her tunic and tucking it between two stays she ran a few inhumanly fast steps and dove over the bow rail, soaring some thirty feet before arrowing into the water. By then she had grown a membrane over her eyes to protect them from the salt water.

She also had grown gills on each side of her neck, gills unlike those of any Earthly fish. As she slipped beneath the waves with hardly a splash she felt the familiar suffocating feel as her nasal passages closed and the dive into the sea forced water through her gills into her lungs. Her lungs expelled air then water through channels now opened just below her ribs, then she was breathing water and was perfectly comfortable.

Her gills included membranes that “tasted” the water. She detected the usual salts and other minerals and the microscopic organic residue from sea life. But the water also contained an expected unusual amount of sulfur compounds, giving it a slightly rotten-egg taste.

She stroked with her arms and sped ahead, angling downward. The water was a clear green extending down about two hundred feet. Long strands of green and green-orange vegetation waved on the ocean floor. Fish swam in their myriads, grey until they changed course when their scales flashed silver. The waves above cast rippling bright and dark patterns on the ocean floor. And the water vibrated as if some far-off animal hummed to itself in deep subsonics.

Kassandra’s breasts had flattened and her toes had lengthened and separated. Webs grew between her toes and between her fingers. Still adapting, she flashed through a school of fish, catching a few, killing them with lengthened and sharpened fingernails. Returning to the surface she quickly wolfed down the fish, scales, bones, and all. Several times she threw several of her larger catches onto the deck of the ship for the captain and crew.

When she had eaten enough fish she dove to the sea floor to pull loose several long waving strands of sea grass. On surface she devoured those as well.

Sharks swam into view, drawn by the faint scent of blood in the water. Kassandra submerged and waited, looking at them. For long moments they paused. Then as one they turned and sped away. Even creatures as stupid as sharks intuitively knew that they faced a predator infinitely more dangerous than they.

Finally she turned back toward the ship. Picking up speed she raced back on the surface, faster than any other Earthly water creature. Nearing the ship she dove deep then paddled upward furiously. Shooting out of the water she caught the edge of the bow rail, pulled, and cleared it just enough to land with a thump on the deck.

As soon as she left the water her gills, claws, and webs had melted back into her body. So had the water on her skin. She stood dry except for the water on the deck beneath her feet. By then the first mate had retrieved her tunic and respectfully extended it to her.

Captain Kedogras was overseeing the raising of the three triangular sails. They flapped then cracked as they filled with wind and the ship began to move. The sea anchor was being raised also and came aboard, a rush of water with it.

Kassandra stood well back while the crew did these and other jobs needed to get the ship on course for Nothos. Only when Kedogras turned to her did she come forward.

“Everything well underwater?” he said.

“Mostly. There’s a problem at our destination. I’ll tell you more in time to avoid it.”

He nodded soberly. Two dozen years of having her as a passenger, contractor for his services, and once crew member had taught him to respect her predictions.

Two days passed. In the middle of the third day the ship approached a mounded jumble of rocks which formed the last of several barren islands. Above and beyond it rose a column of smoke they had been seeing since morning. As they rounded the edge of the jumble Kassandra and the crew could see on the horizon another island hidden till now by other islands and the Earth’s curving horizon.

This new island sprawled green and ocher and brown before them. A sprawl of apparently tiny white blocks near the island’s edge were the buildings of Nothos City on Nothos Island. Rising in the center of the island were several conical hills, all very old volcanoes.

The smoke rose from the top of the third tallest. If it had been rising from any of the others matters would be routine. But not this one, the delicate one. Wild joy rose within her, pierced by sorrow.

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About an hour before sundown their ship entered the Nothos harbor. The two largest sails came down and the single bank of oars were unlimbered. Finally the ship thumped quietly against a pier and was made fast to it. The oars were shipped, the last sail brought down.

By then Kassandra had long made clear the looming peril and what she — and the crew — were going to do about it. She and Captain Kedogras stepped down onto the pier even before the ship was completely secured and hurried to the next ship over.

“Permission to come aboard?” The Captain’s voice was loud when he wanted. A tall skinny old man with a long beard came up from below to join the several crewmen looking down at Kedogras and Kassandra. He squinted at the two for a moment then smiled

“Kedogras. And Lady Kassandra, I believe. Yes. Come aboard.” His grin was wide and filled with as many gaps as teeth.

His grin narrowed and then disappeared as the Captain and Kassandra came up the gangplank and Kedogras grasped his hand. For the old man could see Kassandra better. She had altered her appearance.

Her long hair was gold and lightly curled and the sunset struck red rays from it as if it were metal. And it writhed slowly as if floating in and caressed by underwater currents — or as if it were the tendrils of a sea-creature.

Closer still he could see that her skin was totally hairless and without pores, perfectly smooth and regular, flawless as a statue. And except for her black pupils her eyes were completely green, a pure spring green unlike the green of any ordinary human.

She was also almost a foot taller than her “normal” height, towering over him, thin but moving with inhuman power and grace.

She spoke, and her voice was a clear soprano with a tone beneath it like that of a bee’s hum.

“Kedogras has told me much about you, Captain Hropsos. Come, let us go to the bow where we can talk privately.”

By full dark every ship in the harbor was under hire to “the Goddess Kassandra.” The combination of awe and greed for the generous fees promised were very persuasive — except for one stubborn young captain. For him Kassandra let her eyes flush blood red and leaned over him to place her face only a few inches from his. That persuaded him.

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That night Kassandra slept in the villa of her adopted family, the only kind of family she could have. When she’d become immortal centuries — millennia? –ago the ability to birth a child had vanished with mortality.

The next morning she called together the elders of the family, which included several great-grandparents, and explained what they must do. Later she called together some of the younger and more vigorous people, and explained to them why their elders needed them to obey their orders.

There was space in the ships contracted to Kassandra for four more extended families. The woman now styling herself goddess visited each of them. The eldest of one family refused to believe her, refused to take her warning seriously. A single invisibly fast swipe of her clawed hand carved four shallow cuts across one cheek.

After a moment of shock everyone in the room sank face-first to lie on the floor.

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There was much preparation that day, some by the entire population of the city. The Festival of the Harvest officially started the next day, though most everyone began to party at sunset the day before. The work of the five families who were leaving the island was nearly lost in all the other activities.

But that night when the families began filing aboard the five ships word of this oddness began to spin out from them. And when the families settled down early for sleep aboard instead in their homes gossip became rife. Still, the Festival was a holy event and most everyone turned to wild celebration.

Kassandra bedded down that night in her adopted family’s home all alone. She wept long into the night as the sounds of celebration came to her from all around.

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The sound of someone pounding on the front door of the mansion woke her. She came instantly alert and walked to the window looking down from the second story onto the front lawn. It was a little past dawn. The clouds in the eastern sky were fiery gold.

Leaning out she saw two five-squads of the King’s soldiers arrayed behind a decurion. They were all in armor and carried spears. The decurion was using the butt of his short sword to pound on the door. It was not locked and he likely knew that, but did not quite dare to enter the house without first announcing himself.

“What do you want?” She spoke loudly enough so that all the men could hear her.

The decurion looked up. “The King commands your presence. Immediately.”

“Very well. I will come. Enter and wait for me in the kitchen.”

“He said immediately!”

But Kassandra was on the way to the kitchen.

On the way she detoured for a quick visit to a chamber pot and to run a hand over her knee-length tunic. Its white intensified and became even more silken. She willed her hair to neatness and it writhed and settled into perfect order.

The King’s men were in the kitchen already when she walked leisurely down the stairs.

Kassandra held up her hand as the decurion rounded on her and opened his mouth to speak.

“I doubt the King told you to be discourteous. This will only take a few moments.”

He frowned at her, but she was the patron of a rich and powerful family and had been known to everyone in Nothos for well before the birth of anyone there. She had neither supported nor denied the rumors of her divinity and been quietly friendly to everyone she had met. But she had let her spine continue to lengthen and now stood two heads above anyone. That and the rest of her appearance spoke for itself.

“We will wait, but only for a few moments.”

Kassandra went to a cupboard and took out the one of the loaves of bread she had commanded left her, along with a big round of cheese. She extended a claw, flattened it, and gave one edge serration that made it perfect for carving bread. She swiftly sliced the loaf into eighths, carved slices of cheese to match them, and made herself several chunky sandwiches.

She took a bite of one and closed her eyes to better savor it. The tart rye bread was delicious against the bland creamy cheese. She was glad she had introduced the grain a couple of centuries ago when she first began to wander these islands.

She opened her eyes and took a sip from the fat earthen jug of water. It had cooled with the cooling night and evaporation. She savored it too, tasting the subtle flavor of the minerals dissolved in the liquid.

As she ate, not hurrying but not dawdling either, she examined the troops standing at semi-attention about the table and in the doorway. They were commendably stoic in her presence, but she could see the elevated pulse at the base of their necks and the slightly sheen of sweat on the brow of most.

Finally she rose, took one last drink of water, and walked toward the front of the house.

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The sun was only a little further above the horizon and the alleys and streets were mostly in cool blue shadow. Kassandra’s long legs covered ground quickly despite her leisurely pace. The decurion leading the way and the two five-squads on each side of her were almost jogging. She could smell their sweat of exertion and fear and, as always, a hundred other scents that told her much about the world near and far.

She soon saw their path was more by back alleys than the main streets and guessed, and soon had her guess verified, that they were headed for the back of the palace of the king of Nothos. A pair of guards stood on the top of the high wall around the palace grounds. Underneath them was a tall heavy double door in the wall. They descended inside the wall as soon as Kassandra’s party was in sight and opened the door. They stood at attention on each side of the entrance as she entered, then closed and locked the doors behind them and merged into the two squads.

The garden was lush with greenery, unlike the browner land outside its walls. Clearings with stone benches on paths sheltered by trees punctuated the vegetation. An artificial stream meandered through the vegetation, fed by a long pond fed itself by a fountain which recycled the water, the flow maintained by a windmill.

She stopped for a few moments to contemplate the slow turnings of the sail-like petals of the mill. She had invented windmills a couple of centuries ago when in her shallow-water form she had wandered into the islands of Nothos and its neighboring clusters of islands. The ever-present mostly westerly winds seemed a resource too good to ignore.

Or had she remembered the design? Well over a thousand years of life had faded her earliest memories.

Taking pity on the decurion she continued, slowing as they passed along the long side of the small narrow pond. It was worth a few moments extra attention. The edges were made of a golden sandstone from a quarry on the opposite side of Nothos Isle and inlaid with intricately patterned light green stone. In the water floated round lily pads with white blooms. Golden fish played seeming hide-and-seek under and between the pads.

Inside the low rambling palace they took a zigzagging path that ended in the smaller audience chamber. Four fluted stone pillars broke its floor into sections. At the far end was a dais upon which sat the king of Nothos and, a step down on each side, his several advisors.

“Your Highness, Lady Kassandra, as ordered.” The decurion bowed. At a nod and hand motion from the king he retired to a spot to one side of Kassandra and slightly behind her. She did not see but heard the two squads form an arc behind her that had her at its focus.

The king’s eyes bored into Kassandra’s. Despite the dais their eyes were on a level. She had commanded her spine and leg bones to continue growing during the night.

“Why are five families camped on all the ships in harbor?” Suppressed anger made the king’s voice tight.

She stepped forward one step. She heard the men behind her tense and the sound, silent to everyone but her, of bows bending in the hands of armsmen stationed to her left and right on the gallery that surrounded the room.

But she had stopped so that she was illumined by a shaft of sunlight. Her absolutely perfect skin gleamed like gold in the light. Her long curly hair was like fire and moved as if lightly touched by breezes from nowhere.

“They are going on a mission for me.”

“With as much property as they can load on board ship?”

“It will be a long mission.”

“What is this mission?”

“That is my business, no one else’s.”

“Everything on the Isles of Nothos is my business!”

Kassandra said nothing, stood perfectly relaxed.

“You will command them to return or you will die!”

“I was here an eternity before you, O King. And I will be here when these islands are worn to dust and covered by the ocean.” Her voice was raised so that all could hear. In it was an icy distance. Chill-bumps raised the small hairs on every man in the room.

The king tugged at his beard. But Kassandra had centuries of experience of men. An instant before the first arrow arrived from the gallery she had taken two rapid steps forward and to the side. Arrows clattered on the stone floor, one of them after glancing off her back as if she were stone.

She turned toward the entrance to the room. From there she could see two files of spearmen and the two-squad escort. All were running toward her, the squads nearer her, spears and swords out and pointing toward her.

Kassandra squatted deep and sprang upward at a slant, landing on the gallery railing but letting her body fall forward. Her hands slapped the floor and she somersaulted, her body spinning so that her feet and legs slammed into the nearest men. They scattered, falling into each other and forcing the furthest men to skip backward out of the way. Ending up on her feet she grabbed a windowsill and was out the window before anyone could recover and try to block her.

Falling thirty feet she slapped the wall beside her with enough force to send her outward, clearing the decorative trimmed bushes near the walls. Her body collapsed almost to a squat to absorb the impact of the fall and she rebounded like a spring. In an instant she was running toward the harbor with inhuman speed.

In a few minutes she was at the harbor, close to the first ship anchored at the piers. As she slowed to a jog she saw that each of the several ships were being boarded by a squad of the king’s guards. All was peaceful aboard all of the ships except one.

Three ships down there was scuffling with several sailors and family members. As she watched one of the guards thrust his short sword into the belly of one of the family men.

Kassandra threw her head back and opened her mouth wide. Her lungs grew to unhuman size as she drew a deep breath. Her ribs slipped loose from her spine to let her chest expand near twice its normal size. She screamed with monstrous rage.

The entire dock and half the town heard her. The closest people clapped hands to ears, those who did not faint from the shock.

“ARMSMEN! LEAVE THE SHIPS NOW! OR YOU WILL DIE!”

With that she began to run down the dock, striking the surface with here heels so that they made THUD THUD THUD sounds so loud it seemed she was a giant striding to mete out justice.

Rounding the corner of the dock onto the third pier she leaped for the bow of the ship where the mortally stabbed man lay curled around his wound. A quick probing glance showed her that he was dying but not yet dead. Two people knelt by him, one his wife. It was her old friend Kedogras.

Real rage burst into flame inside her, not the showy rage she had pretended to when she had screamed and began to run. She turned most of it off but left enough to overcome her distaste at what she had to do.

Her eyes turned to the huddle of armsmen who had drawn away from Kedogras. Zeroed in on the face of the guilty armsman pointing his bloody blade at her face.

“DIE!” she screamed at him and leaped and swept his sword to the side and tore at him with the glittering crystal claws which snapped out from the sheaths hidden in her fingers. The blood seemed to explode out of his body, showering her and everyone else within yards.

The other armsmen clustered around her, hacking and stabbing at her in vain. The swords and spears no more affected her body than they would have a stone. And before they could run she turned toward them with the same ferocity she had vented on the first armsmen. Blood exploded from them as if from a fountain.

Then she turned toward Kedogras. His wife looked at her in mute appeal but without a bit of fear. Kassandra had been midwife to half the woman’s children and protected and healed her and all her family many times over. The shower of blood that had deluged Kassandra and splashed everyone on deck had been described to her more than once by crewmembers of her husband’s ship who had weathered pirate attacks at sea. The first mate of her husband’s ship, crouching beside his captain, had seen it personally and his face showed not appeal but confidence.

Kassandra knelt beside Kedogras and laid hands on him. As she had thought he was still well this side of Death’s door. She probed his body deeply, fixed immediate problems or began their fix, then gave his body detailed instructions to protect it in the years ahead. This would be the last time she would ever see him in this part of her life. For she would still be on Nothos when the volcano blew.

“He will live and be better than ever. As will you two.”

She stood up and laid her hands on their heads. “I bless you, my children.”

Two strides toward the gangplank of Kedogras’s ship she turned.

“Keep him in bed when he starts to complain that he’s well enough for duty. He won’t be.” His wife nodded, her face stern.

The first mate grinned and nodded too. “I’ll tell him you ordered me to sit on him if he disobeyed your orders.”

She grinned back. Then her face turned grim. “Now I have to go to deal with more annoyances.”

The armsmen on the nearest ships had seen enough to speed them off those ships. Those on the farthest ships followed their example when they saw the tall blood-bathed goddess pounding noisily toward them. When they were all off the ships and gone to hiding from her she turned toward the sea.

The emigrant-laden ships had cast off and were being rowed backward well away from the piers. Each ship then set a forward sail to turn them seaward, then the rest of the sails to speed them away from their homes.

Kassandra leaped atop the tallest building near the docks to watch the ships go, the rising sun behind her warming her back. Their sails were golden against the wine-dark sea and the blue sky behind them. She watched them until they disappeared around the curve of the earth, then looked after them for a long time afterward.

“Goodbye,” she whispered and let her tears flow.

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The latest shock in the earth beneath her was sharper than those before. This one the people of the town below would feel. Their anxieties and even terror would grow soon.

Kassandra let her skin begin to exude a mist. It spread out from her and, as she wanted, became invisible and rolled down the hillside. As it began to fill Nothos and the countryside around it Kassandra’s body began to visibly shrink. She was using up her own body’s tissues.

Within the hour her body lost half its mass. Now she was a skinny figure, almost skeletal. Her skeleton itself shrank, the calcium and other elements used up in the mist.

In the city people had yawned and fidgeted and finally lain down for a brief nap, some in the middle of the streets.

Several shocks had come and gone while this happened. None alarmed the few people remaining ‑‑ barely ‑‑ awake. Soon even they were asleep.

A final tremendous shock made the entire island tremble. Dust rose from the ground. Several buildings cracked. A few shook apart and crumbled, killing or maiming people who were too drugged to know the pain and terror of dying.

Another shock and Kassandra knew without looking behind her that cracks had appeared in the sides and top of the Sleeper. Lava oozed from the cracks and began a slow weeping down the sides of the volcano, fluorescent orange with the blood of the planet.

Another shock, with a blast that shattered Kassandra’s ear drums. For an instant the world was silent until she grew them back.

Finally she turned and beheld the awful glory of the volcano.

For many long minutes the earth was still, the only movement the slow trickling of the lava which was splitting into more and more streams, approaching her, the city, the countryside all about the skirts of the Sleeper.

A tremendous explosion ended the momentary peace. The entire top of the Sleeper blew upward, sending some of the rocks as high as the stratosphere.

Two sides of the volcano also blew, one of them directly in front of the creature who had been Kassandra. One rock struck her and sent her sailing more than a hundred feet, her eyes burned away from the superheated gases following the rock.

But her body had been changing, the human cells mutating, the cell walls incorporating long polymer strands many thousands of times the tensile strength of steel. Her arms and legs extended, the skeleton becoming sticklike, the muscles like ropes. Before her body hit the earth gossamer webs had issued from her body and limbs and joined.

The webs became flat balloons, filled with the super hot gases that had struck her. Her body never touched ground. It even lifted a bit into the air.

The balloon/webs became sails then, as her skeletal limbs lengthened more and her ropy muscles began to move the limbs, became gossamer wings.

Kassandra screamed her sorrow for the lost people below her, for the people who had escaped but lost their homes and many of their family and friends. Her now-inhuman heart ached with loneliness.

Then the scream changed. Buoyant joy filled her heart, her breast, her body. The scream became song.

Kassandra flexed her wings and soared upward. The Phoenix had returned to the skies of Earth.

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