I guess in a way I did actually sleep. I was mentally exhausted. I was weary and depressed. More tired than I have ever been in my life. And yet afraid that if I dreamed, the Yeerk would watch my dreams.
My fear was justified. I did dream. The same dream I'd had before.
I was the tiger. Tom was my prey.
We were in the dark, deep woods, and I was hunting him with all my tiger skill. He was stumbling and noisy and weak.
I knew I would take him.
At last, too tired to run any further, Tom fell. He waited, helpless, while I gathered the power of my tiger body and prepared to leap . . .
And then, I was no longer the tiger. I was my own prey. I watched through eyes wide with terror as the tiger sprang.
I woke up. My eyes were already open.
"Interesting dream," the Yeerk said. "Very metaphorical." I looked out through the eyes the Yeerk had opened. Rachel was still sitting back against the wall. Her book was open on her lap. But her breathing was heavy and regular. Her eyes were closed.
She had fallen asleep!
Her flashlight was still on. It shone across the rough wood floor. It illuminated my right arm and leg.
My arm ... my leg ... they had changed! My arms were thicker, more powerful, and growing larger still. My hands had swollen and become huge. The fingers were disappearing, replaced by curved claws as sharp as stilettos.
Orange-and-black-striped fur appeared, a rippling wave that grew to cover me.
I was becoming the tiger!
71 The realization hit me like a jolt of electricity. I was morphing!
The Yeerk was morphing!
How could I have been so stupid? Of course! The Yeerk controlled my hands and feet and voice, he controlled my very mind. Of course he had my morphing power, too!
The others . . . they didn't realize. They didn't understand. They had tied me up, but it was useless. The Yeerk had access to every one of my morphs.
The ropes around my hands were painfully tight as my wrists swelled to become powerful forepaws.
The Yeerk raised the rope and used the tiger's teeth to tear the rope apart.
I wanted to warn Rachel. She was still asleep. I had to warn her. The Yeerk would escape. He might even kill her.
But try as I might, I could not reach my own body any longer. I could not reach my own body.
"I won't kill her," the Yeerk said. "Like you, she is capable of morphing. I will deliver Visser Three four morph-capable humans, as well as one Andalite scum."
I now saw the world through tiger's eyes. The night was brighter. And I heard with tiger's ears.
Ears that caught any sound that might be made by a predator.
The tiger sniffed the air. But the breeze was slight, and carried no warnings.
"What a wonderful animal this is, this tiger," the Yeerk said. "Excellent senses. Fast and silent and deadly."
The forest was dark and quiet, but for the rustling of leaves in the trees above. Absolute silence, as the tiger crept away. No sound as the tiger melted into the shadows. And Rachel still slept.
Soon the shack could no longer be seen. The beam of Rachel's flashlight was swallowed by black night.
But the Yeerk was uncertain now. He did not know where we were. He did not know which way to go.
And then ... a sound. A smell.
Humans!
72 "What are humans doing here?" He opened my memory. He searched my brain for an explanation. I had none. "Your own thoughts tell me it is wrong. It is very late. Humans, this deep in the forest?"
The Yeerk moved away from the human scent. They might be hunters. They might be park rangers. Those were the possibilities he had pulled from my own brain.
The Yeerk sent the tiger body into a loping run. But after just ten minutes, the tiger tired and he had to slow down. Tigers are not distance runners.
"Which way?" the Yeerk wondered.
And then . . . once again. Human scent. Human sounds.
I looked through the tiger's eyes and saw nothing. The Yeerk once more turned from the human scent.
The Yeerk searched my memory. "South. I must go south. But which way is south? Anything else will send me deeper into the forest."
"I guess you're lost," I said. The first thing I had said to the Yeerk in a long time.
"Shut up, slave. Once the sun rises in the morning I will know the way to go."
"Two hours in a morph," I reminded him. "lf I'm stuck in tiger morph, then this body will be useless to you. Visser Three will want my body morph-capable."
"Don't tell me what Visser Three wants," the Yeerk said.
But the Yeerk knew time was passing. He had to morph back to my normal human shape.
Moments later, I was watching the world through human senses. The night vision was less acute.
The ears heard too little. The human nose could scarcely smell a thing.
The Yeerk walked, pushing on as fast as my human body could move with no shoes.
"In a hurry to go nowhere?" I asked.
"I know where I'm going," the Yeerk snapped. Then he stopped. "Hah! I should have thought of it. Of course! The falcon morph. I will simply fly away."
I watched like it was a TV program. Like I was far away from my own body. I watched with interest as the body shrank. As wings sprouted. As talons appeared. As - WHAM!
The half-bird, half-human body went rolling, end over end across the ground.
73 "What?" the Yeerk demanded. "What hit me?"
He looked around frantically. But falcon eyes are for daytime hunting. They are stunningly good in sunlight. In the dark, they are nothing special.
The Yeerk continued to morph. Falcon feathers grew, the wings became more fully formed.
WHAM!
A shadow within shadows. A sense of something dark that disappeared before the Yeerk could turn the falcon's head. From far away I realized the falcon body had been injured. There was a deep, bloody gash in the right shoulder.
The Yeerk was beginning to be afraid.
WHAM!
A hammer blow! A ripping of flesh and ten don.
The invisible enemy had struck again. The falcon would not be able to take wing. Not now. The falcon was crippled. Disabled by a silent, invisible enemy.
And then I felt hope come alive in me again.
Because even as the Yeerk, crying in pain, demorphed and returned to human form, I saw the enemy.
It landed on a branch. It was outlined against faint moonlight and infrequent stars. The two little tufts on its head inspired its name.
"The great horned owl," I said to the Yeerk.
"I can read your every thought, you don't need to tell me what it is," the Yeerk snapped.
"Oh, but I enjoy telling you. It's a great horned owl. It flies without making a sound. Tobias watches them hunt sometimes. Tobias says they can hear a mouse burp from a hundred yards away. He says they can see a bug blink on a coal-black night." I laughed silently in my corner of my own brain. I laughed at the Yeerk. "As far as that owl is concerned, you might as well have a spotlight on you."
Then, to my amazement, Cassie's thought- speak was in my head. A voiceless voice that seemed to belong in a different life.
"Sorry I had to hurt you, Jake. But it was necessary. We realized the Yeerk would try morphing.
So we were ready. Rachel only pretended to sleep. We wanted this Yeerk of yours to make his escape when we were most ready for him. So you hang in, Jake. The forest is full of your friends."