Again, I can say little about how much time passed, or exactly what was done. I know that the old woman chanted and meditated over me for a long while, and occasionally seemed to knead various parts of my head and body. I also seemed to have a bad fever, with all sorts of strange, surrealist visions passing in and out of my mind. I would come down with chills, then hot flashes, and even oddly erotic sensations ran through my whole body. They had remarked on how bad off I was, and so I didn’t fight any of it. Finally, I just lapsed into an incredibly deep sleep where no odd creatures, feelings, wizards and witches penetrated.
I awoke still feeling groggy, although with no pain. It was some moments before I perceived a wrongness, somehow, about myself. I looked around the cave, but aside from a now tiny fire and a sliver of light coming in through the opening indicating it was day outside I saw nobody and nothing unusual. I fought to clear the cobwebs from my brain, and, at last, I realized a couple of things right away. First of all, I was standing up. That was really odd, since there was no way I could imagine myself rising in the dark—unless it was part of the witch’s healing spells or whatever. Second, I no longer felt the least bit hot. In fact, I felt a little chilly, which was ridiculous in a cave with the fire still going.
I was suddenly very wide awake and with a very bad feeling about all this. I raised my hand to rub the last bits of sleep from my eyes and saw what I feared.
The hand was green, rough; and taloned.
“No!” I shouted, my voice echoing slightly around the cave walls. “Damn it!” I took a step forward, and immediately knew the whole story. I turned and looked down and back at myself. I had big, taloned lizard’s feet and thickly muscled lizard’s legs, not to mention a bright green tail that was almost as long as my body without the legs. Frantically I looked around the cave, then saw over in one corner something that would do for my purposes—a large piece of shiny metal. I went over to it, picked it up, and looked at myself in the fire’s reflection.
Horn and all, I reflected glumly. The face and torso retained some of my former appearance, but it was an odd hybrid, a combination of the features of Park Lacoch and Darva.
I heard someone enter behind me. I put down the shiny metal and turned. It was Darva. She stopped and looked at me, a mixture of pleasure and apprehension on her face. “Darva, why?” I asked her.
She looked a little apologetic. “I saved your life,” she reminded me. “I would think you would do the same for me.”
“I—I would,” I told her honestly, “but how is changing me into a near double of you going to do that?”
She sighed and looked a little sad. “The only thing I lived for was revenge, and I’ve had that, although not the way I hoped. Now, with all this, I’m completely alone and like this forever, unless I’m changed into something even worse. The only one of my kind, Park—and never able to go home again, to see my family, to be among the few I treasure.” There was a note of pleading in her voice. “Don’t you see? If I had to go on alone, I’d kill myself. And there you were, and Jobrun knocked you out, then drew his pistol to shoot you. I saw it, and knew, somehow, it was destiny and that the gods had put you and me there like that for a reason.”
I shook my head sadly. The truth was, I had to admit even to myself, that what she was saying was totally understandable and even reasonable. How could I even argue with her logic, no matter how I felt? Face facts, I said to myself. You’d be dead without her, so you owe her. And this way, you are still in the game, still playing. If the changelings were the heart of Koril’s movement, then it was with the changelings I belonged. If there was any doubt about that I should have just stayed out of that square and helped Tully pick up the pieces as a loyal T.A. Besides, there were a lot worse things I could have been turned into—I ought to know. I had seen them in the square.
I went over to her, almost knocking over some stuff with my tail, took her hand in mine, and smiled. “I do understand,” I told her, “and I do forgive you.”
She looked instantly happy beyond measure.
“But you might have gotten more than you bargained for,” I warned.
She didn’t seem to hear the comment, but two big tears welled up in her green eyes. “I’m glad we’re not going to have a fight.”
I sighed. “No, no fight I admit this is going to take some getting used to in more ways than one, but I think I can live with it.”
“Let’s go outside,” she suggested. “We’re sort of cold-blooded.”
Well, that explained the slight chill, I thought I followed her out It was the usual hot day, with heavy humidity and great clumps of white fog covering almost everything. The heat and humidity seemed to fade slowly away, though, and I began feeling very comfortable for the first time since arriving on Charon. Suddenly I was conscious of a great hunger. “What do we eat?” I asked her.
She smiled. “Almost anything living,” she replied, and I had visions of tearing small lizards limb from limb. She caught my thought and laughed. “Oh, no. Plants, fruits, leaves, that sort of thing. Animals, too, but I prefer mine cooked the old way.”
“Fair enough. Anything nearby?”
“There’s a grove of fruit trees—cuaga melons—just down the hill here. Follow me.”
She started off and I followed. “You say it’s a grove. Any chance of our being seen? Tm pretty sure changelings aren’t too popular right now.”
“No, it’s on the edge of Bindahar’s holdings,” she replied. “They won’t be out this way for a couple of days, and by then we’ll be long gone.”
The melons were big, fat black and orange striped things, but they were very filling, although I had to get used to eating the rind as well. Either my taste sense had changed drastically—which was likely—or the humans who ate only the pulp missed something good.
We ate long and heavily. My old self—my original self—might have managed a whole melon, pulp only. The old Park Lacoch maybe a quarter of that. I ate seventeen, rinds and all, and still wasn’t totally full.
“You eat a lot,” Darva told me, “and whenever we can. We never get fat, though—just stronger, it seems.”
“That’s a fair trade,” I admitted, feeling much better now. Once we’d eaten, it was time to talk of other things. Eating made me a little lazy and lethargic, and it was time to relax.
“Look—tell me a lot of things.”
“Anything,” she responded, obviously meaning it. “You don’t know how very long it’s been since I’ve had anybody to talk to, just friend to friend.”
I nodded. “Okay. First of all, the immediate stuff. Who was the old woman who cast the spell?” Frankly, I wanted to know for more than one reason. She was the one who, at some future time, might also take it off.
“That was my great-grandmother—my real one,” she told me. “She’s had that power since I don’t know when. Maybe since she was little. She studied with a Company sore when she was very young, when there weren’t the lands of prejudice and tight unions they have now. But she never got the full bit. She had nine kids instead.”
“I can see where that would slow you down,” I admitted, “though she seemed powerful enough. But—why make me into your twin sister? Was that because her powers were limited?”
She hesitated a moment. “Well, that’s not exactly true,” she responded. “It’s true that she had me for a model, and it’s kind of tricky, making a changeling. Do it wrong and your brain’s not right for the rest of you and you get crippled in the body or head. There’s lots like that. So she used the same spell that bastard Isil used on me as her guide. That meant you look almost like me. But she had bunhars as models also. I was so excited I didn’t even really think about it, but she did. You’re still a male, Park—looks aside.”