The Visitor (5 page)

“He’s a male? He’s a tomcat?” Cassie asked.

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Oh, wonderful,” Cassie moaned. “Please tell me he’s been fixed, at least.”

“Have you been fixed, Fluffer McKitty?” I cooed. “Why do we care?” I asked Cassie.

“Because pound for pound, a tomcat is like one of the toughest, most dangerous little things around.”

“Who, Fluffer? My little kitty friend Fluffer?”

“Even if he is fixed, a male cat, out at night in hunting mode?” Cassie shook her head. “We should have worn gloves.”

“Oh, come on. He’s a sweet kitty cat.” To demonstrate just how sweet Fluffer was, I reached a hand for him.

“Hhhhhhssssss!”

In a movement too fast for my human eyes to see, Fluffer swiped out with one paw. Three bloody scratches appeared on the back of my hand and Fluffer shot straight up the tree.

“Owww!” I stuck my injured hand to my mouth.

“Gloves would definitely have been a good idea,” Cassie said.

“How are you guys doing?” Jake whispered, just loudly enough for me to hear him.

“Wonderful,” I said through gritted teeth. “I’m bleeding and Fluffer is up the tree.”

I heard Marco giggle. I expected that. But then I heard Jake giggling, too. I looked up and saw two glittering yellow-green eyes glaring down from the dark tree.

“This was supposed to be the easy part,” I said. “I figured, okay, we go and acquire Fluffer’s DNA, and
then
the hard stuff begins.”

“We have a cat up a tree,” Cassie said dolefully. “You know how hard it is to get a cat down out of a tree?”

“I have a plan,” I said. “Tobias, are you up there?” not
going to try and snatch an angry tomcat down out of a tree.>

“That’s not what I was going to ask,” I said. I took a deep breath. This night was turning weird real fast. “What I need is a mouse.”

G
ot something for you. A baby mouse. A
mean
baby mouse. It keeps trying to bite me.> Tobias flew in a low, tight circle overhead, disappearing behind the tree branches, then reappearing.

I took a deep breath. I gave him a wave. Sure, I was ready. Why wouldn’t I be ready to have a hawk hand me a mouse? Just your normal kind of thing to deal with.

Tobias flew low and slow. I held out my hands, cupped together. With amazing precision and perfect timing, he deposited the mouse in my hands.

“Don’t let it bite you!” Cassie warned. “Rabies.”

“Wonderful,” I muttered. “Just one more fun aspect of this night.” Actually, I was glad for the warning. The mouse was squirming in terror, trying to get away. I could feel its tiny little mouse legs scrabbling against my palms.

“You should all get rabies shots,” Cassie said. “Seriously. I already have mine. But if we’re going to be handling wild animals … In the meantime, be careful to keep his teeth away from you.”

“I wasn’t planning on feeding him my finger,” I said.

“Hey, wait.” Cassie pried open my hands to get a better look. “That’s not a mouse. That’s a shrew. See the eyes? They’re too small. And the tail is wrong. That’s not a baby mouse, Tobias, it’s a full-grown shrew.”

Cassie shrugged. “I don’t know. I just know it isn’t a mouse.”

“Wait a minute,” Marco said, beginning to grin. “Rachel is going to become a
shrew?
How will we know when she’s changed? How do you
become
what you already are?”

Everyone was too nervous to find the joke very funny. We felt kind of stupid, standing around on some stranger’s lawn playing with rodents. I mean,
there are times when the whole thing just seems so utterly insane, you know?

“Okay, I have to concentrate on acquiring, so everyone shut up,” I said.

Acquiring
is what we call it when we absorb a sample of the animal’s DNA. The DNA is the stuff inside the cells that sort of serves like a how-to manual for making the animal.

When you acquire, you have to think hard about the animal, focusing on it and blocking everything else out. Then the animal kind of goes limp, like it’s in a trance. It takes just about a minute.

It was easy to focus on the shrew, what with it squealing in terror and squirming to get out of my hand. But it was gross, definitely gross. I know there’s nothing really wrong with shrews, but still. They freak me out a little.

When I was done, I opened my eyes. “Okay, little shrew, thanks for your help. You can go now.”

“I’m not sure this is a good idea,” Jake said doubtfully.

“Really?” Marco was sarcastic. “You’re not sure it’s a good idea for Rachel to turn into a shrew in order to lure a vicious cat down from a tree so she can morph into that cat and sneak into the assistant principal’s house? What worries you about that plan?”

Cassie looked worried, too. “You know, Rachel, usually a cat will play with a mouse a little bit. But sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they go right for the neck bite. The mouse — or the shrew—dies instantly.”

Tobias said.

He “said” it so only I could hear. I could tell, because nobody else reacted.

I looked up at Tobias and winked. I knew he would see it. I rubbed my hands together. “Okay, let’s do this.”

I concentrated once more on the shrew. The shrew was now a part of me. I don’t know how it works, but it does. Somehow, thanks to the Andalite technology, the DNA of that shrew was stored away inside me. It was like having a map to guide me as I transformed. Not that I had a clue how I was able to do it.

The first sensation was of shrinking. It’s a long, long trip down from being five feet tall to being less than an inch tall. It’s like falling. Except that you can feel the ground under your feet the whole time.

One minute I was looking Jake and Marco and Cassie in the face. The next minute their faces seemed to be zooming high up above me. I was falling down
the length of their bodies. It was like they were huge skyscrapers and I had jumped off the roof or something.

My outer clothing fell around me like a big, collapsing circus tent.

There was a slight grinding noise as my backbone collapsed into a size smaller than my little finger. There was the disturbing, not-quite-pain sensation that goes along with some morphs. Like you knew it should hurt, but it didn’t quite.

I could feel the tail sprout from my tailbone. A long, hairless tail. Not at all attractive.

My legs practically disappeared, they were so small. I was a chubby little ball of fur no more than two inches long, with four tiny feet.

Then the fear kicked in. The shrew’s fear.

It hit me so hard I began to shake. I rattled with terror. I quaked with terror.

I was surrounded! Predators everywhere! I could smell them. I could see them — huge, looming, slow-moving creatures standing over me.

“Rachel? You okay down there?” It was Cassie. She lifted the folds of my clothing off of me.

I heard the voice and sort of understood it, but it was more like distant thunder. It didn’t really mean anything. At least not to the shrew.

It was looking for a way out. Its brain might have
been terrified, but it was also amazingly smart. It was evaluating every possible escape route. It was measuring the distance between the three sets of legs. One set of legs moved slightly.

I was off like a shot.

Running! Running!
Blades of grass seemed six feet tall. Twigs were like fallen trees that I had to scramble over. My little feet moved with incredible speed. I scooted past a beetle that seemed to me to be as big as a dog.

“Rachel, you have to get control!”

I knew they were right. I even sort of understood what they meant. But the terror was so strong. The urge to survive was so powerful.

And at the same time there were other feelings. Hunger. I smelled nuts. I smelled dead flesh. I even smelled the maggots squirming on the dead flesh.

And I wanted them. I know it’s too gross, but I wanted to eat those maggots.

Heavy pounding footsteps behind me! I turned sharply and ducked under a bush. The steps went barreling by before stopping and turning back toward me.

They were faster than I was, but not as agile. I could get away. I could get away and find that dead smell and gorge!

< Rachel, it’s Tobias. The shrew is in control. You have to assert yourself! Tell it to stop running.>

Fear! Hunger!

Fear! Hunger! Run!

Grass and twigs and dirt. Low scratchy branches over my head. The smell of food. The smell of a dog that had urinated on this bush.

More loud footsteps and far-off rumbling voices yelling. They were trying to catch me. But I was fast! I was clever!

But not clever enough. I ran out from under the bush.

Like a shadow inside of a shadow, I felt it descend on me. Terror like nothing I’d felt before swept over me. Something deep, deep inside my shrew brain cried out.

It was the ultimate fear! The ultimate horror! It was the enemy I could not defeat!

And it was coming for me!

I
dodged, but too slowly. Huge talons closed around me and suddenly my little feet were running in air.

The voice was in my head. I understood the words. It cut through the terror at last. I held on to that voice.

I looked down and with my dim shrew eyesight saw the shadows shooting past below.

School? Yes. I remembered school. Quite suddenly the shrew mind lost the battle for control. It was like a switch had been flipped. I was in charge. I knew what I was. I knew
who
I was.

I said.

He circled around and landed with perfect gentleness on the ground.

“You okay, Rachel?” Jake’s voice.

“It’s like Jake’s lizard,” Cassie suggested. “He had a panic reaction, too. The other animals we morphed were all kind of big, dominant animals—gorilla, tiger. My horse was skittish, though.”

I said. That was the understatement of all time. I could still smell death and hear the thousands of feasting maggots. And to me those things still meant dinner. I was horribly hungry.

“Are you sure you’re going to be able to maintain down there?” Marco asked. I saw him peering down at me from a million miles up. “You still look a little
nervous. Your tail is twitching and your little nose is sniffing like crazy.”

Before I could object, Marco reached down and scooped me into his hands. He held me up and looked into my eyes. “I’ve never seen you look lovelier, Rachel. Very cover girl.”

We walked down the block. Marco set me down at the bottom of the tree where Fluffer was still hiding out on a high branch.

I said.

“Not
too
far,” Jake said. “We have to be able to get between you and Fluffer fast.”

I said, joking. I guess I felt a little embarrassed about having let the shrew take control of me.

“Uh-huh,” Marco said dryly. “Cat versus mouse. Who would you bet on?”

“Haven’t you ever seen
Itchy and Scratchy?”
Cassie asked. “Mouse, definitely. Besides, she’s not a mouse.”

Let me tell you something: It is no fun sitting around in a shrew’s tiny body, waiting to see whether a huge cat is going to decide to climb down and kill you. It is one of the least fun things I’ve ever done.
I had the shrew brain under control, but that didn’t change the fact that the shrew was about as scared as a shrew can be. Between being snatched up by a hawk and now waiting to see if the shrew’s other deadly enemy was going to attack … I mean, the shrew was definitely in a state of panic.

She was not a happy shrew.

I was so preoccupied thinking about the shrew’s hunger that I missed what happened next. I didn’t even notice until I heard the sound of scraping tree bark just an inch over my head. Fluffer was dropping through the air right on top of me!

I froze!

Jake and Marco did not freeze.

Marco grabbed Fluffer in mid-pounce. Fluffer rewarded him with a nasty slash of his claws. Marco yelled and almost dropped the cat. Jake grabbed Fluffer by the nape of the neck and Cassie ran up with the animal carrier.

The three of them managed to stuff the squalling, hissing, slashing Fluffer into the carrier and close the door.

I was already morphing out of the shrew body as fast as I could.

“I’m bleeding!” Marco cried.

“We’re all bleeding,” Cassie said matter-of-factly.
“I told you guys: Kitties can be nasty when you get on their nerves.”

I was shooting up from the ground, regaining my normal body.

“Ugh! Ugh! I’m never doing that morph again,” I said, as soon as I had a normal tongue and lips. I looked over my shoulder to make sure I didn’t still have that creepy tail. Nothing. I was me again. I was in my morphing outfit and with no shoes on, but I was human again.

I shuddered. The memory of the shrew’s brain and its fear and hunger made my flesh creep. I was fighting a powerful urge to throw up. I felt sick in a way that is mostly in your head.

Jake looked at me and shook his head. “I should have done it. I should have used my lizard morph to lure the cat down from the tree.”