Page 5 of Mestra

“Six times is a new record,” I said.

He looked up at me with pale eyes. “You are proud of yourself?”

“I just mean I am glad to help.”

He swung his hand down, like chopping off a chicken’s head. “Help? A mouse would starve on what I’ve had today. We should be getting three times as much, but I have to sell the same tired nags over and over, because you can’t do what you’re told.”

He went back to chewing crusts. His knees looked like stones joining two sticks. His anklebones were the thickest things on him. The god had given me a gift to save him, and I couldn’t even use it right. I stayed up late that night trying to put my cousin’s head on the queen’s body, but no matter how I shivered, I couldn’t do it. It was bad enough that I let them be handled and mauled every day, I could not chop them up besides. After all this was over, when my father was whole, and the curse lifted, I didn’t know if I could even bear to see my cousin again. All these hours I’d spent as her would sit between us.

I didn’t tell my father about my failure. Instead, each time I escaped, I raced back to him all the faster to be sold again. I became practiced at stealing, walking off with baskets of dates or rolls or sugared almonds. Every night, I tallied up the day’s food. Roasted pig and lamb, porridge with honey, beans in gravy, thick slabs of roasted cheese, two rounds of bread and a large millet cake. When he wasn’t looking, I examined his wrists, his neck, to see if it had begun to work. Not yet.

On the tenth day, he sold me to an old man who pinched me all the way to his house. I’d had pinchers before, but this man’s nails were long and ragged, and put red lines in Arete’s flesh. The man’s mouth was yellowed with dried spit, and the more I shrank from him the more he seemed to enjoy himself. As soon as we were in the house, he pressed against me. His breath was even fouler than the first merchant’s had been. I tried to pull away, but his fingers hooked into me like briars. He was dragging the dress from my shoulders.

Sir, I said, in my cousin’s sweet voice. I need a moment. I need to make water. Please.

Later, he said.

Please, I am afraid I will have an accident.

You better not, he said.

I shoved at him with my cousin’s small wrists, and it did nothing. But this man wasn’t a god, and he was older than my father. So then I shoved him again, and this time, he flew back. I towered over him. I hadn’t changed into the fisherman since I’d realized who he was. But now the old warmth washed through me.

The old man shrieked. “Help! A monster! He will murder me!” He ran from the room and out the front door. I could hear his cries, and voices answering, feet running. I would be cornered. Could I fight my way out? I couldn’t imagine the fisherman doing that. I looked to the window, but it was too narrow for a person. It would only fit a small animal.

I felt a pang of grief, letting the fisherman go so soon, but I could not let us both be caught. The room seemed to tumble, and then the window darted towards me. I passed through it, and out into the sky, wheeling upwards. The houses below sped by so fast I could scarcely see them. I spotted the crown of a poplar tree in a small square, and landed in its shade.

My cousin had kept a tame sparrow. She’d named him Honey, because of the cakes he liked, and his sweet disposition. We would feed him from our palms, and laugh at the bright way he cocked his head. She was always trying to train him to land on her finger. I wished I could fly to her right now and tell her how Honey had saved me, but instead I turned into Mestra and went to confess to my father.

“You’ve ruined it, haven’t you?” he said. “I heard the shouting. You changed into that brute again.”

I flushed. “Father, if you had your horse back, could you sell her?”

“Of course. She was descended from horses given by the gods themselves, you know that. I should never have eaten her. She would have sold for more than you ever have.”

I believed it. Oak, she’d been named, for her brown flanks hard with muscle. He had roasted her last of all, over a brazier. We walked to a field outside the city, and with a shiver I changed into her. I felt the great kick of her heart, and though I had meant only to trot, I raced down the field, spraying dirt behind me. When I stopped, air heaved through me, in and out, tasting of sun and dust.

He took me to the richest man of the city. He didn’t have to say much, the stable hand’s eyes were wide when he saw me. He ran off to get his master, and they all stood at my chest, marveling at its glossy width. My father recited my lineage for them. You could own a piece of divinity. This is your chance.

The lord ran his hand down my side, and I stamped my foot. He startled back.

Just a fly, my father said. She’s obedient.

I kept still after that. But I liked knowing that the lord feared me. When the gold was handed over, they put a rope around me, and led me to the stable. The groom ran off for some water for the trough, and I turned into myself, and opened the latch on the door, as if I had escaped that way. Then I turned into the falcon that used to glide past my window. By the time the groom came back I was up in the thin blue of the sky, watching him scramble below. I flew to a tree near my father, changed on a low branch, then dropped to the ground as myself.

My father sold his whole stable that day, each one of those god-touched horses, Oak twice, Fury twice, River and Bright-face once each. I came back to him each time, as one of the deer that used to graze our fields, then a long-legged hunting dog the King of Sparta gave us, then the falcon again. I was dizzy with all the changes, as if I had drunk unmixed wine. At the end of the day we had so much food, he was still working his way through it, and he rode me home with a huge sack balanced across my neck. I was careful to place my hooves soft as a cat so his bones would not be shaken. I could feel the crumbs falling across me as he chewed, and I shivered them off with pleasure.

At home, he peeled the crackling skin from a pig and ate it down to the trotters. By moonrise, the room was only bones and grease stains. He looked up. “What else?” he said.

“I’m sorry, that’s all there is.” I reached to put my hand on his, in comfort.

He grabbed my wrist. His fingers had no flesh left on them at all. Against my skin they felt like claws. His breath was ragged, and in the firelight, his eyes were pricks of gold, fixed on me.

“You ate,” he said. “You think I don’t know? I can smell it on you.” He pushed close to me, and inhaled. His face was sharp and thin, all skull.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I had a handful of bread, and a bite of cheese. That’s it, I swear.”

He still held my wrist. We were far from the city, far from anyone. There was a wildness in his face. I should change, I thought. But all my forms felt far away, held back by the pressure of his grip. Instead, I blurted out: