He shook his head. “When I’m a bird, I forget myself. I forget everything but the wind and the sky. I’m just flying, floating above it all, and it’s the best feeling in the world. I’m not sick. I’m not king. I’m free.”
She’d moved closer to him when he spoke of flying, her expression pensive. She gazed up at the stars, and he tried not to be distracted by the alluring arc of her neck. “It does look lovely up there,” she murmured. “I’ve often dreamed of flying.”
“But I lose all sense of time and purpose when I do,” he continued. “Does that happen to you when you change? Does the animal take over?”
She looked thoughtful. “I do have foxy thoughts, sometimes. A love of holes. Of running. The squawk of a chicken just before my teeth sink in—” She blushed and showed her dimples again, eyes dancing in the firelight.
He pretended to stretch his arms, in order to shift even closer to her. (This isn’t in the history books, of course, but we’d like to point out that this was the first time a young man had ever tried that particular arm-stretch move on a young woman. Edward was the inventor of the arm stretch, a tactic that teenage boys have been using for centuries.)
Gracie didn’t move away. The kiss might have happened then, but at that exact moment the wind shifted, sending a cloud of smoke from the fire into their faces. They both coughed, of course, but Edward coughed and coughed until his vision blurred. Curse Dudley and his poison and his plan and all this wretched coughing, he thought. No way she’d kiss him after he just hacked up half his lungs.
Gracie jumped to her feet and made herself busy tending to the fire. “Anyway, you’re a greenie,” she said as she strategically arranged more pieces of wood. “You’ve just discovered your E?ian form. You’ll learn to control it, in time.”
He sighed. “How do you do control it?”
“It’s not so hard. When I want to change, I take a deep breath to clear the head, and I think something like, To be a fox now would be to find our supper, and to find our supper would be to help the young king, and then the fox rises to the occasion. Speaking of which,” she added, turning to her pack. “I’ve brought us some dessert.”
She took out a handkerchief and unfolded it, and there, glistening in the firelight, was a handful of blackberries.
Edward didn’t know what happened. One minute he was fine, pleased, even, at the prospect of having the taste of blackberries on his tongue again, and then the next he was thrashing in a violent series of seizures, his eyes rolling back in his head, his mouth foaming. He could barely discern Gracie’s face over him, her eyes wide with worry.
After several moments the shaking passed. He lay for a while curled on to his side, exhausted and panting, then coughing again, always coughing, then vomiting up rabbit. When he was done Gracie laid her cool hand against his forehead.
“You’re hot,” she murmured.
He wished he could take that as a compliment. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t have one or two days to get to Helmsley, do I? I’m still dying, apparently.”
Her jaw set. “You need to change. It’s the only way.”
All that was left of his pride seemed to have deserted him. “How?” he whispered.
“I’ll wrap you loose, so you won’t be injured, and bind you to me, and carry you.”
“Bind me to you?” he croaked, struggling to keep his eyes open.
“Like a mother would carry her bairn,” she said, grabbing his hand. “You’d be safe, and we’d go quickly. I can run like the wind, even when I’m not a fox.” She pulled his hand into her chest, where he could feel the strong beat of her heart. “I promise you. I can get you to your granny.”
“All right,” he whispered, a hint of a smile appearing on his lips. “I can’t very well say no to spending the night resting against your bosom, can I?”
She snatched his hand away. “Don’t be fresh.”
He gave a soft laugh, and then he was a kestrel. Gracie sighed and pulled the cloak around him, and it was dark, and warm there against her, and good. Really, really good.
He became slowly aware of a faintly bad smell. He stretched and was surprised to find himself in his human body again, on a real bed, it felt like, covered in furs. He opened his eyes. A single candle burned in the darkness, and as his eyes adjusted he could make out a figure sitting by his bed. A woman.
“Gracie? Where are we?”
“You’re at Helmsley,” said a voice, but it wasn’t the Scot’s voice. It was Bess. She smiled at him and caught his hand. “I was beginning to think you wouldn’t make it.”
“I was beginning to think so, too,” he admitted.
“Here.” She brought a cup to his lips. He drank and then hissed at the taste. It wasn’t water, but a concoction so foul it made his eyes tear.
“It will snake the poison from your blood,” Bess told him. “Gran made it.”
“Gran’s here?”
“Of course I’m here,” came a gruff old voice from the doorway. “Where else do you suppose I would be?”