BEWERE THE NIGHT.

edited by Ekaterina Sedia.

To those who cannot keep one shape

INTRODUCTION.

After editing Running with the Pack, I was a tad apprehensive about taking on another shape-shifter anthology. Sure, it's more than just werewolves, I reasoned, but how many variations on a theme can there be? The metaphor was, to me, obvious: violence and wildness, the human's animal nature hidden by a thin civilized veneer . . . a theme as old as storytelling.

As it turned out, I should never have worried. The imaginations and inventiveness of the contributors amazed and delighted me. Their stories were richly diverse, both in terms of were-creatures and the themes they represented. Were-hummingbirds and were-socialists, failing families and immigrant resilience, stories set in the present, past, and future, a variety of cultures and influences, from China to Mexico to Hollywood. The protagonists of these stories are just as diverse: from children to old astronauts to mountain climbers to actors, all have singular stories and unique perspectives on their human and animal natures.

As for my assumption about the meaning of shape-shifter stories, my concept was wonderfully broadened: these stories are not always (or even mostly) about humankind's inner animal nature. They are often about longing and wistfulness, the desire to be something we are not, to regain some aspect of ourselves that we've lost without ever actually possessing it, the yearning for something we cannot quite remember.

Some of the stories are recognizable as traditional tales of werewolves or animal wives; some take on the now-familiar tropes of urban fantasy. Others are singular: were-jellyfish; an entire city infested with a strange malaise; lycanthropes in an STD clinic . . . I could never have imagined!

The stories were chosen for their individual beauty and for their many differences of viewpoint, for their novel flights of imagination, or for their radical twists of the familiar tropes.

I invite you to enjoy these stories, one by one, to give each the room to breathe and unfold and to show you what's inside. Some are funny and some are scary, but all are beguiling. Each of them will delight you with its love of language and of storytelling. They offer unique perspectives on shape-shifters and were-creatures, and I only hope that your notions of these strange beings will be challenged and expanded as much as mine were while editing this collection.

And most of all, beware: these stories might transform you!

Ekaterina Sedia.

December 2010.

Grenada/New Jersey.

THE THIEF OF PRECIOUS THINGS.

A.C. WISE.

Their shadows are crows.

They are two men, standing at the mouth of an alleyway, watching the night with dark, guarded eyes. Their long, black coats flap in the wind, and their shadows have wings. They have feathers and beaks and claws.

When the moon reaches the apex of the sky, they crush their cigarettes against the bricks. Their shadows break into a dozen birds each and take flight.

They have been waiting for her.

She is a fox-girl, running swift over the close rooftops. Up here, the world smells of dust and feathers. Fresh-washed laundry hangs from obsolete radio relays, satellite dishes, and cell phone towers, which sprout like mushrooms atop every building. Sheets and shirts flap in the wind, flags to mark her passing.

Her paws-black as burnt wood-fly over shingle, tile, brick and tar. The birds follow, floating on silent, star-lined wings. She stole something from them, something precious. They want it back.

When the roof ends, there is nowhere else to run. She jumps, changes in mid-air, and lands on two feet on the cracked pavement. The smells between the buildings are wet-all puddles, garbage, and food left to rot. She longs for the dry smells of the world near the sky. Neon turns the alley the color of blood. She is on four paws again, running.

The fox-girl can almost remember what she stole. She remembers a stone on her tongue. Images tumble through her mind: an unearthly blue glow, a chair, leather straps around her wrists, a needle in her arm. There was a woman, a human woman, and she buried something under the fox-girl's skin. It burns.

Sheltering against the side of a dumpster, she snaps fox-teeth at her own flank, tastes blood, and spits fur and flesh onto the wet ground. Something catches the light, gleaming in the patch of bitten-free skin. It is a small square of plastic, patterned with silver.

She stole it from the men in the tower; she can almost remember why. The crows want it, the humans want it; it is precious. She picks it up between careful teeth, and tucks it in her cheek.

A door opens onto the alleyway, spilling yellow light and the scent of noodles and cooked vegetables. A young man stands framed against the light, holding a bulging, plastic bag full of wasted food. Her eyes meet his, but before he can speak, four and twenty black birds fall from the sky.

The crows fold their wings tight, diving for her eyes. She whirls, snapping and snarling at the storm of feathers. The precious plastic thing scrapes her gums raw. She leaps, twists-a war dance. She is all fox now, her animal heart beating hard inside a cage of burning bones, wrapped in fur the color of coal.

"Hey! Leave it alone!"

Amidst the chaos of wings, she hears the young man drop the swollen bag of trash. It splits, spilling new scents into the alley-meat and sauce, cooling in the night air.

He runs to her side, arms beating the feathered whirlwind. She could slip away, now that the birds' attention is divided. A sharp beak draws blood from his arm, and he cries out. He is nothing to her, this young human, but she stays.

The crows are distracted, and she leaps, snatching a bird from the air. Her jaws close, crunching hollow bones. Liquid shadow slides down her throat, tasting of primordial tar, tasting of the decayed flesh of a million dead things from the beginning of time.

Twenty three birds lift, wheeling in the sky. They scream, and fall together again at the far end of the alley, coalescing into shadows where two men wait and watch with hard, dark eyes.

One man is missing a piece of the ragged blackness spread beneath him, cast by the alley's light. His eyes meet hers, full of pain and surprise. He limps as he and his brother walk away.

A hand touches her back. The young man's voice is soft. "Are you okay?"

She's still postured to fight. Instinct snaps her teeth; the man yelps and pulls away. She tastes blood-his and hers-mingled with the lingering taste of crow-shadow oil.

She changes and lifts her head. She is a woman now, naked, crouched on blood-colored pavement that remembers the rain. She is bleeding, shaking, and tired to the bone.

The young man stares at her, open-mouthed, wide-eyed, cradling his wounded hand. She tries to speak, fails, and spits blood and plastic into her palm before trying again.

"Sorry," she says.

She collapses, but not before closing the precious, stolen thing that the crows and the humans want tightly in her hand.

She wakes on a pallet in a strange room. The scent of noodles, cooked meat, and vegetables, has sunk deep into the walls. A thin blanket lies draped over her. When she shifts, its rough weave catches on her torn skin.

The young man from the alleyway enters carrying a tray holding a bowl of water, a bowl of soup, and a roll of gauze. He sets the tray down and backs away. His hand is wrapped; two spots of crimson have soaked through the white.

He could have run, too. He could have left her in the alley on the blood-colored ground. Why bring her here? Perhaps she reminds him of someone.

She sits up, letting the blanket fall, and reaches for the gauze. He watches, wide-eyed, as she licks the wounds she can reach with her tongue, and cleans the ones she can't with water from the bowl. The young man is too frightened, too stunned, to look away.

After she wraps the last of the bandages, he shakes himself and hands her a shirt from a pile draped over the back of a chair. She catches his scent-sweat, laced with pheromones, but mostly with fear.

The shirt is clean. It reminds her of the wind on the rooftops. She pulls it on. Only now that she has covered herself does the young man blush, as though his skin has just remembered shame. He looks away.

She reaches for the soup and drinks, swallowing until she almost washes away the taste of crow-oil and shadows and blood. The young man looks back at her as she sets the bowl down; she smiles-a fox-grin.

"What's your name?" he asks. He watches her as though he believes she will bite him again, or worse.

"I don't know." As she speaks them, the fox-girl realizes the words are true. "I don't remember."

She lifts the plastic square, which she held tight even as she slept, letting the young man see.

"I stole this. Do you know what this is?"

Fear flickers through his eyes. "I think so."

He perches on the edge of the pallet, rigid. He doesn't meet her fox-eyes straight on, but looks at her from the side.

"My name is Yuki. If you don't have a name, what should I call you?"

She shrugs. She isn't interested in names, only the patterned plastic in her hand.

"Ani. I'll call you Ani."

The way he speaks the name makes her look up. He holds the name on his tongue like it's a precious thing, one he's afraid of breaking. The name has a physical weight; it changes the air in the room and leaves it tasting of ghosts. That he has given her this name frightens her. Once she had a name that meant something. Names have power, and this heavy name, fallen from his lips and soaking into her skin, might change her if she lets it. Maybe it already has.

She pushes the thought away. "Tell me about this." She holds up the stolen plastic again.

"It's a computer chip, from before the war. Everyone used to have them, but now they only exist in tower." He points to the window. "I used to deliver food there, but not anymore."

Ani looks. The tower glitters. A thousand windows catch the setting sun and turn it into a column of living light twisting up from the scrub-brush of the city surrounding it.

"I carried a stone on my tongue," she says.

"What does that mean?"

"I don't know." She closes fox-eyes. "Except sometimes, I do."

She remembers.

Before the glass tower there was a tower of stone. It is nothing like the glittering tower outside Yuki's window. It has no windows, but it is open to the sky, and it rustles with the sound of restless wings.

In the central courtyard, a line of men with cold, hard eyes stand on a raised platform. If the fox looks straight ahead, she can only see their shoes. Even if she changed, they would still look down on her. She is less than nothing in the Crow Lords' eyes-all foxes are. So she stands with her head held high, just to show them she can.

Above the hard-eyed men, hundreds of crows line the tower's edge. The fox-girl holds her tail erect; she does not show her throat; she does not bow.

"Why are you here?" one of the Crow Lords asks.

"I've heard you need a thief. I'm the best there is."

She meets their eyes, bird and human both. Her tongue lolls, a fox-grin. She speaks truth.

Powerful and ancient as they are, there are places no Crow Lord can go. They were tricksters once, but they've forgotten the old ways, or let them go. Fox-girls were born to steal, and no fox-girl is quicker or cleverer than she.

"Cocky child." Another Crow Lord speaks, and the fox-girl turns to him. His eyes are cold, harder than those of his brothers, filled with contempt.

"You must learn your place," the Crow Lord continues. "I will take your name to teach you respect."

Every fox-girl earns her name. It is a battle, hard-won with teeth and claws, with wit, and cunning, and quickness. But with a thought the Crow Lord rips her name away, leaving a hole where a thing she can't even remember anymore used to be. The hole fills with ice; it slows her blood and threatens to stop her breath. She shivers as though at winter's deepest cold.

The Crow Lord steps down from the platform and crouches. She could reach his throat, tear it out. The cold spreading from the place where her name used to be keeps her from doing anything at all. He laughs-a sound like rustling wings.

He grabs her muzzle, forcing open her jaws. Her needle-sharp teeth are so close to his skin, but she cannot close them while he holds her.

"I could snap your neck," he says in a voice like feathers brushed against fur. "I could rip your lower jaw from your skull and leave you broken and bleeding on the floor."

With his free hand the Crow Lord takes a smooth stone from the pocket of his long, black coat. He places it on her tongue. She expects it to be cold-and maybe it is-but it also burns.

"Your name belongs to me until the moment I choose to return it, if I ever do."

He lets her go. She wants to retch. She wants to whimper and yip, but she won't give him the satisfaction. He watches her with hard, empty eyes. She does not look away. The shadow of a smile lifts the edges of the Crow Lord's mouth.

She knew when she walked into the Crow Lords' hall that this could happen, but she came anyway, because no other fox-girl would. When the Crow Lords fly, her sisters lower their eyes. They keep their places, the places the Crow Lords give them. They whine and show their bellies. And if the Crow Lords' sharp beaks seek their lights and their livers, they hold their teeth, and whimper as they die.

So for the sake of her sisters, she refuses to look down. She needs to show the crows that at least one fox-girl is not afraid. She bares her teeth, trapping a growl at the back of her throat. A name is a small price to pay.

"What would you have me steal?" she asks, and she does not say, my lord.

"The humans in the tower are trying to resurrect their old magic, their circuits and wires. This time they are trying to infuse it with Crow Lord magic. They have forgotten their old ways, and they have forgotten their place in the world. They seek to steal from the oldest and the highest. We would have you steal from them what they stole from us first."

"Then it is done." The fox-girl grins, showing sharp teeth.

She will steal this precious thing for them, not because they asked her to, not for their favor, but because she can.

Ani wakes with the moon and stars still bright in the sky. Even now, shadows and oil linger on her tongue. She slips from the bed, and tiptoes past Yuki, who lies snoring on the floor.

The night air is cold, raising goose bumps. It hardens her nipples, making them stand out against the fabric of her borrowed shirt, fabric so thin that it shows the thatch of hair between her legs-dark as burnt wood.

A man waits beside the dumpster with its peeling paint. The chill in the air dampens the smell of rotting food. A rat squeaks its fear at Ani's approach, turning tail and running. Ani faces the hard-eyed man, waiting for him to speak.

"You took something from me," the Crow Lord says.

There is pain in his voice where she expected cold anger. She meets his eyes, which are crow-black and hard, but not as hard as before. The moonlight throws his shadow over the cracked pavement. Ani sees the jagged hole where her teeth tore part of that shadow away.

She can taste him, even after a day and a night, she can taste him. He tastes like the sky, like the wind and the stars. He tastes like freedom.

With a suddenness that stuns her, Ani understands. It's no wonder the Crow Lords look down on her kind. The entire world is a blanket spread beneath them. They speak with the dead; they know each current of air by its secret name. Humans read their flight to auger the future, and everything that walks the earth, or swims the seas must look up to them.

Ani understands, and she hates the understanding. She wants to vomit up his shadow-feathers beak and all-and force him to take it back, covered in her bile. But she can't. It's in her blood; it beats in her heart. It is part of her.