And yet I had another memory, more recent. I saw myself the way I had appeared when the El-limist had taken me into the turquoise mist. I saw myself half-bird, half-human.
No! I said to myself. I shook off the image. Just an Ellimist trick.
I tried to stop thinking. I needed sleep. That's all. I just needed a good night's sleep. I'd be fine in the morning.
I closed my eyes and tried to turn off the busy human mind that lived alongside the hawk's simpler intelligence.
I closed my eyes . . . and when I opened them again, I was not in my tree.
I was in a room. In a house.
It was night, but I could see blue numbers glowing from an alarm clock.
And I could see
someone lying in a narrow, disheveled bed. There was a sleeping, tousled dirty-blond head lying on the pillow.
A cold chill swept through me.
I knew this room. This bed. I knew the person lying there, tossing and turning with sad dreams.
I fluttered to the nightstand. The noise of my wings woke the sleeper.
He blinked the sleep from his eyes and stared at me. "A bird?" he said.
"lt's just a dream," I told him. My heart was beating so fast I thought it would explode. But at the same time I felt a weird calm. Like I knew what was going to happen. Like it had all happened already.
Then I saw the calendar. It was a Star Trek calendar. I guess that's funny. The date was the day before I had walked through the construction site with Jake and Marco and Cassie and Rachel.
"A dream?" The sleeper sat up in his bed. He peered at me and I saw a troubled expression in his eyes. "I know you, don't I?"
"Kind of," I said. "And I know you. ... Tobias^
"How do you know my name?"
"l can't tell you that. But listen, Tobias, I . . ." What could I say?
What could I possibly say to my old self? I couldn't tell him everything would be all right. I didn't know that. I couldn't tell him what was about to happen to him. No sane person would believe it.
Besides, I had forgotten this dream. Hadn't I?
"Tobias," I said. "Walk home with Jake. Walk through the construction site."
"What?"
I just laughed a little sadly. Why had I told him to do that? Why had I sent him to the construction site? It was there that everything had begun. It was there that I had started down the path that led to my being trapped as a hawk.
I knew the truth now. I could see it clearly. I was looking at myself.
Back when I was human. And looking at myself, I couldn't escape the truth - that wasn't me anymore.
I wasn't Tobias the human. I had become something else. Something new.
What had the Ellimist said? ". . . you are a beginning. You are a point on which an entire time line may turn."
"Tobias?" I said to the human. "You should go back to sleep."
"I am asleep, aren't I? This has to be a dream. And if it isn't a dream, I'll never get back to sleep!"
"l can help you sleep," I said. "Hold out your arm. Don't be afraid." The human Tobias held out his arm. I flapped
my wings and landed on him. I was as gentle as I could be with my talons. I didn't need to dig them in. Simple contact was enough.
Tobias's eyes began to flutter. He became dazed and passive. The way all animals do when they are acquired.
I closed my eyes and focused on him. On the human DNA that was being absorbed into my hawk's body.
When I opened my eyes again, I was back in my tree.
Had it been real? Or was it all just some silly dream?
don't forget, a huge voice said. two hours, tobias.
I didn't ask what the Ellimist meant. I knew. I had acquired my own human DNA. But it was just a morph. If I stayed in my old human body I would be trapped there forever. Never again to morph. Never again to be a hawk. Never again to fly.
HAVE I KEPT MY PROMISE?
"Yes," I said.
AND ARE YOU HAPPY, TOBIAS?
me next day was Monday. The day when Rachel was to receive the Packard Foundation Outstanding Student award.
There were four other kids being honored, too. They held the presentation in the school gym. Parents were there, all proud of their sons and daughters. Kids were there, having a good time, basically because the assembly got them out of last period.
I missed the early part of the ceremony. I had to be careful, you see. I had to time everything just right. There is a two-hour limit, as I know better than anyone. In that time I had to walk from the edge of the woods to the school and leave plenty of time to get back.
I was scared and nervous, sneaking into the back of the auditorium.
A teacher frowned at me, like she knew me from somewhere but couldn't quite recall where.
I hung back in the shadows. The ceiling bothered me. I don't like being where I can't see the sky. But I stood there as patiently as I could, watching the ceremony through dim human eyes, and listening to the blah, blah, blah through weak human ears.
And only at the end, as the recipients filed out, did I step from the shadows.
Rachel was last in line. She was beautiful, as always. And she had the usual Rachel swagger.
I saw Cassie give her a wink as she walked by. Rachel rolled her eyes, self-mocking, and Cassie laughed.
When she passed by where Marco was sitting, Marco made a phony bow.
You know, like he was bowing before some idol. Rachel laughed and shook her head.
And then she was right there in front of me. I saw her eyes sweep over me, indifferent, and then look past me toward the door.
She stopped walking.
She turned to me. Her eyes were wide.
"Hi, Rachel," I said with a human voice.