I turned a sharp left. Seagulls can turn amazingly fast. And shot . . .
ZOOOOM! . . . straight in through an open stall door.
I landed on the dirty hay. "Looks okay in here," I called to the others.
ZOOOM!Z000M!Z000M!ZOOOM!ZOOOM!
The others flew in and landed near me. Then we began to demorph. It was easy. No problem.
Just one slight difficulty we'd overlooked: When you demorph you have to return to your normal body. For Rachel and Jake and Marco and me that meant human.
But for Ax that meant Andalite.
Chapter 14
"Okay, everyone, demorph," Jake said. Tobias? You want to go human or stay as you are?"
"l have to stay in hawk shape if I'm going to acquire a horse. In fact, while you guys demorph, I'll go ahead and try and find a horse I like."
See, you have to be in your original form if you're going to acquire a new morph. And, sad as it may be, red-tailed hawk is now Tobias's true body.
Tobias flew off, keeping his wings tight in the narrowness of the barn.
I began to demorph. My swept-back white wings grew fingers. My tiny legs sprouted up and up and up. My yellowish beak spread and softened to become lips.
And one thing was becoming clear: Four kids and an Andalite are kind of crowded in a single stall.
Everyone was about ninety percent human, and Ax was about ninety percent Andalite, when suddenly, without warning, I found myself staring at two old, old men. One was chewing the end of a slobbery cigar. They were looking over the stall door.
"What the ... what are you kids doing in that stall? And what in the name of all that's holy is that?"
What they were seeing was four kids who seemed to be wearing leotards decorated with feathers. And one really, really unusual creature like nothing either had ever seen before.
"Ax! Keep your head down!" I hissed. I leaped to get between the two old men and Ax's tail.
In case you've never seen an Andalite in person before, and obviously, you haven't, let me explain. Andalites look like a weird cross between a deer, a horse, a scorpion, and a human. They have the bodies of slender horses or large deer, except that their fur is blue and tan.
Their upper bodies seem almost human, until you get to the head, which is so totally nothuman you'd never mistake it. Like I said earlier, Andalites have no mouths. They eat by absorbing grass up through their hooves as they run. And they communicate telepathically with thought- speak. Plus, there's the whole eye thing.
Andalites have four eyes. Two are right where you'd expect them to be.
The other two are at the end of flexible stalks atop their heads. You know the little hornlike things giraffes have? Picture those, only flexible. And with an eyeball at the end.
And finally, there's the tail. It's long and it ends in a scythe-shaped blade that could topple a tree faster-than-you-can-see.
The tail is what I was trying to hide from the old men. I could only hope that Ax would have the sense to keep his upper body lowered.
"I asked you kids what you're doing in that stall," the cigar man said, more sharply this time.
"Urn . . . grooming our horse?" I offered.
Rachel's eyebrows shot up. "Our horse?Oh, yeah, that's exactly what we're doing. Grooming our horse." She reached over and stroked Ax's back.
"Small for a horse," the second man said skeptically. "What are you feeding that poor swaybacked nag?"
"Horse food," Marco said.
"Horse food?"
"Yeah. Urn ... you know, horse food. Boy, you should see how many cans this guy can eat.
Man, all day long I'm opening cans of horse food and filling his dish."
The two men stared. The cigar man moved his cigar to the other side of his mouth.
"Hah-hah-hah!" I practically screamed. "He's such a kidder! Of course we're not feeding our horse foodfrom cans.We're feeding him alfalfa and hay. Like you'd feed any horse. My friend is such a joker! Total joke machine!"
"Plus he's a moron," Rachel added.
"Your horse is blue," the second man observed. "Never seen a blue horse."
"Never seen kids wearing feathers on their faces, either," cigar said.
"And I've seen a lot of things in my time."
Jake was looking at me, waiting for me to come up with an answer. So was Rachel. So was Marco. Our "horse" was blue. There was no denying that. And yes, we had white-and-gray feathers sticking out of the sleeves and collars of our morphing suits.
"We like blue horses," I said lamely.
"Some day, all horses will be blue," Jake agreed.
"You kids step out of there. This ain't right. Not any part of this. Step out of there and let me see what —"
I felt, rather than saw, the twitch that ran through Ax's body.
"Ax, NO!" I yelled.
FWAPP! FWAPP!
He struck with his deadly tail! But not at the men. In less than a half- second he had sliced the overhead railing that framed the stall. He'd sliced right through it in two places. The railing, a chunk of eight-by-eight lumber, fell directly on the men's heads.
"Ahhh!"
"Owww!"
"Run!" Jake cried.
We stumbled and piled over the two groaning men. Four kids and a very strange blue "horse." Out of the corner of my eye I saw a flash of brown-and-russet feathers.
"l leave you guys alone for two minutes!" Tobias said. "And what have you done?"
"Get them! Stop those kids!"
We were off and running between the stalls! Ax was morphing to human as he ran. I was finishing my demorph, losing the last of the feathers.
Outside the barn, crowds of people were milling around, waiting for the first race.
"Get out of here. Out into the grandstand!" Jake yelled. "We can lose ourselves in the crowd."
Then, WHAM! A stall door flew open, right in front of me. It cut me off from the others. I dodged around it, but too slowly. Someone grabbed my ankle. I sprawled, facedown on the concrete.
"Cassie!" Jake yelled. He started back for me, but now there were people pouring into the barn. Stable hands, jockeys, horse trainers, and owners, all worried about what we might have done to their horses.
I looked down. It was some teenager who had my ankle.
"I got one of them!" he yelled.
I didn't want to kick him. I didn't want to hurt him. He was just a guy, probably not a Controller.
"I got this one! I got this guy!"
Guy?Excuse me? Guy?I wasn't even wearing overalls or anything.
Okay, maybe the workout suit I was wearing for morphing was less than stylish, but hey, guy?
NowI wanted to kick him.
WHAPP! I kicked his hand loose.
"Sorry," I said and scrambled to my feet. I looked around frantically. No Jake. No Rachel. No Ax or Marco or Tobias. All I saw was the back end of what looked like a small mob, chasing someone down at the far end of the barn.
I dodged behind the fallen teenager and threw myself into stall.
"Take it easy, boy," I whispered to the big golden stallion in the stall.
"Take it easy. E-e-e-a-a-s-y."
Normally animals love me. This one didn't.