Relieved of his major pain, the cat relaxed into the warm nest of knitted wool. Dry, he thought, then slept.
In the morning, the cat woke to a miscellany of sounds-rattles, clunks, whisks, and bangs. The wizard was busily engaged in what he fondly considered his daily tidying. Since the jumble in his cottage remained equally multitudinous and obstructive after his rearrangings, it was hard to distinguish any real progress.
While the wizard puttered about, the cat surveyed the room. The large white owl he'd noticed briefly the previous night was still apparently asleep on a high bookshelf. Beginning with that distinctive owl scent, an entire intriguing array of smells jostled for the cat's attention. He had never before been in a place with so many nose-tingling sensations. Closest to him came the wizard's human scent, tinged with hints of dust, ink, and some puzzling accents for which the cat had no name. Also from nearby wafted a strong metallic tang of copper and brass from a set of scales and weights on an upper shelf of the desk. Mingling with these, he could detect whiffs of musk, amber, and oil of cloves. A faint odor of snake was temporarily disquieting until the cat saw a dried snakeskin rolled up and stored in a cubbyhole. The concentrated sweetness of dried fruits hanging in nets from the ceiling beams roused the cat's hunger.
Famished by his ordeal, the cat scanned the desktop for anything edible. Various nooks above his head were jammed with bundles of dried herbs, packets with powders sifting from their corners, and countless twists of leather and parchment. Close by his shoulder was a squat, tawny glass bottle sealed with dark wax over a cork stopper. Judging from its dusty surface, the cat concluded it must have been undisturbed for a long time. During the previous night's activity, however, the bottle had tumbled over on one side. Over time, the sealing wax had cracked, and the cork stopper had split, so that some of the bottle's contents had spilled out on the desk. The cat idly noted the amber-red pellets, then his nose twitched. Were those pellets the source of that tantalizing minty scent? He stretched out his forepaw and batted a pellet closer. It smelled delicious, and he was hungry. He lapped it into his mouth, where it melted at once, like a cool, flavored snowflake. But, but… cold-hot-COLD going down! The cat tried to arch his body and spit, but something was suddenly awfully wrong with his body. He was growing, much too large to fit on the desk. With a terrified yelp, he fell off the desk onto the floor.
The noise attracted the immediate attention of both the owl and the wizard. "Oh, my," said the wizard. "What have we here? I left a cat on my desk, and now I see no cat, but instead a boy. No, wait-there is a strong feeling of magic here." The wizard peered at his desk, noticing the opened bottle. He then carefully surveyed the boy, who stared back, speechless, from the floor.
"Most interesting," observed the wizard. "I see before me a boy of ten or so years, with unusual dark gray hair edged with silver, and-yes, azure eyes in a rather triangular face. Can you speak, lad?"
The cat-now boy-tried to yowl his dismay, but produced only a wretched croaking sound.
"I thought so!" exclaimed the wizard. "You are the cat! That is to say, you were the cat; you are now a boy. Oh, I do feel most keenly responsible for this, you understand. I could have sworn I'd given those shape-changing lozenges to Otwill ages ago… or was it Otwill who gave them to me? There was supposed to be a parchment attached to the bottle…" He sorted unsuccessfully amid the clutter for a moment, then sighed. "I shall seek it later, but I do fear… well, no need, to borrow trouble. Quite likely I am recalling the wrong strictures entirely. What should we do first? Arrange for you to speak, I should think; most frustrating otherwise for us both. I have a spell for speech tucked away here somewhere-aha! Here, in fact. Now, pay attention." He intoned more sounds unintelligible to the cat/boy, but suddenly the sounds were intelligible.
The wizard watched expectantly. "Can you say my name, boy? My name is 'Flax.' "
His mind whirling from all the unimaginable changes that had befallen him, the cat/boy opened his mouth, producing a grating sound. "Fflleeckss?"
"Not at all bad for a first try," said the wizard, nodding encouragingly. "Take a moment to settle yourself. You might be more comfortable sitting in a chair… or then again, perhaps not."
The cat/boy swallowed, and tried to move his paws. But they weren't paws any more… and he was so LARGE. His whole viewing perspective seemed horridly wrong, shifted dizzyingly far up in the air above where it should be. And… and he had no fur-except for that on his head-and no whiskers, and-he gazed frantically down at himself-no tail! However could he walk, or jump? With a low moan, he tried to extend his claws… but he had no proper claws, either. Instead of his formerly elegant paws, he now had great long finger-things, with blunt, flat nails that wouldn't extend or retract. Apprehensively, he tried to stand on his four legs… but he now had only two-great LONG legs, with peculiar bent feet. He fell over with a resounding thump.
The wizard hurried to assist him. "I know," he said kindly. "Your balance must feel quite askew, but then your body proportions have altered significantly. Before you harm yourself falling, try sitting in this chair. Yes, the rump goes there, and you must bend your legs-what were your back legs-at the knees. Those joints are knees, you know, although they must seem oddly placed. The feet stay flat on the floor, by the way. That position will be different to you as well, I fear, for cats' feet are more like our human fingertips and toetips. At the moment, you are quite frankly clumsy, but you'll soon adapt. We must call you something. I had named you 'Raindrop' last night while you were a cat, but that seems a trifle poetical for a lad's name."
The wizard paused, regarding his shivering guest. "And there you sit, naked. I must find you some clothes before you suffer a chill. Weren't there some lad-sized clothes in this chest? Ha, try on this sleeved jerkin. It fits on over the head. No, no-arms through those holes, and head out the top hole. Never mind, I'll pick it up. Try again, a bit less vigorously. Much better. Not 'Raindrop,'-no. 'Drop.' That should do admirably for the present. I shall call you 'Drop.' Can you say it? Very good. Anything else you care to say-no? In my experience, cats usually aren't loquacious creatures. So much more restful to have about the house than parrots. I once treated a parrot with an eye ailment. I finally had to settle a dumbness spell on the wretched bird. He wouldn't give a person peace to think in-always prattling on and on. Ah, here are some breeches of a reasonable size, and some soft slippers that should fit your feet. "When you have dressed, you might try moving about a bit. Yes, the breeches fit over the legs. While you're finishing, I shall search for Otwill's parchment. I know I saw it quite recently. The cord around the bottle had frayed, you see, so I slipped the parchment into one of these cubbyholes for safekeeping."
Drop wrestled with the hideously uncooperative clothing, then subsided into the chair, breathing hard. His exquisite sense of cat-balance was asserting itself, adjusting to his new body shape. He flexed his curiously divided fingers, pondering the other changes that intruded into his awareness. Scents, for one thing, were now much less keen and distinct. That was discouraging, but perhaps compensated for to some degree by the enormous expansion of his color vision. Before, as a cat, he could tell a difference between blue-to-green colors and orange-to-red ones, but only in bright light. Now the world was a riot of colors, for which the wizard's speech spell obligingly provided him names. He wondered briefly about his night sight-so important to a hunting cat; his loss or gain there would be revealed later. The humans he remembered seemed to take shelter at night. Perhaps, he reasoned, they couldn't see as well in dim light as in full sun.