Terri got a phone call in the early afternoon from a number he didn't recognize. "Cooper residence," he said, picking up the phone. "May I ask who's calling?"
"Um, hi," said a woman's voice. "This is Adam, from the house in Hedgeton?"
He raised an eyebrow. Guess the sun had claimed another victim... "Uh, hello, Adam," he said. "What can I do for you?"
"I'm...I'm calling about Riley," the voice on the other end said. "There were a couple of government people here investigating what happened to the town, and they wanted to know about who it was that helped put things right...I told them I'd have to ask about revealing that..."
Terri nodded. "Much appreciated. I think that's something we'll have to discuss as a family, though. Can I call you back this evening?"
Keith rode for hours without stopping. She couldn't stop, she couldn't sleep, she couldn't anything until this nightmare was over and she was returned to her real body. She was hungry and tired and distressed beyond words by everything that had happened to her in the last two days, but she pressed on. It was dawn by the time she arrived at the camp; she dismounted the horse and grabbed the saddlebag, and it trotted off to wherever it belonged around here.
As she'd expected, it was only a minute before she was met by the young fellow who'd caught her before, along with a few other men brandishing weapons. She held her hand by her new gun, eyeing them warily. "I ain't here for trouble," she said, cringing at how little was left of her original voice by now. "All I want is for your wizard to undo whatever he did to me." Really she did want some trouble, wanted to teach them a lesson for subjecting her to this, but four against one was bad odds even if she was carrying the newest weapon of anyone, and anyway that was something to be considered after she'd gotten them to change her back.
His eyes narrowed. "Leave the gun."
She set her jaw. "Gun stays with me." The gun was for if the damn witch doctor wouldn't change her back...or if any of them tried anything funny.
He lifted his worn old rifle closer to a firing position, and she tensed. "You leave the gun, or you will not see him."
They stared each other down for what seemed like forever, Keith trying to decide whether to go for her gun or not. Really she'd just like to shoot him at the moment, but if she killed one of the tribe, the odds weren't good that she could get this curse lifted...she didn't even really believe in this stuff, but she was pretty sure there were rules about the original caster having to do that or something. Forced to choose once again between her safety and her manhood...
She reached slowly around front and unbuckled her gun-belt, letting it drop to the ground with a solid thud. He lowered his rifle. "Stay with me," he said. She followed him into the camp. Damn! Was she still getting shorter, or was he taller than she'd thought? Maybe it was just that she wasn't used to things from this perspective. She spotted the girl she'd been following, sitting out in front of one tent grinding corn into flour. She looked up in curiosity at the visitor, but if she recognized Keith she gave no indication, and went back to her work.
He led her to one of the tents, opening the flap and calling to someone in their language. They waited a few minutes, and he ushered her inside. The interior was a simpler place than she'd have thought; a handful of thing that she wasn't sure whether they were decorative or mystic were placed on one side or hung from the ceiling, but it was pretty sparse overall. The old man sat towards the middle and gently puffing at a pipe. "You return," he said, a bemused smile on his craggy face. He turned to the younger man and said something. "Dyami..." the young man said, but the old medicine man shook his head. "She will not attack." The young man shrugged and left the tent.
Not attack, hell! She tried to keep her temper. Damn, how she wanted to lay into someone for this whole humiliating mess! But that wouldn't get her anywhere...and even as impulsive as she was, the prospect of being stuck as a woman for the rest of her life was enough to make her keep a hold on herself. "I want you to undo what you did," she said, measuring out the words as if any one of them could escape her control and attack him on its own. "No more woman."
He mulled that over for a moment, then frowned. "I did nothing," he said. "Only watch."
She twitched. "Well, I damn well wasn't turning into a woman before I came here!"
Another pause, and he shook his head. "A bird must grow in its egg before the shell cracks."
There was that shell thing again...the large flakes that were peeling right off of her... "Wait," she snapped, "you knew?"
He shrugged. "Saw the shell. Did not know what was inside."
"If you didn't do this, who did?" she growled. "I gotta take it up with them."
A brief flash of worry crossed his face. "Spirit in the forest," he said. "Bad to fight. Gain nothing."
"Well I'm not just going to stay like this!" Keith snapped. The old man shook his head. "No, not like this. Finish the change, then you stay."
She gaped. Finish? How much further did she have left to go? And he couldn't seriously be suggesting that she...that she... "I'm not living like this!" she said. "I'm a man, dammit!"
He sighed. "I said...you will never be the same again. You cannot escape by fighting or medicine. Spirits might aid you, but you would not find them. They do not come here now."
Keith felt her stomach sink. "I...I can't just live like this!" she said. "I can't! What am I supposed to do, just...what?"
Dyami shrugged. "Stay if you like, but not as a guest. Or you have a new life, seek out where to build it."
She seethed. She wanted to attack him, to thrash him good, but the man with the rifle couldn't be that far away; he didn't want to leave them alone in the first place. She got up and stormed out of the tent and away from the main area of the camp. How could he suggest that she just accept being a damn woman? She stomped angrily about, fuming.
Eventually she wound up stomping her way over by the stream, and it occurred to her that she hadn't actually seen herself since that humiliating encounter last night...she walked nervously up to the water's edge and peered down into it. She gasped; there was so little left of the man she had been! Instead, she saw a girl of no more than fourteen; no wonder everyone had looked so tall... She had patches of rough, ruddy skin still lingering upon her and parts of her that still looked awkwardly out-of-place, and her hair had grown back down almost to the base of her head. Even her clothes were hardly staying on her now...she cinched her belt as tight as it would go, just to make sure.
Was this...was this it? Or were there further changes in store? What would she be when this was all said and done? Did she stand any chance of ever returning to her old form? What should she do? If she were stuck as this...would it even be possible to build her kind of life as a girl? She could still shoot, but she'd be easy prey in a brawl. But if she couldn't do that, then what? She'd have to...have to be someone's wife, or some damn spinster making shirts for a living...damn it! What could she do!?
