Yeah I had always heard it was the woman from book one. This time though, I'm thinking that her fixation on clothes and "the store" could indicate that this lady was formerly guarding the pool entrance over the Gap. Her Yeerk starved after they blew up the Kandrona, understandably driving her nuts, and she's been living in the woods ever since.
Wasn't that like a week ago though?
Marco and I took the bus to a place close to where the dust beast had attacked Rachel and destroyed the ice-cream truck.
The bus stopped and we climbed off. We were at a combination gas station and convenience store just off the highway. There was a Denny's across the street and a Dairy Queen not far off.
The wreckage of the Ben and Jerry's truck was 66 at the gas station. It had been towed there to get it off the road. There wasn't much left of the trailer. It had been chewed up and ground into splinters.
"Well," Marco said dryly, "that sure looks like the work of the same creature that ventilated Darlene's house."
"You do realize you shouldn't have been there in the first place," I said. "Someone could have been killed."
"Like I knew some devil beast was going to come after me?" Marco demanded.
I let it go. Marco knew he'd screwed up. At least, I hoped he knew
"Come on," I said. "You have the bag?"
"Of course I have the bag," Marco grumbled.
We headed for the woods. Once well into the trees we began scanning the tree branches.
<Up here,> Tobias said in thought-speak.
He was on a branch, preening his feathers. He used his beak to sort of comb through each feather.
"Is this really the time to be worrying about your looks?" Marco asked.
<Preening isn't about looks,> Tobias said patiently. <I'm cleaning and straightening feathers. Clean feathers fly better.>
"How do you even get dirty?" Marco wondered. "I mean, flying all the time . . ."
<I was hungry, so I ate a mouse. A mouse just like the one you became this morning,> Tobias said. <It wasn't a very clean kill. Any other questions?>
I smiled as Marco turned slightly green.
"Where's Ax?" I asked.
<He's coming. He's about a mile back. He's fast, but he's on foot, whereas I flew.>
"Did you ..."
<No,> Tobias answered. <I didn't see anything. No humans walking in this area of the woods at all, as far as I saw. Except for this crazy woman who lives in a shack out here. No Rachel.>
"Okay," I said, "Marco and I are going to morph now. You want to go up top and make sure we're clear?"
Tobias opened his wings and swept low over our heads before catching a headwind and rising up above the treetops.
"Ready, Marco?" I asked.
"Sure. I love this morph. It's cool. This is what morphing should always be like."
We were planning to use our wolf morphs. For one thing, wolves ran in the forest, so we wouldn't be totally out of place. But more importantly, wolves have a magnificent sense of smell.
"Open the bag."
Marco opened the bag and took out a girl's shirt. It belonged to Rachel. She'd left it at Cassie's house. We hoped it would still smell like Rachel. We were going to play bloodhound. We shoved our clothes back into the bag and stood there in our morphing suits - bike shorts and tops. Needless to say, we looked just a bit out of place.
<All clear,> Tobias called down from somewhere above.
"Well, let's do it," I said to Marco.
"You look so Ah-nold when you get that expression," Marco teased.
"So what?"
"So Arnold. Schwarzenegger."
I smiled. "Oh, shut up."
"All ride den, led's do id," Marco said, doing a pretty decent Arnold accent.
I focused on the wolf. We had first acquired the wolf morphs a while back, when we were on a mission to destroy a Yeerk truck ship.
Wolf, I said to myself.
The first change was the fur, gray and shaggy and as rough as carpeting. It sprouted from my human skin in a wave that rippled down from my neck all across my body. I could see my face bulging out, growing a long snout. It's very odd, because when you're a human you can't really see your own nose. So it's definitely weird to have this long thing sticking out of your face.
Of course, that's not exactly the only weird thing about morphing.
Morphing seems like it should hurt. I mean, there are entire organs inside your body that are changing. Even down to individual cells, everything about you is changed within a couple of minutes.
It doesn't hurt, though. I guess the Andalite scientists who discovered the process made sure of that. If it had hurt, it would have been pain too terrible to live through. Especially when you're doing some really bizarre morph, like into a lobster or an ant, when there's almost nothing left that's even slightly human.
It didn't hurt. But it could definitely creep you out. I could hear my bones shifting and popping and stretching and squeezing. There was a grinding noise when my knee suddenly reversed direction.
"Hey, Jake?" Marco said. He still had most of his human mouth.
I started to answer him. But the sound that came out was more like "Ybwwrrllrow."
Marco grinned and at that second his mouth bulged into a snout. His teeth grew and multiplied and became the fearsome weapons of the wolf.
<I don't believe it. It's coming!> Tobias yelled. <It's coming!>
I didn't need to ask what Tobias meant. I looked up at the sky. A dust storm was blowing just above the trees.
<It's coming!>
Let me out, you crazy old woman!" I yelled.
I was learning something about myself. I still didn't know my own name, but I knew one thing: Whoever I was, I had a temper.
But the woman was no longer paying attention to me. I could hear her in the cabin above, sorting clothes and muttering to herself.
The anger I felt was good. I realized it kept me from being afraid. There was something about that word . . . "Yeerk" ... It meant something. Something bad.
FLASH! I was looking through strange eyes. Seeing too well. Seeing not at all. Then ... a centipede! Bigger than a human, huge! More creatures. Some real, some . . . some that couldn't possibly be real. An elephant... a massive, rampaging bear. . . ants that were as big as I was ... a deadly creature that swung razor-bladed arms and had feet like tyrannosaurs and . . .
FLASH! . . . and a creature dying. Like a horse. No, like a deer. But not a deer. A tail that flashed. Eyes ... too many eyes. And thoughts! Thoughts that were in my head.
"Get out of my head!" I yelled suddenly.
I gasped. It had been so powerful. My mind had opened and gushed out horrible images.
Then it had closed again. Everything was hidden once more beneath a gray blanket.
I srnelled smoke.
And the scent was strong. Strong and near. Was the old woman cooking? Making a campfire. Was she . . .
The shack! It was burning!
"Let me out of here!" I cried. "The shack's on fire!"
"You won't get me again, Yeerk!"
"I'm not a Yeerk! Let me out! Let me out!"
The fire spread with stunning swiftness. In less than a minute there were tongues of flame dripping down through the chinks in the floor above me. I could hear it snapping and popping. The smoke poured down in gusts and then blew away, only to come back still stronger.
"Let me out!" I yelled again. But there was no answer.
I was going to burn! I coughed as smoke scorched my throat. I ran to the log uprights that formed the cage. I shoved at them - shoved and pulled, but they didn't move. I was trapped!
I tried to scream again, but I coughed instead. I could barely breathe. Already my head was feeling light.
Power. I needed power to break out. Power enough to shatter the rotted logs!
I sank to my knees, driven down by the heat. Sparks fell around me, and I brushed them away as they burned my legs and back.
I was too weak. I couldn't do it. But within me ... something within me ...
And then it began. I didn't even notice it at first. I was too terrified. I expected the flame engulfed cabin to crash down on me at any moment.
Suddenly, I began to change.
I was becoming large. So large, so quickly, that my head was rising toward the flames.
Heavy, dark brown fur was growing from my arms and legs
But what I noticed most was the power. Rippling, massive muscles bulged from my arms and legs and swelled my neck. It was an incredible, giddy rush.
One minute, I was weak and failing and near-ing death. The next minute ... the power! The amazing, straining, bulging, explosive POWER!
Tobias came shooting down toward us. He wanted to make sure we knew. <It's coming!>
I was halfway into morph. Could I use thought-speak yet? I decided to try. <We hear you, Tobias. I can see it.>
<Finish morphing,> Jake yelled in my head. <Better to face this thing as wolves.>
I was trembling with fear. I had faced this thing once already that day. I wasn't interested in facing it twice. But Jake was right - better to fight as a wolf than as a human. And this time Jake was with me.
I was on all fours. I could feel the wolf's strength. I could sense the intelligence and instincts of the wolf's brain. All the wolf's incredible senses were mine.
But when I looked up to see the beast forming, I knew the wolf wasn't nearly enough. No animal morph could fight this thing!
<Look at it!> I cried.
<Yeah,> Jake said. He was trying to sound brave. But Jake's been my friend for many years. I know when he's scared. He was scared plenty.
<Here it comes!>
The beast of a hundred mouths and a hundred whirling blades came for us. There were treetops in the way. The beast shredded them.
B-R-R-R-A-A-A-A-K!
We ran. It would have been stupid to do anything else. My powerful wolf's jaws were nothing to this beast.
I ran, and I ran fast. Wolves have pretty good speed, and incredible endurance. A wolf can run for hours, all day if necessary. But I didn't think I would get the chance to run that long. The beast dropped to just a few feet above the ground, leveled off, and came after us. The trees were close together. Too tight for the beast to fit through, so it simply shredded anything in its way.
B-R-R-R-A-A-A-A-K!
The noise was shocking. I ran. I leapt over fallen logs. I dodged around trees. I counted on my rough gray coat to protect me as I ripped straight through thorn bushes.
B-R-R-R-A-A-A-A-K!
The beast ripped a path fifty feet wide through the forest. It was like some nightmare lumberjack. It reduced trees to twigs and splinters in seconds. Wood shrapnel flew everywhere.
<It's gaining!> I said to Jake. <Little by little, it's gaining!>
<The trees. It destroys them, but they slow it down. Just enough.>
<More trees. Thicker trees!> I yelled.
I looked wildly around at a world washed pale by the wolf's poor color vision. There were trees everywhere. Too many! I didn't know which way the forest grew denser and which way it might thin out.
But the wolf knew. The wolf's own instincts led the way. Jake and I both felt it, I guess, because we began turning north.
B-R-R-R-A-A-A-A-K!
The trees grew thicker and there were more of them. The beast chewed its way after us, but it was no longer gaining.
It was not falling behind, either.
<Jake! Marco! What are you doing?> Tobias yelled.
<Heading for denser woods,> Jake said. <Maybe it'll slow this thing down!>
<It is getting thicker up ahead,> Tobias agreed. <But you better hope it wears out soon.>
<Why?> I said.
<Because you have a quarter mile of woods. And then it opens up into a meadow,> Tobias said. <Open grass.>
Jake and I said nothing. We didn't have to. We both knew if the beast didn't tire out before we came out into open country, it would catch us.
And it didn't seem tired.
Just then, as terrified as I was, I smelled something that set off deeper alarm bells in the wolf's mind. Smoke. There was a fire not far away.
And to my acute wolf's ears came the faintest sound of a human voice screaming.
Just as if the beast had heard the same faint cry, I saw the monster shudder. It hesitated.
<Jake! Look!>
The beast wavered and slowed. I could see the meadow through the trees. The meadow where we would surely die.
Except that now the beast was wavering. Suddenly, it turned away.
It turned toward the place that smelled of fire and smoke.
that we're not doing the next in-sequence book yet since it's the first Ax book but man this is a nail biter. The only Megamorphs book I'd read is the dino one so this is all brand new for me.I only read to book 12 or so, did they ever elaborate on the rules of Acquiring? Can you acquire a new morph while you're already in morph? Can you acquire a new morph from someone in morph?
As awesome as it would be be for Visser 3 to be attacking them as some four-story tentacle monster and for one of them to land on him as a fly and both pacify him and copy a super-strong morph, I imagine there's some limitation or horrifying consequence for trying something like this? These books were big on horrifying consequences.
"Aaaaarrrrgghh!" I cried.
I was in a shower of flames, as bits of wood and fabric fell around me. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't see. But I could hear an insane grinding noise from deep within my own body. And I knew that I was changing.
In all my despair, I could feel the power flowing through me. Awesome power. But was it enough?
I waited as long as I could. I wasn't done changing. But the heat was too great. And the thing that I was becoming hated the fire.
A sudden surge of muscles! A forward rush! I slammed into the half-rotted logs.
Crrr-RUNCH!
The logs broke from the force of my huge body. The logs that had imprisoned me were mere sticks now. I hurtled through them and away from the burning shack.
At that moment, the shack collapsed on itself in an explosion of sparks.
I stood panting. I stood on four legs. I looked down and saw front paws where hands should have been. My paws were covered in coarse brown fur, very shaggy. And I had long, sharp black claws.
FLASH! A bear on its hind legs, roaring and swinging its mighty paws. Creatures all around. Like walking razor blades. They came for the bear. . . came for me.
Yes! I thought. Grizzly bear. That was it. I had become a bear. Was still becoming a bear, because the morphing was not completely done.
"What am I?" I shouted. But the sound that came from my mouth was not human.
"Hhhhhu-uuuRORW!"
What kind of creature was I? How could I do this? How could I become a different animal?
It was insane. Insane.
Maybe it was that simple. Maybe I was as insane as the woman who had burned down her shack to kill me for being a Yeerk.
Was that it? Was I a Yeerk? What was a Yeerk?
Suddenly, I heard a wild rush of wind. Not from the burning, crumbling cabin - from above.
Up in the air. I looked up, but my human eyes were changing to bear eyes and I couldn't see very well. I only saw a large shadow hovering above me.
A flash of swift movement! It was attacking!
The last of my human body was gone. And now I felt the full force of the grizzly bear's own mind. It was unafraid. And more than that, it was angry.
No one attacked a grizzly. Not if they wanted to live.
I reared up on my hind legs. I must have been ten feet tall. And I knew I was mighty.
"HhhhuuRRRROOOOWWWWRRRR!" I roared. I swung my massive paw at the hovering beast.
But then, a second flash of movement. Another animal, racing swiftly toward us.
<Rachel! Rachel, is that you?> a voice demanded. A voice I did not truly hear, except inside my head.
I looked at the new creature. It had come to a stop, just a dozen feet away. I peered at it with my dim bear vision. It had four legs, like a horse or a deer. But it seemed to have a head and upper body that was almost human. And there was a tail, I was sure of that. The tail was cocked back like a weapon ready to be fired.
For a frozen moment of time, we all three waited: me, the beast in the air, and this new
apparition.
<Rachel. Rachel. Is that you in morph? It's me, Ax.>
<Rachel?> I asked silently. <Is that my name?>
And then the beast made of dust attacked Ax.
My name is Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill. I am an Andalite. It was my brother, Prince Elfangor, who gave the humans the power to morph. He had been injured trying to drive the Yeerks away from Earth. And, when he crash-landed his fighter, it was Jake, Rachel, Tobias, Cassie, and Marco who found him.
It was Visser Three who killed my brother, so my human friends have told me. Someday I will avenge that death. I must kill Visser Three or be dishonored.
Later, Jake and the others found me. I was the last surviving Andalite from our great Dome ship.
I am not one of the Animorphs. But I fight alongside them against our common enemy, the Yeerks. And while I am on Earth, I have taken Jake for my prince.
I had gone along with Marco on his foolish venture to the home of the human named Darlene. I knew it was foolish, but I thought it would be better for Marco to have someone with him.
Marco is highly intelligent. But he is also very afflicted by a condition the humans call "sense of humor." I have noticed that Marco's sense of humor sometimes makes him do strange things.
But when the great beast from the sky appeared, I was powerless!. Later, the humans asked me for answers. Did I know what this beast was? The humans assume that I must know every terrible thing that lives in this vast galaxy.
But I did not know this creature. And it frightened me.
When we set off to find Rachel, I traveled through the woods. I live in the forest now. It is my new home.
I ran steadily to reach the place where I was to meet up with Tobias, Jake, and Marco.
Then I detected the smoke. I looked up and saw a pillar of smoke rising through the trees.
My eyes swept around me, checking every direction. I must always be very careful not to be seen by humans. One stalk eye followed the pillar of smoke into the sky. And then, I saw not smoke, but dust. Dust that blew faster than any wind.
The beast!
It was coming again.
I ran! Faster than before, with all my speed.
It had to be looking for me. It had come to hunt me down, I was sure of it. Where should I run? Not toward where Jake and Marco were supposed to be. I could not lead the beast to them.
But the fire . . . maybe the smoke would hide me. Yes!
I raced toward the smell of smoke. My hooves flashed, my tail was tucked down tight against my back for speed.
I saw a small clearing. And in the clearing, a pillar of flame. A building of some sort. It was burning rapidly. The heat blasted me. I could hear the noise of dry wood snapping and popping, flames sucking at the air.
But there was a greater noise. The beast! Above me, above the fire, it swirled and roared like a storm.
Then I saw another creature. It was an Earth animal called a grizzly bear. It reared up on its hind legs and bellowed defiance. But that mighty voice was swallowed up in the hurricane howl of the dust beast.
A grizzly bear. Rachel had a grizzly bear morph. I had seen her use it. It had to be her.
<Rachel! Rachel, is that you?>
The huge bear swung its massive head to glare at me. But there was no thought-speak answer.
<Rachel. Rachel. Is that you in morph? It's me, Ax.>
<Rachel? Is that my name?>
Suddenly, the dust beast attacked.
In a rush of hurricane winds, it descended on Rachel. Not on me, but on Rachel! It was her the beast wanted.
She stood firm, unafraid.
<Rachel!> I cried. <Run, you can't fight it!>
The beast of a hundred gnashing mouths descended on the bear. The bear swung a massive paw. It was a blow that would have knocked my head from my shoulders. A blow that would have punched through steel.
The claws raked the dust beast's closest mouth.
"RQOOWWWWRRR!" the bear cried in sudden pain.
Its paw was gone! Simply gone. In its place was a shattered, bloody stump.
What could I do? I was desperate. My tail was my only weapon. But the creature would simply grind it off as he'd done with Rachel's paw.
Rachel bellowed in pain from her awful wound, but she struck again. Still standing erect and defiant, she struck again with her other paw.
"HhhhRRROOOOAAAARR!"
This time the entire leg was gone! And now I could see human terror shining through the bear's eyes.
<Rachel!> I cried in despair.
My Andalite tail was useless. I needed something else. Anything! I searched my memory.
What morph did I have to fight this monster?
Nothing. Nothing. Rachel's bear was one of the mightiest morphs we had. And she was doomed.
There was nothing left now but to escape.
No! Not to escape. To follow this creature. To find where it hid. To find where it came from.
I had an Earth bird morph. It was called a harrier. It was very fast. I could morph and perhaps be able to follow this monster.
Because one thing was certain: I could not save Rachel.
The dust beast descended on Rachel. It enveloped her completely. I could no longer see her. It was as if a cloud was swallowing her up. The beast shifted and flowed and reformed to engulf the raging bear that was my human friend, Rachel.
Shaking with fury and horror, I began to morph.
And suddenly, with a speed that was shocking, the dust beast stopped.
It lifted away from Rachel.
It exploded upward, away from her, and came at me! Right at me!
And in the few seconds left to me, I realized . . . the morphing! It was the morphing! That's what it was after. It was reacting to the morphing. It was the morphing energy itself that drew the beast.
It lifted from Rachel. I had a flash of her bear body, wrapped in living ropes. The beast had not killed her. It had wrapped her up, as if wrapping a gift.
The living ropes dissolved to rejoin the dust beast and become part of it.
A hundred mouths and a thousand whirling blades descended on me. Now it was after me!
And I knew that if I struck it with my tail, it would leave me with a bloody stump.
I could not fight it. To fight was to be shredded.
I stood still. I reversed the morph and regained my complete Andalite form.
I felt the beast around me. It suffocated me. It choked me. It wrapped me tightly in a cocoon till I could not move an inch.
I felt myself being lifted up from the ground. Up and up, faster and faster, unable to see, able only to hear the wild winds of the beast itself.
But now I understood. I knew where it was taking me.
I knew the purpose of the beast.
And with a fear that chilled me to my bones, I realized that I knew its master's name.
I remember thinking on my re-read, and still think now, that Ax's narrative voice is weirdly flat here. Don't really think this is much of a spoiler but just in case: this is particularly weird since I don't think that's the case at all in the very next book, so it's not like it took her a while to get to grips with it or anything
I kind of like Ax's frustration here with the Animorphs coming to him and saying, "You're the alien, so you must know alien stuff!", when of course, Ax doesn't know everything. He knows a lot about the Andalites and the Yeerks and stuff that the kids don't, but they also know a lot of stuff he doesn't. So I can see how it must be frustrating here to be stuffed in the "alien" box.
I think as a function of their super-serialized nature the Animorphs books can be extremely repetitive - especially the beginnings which cover familiar ground for anyone reading the series in order and the morphing descriptions which while fun at first continue despite being mostly unnecessary.
I remember thinking on my re-read, and still think now, that Ax's narrative voice is weirdly flat here. Don't really think this is much of a spoiler but just in case: this is particularly weird since I don't think that's the case at all in the very next book, so it's not like it took her a while to get to grips with it or anything
My wolf nose told me a story.
The stench of burning wood was everywhere, but I could still smell blood. Something had sprayed blood over a wide area. A bear. I smelled the powerful scent of a bear.
I sniffed the ground again. Human. Two different humans.
And something else ... a strange, alien smell. A smell like nothing I could imagine. Until I looked at the tracks: sharp hoof marks. Ax. Ax had been here.
Two humans. One wearing shoes. One barefoot. A bear. Ax. Blood. A fire, still smoldering.
<What do you make of it?> I asked Marco.
<The barefoot person had to be Rachel. So was the bear. It had to be her. There are no grizzlies in this forest. And the blood, that's hers, too. Or the bear's, anyway. So she was hurt bad.>
I swallowed anger and fear. I had to stay focused. <What can hurt a grizzly?> I asked, knowing the answer.
<A man with a gun,> Marco said. <Another grizzly. Or some animal that isn't from Earth. No Earth animal can mess with a grizzly bear.>
<It was that thing,> I said.
Tobias swooped down low and slow. <Bear tracks head north. I see tracks, but they're weird. Hind legs only. Like the bear was walking erect. And blood.>
<So Rachel in bear morph tangled with the dust beast,> I said. <She came out of it alive, but she couldn't use her front paws.>
<That's the way it looks,> Tobias said. <The bear tracks stop down by a stream maybe a thousand yards from here. After that, I don't see anything. She must have morphed back to human.>
<Which way did she go?> Marco asked. <Up-stream? Downstream?>
Tobias came to rest on a branch. <I don't know. I looked. I didn't see her. I should have gotten here sooner. I should have known when it let you two go that it was going off after her.>
<Tobias, no one understands this monster. You couldn't have known what it would do. None of us could,> I said. It sounded reasonable. But in my mind I was thinking that I should have known. I should have guessed.
<What's Ax's story in all this?> I asked. Blaming myself was not the point right now. <Ax was coming to meet us. He sees the fire, goes to investigate it. Maybe then he sees Rachel? Or Rachel in bear morph? Were they both here at the same time?>
<I don't know,> Marco said. <Maybe. Lots of Andalite tracks all together here. Then, look - they just stop. Right here. No Andalite scent past this point. It's like he was just lifted up and carried away.>
Tobias said, <So he gets here, sees Rachel and the beast going at it. Ax is a brave guy. He jumps into it. Rachel gets away. She's bloody, but she gets away. And Ax? Why isn't he still here? Or else why don't we see a separate set of Andalite tracks leaving? Or at least see his body?>
No one said anything. We all feared the worst. I was remembering what the beast had done to Darlene's house. And to the trees. Maybe it didn't leave bodies behind. Maybe there was no body left after it was done.
<Andalites are tougher than they look,> Tobias said. <I'm with Ax a lot, out here in the forest. Don't write him off.>
<Yeah,> I agreed, trying to sound hopeful. <We've been in morph a long time. We need to use what time we have left to get to civilization and morph back. I have to at least check in with my folks or they'll have cops out looking for me.>
<We can't just stop looking,> Marco said. <Tobias only has an hour of good light left. After that, there won't be anyone trying to find Rachel. Or Ax.>
<I'll use that hour,> Tobias said. He opened his wings and flapped wearily back up into the sky.
<We'll come back tonight,> I told Marco. <Have dinner with your dad. Then we hook up at Cassie's barn.>
<Jake, what is going on?> Marco asked me as we trotted swiftly back toward the road. <Is this the Yeerks?>
<Who else could it be?> I asked.
<But look, if it's them, then they know who we are. I mean, this thing came right after me and Ax. It went after Rachel. It went after me and you. It knows who we are. So why don't the Yeerks just move in on us? Why not show up at our homes?>
<That's the question> I agreed. We had reached the road. The bus would come by soon. It was time to demorph. <That is exactly the question we need to answer.>
<Yeah, that and the question of where Rachel is, and why she doesn't go home.>
<And one more question,> I added, as I felt my human body emerge from within the wolf. <How do we stay alive?>
Radio Shack. August Woman. Godiva. The Gap. Mrs. Field's. Casual Corner. B. Dalton. Kinney Shoes. Banana Republic.
Bright lights. Color. Signs. The smell of cinnamon buns.
The mall. Yuck.
And worse yet, the mall on a Saturday evening. It was crowded. It was loud. But the mall was the place to look for Rachel.
Jake, Marco, Tobias, and Ax had all gone to the spot where the ice-cream truck attack had taken place. Jake had asked me to look in all the other places she might have gone. He'd said I would know best where she hung out.
Maybe that was true, but it bothered me a little. It could be a little sexist on Jake's part. Or maybe he was trying to protect me. Either way, it bothered me. I didn't want special treatment because I was a girl. Jake would never even think about something like that with Rachel.
It bothered me for another reason, too. It bothered me because a part of me was just a little relieved. I was safe in the mall. Who knew what Jake and the others were dealing with out in the forest?
I told myself I wasn't glad to be safe. I told myself I was just doing what needed to be done.
But the possibility that Jake was in danger, while I was safe, gnawed away at me.
It's because you told Jake about the stupid dream, I realized. Now he thinks you're losing it.
Not a surprise, is it? Tell a guy you're having nightmares where you face evil and choose who it kills, he's going to maybe think you're losing it.
Just; the same, Jake was right: I knew the places Rachel might go.
I had already checked out the gym where Rachel did gymnastics, and the frozen yogurt place where she always ordered key lime pie flavor. I'd checked school, just because that's where she should have caught the bus. And I had scoped out her house, even though her sister said she wasn't there.
Which left the mall.
"Wait. Is that her?" I muttered to myself. I stood on tiptoes to see better. No. It was some other blond girl.
I am not a shopper. To me, shopping is something you do when you have to. For Rachel, it is an art form. If she wasn't at home, she should be here.
"Rachel?" I called loudly to a girl passing by. But as soon as I did, I knew it wasn't her.
"Sorry. Thought I knew you."
Then, suddenly, someone I did know. Someone I definitely knew.
Chapman.
He appeared suddenly in front of me, carrying a shopping bag from one of the department stores, and heading toward the B. Dalton bookstore.
Chapman! If this dust creature was linked to the Yeerks, he would know. Chapman was our assistant principal at school. He was also one of the highest-ranking Controllers. The slug who lived inside his brain was an important Yeerk.
Chapman would know. Following him had to be more useful than just wandering around the mall. But how? Morphing in a crowded mall would be dangerous.
So what? I reproached myself.
So don't do something stupid just to prove you aren't scared, I argued with myself.
While I was debating with myself, I fell into step a few yards behind Chapman. I had already made up my mind. I just had to decide how I was going to spy on him.
Housefly. Yes. That was the thing. A quick morph, hook on to Chapman, and stay with him for as long as I could remain in morph.
Chapman was in the bookstore, thumbing through magazines. How long would he stay in the bookstore? Long enough? Maybe. And where could I morph without being seen?
I went to the back of the store. There was a storeroom with the door ajar. Inside the storeroom was a second door. A bathroom for the employees; Bingo.
I glanced at Chapman. He had moved to the history section. What on Earth did a Controller want with history?
I swallowed hard and slid into the storeroom, acting like I belonged, but also moving quickly. No one was around. I went into the tiny employees' bathroom and locked the door.
I took off my shoes and outer-clothing and stashed them in the trash under a lot of wadded up paper towels. I would have to come back for them later.
Then I focused. It wasn't easy, because my heart was pounding. And I really didn't like insect morphs much.
I focused on the fly and prayed no one broke into the bathroom. I felt giddy. I wasn't afraid.
Not too afraid, anyway. Even Rachel would have been impressed.
I began to shrink.
It's very weird when you morph into something tiny. One minute your head is like four feet above the floor. Then, suddenly, your head is only two feet above the floor. Then one foot. Six inches. One inch.
It's like falling. And it seems like the floor is rushing up to slap you. I mean, that linoleum seemed to be alive, the way it swooped up at me. It was like being a sky diver spiraling down to Earth.
But there were other very disturbing things happening, too. There is nothing human about a housefly. Everything has to change. Everything.
My hands began to split open. Two of my fingers grew out and became sharp claws. Two other fingers and my thumb blossomed open, splitting into thousands of tiny, sticky hairs.
It's the kind of thing that used to scare me to death when we first started morphing. Let me tell you: The worst horror movie you ever saw in your life is a joke, compared to actually watching your own body turn into something else.
Morphing is almost never pretty. The others all say I'm the best morpher, that I can make it look okay. But nothing can make a fly look okay.
There are no Brad Pitt flies. Flies are ugly-looking creatures - nasty, ugly, gross, disgusting creatures.
My legs were shriveling down and turning into fly legs.
Sploot! Two new legs exploded from my chest, just at the bottom of where my ribs had been. The legs shot out of me like huge black worms. They grew daggerlike hairs and formed joints, and became as hard as plastic.
And my face . . . well, that was definitely unpleasant.
My nose split open, forming two halves. Each half began sprouting long, sensitive hairs.
My mouth and tongue melted together, then grew huge, forming a long tube with an open, spitting, sucking hole on the end.
My eyes seemed to shatter, like a mirror broken into a thousand pieces. My vision was gone for a moment, and I was blind. Then it came back, but was so different I almost didn't realize it was sight at all.
I had gone from human eye to compound eye. Where once my vision was a single picture, now it was a thousand bits. It was like watching TV with your nose right against the screen while you twist the color-control knobs. The bits formed pictures, but the colors were all wrong.
At last, I was done morphing. I was a fly. It is true, I guess, that I am a little faster at morphing than the others - even Ax. I know it's kind of a stupid thing to be proud of, but I am.
I beat my powerful wings, let go of my grip on the tiny ridges in the linoleum, and escaped from the bathroom by zooming neatly beneath the crack of the door.
Once out, I shot quickly up for altitude and safety. And headed for Chapman.
The dust beast carried me up and up. I could feel gravity tugging at me. I could feel momentum as we moved faster and faster. I could see nothing. I could only hear a swirling sound.
We began to slow down. Slower, slower. Stop.
The dust beast hovered. How high up were we? Where were we?
Then ... a gap opened in the howling wall of dust that enveloped me. I saw the earth below. But not from orbit. We were still in the atmosphere.
That surprised me. What I saw next did not.
It was not a large ship by most standards. It was far smaller than an Andalite Dome ship. Far smaller than the Yeerk mother ship. It was all black, with two wings like a battle-ax, and a long, sharp, diamond-shaped battle bridge mounted at the front. I knew the ship. It was the Blade ship. The private command ship of Visser Three.
It had dropped its stealth cloak for just a few moments. Silently, a hole appeared in the top of the battle bridge. The dust beast swirled through.
Suddenly, I was falling! SLAM!
I hit a hard surface. My hooves scrabbled to stand up, but I was down on my side. The dust beast had dropped me on a polished, metallic floor.
I stood up. The dust beast hovered above me. And all around me on all sides stood Hork-Bajir warriors. Each with a Dracon beam
leveled and ready to fire.
There must have been ten of them. Two or three would have been plenty.
Once, the Hork-Bajir were a decent, peaceful race. Then they were enslaved by the Yeerks.
Hork-Bajir are incredibly dangerous and very powerful. They stand on two legs, balanced by a tail. Each leg ends in a foot, like an Earth bird of prey. They have two arms. There are curved blades at their knees, at their elbows, at their wrists. Blades similar to my own tailblade.
Atop their snakelike heads are two more blades, swept forward. And their tails end in long, sharp spikes.
They are not a species you want to start a fight with. Which may be why they were such a peaceful, even poetic, species. They had no one to fear. Until the Yeerks began to make them into Controllers.
Now there are no longer any free Hork-Bajir. All are slaves of the Yeerks. All are Controllers, with a living Yeerk inside their brains.
Two or three would have been more than enough to deal with me. Having ten there was a compliment.
<Well, well,> a voice said in my head. <So we have our first captive.>
It was him. As I had known it would be. Visser Three. Third most powerful of all the Yeerk warlords. The leader of the Yeerk invasion of Earth.
An abomination!
Visser Three is unique in all the galaxy: the one and only Andalite-Controller. He alone, of all Yeerks, has managed to take and enslave an Andalite body.
The sight of him filled me with loathing. My brother's killer! The creature I knew I had to destroy. If I didn't, I would never have the honor of being a true warrior.
I had faced him before. But always with my human friends beside me. To have attacked the Visser then would have meant risking them.
But now I didn't have that excuse. Visser Three was before me. My brother's killer.
Visser Three focused his main eyes on me. His stalk eyes watched the dust beast as it hovered uneasily above our heads.
I am ashamed to confess it, but I felt terror in his presence. Evil radiated from him. And power. A great and frightening power.
<You're not even full-grown, Andalite,> Visser Three sneered. <My Veleek brings me a child?>
<Veleek?> I said.
<Yes. I named it myself. In the Yeerk language it means "pet." It's a rare life-form from right here in this solar system. The big gas giant, the one with the very prominent rings.>
Saturn. That's what the humans called it. But I said nothing to the Visser. Answering might have revealed that I was in contact with humans.
Visser Three considered me. <So, you are an Andalite, after all. Some of my advisers have been suggesting you terrorists were human, not Andalite. But here we have a prime Andalite specimen.>
The Yeerks believed the Animorphs were a group of Andalites who had survived the battle in orbit and made it to Earth. It was important for them to go on believing it.
<Yeerk filth!> I cried suddenly. <My uncles will destroy you!>
Visser Three laughed. <You and your "uncles" have caused me some annoyance, it is true. You destroyed the truck ship we used to gather oxygen and water. That was very unfortunate. And you destroyed our ground-based Kandrona. That was even more unfortunate.> He stepped closer, showing his complete confidence. Showing me that he did not fear me. <For that, I will give you a very, very long, very slow death, Andalite.>
I wanted to strike at him. My brother. . . Prince Elfangor... he would have had the courage.
But I did not. The Hork-Bajir would have disintegrated me before I could twitch my tail.
And the awful force of the Yeerk Visser's power held me mesmerized.
<Yes, you led me a chase, you Andalite bandits> Visser Three said. <But my Veleek will capture you, one by one, and bring you to me.>
If I lacked the courage to attack and die, I could at least try to learn more. If I lived ... if I escaped somehow, by some miracle . . .
<How do you make a Controller out of something made of dust? Where do you place your filthy slug body?>
<Oh, the Veleek is not one of us,> Visser Three said. <He is not a Controller. He's not really "he." There is no intelligence there - or at least not much. Fascinating life-form, really. Unlike anything we've ever found before. It spreads through the atmosphere as a dust. Each particle can sense life-form energy - any life-form. When one particle senses prey, the millions of particles come together to attack the life-form and chew it into shreds. The energy of each shredded bit is then absorbed by the particles themselves.>
Visser Three laughed again, soundless, but vile in my mind. <We lost a lot of soldiers before we figured the creature out. Oh, yes. It was chewing up Hork-Bajir and Taxxons at a startling rate. But then we realized something - it could be altered. We could use the thing. I could program it to serve me.>
I nodded, understanding the truth. <You changed it to detect only the energy of morphing.>
<Very good. But you Andalites always have been clever when it comes to science. Yes, now it detects only the specific type of energy released during morphing. But it cannot feed on that energy. Oh, no, no. I didn't want it to shred you Andalites. I didn't want it to eat you. I wanted to have you here. With me. So I programmed my Veleek to eat only the energy we feed it from the engines of this ship. Clever, isn't it? The Veleek senses morphing, attacks,
but brings the morpher to me in order to get its true food.>
<Only a Yeerk would think it clever to force mutation on another life-form,> I said, as contemptuously as I could. Should I strike? Could I strike? Was I fast enough?
Visser Three nodded. <Yes, yes. We lowly Yeerks know how superior you Andalites are. Holier-than-thou. The meddling moralists of the galaxy. The glorious, self-righteous Andalite princes, saving the galaxy from the despised Yeerks. Well. Here you are, Andalite child. And soon the rest of your group of bandits will be here as well. How many of you are there, all together?>
<I'll tell you nothing> I said.
<It doesn't matter,> Visser Three said with cold disdain. <The Veleek will never tire. I'll send it back and it will go on hunting. Your friends will be clever. Sometimes they will escape - for a while. But sooner or later, my Veleek will hunt them down and, one by one, bring them to me.>
He jerked his hand in a signal to his soldiers. <Throw him to the cage. Watch him. If he escapes, each of you will die. Oh, and have the Veleek fed, then release it. Let it go to find me more Andalites. I wouldn't want our young Andalite to be lonely.>
The Hork-Bajir grabbed me roughly. Visser Three turned his back and walked away.
I had not struck. I had been face-to-face with my brother's killer, and I had let him walk away.
ZoooooM! I beat my fly wings and zipped under the door. The bottom edge of the door was like a ceiling to me, and then I was out.
ZOOOOM! I flew straight up. I mean, straight up. Like a rocket.
<Cool!> I yelled to no one.
ZOOOOM! I spun around in midair and hit the ceiling with all six feet. The long claws dug into tiny cracks in the ceiling tile. The sticky pads added extra hold. I rested upside down, hanging from the ceiling.
Becoming a fly is disgustingly gross. But being a fly is excellent. I mean, nothing flies like a housefly! You can fly straight ahead, or you can suddenly shoot straight up, or you can stop and just hover. There is absolutely nothing those fly wings won't do. The best jet fighter, flown by the greatest pilot ever, is a big, slow, wallowing pig compared to a housefly. Tobias on his best day couldn't come close to the maneuvers a fly can do.
I rested on the ceiling, directly above Chapman's head. It was maybe five feet from me down to his balding head. At least, I think it was him. Fly eyesight is hard to get used to.
Very hard to get used to. Fortunately he - or at least the guy I hoped was Chapman - had stepped in some dog doo earlier. I wasn't sure of my weird compound eyesight. But nothing can smell poop like a fly. I was locked onto the location of Chapman's shoe.
There was just one problem: Chapman wasn't doing anything but looking at books. My fly brain got edgy just staying in one place, so I dropped from the ceiling, pivoted in midair, fired up my wings, and took a quick, wild ride around his head.
Yes. It was Chapman. Almost for sure.
For the next twenty minutes I just stalked him on his slow progress through the bookstore. I zipped around him, always staying out of reach, occasionally resting on the spine of a book or rocketing back up to the ceiling.
After twenty minutes or so, it was all starting to look like a pretty stupid idea. I was supposed to be looking for Rachel, who might be in some kind of trouble. And instead I was staring upside down at Chapman's scalp.
Then . . . yes! A man and a woman were talking to Chapman.
Understanding speech is difficult, with the hearing flies have available. Fortunately, I had been a fly before. So I knew how to translate the vibrations the fly felt into "sound."
"You're late," Chapman snapped.
The man said, "It couldn't be helped. Our job isn't easy, with all this going on."
"Not here," Chapman said. "Walk with me."
He walked away, and the two newcomers fell into step alongside him. I dropped from the ceiling, and buzzed quickly after them. It was easy to keep up. I just kept Chapman's head a few feet in front of me. What was hard was hearing everything they said. Out in the mall itself there was a din of noise. Dozens of voices, music, footsteps - it was all vibrations to my antennae and hairs.
To make sense of it, I had to take a risk. I shot forward at full speed, pivoted sideways, and landed on Chapman's collar. The threads of his shirt fabric looked as big as ropes to me. It was easy to hold on. But I kept my fly instincts hyper-alert in case some big human hand came reaching to swat me.
"I don't see why we're meeting like this," the woman said. "It's a little melodramatic, isn't it? Like some stupid human spy novel."
"Visser Three does not trust our communications lately. Visser One has supporters among some of our people here. Don't forget - our leader trapped these Andalites once before, and they were freed by Visser One to embarrass us."
"Has that been proven?" the man asked.
Chapman snorted derisively. "If it had been proven, Visser One would be screaming in the torture chambers of the Council of Thirteen. But we know it, just the same. Visser Three isn't going to let anything get in the way this time. This new creature of his, this Veleek, will finish the terrorists once and for all."
Veleek, I thought. The enemy had a name.
"And make a huge mess doing it," the woman grumbled. "I've been running around all day, trying to keep this story covered up."
"That's why you've been placed on the police force," Chapman said coldly. "It's your job to control police investigations that could be
... difficult... for us."
"There's only one of me," the woman said, not intimidated at all by Chapman's tone. "Ten percent of the police force are our people. But that leaves ninety percent who are human. And the humans are not complete idiots. We have witnesses talking about monsters made of dust, not tornadoes."
"It's the same at the newspaper," the man said. "So far, this story is under control. People believe the tornado nonsense. But you have to tell Visser Three to -"
Suddenly, I was swung wildly around. I released the collar and flew upward. Chapman had stopped, jerked around, and grabbed the man's arm.
Chapman had his face an inch from the man's face.
"Tell Visser Three? Tell Visser Three? No one tells Visser Three. People who tell the Visser something he doesn't want to hear end up cut off from Kandrona rays, slowly starving, dying inside their hosts. With the rationing of Kandrona rays since the bandits destroyed the Earth-based Kandrona, the Visser has been looking for excuses to eliminate hungry Yeerks. Now, if you want to go tell the Visser not to use his Veleek, you go right
ahead."
He released the man and they all started walking again.
"Veleek," the woman grumbled. "Do we have to rely on such things to track down a handful of Andalite terrorists?"
"Yes," Chapman said. "And be glad the Visser has his 'morph-hunter.' It distracts him from asking why you haven't caught the Andalites. You'd better hope this dust creature succeeds> The pressure is building on the Visser to clean up this mess on Earth. There is talk he may be demoted to Visser Four. Even Five. If Visser Three loses rank because of your failure, take my advice: Kill yourselves. Don't wait for the Visser to do it for you."
The two newcomers fell silent after that.
Chapman gave them some instructions. Mostly to just stick to the tornado story, no matter what happened. He told them humans were fools who would believe any sort of nonsense. And if any witnesses became too troublesome, they should be eliminated or made into Controllers.
It was a chilling conversation to hear. And there was nothing in it about Rachel. But just the same, I had learned something important.
The Veleek was a tool of Visser Three's.
And they had called it a "morph-hunter.
It was time to head back to the little bathroom and demorph. I needed to talk to Jake and the others. Immediately.
Morph-hunter.
It had struck Marco and Ax when they were demorphing in the basement of Darlene's house. It had almost killed them.
Had it succeeded with Rachel?
I think the pain would have killed me, if I had been human. But I was not just human. I was the bear. And because of the bear's strength, I held on.
My front paws were gone. Chewed off by the terrible dust monster. Blood was everywhere.
I could not walk like a bear. But I could wallow along on two legs, until I had gotten far enough away from the terrifying creature.
I found a stream, no more than a foot deep and three feet wide. I sank down into the water and tried to change.
I didn't know if I could. I didn't know how I had become a bear. So I wasn't sure if I could become human again. And if I did ... what about my hands? Did this terrible injury to my bear body mean that my human hands would be gone, too?
Rachel. That's what the other creature had called me. The creature that looked like a deer and a scorpion and a boy. He'd made no sound, but I had heard his voice in my head. He'd called me "Rachel."
Was I Rachel?
I focused on becoming human again. But all the time, I braced myself for pain beyond endurance.
I lay on my side in the stream. Cold water bubbled and rushed around me. I kept the stumps of my paws in the numbing water. And slowly, I grew smaller. Smaller and weaker. I held the bloody stumps up so I could see them. I would have cried, if I'd had human tears.
Fingers . . . human fingers . . . were growing from the gore.
My hands grew back. The carpet of rough fur was replaced by skin and the black fabric of my leotard. Massive bear legs became my own human limbs. My sense of smell grew weak, as my sense of sight grew strong.
I stood up. Shaky. Weak. But no longer in pain. And what was strange was that the scratches and scrapes I'd gotten from walking barefoot through the woods were gone. I was renewed.
I looked fearfully around for the dust beast, but I saw nothing. It was growing dark. Would darkness protect me? Or would it help my enemy?
I looked closer, searching for the alien who knew my name.
Alien?
The word stuck in my mind. Yes! Yes, that creature could not have been from Earth. I knew that. Those memories were still intact. I didn't know whether I knew the alien, or whether he was good or evil, but he had to be an alien.
Like the dust beast. Yes. Yes, of course. The old woman ranting about "Yeerks." They were aliens, weren't they?
FLASH! A construction site. Half-finished buildings all around. Heavy equipment. Dark night. A light in the sky. Something . . .landing. Something . . . alien. People around me.
Faces. Faces I knew . ..
"What faces?" I cried. But the vision was gone.
"Arrrrgggghhh!" I yelled in frustration. I wanted to kick something. I wanted to reach inside my own head and tear down the gray curtain that hid the truth from me.
Get a grip, Rachel, I told myself. At least you know your name. And you know that you have some very weird powers. And you know you have some very serious enemies.
This was not reassuring. The dust beast would have destroyed me. Except he'd been distracted. By the alien.
Was the alien a friend? Had he been trying to help me?
The answers aren't here in the forest, I told myself. You need to get back to civilization. That's where the answers are.
Back to the world. But which direction? The bear would know. He would have been able to sense: it. Could I do the same?
I stood very still. I listened.
The wind rustled the leaves. Squirrels chattered. Things I couldn't see skittered behind bushes. Birds sang songs of love and threat. The stream chuckled over rocks and fallen branches.
The stream. Of course.
Follow the stream, I told myself.
Marco is highly intelligent. But he is also very afflicted by a condition the humans call "sense of humor." I have noticed that Marco's sense of humor sometimes makes him do strange things.
<I didn't see anything, all right?> Tobias said angrily. <No bear. No Rachel. No Ax. How many more times do you want to ask me? I didn't see them.>
He was in the rafters of Cassie's barn. We sat on bales of hay or paced back and forth, glaring and angry and, worst of all, afraid.
Jake, Cassie, me, and Tobias. Four of the six who should have been there.
"All right, calm down, Tobias," Jake said. "No one is blaming you. No one is blaming anyone. We just need to get a grip on this."
"Ax was supposed to hook up with us in the forest," I said. "He never did. If he couldn't meet us, he'd know we'd worry. He'd know he should morph into his human form and come tell us he's okay."
"So he's not okay," Jake said.
"Ax is not okay and Rachel is not okay," I agreed. "And I think we know why. That thing."
I turned to Cassie. "What did Chapman call it?"
"A Veleek. A morph-hunter."
"That's why Rachel and Ax have both disappeared," I said. "It almost got me and Ax at Dar-lene's. It almost got us again this afternoon."
Cassie looked at me, her expression troubled. "Why 'almost'?"
"What do you mean?"
"Why didn't it get you?" Cassie asked. She was frowning. "At Darlene's house it had you cold. Today, you say you outran it. But actually, it stopped chasing you, right? It went tearing off to the cabin where we think Ax and Rachel were. Why? Why stop chasing you two and go after them?''
"I don't know!" I yelled. I was as frustrated and scared as anyone. I wasn't in the mood for puzzles. "Ask Tobias. He's the predator here. He should know."
I meant it to be mean. I felt bad about it as soon as I said it.
But Tobias didn't lash back at me. Instead he said, <Movement.>
"What's that supposed to mean?" Jake asked.
<Marco said it: I'm a predator. When I hunt, I look for movement. I chase what moves. Same as a cat. If the prey stays still, it's harder to see. If I listen and I don't hear movement, it's the same thing. The hawk's brain is wired to pay attention to the sight or sound of movements
"That's it!" Cassie yelled.
I jerked about two feet in the air. Cassie is not a person who yells.
"That's it! It's been bugging me ever since the first attack. How did the Veleek know who we were? How did it decide Marco and Ax were prey? Marco, what were you doing just as the beast attacked?"
I shrugged. "I was morphing back."
"Yes!" Cassie said. "Coincidence? The beast just happens to attack while you are morphing? And today, when you guys were attacked in the woods?"
"We were morphing," Jake said. "We were morphing into wolves."
"Both attacks at the very time you were morphing," Cassie said. "The very time. Interesting coincidence."
We all just pretty much didn't say anything for a few seconds after that. I was trying to think through what this would mean: As long as I didn't morph, I was safe. As safe as a mouse who stays frozen.
"Rachel doesn't know this," I said quietly. "If she's even alive."
"Why did the Veleek drop us and take off for the cabin in the woods?" Jake asked. Then he answered his own question. "Because we were done morphing, so we weren't as interesting to it. It sensed some other creature actively morphing."
<Two mice in a field. Maybe I'm chasing one, and he's running. But then he freezes. No movement. And at that moment I catch a glimpse of another mouse running. I ... or at least the hawk, goes after the second mouse. The hawk brain thinks they're the same mouse. What's important is the movements
"And for this morph-hunter, what counts is the morphing. That's what it locks onto," Jake said.
"So why didn't it come after me when I morphed at the mall?" Cassie wondered.
"Because it can't be two places at once," I said. "There must be limits on how far it can spread. It was too far away."
"We're safe, as long as we never morph again," I pointed out.
"You mean as long as we don't fight the Yeerks, we're safe," Jake said. "Is that what you think we should do, Marco?"
They all looked at me. I shrugged. "Rachel isn't here to cast her vote. So, on her behalf, I'll say what she would say: What we need to do is find a way to kick this Veleek's butt."
Cassie smiled. "And what would the real Marco say to that?"
"He'd probably make some stupid but very funny remark," I admitted. "Then he would start thinking about how to do just that: Kick this big windbag's dusty butt."
I reached civilization. Or at least, I reached a suburban development. Maybe it was familiar, I don't know. Maybe I'd been there before. I didn't know that, either.
What I did know was that my feet were scratched and torn. My legs were aching and sore. My entire body was sore. I was hungry and thirsty and scared. And I was tired beyond belief.
I needed sleep. I could see lights on inside many of the homes I passed. For a while I considered just walking right up to the front door of any house and saying, "Look, I don't know who I am. Can I sleep on your couch?"
But I was being hunted by someone, or something. I didn't know who I could trust. And until my memory returned, I had to be cautious. Besides, I was dirty, messed-up, barefoot, and wearing a stupid black leotard. No one was going to let me in.
Then I saw the house with no lights on inside. There was a sign on the front lawn that said sold. I crossed the damp lawn, which felt wonderful to my sore feet. I peered in through a front window. No furniture. It was empty.
I quickly went around to the back. The house had a pool. And I saw a faucet down behind some bushes. I fell to my knees and turned the knob till cool, fresh water flowed. I drank my fill.
"Well, that's one thing taken care of," I whispered to myself.
I checked out the houses on either side. There was a high fence all the way around. No one could see me.
I tried the back door: locked. I tried the garage door: locked. Then I tried a window. Yes!
I hoisted myself up and slid inside. It was dark. The house smelled like fresh paint. "Is anyone here?" I called out in a trembly voice.
My voice fell flat in the emptiness. I went to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. The light surprised me. Inside the refrigerator was nothing.
I checked the cupboards. Empty. Empty. Empty. Ah-hah! Right there on the counter: a box of vanilla Wafers. They must have belonged to the painters. There were paint fingerprints on the box. It was open, and half the cookies were gone, but I didn't care. I wolfed the cookies down as I prowled through the rest of the empty house.
The place was empty, but I had water and cookies, and the carpet was soft enough to sleep on, as tired as I was.
I sat in a corner of the abandoned living room and finished eating the cookies. I wondered who had lived here. And who would be moving in next.
But most of all, I wondered about me. Who I was. What I was. And why some terrible alien creature had tried to kill me twice.
I don't remember falling asleep. But later I remembered the dreams. The nightmares. FLASH! I was at the construction site. Dark. A light coming down from the sky. Others with me. Was one a girl? Yes. But I couldn't see her face. Or the faces of others with me. Just one ... a boy ... He turned to look at me...
A bird! He had the face of a bird of prey.
FLASH! I was balancing. Putting one foot carefully in front of another. I was on a beam.
Four inches wide. I felt clumsy. But when I looked down at my feet, they changed. They weren't my feet at all, but the dainty paws of a cat.
People applauding. No, not all. Some hated me. Wanted to kill me. Something wrong with them. Something terribly wrong with them! Worms! Worms in their heads!
FLASH! I was underground. A vast open pit, but covered by a dome of rock and dirt. A pool of sluggish gray water. The worms! They were in the water. And all around me ... blades everywhere, heads like snakes.
Huge ants! No, no, I was an ant, too. Reeking acid smells. Hundreds of them swarming, attacking. Ants as big as I was. Huge pincers cutting into me.
Morph back! I cried in my dream.
Morph back!
Morph!
"ANIMORPH!" I woke up screaming.
I jumped up off the floor. I ran my hands frantically over my body. What was I? What was I? What was I that I had these dreams?
Humans did not dream of being ants. Dreams that were so real you could feel the huge grains of sand pressing in, the airlessness, the terror, the eerie vision of swarms of ants crawling over you, ripping you apart.
I was gasping for breath. My heart was beating twice its normal rate. My forehead was dripping sweat, even though it was chilly in the empty room.
Animorph. That's what I had screamed. What did it mean?
Then . . .
BAM BAM BAM!
"Whoever is in there, come out. This is the police!"
"Ahh!" I yelped, then covered my mouth. Flashlight beams pierced the darkness around me.
Spears of light searched for me. I rolled quickly into a corner.
"Don't make us come in there after you!" a policeman said. "Neighbors reported someone climbing in. So just come on out."
Trapped! I should just... I should just give myself up.
No! No! There were enemies. Enemies everywhere. I couldn't... I couldn't. . .
"I'm gonna count to three and you'd better come out with your hands over your head," a policeman yelled.
I had to get away! Had to think. Had to find out who I was. What I was. But I was surrounded.
Morph! Like when I became a bear. Only not the bear. I didn't know if the bear inside me was injured.
I searched the jagged memories from my dreams. What had I seen? What pictures had I seen? The ant? NO! Never the ant. Never again. I felt that in my bones.
Larger. More powerful. Yes!
The cops were banging and yelling. My skin was still electric from the terrifying nightmares. But I calmed myself. I focused on one image from my dreams.
Large. Very large. Too large for the police to handle.
"Ohhh!" I cried out as my nose and upper lip suddenly exploded outward. Exploded in a long, massive growth that reached to the floor.
I was growing larger. Larger. Filling the room!
"Come out of there now, or we're coming in!"
Don't worry, officer, I thought. I'll be out soon.
It was just dumb luck that we even saw what happened.
Our meeting broke up with all of us mad and scared and upset. No one wanted to believe that Rachel and Ax might have been killed. Ax was a new friend, sort of. And an alien, not someone we had grown up with. But Rachel was my cousin. She was Cassie's best friend.
And we looked up to Rachel. She was fearless. She made the rest of us braver than we might have been without her.
We went out into the night, the four of us. Tobias flew off toward the forest. We watched him fly away, flapping hard in the dead night air. Marco and I picked up our bikes.
"Cassie? Are you out there?" It was her mother, framed in the doorway of their home.
"Yes, Mom. Right here."
"That show you like is on. Do you want me to tape it?"
"I'll be in in a minute," Cassie said. "I'm just talking to Jake and Marco."
"Hi, Jake. Hello, Marco."
We said hello back.
"Well, don't stay out too late," Cassie's mom said. "It's almost nine o'clock." She went back inside.
"Nine? Man, I better be getting home," Marco said. "I'll be toast."
"I'll walk you guys to the road," Cassie said. We walked in silence down the long driveway, then down the dirt road that connected the farm to the highway. Marco and I pushed our bikes, and the only sounds were our footsteps and the rattle of Marco's bulky bike chain.
"Maybe she's home already. Maybe we don't even have to worry," I said. "And Ax is probably fine. I mean, who knows what an Andalite might be doing?"
"At least it's warm out," Cassie said. "If Rachel is out there somewhere, at least it's a warm night. And there's a bright moon to help her find her way home," she added softly.
I followed her gaze. The full moon hung high in the sky, surrounded by millions of stars. You can always see a lot more stars out on Cassie's farm.
"Look!" Marco yelled.
Something was obscuring the moon. It passed swiftly and the moon shone clear again. I saw what looked like sparkling fairy dust. A swirl that raced away toward the development whose lights were just visible in the middle distance.
"What is that? Is that a cloud?" Cassie asked.
I looked at her. "I don't think so."
"You know what it is," Marco snapped. "What are we going to do about it?"
"Morph-hunter," Cassie said. "It's after someone. Ax. Or Rachel."
"Two choices," I said. "Do nothing. Or try and distract it."
"Distract it?" Marco demanded. "How?"
"Like playing keepaway," I said. "It chases morphs, right? So we give it something to
chase."
"We have to get it away from those houses," Cassie said. "That thing chews up everything in its path!"
Marco nodded. "Keep shifting targets. Keep it guessing. Oh, man! This is going to be really unpleasant!"
"How do we get there?" Cassie demanded. "We can't morph here and fly over. If we morph here we'll draw it to my house!"
She was right. And the houses where the Veleek was headed were half a mile away.
"Are the keys in that?" Marco asked.
Cassie and I looked where he was pointing. Cassie's father's beat-up old pickup truck. The truck he used around the farm.
"No way," Cassie said.
"Way," Marco said.
Which left it up to me to decide. "Let's do it."
"And Ax is probably fine. I mean, who knows what an Andalite might be doing?"
I remember thinking on my re-read, and still think now, that Ax's narrative voice is weirdly flat here. Don't really think this is much of a spoiler but just in case: this is particularly weird since I don't think that's the case at all in the very next book, so it's not like it took her a while to get to grips with it or anything
I had become very, very large.
The cops were still outside pounding and yelling and ordering me to come out.
So I decided I'd better do what they wanted.
I aimed for the front door. Not that the front door was going to be big enough. But I figured the front wall would be just about big enough. I could If eel the morph progressing. In a minute now, as soon as the morph was complete -
B-R-R-A-A-A-A-K-K!
Behind me some terrible noise! Noise like a circular saw going through steel!
"HhhhREEEEEuuuhhh!" I trumpeted in terror and rage.
B-R-R-A-A-A-A-K-K!
Suddenly, the back wall of the house was gone! The beast! The beast!
Head down, trunk curled under, I charged the front door.
KaaaaaRUNCH!
I hit the front door. The door popped out like a champagne cork. The frame around the door exploded into splinters. Then the wall around the door frame bulged out and popped open like a pimple
And out I came. Several tons of me. An insane, horrific combination of human and African elephant. The unpredictability of the incomplete morph had resulted in a huge creature with a long trunk, tiny, human ears, big elephant legs, and blond hair.
The police officers were surprised.
"HhhhRRRRRRuuuhhh!" I trumpeted again. I raised my massive trunk high in the air. Four police officers stared with identical expressions of total, absolute disbelief. Four mouths hung open. They blinked. One of them rubbed her eyes.
Then they had something even more amazing to see.
The dust creature ripped through the house, just a few feet behind me, leaving it a mess of chopsticks. I bolted.
You would not think, to look at an elephant, that it can even run at all. But believe me, an elephant can move out when it needs to. Elephants can go twenty-five miles an hour, faster than the fastest human runner.
But there is a problem with elephants, too. They are huge. Too huge to dodge and twist. Too huge to hide.
I barreled down that quiet suburban street, completing the morph as I ran. But I knew I could not escape.
BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!
The police were shooting! At me? At the dust monster? I didn't know. I didn't care. The bullets meant nothing to me, and nothing to the monster that was after me.
It was after me! A hundred feet back, a huge, flying wall of gnashing teeth and whirring blades.
It was gaining!
I stomped through someone's garden, crushed flowers beneath my huge, round feet, and annihilated a fence. I turned toward an alleyway between two homes. A parked Winnebago was between me and the beast.
B-R-R-A-A-A-A-K-K!
The Winnebago was gone! Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a single tire bounce down the street. The rest of the camper was shredded.
Right then, I knew it was over. If I kept running, the beast would chew its way through houses where innocent people were sleeping. I couldn't let that happen.
This is it, I realized. This is it I can't run. I can't win. I turned to face the beast.
I saw it slow down. It hung in the air before me. A nightmare of gnashing teeth and wild eyes and whirling blades. The last of the morph was completed, as two gigantic ivory tusks sprouted from my mouth.
From the beast, tendrils emerged. They were like ropes. Living ropes that wrapped around my huge body.
I felt myself being smothered. I couldn't breathe!
I struggled, but the ropes just tightened their grip. The dust beast swirled around me, covering me.
I couldn't see. I could barely breathe.
Then the beast lifted me up.
Or... it tried to.
I felt myself raised up, up ... maybe a foot off the ground. Then we settled back to Earth.
Once again, the beast tried to lift me. This time we rose two, maybe three feet.
And then settled down to Earth again.
At that moment, a tiny flicker of hope was reborn.
I looked it up in a book once - the largest elephant ever found weighed 22,050 pounds. Mostly they weigh in between 7,000 and 13,000 pounds. I had no idea how much I weighed in this elephant body. Probably not 22,050 pounds. But I was big, just the same. Very big.
Too big for the dust beast to carry away. <Heh, heh, heh. Too much for you, creep?>
Penetrating the swirling, angry sounds of the dust beast as it strained to lift me up came a sudden SCCRREEEEECHH! It sounded like squealing tires. Like a very bad driver was racing toward us.
"Aaaaaaahhhhh!" Cassie screamed.
"Look out! Lookoutlookoutlookoutlookout!" Jake yelled.
"Would you both shut up?" I demanded. "I'm trying to drive here!"
"Car! Car! Car!" Jake yelled.
I yanked the wheel left. The car sped by, horn blaring. The driver stuck his hand out the window and made a sign with his fingers.
"That's rude," I said. "And totally uncalled for."
BAM!
"Aaaaaaaahhhhhh!"
"Oh, it's just a trash can," I said. "Chill out."
BAM!BAM!BAM!
"Okay, so it's four trash cans," I said.
"Get off the sidewalk, you lunatic!" Jake said.
I yanked the wheel to the right. We bumped off the sidewalk, sort of grazed a parked car, and...
BAM! BAM!BAM!
"Do you hate trash cans?" Jake asked. "Is that your problem? Do you just HATE TRASH CANS?!!"
"I can't drive with you screaming in my ear," I said.
"You can't drive at all!" Jake said.
"Left! Turn left! There,, there! Turn left! It's that way," Cassie said, taking time out from screaming.
I turned left. I missed the actual street, but fortunately, the people who lived on that corner did not have any trees in their front yard.
BUMP! Over the curb. BUMP! Rear wheels over the curb. I stepped on the gas and tore across the lawn.
"Cool," I said.
"I'm going to kill you, Marco," Jake said in a weirdly calm voice. "If I survive, I am gonna kill you."
"You said you could drive!" Cassie accused.
I shrugged. Actually, what I had said was I scored millions of points playing Wipeout, this excellent video game. "Okay, so it's not exactly like Wipeout. I'm doing the best I can."
BUMP. BUMP. I was back on the road.
Suddenly, an elephant went tearing across the street a block away. An elephant with little pink ears.
The Veleek was right behind it.
"That's Rachel!" Cassie yelled. "She's still alive!"
"Not for long, maybe," Jake said grimly. "I'm gonna morph. Marco? Follow that elephant!"
The elephant ran behind a Winnebago. The Veleek chewed the Winnebago into sawdust.
The elephant turned to face the animal. The elephant planted its feet firmly, raised its trunk in defiance, and faced the beast of a hundred mouths.
"Yeah, that's Rachel, all right," I said.
I floored the truck. We burned rubber and shot forward down the block.
"Come on, you big dirtball, I'm right here!" Jake yelled. Orange and black fur was already sprouting from his body. Tiger teeth were growing, bulging down beneath his upper lip.
Suddenly, living ropes, like tentacles, wrapped around Rachel's huge body. The dust beast enveloped her. Covered her.
"NO!" Cassie cried. "Rachel! NO!"
The Veleek began to rise from the ground.
Then it slipped back down.
"Oh! Duh!" I gasped. "It's not trying to kill us! It wants to capture us! It's trying to carry Rachel away."
"It can't lift her," Cassie said. "She's too heavy."
Just then, the Veleek noticed us. Or at least it noticed Jake, who was morphing into a tiger.
The Veleek dropped Rachel. She fell just a foot or so, but still cracked the road surface.
"I'm going to Rachel," Cassie yelled. She started climbing over Jake to get out. But it wasn't working because Jake was already half-tiger, and he was squeezing out of his seat.
"Jake, better climb in the back, man. You're getting large," I said and but on the brakes.
Jake pushed open the door and climbed out of the truck. He was clumsy because he had legs that were not human and not tiger, but some weird halfway mix. His hands were furcovered claws that could barely work the door handle.
But Jake piled out and jumped into the back of the pickup. Cassie piled out right behind him.
"Good luck, you guys," Cassie said. She slammed the door shut.
With a rush of wind, the Veleek came after us.
I put the truck in reverse and gunned it.
WHAM!
I groaned. Someone had parked a car right where I needed to go.
<Turn it around!> Jake yelled in thought-speak.
I spun the wheel and at the same time I floored it. It was totally Hollywood! We're talking squealing tires, smoke coming up off them, then ZOOOOM!
I had a tiger in the back of a pickup truck I could barely drive, and I was being chased by the most powerful monster I had ever seen.
Later I would be terrified. But right then, at that moment, I was just thinking, This is so cool.
The good news was Marco had gotten out of the neighborhood, so he couldn't destroy any more trash cans.
The bad news was he'd gotten onto the highway.
<Pass on the left, pass on the left! Not on the right!>
"Hey, I'm cool now," Marco yelled back through the open back window of the truck. "This is just like the game now. No problemo."
<It isn't dark on the video game.>
"Sure. The part with the tunnel."
<You mean the part where you always crash and burn?>
We were tearing down the highway at seventy miles an hour, weaving through a stream of bright red taillights. I was halfway into the tiger morph. I was deliberately dragging it out, keeping the Veleek interested.
It was working. The Veleek was interested.
I was standing in the rattling, swaying bed of a junky old pickup truck, and just about five car-lengths back there was a beast fifty feet wide that was nothing but sheer destruction.
Occasionally, the other motorists on the road would offer us advice. I could hear bits and pieces of it as we shot past.
". . . idiots! Why don't you . . ."
"What kind of a moron . . ."
"Where'd you learn to drive? Jersey? You stupid . . ."
<It's gaining on us!> I told Marco.
"This thing won't go any faster!"
<Good,> I said.
"Off-road! We're going off-road!"
<Nooooo !>
But it was too late.
Ka-BUMPH! Bump! Bumpbumpbumpbump-bump!
The truck plunged off the road, jumped a ditch, slammed through a wire fence, and aimed straight for the trees.
Tree left! Tree right! Tree! Tree! Tree! Tree!
Branches scraped at the sides of the truck.
And behind us, chewing through the trees, came the Veleek.
B-R-R-A-A-A-A-A-K-K!
<Marco, I'm almost morphed. I'm gonna bail. Give me five minutes, then it's your turn.>
"Yeah," Marco yelled. "Jake? Be careful, man!"
<Try not to destroy Cassie's dad's truck, okay?>
"Get ready. Slowing down ..."
He slammed on the brakes. WHAM! The side of the truck slid into a tree. I sprang from the bed of the truck. Marco floored the truck and sped off through the brush, engine roaring.
I landed like the cat I was. The tiger inside me knew where we were. Knew it in his bones.
This was a cat born and bred for dark nights in dense forests.
In a rush of sensory information, I heard-smelled-saw the environment around me. Dark penetrating eyes. Ears attuned to every small sound. A sense of smell that told me stories of deer and wolves and wild pigs that had passed through this area.
But what I needed most was the cat's agility and speed. I completed the morph. As long as no one else morphed and distracted it, the Veleek would chase me. At least, that's what I hoped.
B-R-R-A-A-A-A-A-K-K!
It was on me! I turned with lightning speed and did the one thing the Veleek could not expect: I charged straight at it.
The dust beast hesitated, then stopped.
"RRRROOOOOWWWWRRR!" I let loose a roar that would make a grown man wet his pants. I unleashed the incredible power of my coiled muscles. I leapt through the air, claws outstretched. It was an attack that would kill just about any animal walking around on this planet.
But it would have had no effect on the Veleek.
At the last second, before my paws could encounter those rows of gnashing teeth and spinning blades, I tucked my head, drew my paws back, and hit the ground directly beneath the dust beast.
SHWOOOM! Right under him! Right under the Veleek and out the far side. I hauled my orange-striped tail out of there at maximum warp.
<Let's see how fast you can turn, creep!>
Hah. Not fast. It took the Veleek several seconds to turn itself around. And I thought, Well, well. So it does have some weaknesses, after all.
Some weaknesses. Not enough.
B-R-R-A-A-A-A-A-K-K! It ripped through the trees and undergrowth like the out-ofcontrol mulcher it was.
Tigers are fast. Tigers are mightily powerful.
But tigers do not have great endurance. I was a sprinter, not a marathon runner.
I moved out, racing wildly through the trees, turning sharp left, then sharp right. Doubling back. Doubling back again. And the somewhat clumsy Veleek couldn't catch me. But I couldn't keep it up. I was winded. Panting. Tongue hanging out. Exhausted. It was time for a distraction. I hoped Marco could provide it in time.
The plan was to run the Veleek back and forth, from one morph to another. It wanted to hunt morphs? We would give it morphs to hunt.
It wasn't much of a plan. It only worked if the creature could be worn out.
But the odds were we'd all wear out first.
I fired myself up a tree. Claws bit deep into the bark. Tired muscles propelled me up an up, through the branches.
B-R-R-A-A-A-K!
The Veleek chewed through the tree I was on! I looked down and saw it right below me.
The tree was still standing, but the Veleek had shredded the base. And it was chewing its way straight up the tree.
I leapt into darkness.
I fell, claws outstretched, through the night air.
I don't want to bias you all. Maybe some of you are liking it, but honestly, I don't think this is a very good book. Rachel is sidelined in chapters like this for most of the story. So far, in 22 chapters, Tobias has had one. I don't know. We'll get through this, though. At least Rachel is going to become an elephant. People like elephants!
Yeah, I agree; it kind of highlights how good the other books are in comparison, though.
The best way I can think of to describe it is that this book feels like one of those movie spin-offs of an anime where they have to make sure that nothing plot-important happens during it.