Lhind the Firebird by Sherwood Smith

Author:Sherwood Smith [Smith, Sherwood]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fantasy & magic, young adult, shape-shifters, psychic powers, adventure, princesses
ISBN: 9781611388985
Publisher: Book View Cafe
Published: 2020-04-18T05:00:00+00:00

As the ships sailed on the wind toward Shinja, I stayed in bird form, except when I wanted to eat. I had to wait until nightfall, the late watch. While most of the crew was asleep, I’d transform to myself on the highest masthead of one or another of the ships, unwrap my bounty, and eat my fill.

The problem, I soon discovered, was that though I kept my bird form most of the time, feeling little hunger or thirst, when I transformed, the hunger hit hard. I clearly needed to eat to preserve my human form, even if it was in other-space. And so the nuts and seeds I’d so laboriously gathered, thinking they would be plenty for weeks...weren’t.

So I began scanning the ships for possible meals before I ran out entirely. I’d tried to avoid the command ship because I figured that one would have the most armed guards who might decide to amuse themselves with target practice on a pesky bird seen too often. I was still angry with the Djurans for shooting at the gryphs.

But the two consorts only seemed to serve cooked foods of the sorts I don’t eat. In desperation late one night I drifted along the open stern windows of the lead ship, golden light pouring out. I looked into a plain cabin with a swinging bed, and a bolted table on which square containers rested.

Since the cabin was empty, and I’d already seen that gray-haired captain walking her deck, I drifted in and looked down. In one of those containers sat ripe fruit, and in the other a bowl of mixed nuts.

This captain liked my kind of foods? I transformed and gobbled down a plum, a peach, and a tiny spray of grapes. Then I helped myself to a handful of the shelled nuts, and while I crunched those I stirred the rest with my knuckles to flatten out the spot I’d raided.

Much refreshed, I flung myself out the stern windows and transformed before I reached the water, then spiraled up, noticing upturned faces as I sped away.

Over the next stretch of days, that was the pattern: when I got hungry, I waited for a time when the captain was on deck, and flew into her cabin. Each time I was afraid I would find nothing. The fruit did diminish, but the container of nuts stayed full, often replenished.

And so the ships sailed on through storm after storm. In bird form, I weathered these storms without trouble, though sometimes I crouched in the lee of a sail when the winds whipped so high they threatened to blow my body off into the sea—or hurl me away through the air so that I would have to struggle back.

I shifted to my human self only to raid the captain’s cabin for food. That was the pattern until I flew in one blustery day, the rising seas gray-green. I transformed in midair, a process I was very good at by now, but even so I stumbled

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