Free The Chronicles of Mavin Manyshaped by Sheri S. Tepper

fifteen-season child, at least. I used to do it at Assembly, to the cooks, to get sweets. They didn’t mind. And I did it to the shifters, too, and to the granders when I wanted something. And to Handbright.”

    A fifteen-season child. Five years old. And already with a Talent seeming so natural that no one knew he had it. Mavin tried this thought in a dozen different ways, but it made no sense to her. Children did not have talent. That was one of the things that made them children. And yet here was Mertyn. Slowly, hesitantly, she moved them on their way. “It will still be best to use it only when we must. Elsewise you may do some unconsidered damage with it. So. Agreed?”

    He nodded at her, rather wanly, and they went on their way, Mavin cautioning herself the while. “He is only a child. Because he seems to have this Talent, you will begin to think that he is more than a child, that he understands more than a child can understand. You will make demands upon him, you will expect things from him. He will make childish mistakes, and you will blame him. Don’t do it, Mavin. He is child, only child, and that is quite enough for the time being. Let him live with his thalan, Plandybast, at least for a little time. Let him not have to make people love him ...”

    Shaking her head the while, impressing it upon herself, demanding that she remember. The light had gone out of the day, and she longed for it, longed to have Mertyn bring it back, but would not allow him to do it even if he would. “Child,” she said to herself yet again. “A child.” She had the feeling that she herself had never been a child, having to remind herself what she had been until the past few days. Before the Assembly she had been a child. Before she overheard the granders she had been a child. Before she had seen Handbright’s body striped with the whip, before she had known what it would be not to be a child ...

    “Don’t worry, Mavin,” he whispered to her. “It’s really a good thing to have. You’ll see. I’ll only use it to help us.”

    They went on toward the north for that day and most of the day following. The latter part of that day they accepted a ride on a farm wagon hauling hay from the fields along the river to the campground at Calihiggy Creek. Mavin had grown used to her boyish shape, had managed to hold it constant even while sleeping. Mertyn nagged at her from time to time. “I thought shifters couldn’t take other people shapes, Mavin. They taught us that. Handbright taught us that.”

    To which she replied variously, as the mood struck her. “I think most shifters can’t,” or “It was a lie,” or “I think it’s only other real people we can’t shift into,” knowing that this last was as much a lie, at least, as any other thing he had been told.

    “You need a fur cloak,” he said seriously to her. “With a beast head. Barfod had one with a great wide head on it, he said it was a monstrous creature from the north. I like pombi heads best. Let’s get you one of those.”

    “Mertyn, child, I don’t want anyone to know I am shifter. I don’t want anyone to know that either one of us are anything except—just people.”

    “Pawns?” he asked in a disgusted voice.

    “Well, maybe not pawns. But whatever is next to pawns that would make the least problems. I don’t want anyone carrying tales about us back to Danderbat keep. I don’t want any child stealers coming after you. I don’t want any woman stealers to be taking me. So, we’re just two—whats?”

    He began to think about this, laying himself back in the haywagon and staring at the sky. It was growing toward evening, and the lights of the campground were showing far ahead of them on the road. “I know,” he whispered to her at last. “You shall be a servant to a Wizard. No one wants to upset a Wizard or trifle with a Wizard’s man. I shall be the Wizard’s thalan, son to his sister. That way no one will trifle with me