Free An Unexpected Apprentice by Jody Lynn Nye

could turn back. His tongue still felt coated with the livers of the creatures he had eaten. He had killed with his own hands for food: pale white fish with bulging eyes, giant shrimps that were more bitter than the seawater he had breathed day in and day out, crabs like spiders whose long, spindly legs caught in his teeth like strands of corn silk.
    Corn.
    It had been a long time since he had tasted corn.
    Nemeth grasped for the memory of corn. Fish thoughts were good only for survival. He must get used to thinking like a human again. Yellow. Corn was yellow. The way it looked growing in a field was … pretty; the horizontal sweeps of green stalks with gold tassels waving in the wind. Its milky sweetness on the tongue was the next thing he recalled. It helped dispel the bitterness of the shrimps. He clawed back each vision, each sound, each taste. Clouds. Clouds rolled through the sky above his head. They were the same as the last time he had seen them—how long ago? The color of the sky beyond them was called … blue. His lidless eyes watched the white patterns change, but black crept up around the perimeter of his vision. He did not have much time.
    Runes lay all around him, on every leaf, every grain of sand, each fish in the sea. Another wrapped him about like a cocoon, defining him in every way: his shape, his history, his future all expressed as one symbol. It was deformed. Nemeth hated the sight of it. He had been forced to see it every day since he began this journey. Now he must repair it before he suffocated on the hot beach. With difficulty, he called up the memory of the one rune he knew better than any other. For months he
had concentrated on every stroke, every detail, every nuance, in order to recall it without error. Now he must summon it or perish.
    The sigil appeared in his mind’s eye. He admired its perfection. This is how he ought to be. With an act of will he expanded it until it was large enough to surround him, glowing with such golden light that it washed out the pale sunlight. He could feel its hot power coursing through his body, as though the lines were connected to organs and blood vessels, a design more complicated than could be conceived by any ordinary mind. Where the living rune did not match the rune in his mind, he must make it match. A line here needed to be straightened out, a flourish lengthened. Other parts must be erased. As though he was scrubbing out a mistake on a document, he corrected the symbol. Around him, the pattern altered, and he felt himself altering in response.
    The first part to grow back was his eyelids. Thankfully, after so many months of inescapable light, he was able to close his eyes. No matter. He did not need to see to complete the transformation.
    Behind his ears he could feel the gasping slits close. Inside his chest lungs came into being and expanded, lifting his rib cage almost painfully. Nemeth gasped and coughed. The fins at his side grew slowly into arms, and the scales fell from them, littering the beach with their blue shimmer. He rolled over on one side in the coarse sand, feeling for the burden that he had carried all this time under the left arm. It was there, no longer a part of his physical body, but as close as his soul. He relaxed a little, patting the bundle as if it was a faithful dog. So all was well. He would soon be himself again.
    Patiently, he endured the continuing pain. Soon he had legs, toes, fingers. His tongue marked the blunting of his teeth, and he nodded approval. One painful surge as his prominent nose, which had receded into his face, regrew all at once.
    That nose had endured humiliation in his past, as had the rest of his person. Such disrespect would never again be his part. The bundle in his arm would ensure that his would always be a name to reckon with. He summoned clothes. It had been months since he had had shoes on, but they could not be more painful than walking the seafloor on his belly.
    Nemeth waited until the