Free Switch! by Karen Prince

like a drowned rat,” his friend grinned. Oddly, he seemed quite smug about that.
    “Thank you. I hardly hurt at all,” the drenched boy huffed. Then he peered at his leg as if he’d lost something. “It must have grabbed me through my pants.”
    Gogo Maya leaned back against the tree trunk, crossed her arms over her chest and grinned. She was prepared to enjoy the boy’s discomfort. Things would have gone much more smoothly if he had done what he’d been told instead of draining her amulet. She could have healed both of them if she’d had control of it, and she would still have had enough power left in the opal to switch home.
    “What the hell did you think you were doing stalking into the water all creepy like that, Ethan?” the handsome one shouted at the drenched one. “You were down there so long I thought you had drowned.” He stabbed an angry finger in the direction of the rapids. “You were lucky that croc pulled you out.”
    Where the boy pointed, Gogo Maya saw a small girl squatting on her haunches between two enormous crocodiles, patting them on their snouts and talking to them in soothing, clicking tones.
    “Well, that’s disturbing!” she said to Salih. “Is she a witch? Do I need to explore the minds of those crocodiles? Because I don’t think I have the energy.”
    “No need,” Salih said. “I can pick up on their thoughts.”
    Gogo Maya watched with interest as the leopard cocked his ears and twitched his whiskers, all the while gazing steadily at the crocodiles. Although she felt the little cold prickles of his awareness spread out to include the crocodiles, Gogo Maya was worried to discover that she could not quite understand what the crocodiles said to Salih. Perhaps the switch had made her a little weaker than she’d expected.
    Salih gave her a quizzical look when she failed to respond to the crocodiles’ information, then shrugged and told her what they’d said. “The little girl has a particular fondness for the crocodiles, but they are not her familiar. More... friends. Friends of the whole community, I understand. They have lived here for some time. They feel most anxious about the drowned boy.”  
    Back in her youth, Gogo Maya had lived in the crocodile-infested Louisiana swamps. As an expert on these matters she felt compelled to argue. “I’m pretty sure you can’t tame a crocodile,” she said. “They don’t have the memory for it. Just when you think you’ve made friends, they forget who you are, and bite you.” On the other hand, she couldn’t help wondering if the crocodile had been trying to help the boy. She prodded Salih on the shoulder. “Delve a little deeper,” she said. “See if they are strange... or different. I have a feeling we were drawn to this place by something, and it sure as hell wasn’t that boy, even if he does have a bit of magic of his own.”  
    The drenched boy, Ethan, the other one had called him, obviously didn’t see the crocodiles as suitable companions either. “Get her away from those crocodiles!” he croaked, trying to rise up and go towards them, but another boy planted a hand on his chest to stop him, speaking rapidly to the handsome one in a language Gogo Maya did not recognise.  
    “No, apparently they won’t hurt her, they’re some kind of a pet,” the handsome one told his friend with a dismissive shrug. “So, why did you go into the water like that? We were worried about you. You could see Jimoh’s guys already dredged the pool.”
    Muttering something unintelligible about having pit bulls as pets, the boy, Ethan, said, “The leopard made me.” He sounded unconvincing, even to Gogo Maya, who knew it was true. “I was supposed to fetch the witch’s amulet.   Well, the leopard says she’s a witch... Anyway, the amulet’s a sort of jewel. I should have it here somewhere,” he added, patting his pockets.
    “Just because she’s old doesn’t make her a witch...” began the handsome one. “What do you