Free Fabulous Creature by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

hundred years, I’ll bet you’d go shopping too, if you got a chance.”
    The bigger girl put one arm around the little boy and gave him a hug. Smiling at him she said, “Shut up, Woody. You and Laurel go on and wait for me where the path goes into the trees. I have to talk to the prince alone for a minute. Okay?”
    The little kids went off slowly with much stopping and looking back and whispering. When they were out of sight, the girl turned to James and examined his face. It was the kind of long level look that ordinarily made him feel very uncomfortable, only this didn’t. There was something about this girl’s strange-looking face that made mutual staring almost acceptable—a kind of open, unprejudiced curiosity that somehow invited a similar response.
    “Hello,” she said after a while. “My name is Griffith Alexandra Donahue. But usually Griffin. What’s yours?”
    James grinned. “Prince Fish,” he said.
    She looked delighted. “It’s like this,” she said. “One hundred years ago an evil witch enchanted you and turned you into an enormous trout. And one day while Woody and Laurel and I were watching you swim around in a deep pool, way down there almost to the lake, you spoke to me and asked me to break the enchantment so that you could be a prince again. So today we did it. We had a spell-breaking ceremony, and just before you disappeared, you told me that the spell was broken but you couldn’t appear to us as a prince immediately because the witch was watching, but that you would very soon.”
    “Wow!” James shook his head, grinning. Watching Griffin’s steady slate blue eyes, exotically tilted and hypnotically intense, he was almost ready to believe the whole story. “Okay,” he said. “Got it. I’m a big fish, otherwise known as Prince Poisson. But maybe you ought to know that I’ve been leading a double life—or would it be triple? Anyway, my other alias is James. James Fielding.”
    She shrugged. “That’s all right. So do I.”
    “So do you, what?”
    “Lead a lot of different lives. A lot more than three.” She sat down on a rock and tucked up her bare feet. The long braid hung over one shoulder and down into her lap. The silver dress clung close to her thin, limber body, making her look a bit like a fish herself, or perhaps like a rather undeveloped mermaid. She stared at James thoughtfully for a moment before she said, “You want to know something funny? I knew it. The minute I saw you, I knew.”
    “That I’d go along with the gag?” James said.
    “No,” she said indignantly, but then she smiled. “Well, maybe that too. But what I meant was that you probably really are one. Or at least you were one once. Otherwise you wouldn’t have understood.”
    “I was what once?”
    “Like in another reincarnation. You probably were a prince in another reincarnation.”
    “Why not?” James said. Maybe that explained the Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great hang-ups. “How about you? Were you ever a princess?”
    “Me?” she said. “No, I don’t think so. I think I’ve usually been animals.”
    “Griffin!” The kids were calling from further up the canyon.
    She sighed. “Little kids. Sometimes I get very tired of little kids.”
    “How old are they?”
    “Well, Woody is seven. He’s my brother. And Laurel is just a few months older.”
    “And how about you? How old are you?”
    “In this reincarnation?”
    “Well, yes,” James said. “Let’s start with this one, anyway.”
    “All right. In this reincarnation I’m thirteen. But I’m actually a very old soul.”
    “I wouldn’t be at all surprised,” James said.
    “Grif! Come on. We’re hungry.” Woody and Laurel had come back around the curve of the canyon wall,
    Griffin uncoiled herself and stood up. “I guess I’d better go.” She started towards the little kids and then, turning back to James, she curtsied again. “Good-by,” she said. “See you.”
    Further up the canyon Laurel and Woody