Kestrel shivered, despite the thick coat of fur she wore, encased as she was in the body of an arctic fox; beside her were a white wolf and a snowy owl. She had barely time to take in what form she now had, when what she had thought was a snowdrift heaved upward on two hind legs, roaring, and came at them with monstrous paws spread wide to crush them all.

But they were not there when the polar bear’s foreclaws hit the snow. Kestrel had gone to the right, the white wolf to the left, and the owl straight up. This time they attacked the bear; the fox nipping at its hind end, the wolf tearing at its flanks, and the owl battering its face and eyes with its wings.

The bear roared with frustration, and knocked the owl out of the air. Instantly, both Kestrel and Mooncrow leapt in, each snatching a wing, and pulling it away from the bear’s claws.

This is nothing but stalemate, she thought to herself, as she panted, her sides heaving, her lungs aching. He can wear us down like this—we have to find some way to bottle him up!

“Put me down and follow!” commanded Moh-shon-ah-ke-ta, and she obeyed unthinkingly, opening her jaws, then followed as the owl plunged forward into—

The cool, green depths of the forest.

A very, very large forest—

No, she was simply very small.

She scampered instinctively into the shelter of a leaf-filled cranny beneath the trunk of a fallen forest giant. She was a deermouse; beside her was a chipmunk, and beside him, a vole. She peered out at the forest outside; it was as silent as the city had been noisy, with one lone bird calling off in the distance, and not even a faint breeze rustling the trees. Sunlight lanced down through the branches, making shafts of gold among the green.

“Kestrel, will you trust me?” asked her ancestor, twitching his whiskers with agitation. Nearby, a black wolverine snuffled through the dead leaves, and she knew that this was the Evil One, looking for them. But for the moment, they were safely hidden in the hollow beneath the fallen tree.

“Yes,” she answered simply.

“Then when you find yourself as a swallow, fly into the first cave that you see.”

Fly into a cave? But even though swallows were clever flyers, and often nested in caves, how would that help?

She never got a chance to ask that question, for at that moment the black wolverine caught their scent, and began to dig at the entrance to their shelter.

“Follow!” cried Mooncrow.

And once again she darted through the air, this time above a landscape she recognized. It was the area around Carlsbad, New Mexico, and she was, indeed, in the shape of a swallow.

Unfortunately, she was entirely alone.

And behind her was a Cooper’s hawk, talons outstretched to snatch her out of the sky.