When I asked her about it, she said, “Don’t be so silly, Sully. I’m not a deer. I can’t shift like that anymore. I haven’t been able to shift to anything but a wolf since my Herbert died. You know that.”

I categorically did not know that. She’d never mentioned it once. In fact, that was the first time she’d ever directly said that she could shift into anything other than a wolf.

“What was it like being a deer?”

“Exactly like you’d imagine.”

“What did you like shifting into best?” I knew I had to ask my questions fast, before she clammed up.

“The best thing to be is what we are, wolves…but if not a wolf, then a bird. Big birds are easier, but little birds are the best.”

“What’s nice about being a bird?”

“Wouldn’t you like to fly, Sully boy?”

“You could fly? Like, really fly in the sky? Can shifters of yore really do that?”

“Only the good ones,” she said with an evil cackle. “Why do you think there are so few of us left?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, what do you think happens if you lose your shift in the sky? Hmm?”

I’d never given it a moment’s thought. “I guess you fall.”

“That’s right. You fall. You fall hard. Lost most of my family that way.”

I was aghast. I had no idea. She’d never mentioned her family to me. Based on the information she’d given me over the years, I’d been led to believe her life started the day she met Herbert. “W-why did you keep doing it, if it was so dangerous?”

“To see if I could. To feel like a bird. To feel as free as a little bird in the wide-open sky.”

“How do you do it? How do you make yourself shift?”

“Aha,” she said, smiling and pointing at me. “I know your tricks. You’re getting better at them, too. I’ve said too much but I couldn’t help it.” She was quiet for a while. We both were. She looked at me and smiled. “You’ve got your momma’s eyes. You know that, Sully?”

And like that, I doubted everything she’d just said. My mother’s eyes were dark brown, almost black. My father’s eyes were such a pale blue that from certain angles they looked see-through. Mine were even lighter than his. I might have had my mother’s olive skin, but I got my eyes from my father. My eyes couldn’t have been less like my mother’s if that was their sole goal in life.

A storm blew into town not two days after my conversation with Mrs. O’Malley. Only it wasn’t a storm storm. It was a girl named Storm.