He said, “A new form takes some getting used to. You’ll be better with practice.”

“Spit on that,” she said. “I don’t ever want to feel like that again. How do I turn back to normal?”

“Ah,” Bitterlich said. There was the rub; she had thought of this as a lark, as a game. It hadn’t yet occurred to her that any of this was permanent.

“There is no way back to looking like you did before,” he said, the plain truth. “You are a Seelenjäger sorcerer like me, and this amazing form is your erstepelz, the blazon of your power.”

“You’re joking,” Rebecca said, horrified. “I’m no cursed beast-man. Take it back.”

“I can’t,” Bitterlich said. Her insult stung even if she flung it in fear. “This is you, now.”

Rebecca looked down at herself again, this time in horror. “You mean I’m stuck like this?” She grabbed at her horn buds and pulled as if trying to rip them off.

“Rebecca,” Bitterlich said as soothingly as he could. “Listen to me. You’re fine the way you are.”

“No! I am not fine. Get it off me!” Rebecca yelled. She yanked at her hair so hard a handful tore loose.

Bitterlich grabbed her by the wrists to keep her from hurting herself. “It’s not on you. It’s in you. It’s part of your soul.”

Rebecca screamed like a loosed Torment and shifted back into her wyrm form, slipping from Bitterlich’s grasp. Then she yanked into her erstepelz, then to wyrm form, sawing back and forth, faster and faster until she looked like a plume of black foam with bits of girl and wyrm thrown in.

She slammed into her erstepelz, and bits of her skin were her old pale freckled flesh.

“No!” Bitterlich yelled. She was pulling at the root of her Seelengewölbe, trying to rip out the beast. She slammed back into her wyrm form and once more into her girl form, now with red hair and green eyes.

“Stop it!” he snapped. Heart hammering, he wrapped his arms around her when she appeared. “Stay, please.” If she transformed again, her spines would shred him.

“Can’t make me,” Rebecca said, but she did not transform again, and her erstepelz reasserted itself. In a few days’ time it would quicken beyond being separated.

“I am not a freak,” she wailed.

“No, you’re a sorcerer,” Bitterlich said. “But if you rip the wyrm out, you will die. Do you understand me?” His blood hammered in his veins so loudly he could hardly hear himself.

“I don’t care,” Rebecca said, probably because she was twelve and not caring about things meant not having to confront them.

“So you’re not interested in being an aeronaut anymore?” Bitterlich asked, trying to deflect her attention.

“No,” Rebecca said, hunching away from him.