“Yes, though it will probably take several weeks. The first thing to practice, if you want to be good at it, is switching back and forth between your wyrm form and your erstepelz. Once you can do that as easily as putting on a hat, then we can talk about voice lessons.”

Rebecca puffed out her cheeks and stood up. “So all I have to do is pull the thread.”

“Before you start,” Bitterlich said, holding up a paw, “the thing to practice is making sure you don’t tangle your erstepelz as you unravel it. You should be able to loop it like holding a coil of rope. Also, if you do get tangled, which happens to everybody at some point, you’ll get stuck halfway between one form and another. It will be the scariest thing that’s ever happened to you, but don’t panic. You can always tease out the knot and try again.”

“Chop my own hands off and be done with it,” Rebecca muttered.

“Pull and coil,” Bitterlich said. Rebecca seemed less inclined to dispute his instructions when he was a cat rather than an adult, a fact that he tucked away for later.

With the set face and the squinted eyes of theatrical concentration, Rebecca tugged on her soul skin. Her body elongated, becoming snakelike, with rows of spikes down her flanks. There was a moment of fish-flopping panic as her arms and legs blended into her body. Then, between one heartbeat and the next, she’d grown into a huge floating blue-and-green serpent with mother-of-pearl horns and four eyes of aquamarine. She twisted her head this way and that to get a good look at herself and pulled her serpentine body into a gliding helix.

“And there you are,” Bitterlich said, letting go his held breath. “Flying.” In general only things with wings could fly above the land, but the ghostfire wyrm was a weirdling and played by its own rules.

Bitterlich donned his raven guise, hopped into the air, and squawked, “Follow me!”

Startled, Rebecca twitched through the air. She flew awkwardly at first, but soon took up an undulating rhythm, slithering along the wind. Up over the rooftops of the warehouses and spiraling around the lighthouse they went, up higher than the masts of the ship at anchorage.

Only when they reached the top of the lighthouse and looked down did Rebecca have a hiccup of fear, scrunching up into a ball at the sudden vertiginous sensation of height.

“This way!” Bitterlich cawed. He swooped to the walkway around the lighthouse’s main reflector and landed in his erstepelz.

Rebecca followed closely, her long body hugging up against the walkway’s inner wall.

“Now come back to yourself,” Bitterlich said. “Reel in your erstepelz and coil the wyrm.”

With a sound like rope whizzing around a turnbuckle, Rebecca returned to herself, shaking out her hands and wagging her tongue. “Pox and blisters. I was flying!”