But what he had said aroused more feelings Morgan had abandoned as a wolf: worry, consternation, and fear. Not the sensible respect for nature’s fickleness or the hunter’s gun, but a dread far more nebulous.
“He won’t die. He came here for a reason, I know it. To help us, as we help him… We’ve needed a miracle. … He is the good luck we have waited for…”
Premonitions of a fate worse than mere death seized Morgan with renewed urgency. He braced himself on his arms and pushed up again, relieved to find that his body functioned in spite of the pain. He could escape. It was not too late.
There was only one way to learn if he was healed enough. He closed his eyes and willed the Change.
Deep inside his body, the core of his being began to shift. He felt it, not as pain, but a natural transition. It was as if each atom became fluid and reshaped itself like clay in the hands of a master potter.
But the Change did not complete. It met the barrier of his injury and paused, forcing his body to make a decision based upon a single law: survival.
Survival meant preserving strength instead of draining it for the Change. Morgan opened his eyes and found himself unrecognizable, neither wolf nor human. A monster.
Instinct made the decision for him. He returned to human shape. Dizziness and nausea held him immobile for a few seconds, but he pressed beyond his body’s exhaustion and clambered to his feet. Sheer determination propelled him toward the sliver of dimming light that marked the tent’s entrance.
Sunset lent the camp a certain softness that almost disguised the atmosphere of shabbiness and adversity. Tents and colorfully painted wagons, marked with hard use and frequent repair, lay scattered at the edge of a wide valley filled with sagebrush and saltbush. A herd of sway-backed horses clumped together in a makeshift corral.
Everywhere there was a certain frantic activity, as if the members of Harry French’s Family Circus did not dare to stop moving. People hurried to and fro, wrapped in much-mended coats and blankets. A man juggled several bright red balls without seeming to touch them. An impossibly slender woman balanced on a wire almost too fine to be visible to normal eyes. Dogs ran about yapping and jumping through hoops.
The one quiet place was centered at a fire beside an open tent furnished with rows of rickety wooden tables and benches. There a fat man cooked a dismally small section of meat on a spit, attended by a mob of barefoot children who watched with the grim concentration of hunger.
Morgan knew poverty when he saw it. He had suffered hunger many times in his life, and had traveled with no more possessions than the clothing on his back. His great advantage had been the wolf, which had allowed him to hunt and to survive under conditions that would have killed an ordinary man.
These folk were not so fortunate. It did not take much imagination to see that they had suffered the “bad luck” Harry French had mentioned, though Morgan knew little of circuses and what made them prosper or fail.
He did understand that no man helped another without expecting something in return. Harry French’s “children” hoped for something from him, something he could not give them. He might outrun guilt, as he’d outrun so much else. If he left, now, without facing those who had saved him…
“You’re not going so soon?”
He looked down at the familiar voice and met a pair of blue eyes in a pixie’s face, topped by a blaze of wildly curling red hair. Here was the second of his rescuers—his captors—the one who had claimed some undisclosed purpose for him. She seemed hardly more than a child, flat-chested and narrow-hipped. The tights, knee-length skirt, and snug bodice she wore only emphasized her boyish shape.
She was the first woman he had seen in a decade, and he felt nothing. Neither his heart nor his body stirred. He realized with a shock that this girl reminded him of his sister Cassidy, so dimly remembered. Only Cassidy’s hair had been black, like his.