Animorphs #55: The Prologue

Chapter 17

We ended up at Cassie's barn. It was once the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center. Cassie and her father took in injured animals from all around and healed them. It was one of the places where we got a lot of our morphs. It was also where we held most of our meetings. I was counting on the animals still being there.

Sure enough, I was bombarded by the cries of various animals as soon as I flew in through the hayloft. Birds in cages cried out. Rodents of all shapes and sizes cowered in terror. A lone wolf howled. A pair of horses whinnied loudly.

We were lucky. Cassie's dad wasn't there. I didn't want to go through the same conversation with him that I had had with his wife.

We all demorphed. "Pick a bird and let's go," I said.

"Pick a bird?" Santorelli asked. "I guess I'll go with chicken. Deep fried. Extra crispy."

"To morph," I clarified. "Hawks and eagles were our usual transit morphs. They can fly far and see everything. Not too bad in a fight either."

I saw Santorelli eyeing up a bald eagle. "E pluribus Unum," he whispered.

"Please, any bird but that," I said.

"Why?" he asked.

I just shook my head. I guess he could tell by my expression that I was serious. The truth was, Rachel had a bald eagle morph. I just couldn't take the thought of someone else having her morphs.

Santorelli stuck his hand into the cage of a Cooper's hawk. Cooper's are scary birds. They don't usually eat mice and squirrels like I…like other birds do. They eat smaller birds. They capture their prey and squeeze the life out of it with their talons. Sometimes, they even drown it.

Shoving your hand into a birdcage is a bad idea. Especially when the bird inside is a Cooper. The hawk took a chunk out of his finger. Santorelli didn't even flinch. The hawk went limp as he acquired it.

I turned to Jeanne. "Did you acquire something already?" I asked.

"Well," she looked at the ground and clasped her hands behind her back, faking innocence. "Back when we were first given the morphing power, I may have acquired a hawk."

"Yeah?" I said. "Why?"

"I remember Commander Jake's face when he spoke about flying. He made it seem like the best thing in the world. I had to try it."

"I won't tell Jake. Just get morphed." I sat down on a bale of hay and closed my eyes. I had morphed more that day than I had in years. Morphing is exhausting, both mentally and physically. I needed a moment to rest. I wasn't sure how many more morphs I had in me.

When I opened my eyes five minutes later, I was looking at a Cooper's hawk and…and at a red-tailed hawk. "Jeanne," I asked, "why a red-tail?"

((It is the most popular bird in the galaxy. Everybody loves red-tails,)) she said. ((They are like Prada.))

I sighed and then morphed my own red-tailed hawk. It was the body that I had lived in for more than six years. It was almost like I couldn't remember a time when I wasn't a hawk. Sometimes, I used to feel like I had always been a hawk. This morph didn't feel like getting a new body. It felt like going home.

The first thing to change was my eyes. Everything came into focus suddenly. I could pick out individual pieces of hay on the barn floor. I could see the grain of the wood in the barn's walls. I could see a fly on the opposite side of the barn.

Next came my ears. I heard everything in startling detail. Every sound in the barn. The breathing of the animals and the scratching of a squirrel on the roof. Nothing escaped my senses.

For one glorious moment, I was a human being with the senses of a hawk. So this is how superman felt, I thought. Then, I shrank.

Shrinking is sort of like falling. Except, instead of you getting closer to the ground, the ground gets closer to you, like it's rushing up to hit you. I went form being about six feet tall to two in about three seconds.

The feathers came next. They started like an intricate tattoo all over my body. Then, they exploded into three dimensions. Brown, white and red. My tail came with them.

My feet, my weak human feet, became the steely talons of the hawk. These talons had taken more lives than I could count. They were featherless so blood didn't stick to them.

Finally, finally, came my wings. My glorious wings! It felt like I had been born again. Like I had been a cripple suddenly allowed to walk. I spread my wings, flapped them a few times just to make sure they were still there, and then folded them.

I waited stupidly for a moment for the hawk mind to surface beneath my own. I felt noting. No instincts, no urges, nothing at all. Then I realized. I had never lost these when I became human again. The hawk would always be a part of me.

I took off without any more delay. I had been tired when I started morphing. Now, back in my right body, I mean back in my hawk morph, I was alive again.

I got out of the hayloft and felt warm air billow up beneath my outstretched wings. It was a great thermal. A thermal is a pillar of warm air. You can just wait in one with your wings spread and ride up forever.

I floated there for I don't know how long. It felt so natural, so right. I had come back to Earth hours ago. I had just now come home. I was hungry, suddenly. I hadn't eaten since we had gotten here. And I could see a tasty mouse not too far below me. It was mine. So easy to swoop down, open my wings, sweep low across the ground, seize the little rodent in my talons, and dig my beak in. So easy to

((Tobias? Can you hear me?)) Santorelli asked. That brought me back we had a job to do. The fate of the world was in my talons.

((I can hear you. It's just…give me a minute,)) I said I got my bearings. I knew every detail of the land for the next hundred miles. This was my sky. My home.

I smiled in my head. I knew this place. I knew the way to get to Cassie. I flew out of the thermal and soared towards the mountains. Soon, I would find her and the Yeerks would be stopped cold.

Can you believe I was ever that stupid?