Chapter 14
The day after Grey and Harper left for the palace, Tina woke to the sounds of labor leaders yelling to one another. She groaned and rubbed her eyes, sure that the adults had some big, new project. It was in the moment when she was about to fall back asleep when she heard someone yelling her name.
“Tina Traxon! I’m looking for the wolf shifter, Tina Traxon! Come on out, little shifter.” She lifted herself up on her hands and peeked out the door to see a large, overweight man with a clipboard and yellow plastic hat walking towards her house as her neighbors pointed him in her direction.
Suddenly wide awake, Tina jumped out of bed and threw her meager clothing on. There hadn’t been a work directive since she was little, but she remembered it very clearly.
The humans had marched into their house and read her parents’ names aloud from a list. They were handed tools and pointed in the direction of a building that needed fixing. They weren’t given any time to find someone to take care of Tina, so she had gone with them. The humans laughed at the sight of her standing in line with the other workers and gave her a tiny hammer so she could bang on the wall, but the situation had actually been very dangerous. Her mother had kept a constant eye on her to steer her away from broken glass and rusted nails. Tina hadn’t known enough to be frightened at the time, but her mother had been so terrified that she eventually got yelled at for not working hard enough.
Now they were back with more lists and more names. Tina pulled a pair of too-big men’s boots – the only pair she had – over her bare feet. The man stood in her doorway just as she got her hair back into a ponytail.
“Tina Traxon?”
“Yes, sir. What are we working on today?”
“The fence.”
He led her to the edge of the compound. On her way, she passed several adults who glared at the human that walked through. A little boy ran up, kicked him in the shin, and then quickly ran off.
“Oh! You’ll pay for that. Dirty little shifter.” The human glanced around to see if anyone was harboring the small fugitive, but saw nothing but silent adults. He shook his head and continued on. “That’s the problem with all of you shifters,” he muttered to Tina, though he didn’t look at her. “You all think violence is the only way. You can’t just talk to someone and say what’s on your mind.” He stopped and looked at her with a sneer, then looked her up and down the way so many boys were doing now that her clothes barely covered her. “See, like right now. You want me to tell you how hot you look, but you can’t just ask, ‘Hey, how do I look?’ No, you have to wear these sexy clothes and trick me into saying it.”
“What?”
“Oh, don’t play dumb.”
“My clothes look like this because of the tax. I don’t want to–”
“Shut up and come with me.” He sighed and shook his head with all the frustration and exhaustion of a tired parent. She walked a bit faster to stay slightly behind him. She didn’t want to be next to him after the comment about her clothing. She had no idea that was how humans saw young female shifters.
They made it to the perimeter, and she saw a crowd of young shifters digging small holes in a line. Off to the side, two smaller groups were pulling down the old fence and rolling it up. Big trucks with writing and symbols on them sat just beyond the boundary with sleepy drivers inside.
“Let’s see,” the man in charge said to himself as he consulted his papers. “Tina, today you are assigned to the installment team,” he pointed to a group of shifters standing just a few feet away in the shade. “Your group jumps in after we’ve got the old fence out and the holes ready for the new one. Be careful, and don’t get electrocuted. Or go ahead and fry your brains out. I don’t really care.”
His job done, he walked over to the other side of the boundary to point and laugh at the young shifters as they struggled with the massive role of fence, the tools meant for digging straight down that they’d never managed before and that twisted in their hands. Tina watched all of this with a horrible sense of dread in her stomach.
She looked at her group and saw the young boars there. “What’s this all about?” she asked.
“Well, good morning to you, too, wolf.” The brother boar scoffed at her and pawed the ground with his foot. “Jeez. Why is everyone in this compound so frikkin’ rude?”
Tina raised her hands in mock surrender. “Good morning, friend. Good to see you. Tell me, what exactly is happening today? I am uncertain as to why we have been called to work this fine day.”
The boar rolled his eyes and crossed his arms before he could bring himself to answer. “Well, wolf, we’re getting a new fence to make sure none of us ever leave. This new one is able to shock and kill us if anyone tries to climb over it or dig under it. And it’s twice as tall, so the humans need our help. Obviously.”
He turned away from her and left her to contemplate the massive fence as it was driven in. The boar nudged her with his shoulder and pointed forward in a non-verbal, “Let’s go.” She sighed deeply to herself before moving forward. Not only did she have to pen herself in, she had to be nice about it.
Most of the workers were given gloves, but a few weren’t. Tina was one of the shifters without gloves, so she and a few others helped to put in the base of the fence poles as quickly as they could so the fence team could drop the posts into their holes and get their hands off the humming metal as fast as they could.
“Hey!” The boar brother had been zapped on his leg as he worked and spun around to face the humans. “Turn the dang thing off so we can get it up. We can’t do your job and die at the same time, you stupid idiots!”
The man with the paperwork walked up to the boar so that they were nose to nose on opposite sides of the fence. Both glared at one another for a long moment.
“You think you can talk to me that way?”
“Well, if all you’re going to do is threaten my life, I see no reason to be polite.”
“Huh,” the human man said to him. “That’s interesting. That’s very interesting.” He signaled to his friends off to the side and they flipped a switch to turn off the fence. The electricity switched off and everyone felt the hairs on their arms lay back down on their skin. All of the young shifters stopped and stepped back as they watched the human and the boar.
The boar glared at the human and waited for him to make the next move, but the man didn’t do anything. Finally, the boar snorted and turned to go, but found he was unable to leave.
“What’s going on? He looked down and saw that the man had pulled the tail of his shirt through the holes in the fence and tied them. He started to untie it and the human grabbed his hands.
“Hey, Helen! This kid tells me he’s feeling dehydrated. Could you douse him with some water?”
“Sure thing.” A small woman climbed down from a truck with a canteen and a big smile on her face. The man stepped aside so that his friend could douse the boar in water, but he never let go of his victim. A little water got on his gloves, and he held up a hand to make sure no electricity flowed into the metal.
“Hey, man, I’m sorry. I was a jerk. I take it all back.” The boar was now dripping water. His shirt was completely wet and still knotted up in the fence. He kept trying to untie it, and the man kept grabbing his hands and pulling on the boar’s gloves to get them off, and the boar would pull his hands back. Tina walked forward.
“Please, let him go. Just send him home. The rest of us will finish the fence.”
“Shut up, you whore shifter!” Tina was shocked by the insult, but she steeled herself and tried again.
“You don’t have to kill him. He made a mistake. He apologized.”
The man glared at Tina as he held the boar. “I do what I want when I’m over here on this god-forsaken compound. You got that?”
She set her jaw and didn’t respond. Instead, she grabbed the boar and pulled him back hard. The man angrily gestured to his friend with the switch, and with a loud hum the current was turned back on.
To Tina’s complete horror, the current shot through the boar’s body and into her hands, clamping them onto his shoulders. In her hands, he shook and convulsed as the electricity traveled through his wet clothes and into his body. Smoke came from his head, and his voice boiled out of him as he was cooked from the inside out. Tina desperately tried to pull him back – to let go, to do anything – but the shock traveled to her as well, and she was at the mercy of the horrible, uncontrollable force.
Tina felt her heart stop, and for a moment everything went black. The next thing she knew, she was on the ground as a group of shifters hovered over her. When her eyes opened, they all started shouting.
“She’s awake! Tina’s alive!”
“Oh, thank goodness. Oh, Tina. We were so scared.”
“Yes! We saved her!”
She put a hand to her pounding heart in her chest. “What happened?”
The boar’s sister, who was right at Tina’s head where Tina couldn’t see her, filled in the blank. “That man killed my brother.” She pointed straight ahead at the human man who was eating a sandwich just on the other side of the fence. Between the group and the culprit was the dead, smoking body of the boy boar.
Slowly, Tina rose to stand. Her nerves were a bit jumpy, and her legs and arms made odd motions as she attempted to walk, but she continued. She approached the body and looked down.
There at her feet was a shell of a creature. It had arms and legs, but they were crumbling as if they were made of paper. The sockets where the eyes had been were now just burnt holes staring up at the sky. The mouth was open in shock and silently screamed up at Tina as she gazed down.
The others joined her, the victim’s sister included.
“What was his name?” Tina asked her.
“Frank. He was my twin brother. Born two minutes ahead of me.”
“And what’s your name?”
The girl looked at her with a stern, serious expression. “Maya.”
“Maya,” Tina said to her new ally, “I’m so sorry. I tried to save him.”
“Don’t.” Maya turned to look at the culprits again as they raised their thermoses in a cheer to the fence. “Don’t apologize for what those cretins did. They killed him, not you.” Tina looked over towards the humans with Maya and noticed they were still moving the switch back and forth, back and forth. Were they hoping to kill someone else?
“Tina,” one male flier asked, “what are we going to do?”
“You tell me,” she said, turning to the kid. “You’re the one with wings.”
He smiled at her and quickly shifted. The humans immediately sat up and paid attention.
“You can’t do that! Shifter! Back in your human form, now.” Despite the boss’ yells, the flier, now a blue jay, stayed in his animal shape. He flapped his wings to up above the fence and then dove across the space, flying right through the open windows of the truck.
As the humans swatted at the bird and attempted to catch it, other fliers joined it. Eagles, herons, love birds, swallows – they swarmed the workers. Some nearby adults saw the melee and quickly joined, doing everything they could to attack the humans in animal form.
Tina motioned to her fellow wolves and got them over to a small opening where the new fence hadn’t be set properly. They each shifted and slipped through the slim hole, each taking a position near the human crew until they formed a perfect circle. Tina gave a nod, and the wolves slowly began to move in.
As a wolf, Tina felt her rage and adrenaline pump like never before. She lowered her head and let out a long, soft growl. Her ears laid back against her head, and her tail lowered to let her enemies know she was aiming straight for their necks.
“Wolves! We gotta get outta here!” The humans scattered but weren’t able to run in a straight line with the birds all over them. The boss of the group started to get away but hadn’t counted on a shoelace one bird had picked apart. His other shoe found it and pulled, sending him sprawling out on the ground. There, in the dirt, he came face to face with the same snake that had taught Tina and her peers all about amphibians.
The rattle on the snake’s tail shook, and the human’s face fell. “No, please.” She struck and let the venom pour from her fangs and into the bridge of his nose. She held on as he thrashed through the poison and let herself be tossed around by his death throes. By the time he stopped, her back was broken and the two died together.
Tina moved closer to the small woman who had doused the young boar. She saw her approach as she took cover under a small tree. “Back off, you dirty shifter.” Tina didn’t listen, she just kept advancing. “You kill me and you go to jail for the rest of your life. They won’t even bother putting you to death. They’ll just let you rot in the president’s jail.” Still, Tina moved closer. The human pushed back against the ground until she was pressed tightly up against the tree bark. She turned her face and closed her eyes.
“Oh, just get it over with.”
With a loud bark, Tina leapt through the air, jaws open.