It seemed a hopeless question, but Collins asked anyway. "Do you speak any English?"They did not reply.

"Eng-lish," Collins repeated.

The guards exchanged glances. The male ran a hand through the brown-and-white stubble of his hair and shrugged. He said something in their strange language.

The woman replied, equally incomprehensibly.

"Hurt." Collins. .h.i.t his left arm with his right hand. He shook his head vigorously. "No hurt." He peeled his right hand away, dropped it to his side, and patted it with his left.

The two watched his every movement.

Collins continued, "Friends." He hugged himself fondly. "Friends?"

"Frinz?" the woman repeated in a questioning tone.

The man put things together more quickly. A frown scored his features, and his crow's-feet sprang to vivid relief around his eyes. "No friends."

Encouraged by their clear attention, Collins explained again. He slapped his left arm again, then looked surprised. "Hurt." He shook his head. "No HURT." He plucked loose his right hand and patted it again, followed by a self-hug. "Friends. Yes." He bobbed his head eagerly.

The man glared. "No friends." He jabbed a finger at Collins. "No no no friends." He turned his back.

"Yes, aguryo."

Clearly, the guard had understood his pantomime. And rejected it. Heaving a deep sigh, Collins slunk to the back of his cell, dropped to the floor, and buried his head. "Friends," he whispered. "Friends . . .

yes."

Hopeless terror kept Benton Collins awake far into the night. Despair gave way to rocky acceptance, then to desperate worry. He paced the confines of his cell like a zoo tiger, afraid to try to sleep. When he went still, thoughts crowded him, horrible considerations of what his future held. Suddenly, all the things he had cursed earlier that day seemed insignificant. So his parents had chosen their lovers over their son.

He was grown now, and they had a right to lives of their own. It only made sense for the other lab a.s.sistants and professors to go home over Thanksgiving, since he had nowhere to go. His student loans- only money. None of it mattered one iota if he never found his way back to Algary.

In the wee morning hours, the female guard reappeared. She stood quietly in front of Collins' cell, studying him. The lantern light kindled glimmers in her pale eyes, but she otherwise blended into the dark obscurity of the prison.

Collins stopped his pacing to look at her. With little hope, he tried one more time, touching a hand to his chest. "Ben. That's me. Ben Collins."

"Falima," she replied.

"Falima," Collins repeated. "Pretty. Is that your name?"

"Yes. My name is Falima."

He had not expected a reply; so, when he got one, it stunned him to wide-eyed silence.

"Why?" Falima added.

Collins found his tongue. "You-you do speak English," he said, holding accusation from his voice.

"English," she repeated, rolling the word in her mouth as if to taste it. "Is that what I am speaking?"

"Yes." Collins approached the bars but did not touch them. "And quite well, I might add."

"You might add?"

Knowing idioms, slang, and expressions often confused newcomers to a language, Collins amended.

"Well, I did add, I guess. Do all your people speak English?"

"No." Falima considered her own answer briefly, apparently recognizing the word from their previous encounter. Her eyes narrowed, and she studied him further. "No friends." She spoke the last two words with a heavy accent that had not tainted her previous conversation.

Collins' heart rate quickened. He had finally found someone with whom he could communicate, and he seemed to be failing miserable. "Why 'no friends?' " he asked with genuine concern.

Falima p.r.o.nounced each word with slow and bitter force. "You . . . are . . . evil."

"Me?" The question was startled from Collins. "Evil?""Yes."

"Why would you say such a thing?"

"Murderer," she hissed. "Cannibal."

Collins blinked ponderously, certain Falima had chosen the wrong word. "Cannibal? What are you talking about?" A moment later, he wished he had reacted as strongly to the claim of murder. To his knowledge, he did not have a violent bone in his body.

Apparently misunderstanding, Falima defined the word. "One who eats its own kind. Cannibal. You."

"I've never eaten a person in my life." Seeing the opportunity, he added. "And I've never killed anyone, either."

Using her thumb and middle finger, Falima pulled back her locks, black as ink, thick, and shiningly soft. They fell instantly back to the sides of her head. "You killed Joetha, Ben Collins." The blue eyes filled with ice. "Then you ate her. We found the remains in your possession, some in your very hands."

"What?" The suggestion seemed nonsense. "I didn't have-" Realization struck with the force of a speeding truck. "Are you talking about the rabbit?"

"Joetha," Falima corrected.

Stunned, Collins stuttered. "I couldn't-I mean I didn't- know . . ." He trailed off. It seemed impossible that he had discovered a society so tolerant of differences that its citizens considered animals on a par with humans. Why not? There are people in our world who do. He recalled incidents of loonies breaking into laboratories, murdering humans to "rescue" laboratory animals that swiftly perished in the wild. "I-I didn't know. You have to believe me."

"I have to?"

"Because it's true. In my world, animals are considered . . ." Collins chose his words with care. "... our charges, not. . . our equals."

The blue eyes narrowed, as if Falima found his explanation impossible to fathom. "What is your switch-form?"

The compound word made no sense to Collins. "My what?"

"Your switch-form. Your switch-form?"

The repet.i.tion did not help. "I don't understand."

Falima spoke louder and with awkward sluggishness. "YOUR . . . SWITCH . . . -FORM."

Baffled, Collins regarded Falima blankly, then came back with the same volume and tone, "I ...

HAVE ... NO ... CLUE . . . WHAT . . . YOU'RE . . . TALKING . . . ABOUT.".

Falima tilted her head. Her lips pursed, and she squinted. Clearly, she thought him a moron. "What are you when you are not a man?"

"Not a man?" Collins shook his head. ". . . well, I used to be a boy." He could not help adding, "My girlfriend thinks I still am."

Falima rolled her eyes. "So, you are hiding it. A carnivore of some sort, no doubt. Or a bear, maybe.

They are always the ones that fall off their oaths."

Collins threw up his hands in surrender. "I honestly have no idea what you're getting at." He put the scattered details together. "Are you saying that sometimes you're something other than a woman?"

Falima's hands clamped to her hips. "You rode me here." "I did?" Collins' eyes widened at the realization. "You're . . . you're ... a horse?" The words sounded twice as ridiculous coming from his own mouth. One of us is entirely crazy. He studied Falima more fully, now noticing the minutiae that seemed too clear for coincidence: the large blue eyes, glossy black hair, and golden skin tone. As impossible as it seemed, he believed. Once Collins' mind made that leap, worse had to follow. "Oh, my G.o.d!"

"Yes, my switch-form is a horse. What's wrong with that?" "That rabbit was . . . was-"

"A sweet old woman." Falima's eyes narrowed again. "And you ate her."

Collins' stomach churned. Bile climbed up his throat. "Oh, my G.o.d. My G.o.d!" Though nauseated, he felt certain he could not vomit and desperately wished he could. "Holy s.h.i.t. My G.o.d. My G.o.d!" Nothing more coherent seemed possible. "I-" His voice emerged hoa.r.s.er than he expected. "I ... didn't know.

Where I come from, people are just people. Animals are . . . animals. All the time. Always."

Rage rekindled in Falima's pale eyes, and she regarded Collins like some loathsome insect. "InBarakhai, you are a murderer and a cannibal. And you will be hanged midmorning."

Stunned dumb, Collins could only stare as Falima turned her back on him and strode swiftly beyond sight.

Chapter 3.

BENTON Collins sprawled on the floor of his cell, the stone warming to his body. His eyes lay open; he felt incapable of closing them. The irregular, plank ceiling became indelibly etched on his vision: the watermark in the shape of a bottle, the knothole like an ever-staring eye, the spidery crack that emitted a steady patter of water droplets. You will be hanged midmorning. The words cycled through his mind, always in Falima's voice, a death knell he had no way to escape. "I didn't know," he said to no one.

"How could I possibly know?"

Collins sc.r.a.ped his fingers along the damp stone in mindless circles, his back aching and his wrists throbbing with every heartbeat. This can't be happening. People changing into animals? It can't be real. He forced his eyes shut, hoping that, when he opened them, he would awaken from this nightmare.

The darkness behind his lids was filled with shadows.

Beyond his control, Collins' eyes glided open to confront the same water spot, the knothole, and the crack. The water plopped steadily against stone.

Collins awakened with no realization of having slept. Only the diffuse glow illuminating the prison revealed that morning had come. Distant voices wafted to him, unintelligible and intermingled with the occasional clink of metal. He sprang to his feet, the movement inciting a sharp pain through his back and right shoulder. The hard floor had stiffened him during the night.

Four men entered Collins' field of vision. They all wore the familiar rust and gold, swords, and batons.

They also carried a rope.

Terror seized every part of Collins. He flattened against the back wall of his cell.

The men spoke to one another in their odd language, then gestured Collins forward.

Collins did not move. "There's been ... a mistake," he wheezed through a throat gone painfully dry. "I didn't know. I . . . didn't . . . know." Enough time had pa.s.sed that the rabbit no longer filled his belly, a constant reminder of a heinous crime. Yet he found it impossible to eat.

The guards exchanged more words. Then, one stepped forward and unlocked the cage. Two of the men entered, one carrying the rope. The door clanged shut behind them.

Collins measured the two with his gaze. Both stood shorter than his five-foot-eleven frame, and only one outweighed his 155 pounds. However, both moved with a wary dexterity that threatened experience and strength. It seemed as foolish to fight as to go willingly. The first would gain him bruises in addition to his sentence, but the latter would mean he had done nothing to avert his fate. Either way, he had nothing to lose but more pain. He was going to die. I'm going to die. Despite the time he had invested in it, the thought seemed beyond comprehension.

The man without the rope, the heavier one, drew a loop in the air with his finger, an obvious gesture to turn.

Collins only blinked, pretending not to understand. It seemed safer than insolence.

The men conversed a moment, then nodded. They lunged for Collins simultaneously. He leaped backward, crashing against the wall with enough force to send pain lurching through his spine and breath huffing from his lungs. A moment later, they had him p.r.o.ne, arms pulled behind him. The ropes tightened around his wrists again, reawakening the previous day's agony. He screamed.

The guards shouted over Collins. The two hauled him to his feet, the door opened, and they all escorted him through the prison hallway. They went through another door, attended by two women in the standard uniform, then emerged into sunshine so bright it seared Collins' eyes. He shut them, allowing the men to guide him blindly, stumblingly forward. Gradually, the sounds of a crowd grew around him, mingled conversations interspersed with an occasional call and sometimes pierced by a bark or whinny.He opened his eyes to slits, seeing a blur of faces, streets, and cottages in a glaze of brilliant sunlight.

Then, he caught sight of the gallows towering over the rest, and he forced his eyes fully open despite the pain.

Collins now saw that he walked through a village of mud-and-thatch cottages, shops, and mills. The gathering consisted of a teeming ma.s.s of people, as varied in appearance as Americans, except they all wore simple homespun: grizzled elders and slouching adolescents, adults of every age, some clutching children's hands or babies in their arms. The shadow of the gallows loomed over them. Collins pinned his attention on the vast wooden monstrosity. A rope dangled from its uppermost pole, over a high, warped platform with ma.s.sive, metal hinges. Clearly, the rope went around the victim's throat, then the platform was dropped, suspending him, by his neck, just above the level of the crowd. Him. Collins shivered.

Him is me. He would feel his spine snapping, a moment of excruciating pain followed by absolute and permanent nothingness. Permanent. The enormity of death filled his mind with a terror beyond panic, the realization that the world would go on without him in it, that his time on this earth would end, not in years, but in minutes.

Collins reared backward, against his captors, screaming in mindless hysteria. Their grips tightened painfully, nails gouging his arms, then his legs. He felt himself lifted into the air. He squirmed, desperate, howling, aware only of the complete and monstrous need to break free. Though Collins recognized forward motion, the significance of it refused to penetrate the thought-shattering horror that drove his fight.

It all came home moments later.

The noose tickled, then hugged Collins' neck, and he went utterly still. It's going to happen. It's really going to happen. I'm going to die. A hopeless rationality filled him, a strange relief from the previous panic. And I'm not going down in the history books as the hero who faced his end bravely. His mind slid to a story he had read in junior high, about a man hanged from a bridge who hallucinated a grand escape in the moments before death. He wondered if it really happened that way and realized that no one could possibly know. He would, but he could do nothing with the information. If only I'd gone to the Johnsons'. If only I hadn't followed that rat. If only I hadn't eaten that rabbit.

Regrets followed, the inability to apologize for small misdeeds, to say good-bye. He thought of all the things he would never get to do: hold a job, marry, coddle his children. Visit Disney World.

A man said something Collins could not understand.

Collins laughed hysterically, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g his eyes shut. Then, the floor fell out under his feet, and he felt himself plunging. He tightened the muscles of his neck and face, bracing for the final impact.

The fall seemed to last forever. Then, a jolt shocked through his groin. Agony cramped his stomach, and he tumbled forward. His nose struck something hard and hairy, driving more pain through him. The crowd roared. Collins forced his lids open. Immediately, wiry hair slashed his eyes, and he shut them again. He felt forward movement, gaining momentum. The noose lay heavy on the back of his neck. He dared a shuddering breath, and air glided silkily, surprisingly easily, into his lungs.

The crowd continued shouting, sounding like they were in an open air sports stadium. Collins sat, splay-legged, on something warm and furry that carried him at a rocking sprint away from the gallows.

He remembered the name of the hanging story: "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," though the significance of knowing it eluded him. Pitching his torso back, without the use of his still-tied arms, he wrenched open his eyes again. His breaths came in pants, due to shock not pressure.

Farm fields flashed past Collins, and forest loomed ahead. Behind, he heard yelling. The noose remained around his neck, trailing a length of rope. He sat astride a horse, its black mane whipping into his face, one golden ear forward, the other flicked backward. A set of saddlebags lay slung across its withers. Falima? he wondered, doubting the possibility. She had seemed so hostile toward him the previous night. He eased more steadily onto the horse's back, not caring who or what had caught him, only glad that he had at least a little longer to live.

The horse lunged around the trees, racing between trunks with a speed that quailed Collins. He wished for the use of his hands. Weight shifts and knee pressure seemed woefully inadequate to keep him astride as the animal kept up its breakneck pace on narrow deer trails through dense tangles of forest.Then, as if in answer to his wish, the ropes loosened on his wrists. He fingered them, his exploration rewarded by frayed areas where it had, apparently, broken. He twisted it blindly over fingers, hands, and wrists, hampered by a warm, sticky liquid. Then, the rope fell away, freeing his hands. He pulled the noose from his neck, rubbed his bleeding wrists, and seized handfuls of mane.

The horse loosed a low nicker and slowed, slogging through denser brush and between more tightly packed trunks. Something buzzed past, irritatingly close to Collins' ear. He swatted at it, missed, and turned his attention to the terrain. The horse wallowed through tangles of brush, forcing Collins to flatten against its neck or side to avoid braining himself on leaning deadfalls and shed branches caught in the crotches of other trees. Time and again, he jerked a leg onto the horse's back to rescue it from being crushed.

Collins had done some riding with his high school girlfriend and realized he could steer the animal better than it could randomly pick its way along the trail. Taking up the rope intended to kill him, he fashioned it into a raw bridle, essentially a loop with reins. Gliding up the horse's neck, he flicked the coil around its nose.