Page 23 of Obsidian Prince

“Wendy has the gentlest nature. She plays with them like they’re her own puppies.” She rubbed the dog’s head affectionately.

“Does she ever play chase with them?” Liliana asked.

“Sure,” Janice bent a little sideways, trying to look at Liliana’s face more straight on. “Why do you ask?”

“I have an idea. There’s this knothole in the fence over there.” Liliana told Janice what she had in mind.

“Have you foreseen this working?”

In her excitement at the idea, Liliana had forgotten to look. She opened her fourth eyes, looking right then while she hung there. None of the new futures branching from this moment were bad, but some succeeded in sending Ben along a path toward expanded understanding of the world, and some did not. There were many possibilities branching forward. Ben’s own curiosity would be the determining factor. “There is a chance that it will work, but it is uncertain.”

“Worth a shot, then.” Janice waved the two children up to her. After Sam shifted back to boy form, she explained in a soft voice for telling secrets what she wanted him to do.

The smaller child, Kayden, rocked his tricycle back and forth as he listened, but Liliana wasn’t certain how much he understood until he said, “Me!”

Sam grinned. “Mr. Harper would be less likely to suspect a trick if Kayden did it.”

Janice smiled. “Are you sure, Kay?”

The toddler nodded vigorously. “Me.”

Liliana ducked back under the oak’s heavy branches on the roof to watch as Janice put her plan into action.

The fence that the two houses shared had twin gates facing the street side by side. Janice left through her gate. A spring shut it behind her. She knocked on Ben’s gate. “Hey, Ben, you back there?”

Ben opened the gate for her, and she went into his yard. “Hi, Janice. What’s up?”

“I’m sorry to bug you, but I was about to make an apple crumble pie and discovered I’m out of cinnamon. Any chance you could help me out?”

“I think I could be persuaded, especially if I get a piece of that pie.”

“Deal.”

Ben went inside his house. When he returned, he handed Janice a small spice jar.

“Great, you’re a lifesaver,” she said. “I’ve got a bunch of apples that are about to go bad if I don’t use them.”

While they talked, Sam and his baby brother had both turned into rabbits. They started a game of chase with Wendy in the grass. The dog ran away from the baby rabbits as if they were terrifying. Then, she turned the tables and chased them, causing joyful bounces in two directions. The smallest of the Willoughby children, a handful of fur and cuteness, rolled onto his back, squealing like he was in terrible distress, his tiny, furry legs kicking in the air.

Janice made a convincing expression of alarm and ran to the fence. She looked through the knothole to see her toddler on the ground, kicking and squealing in rabbit form like he was being killed.

The concerned dog had its nose buried in the child’s furry belly trying to determine what distressed him. It looked a bit like the dog was eating the baby bunny.

“Oh, no!” Janice said, in a somewhat less convincing way. Her hand over her mouth covered her attempts to smother a grin. She ran out of Ben’s yard and back through her gate simulating panic. Liliana thought her performance had convinced Ben.

“Are you all right?” she asked loud enough that Ben, just a few feet away on the other side of the fence, could hear. “Come back to human form so I can see if you’re hurt.”

The baby bunny shifted back to a toddler without difficulty.

Liliana was impressed by the level of shape control in one so young. By the time he was an adult, Kayden would have the kind of control she’d only seen in Pete. He’d be able to change just his ears to hear something, or just his legs to leap amazing distances while still mostly in human form.

Janice scooped him up and hugged him. “Don’t scare me like that. From all that noise, I thought Wendy hurt you. Were you afraid?”

The little one grinning in her arms, nodded enthusiastically.

Janice couldn’t suppress a snort. She continued to fuss over her youngest, glancing occasionally at Liliana where she perched on top of the house, peeking around the chimney. She could see Ben Harper standing in his own backyard, confused and a bit worried about what just happened.

He could hear Janice fussing over her toddler. He had to be wondering about the “human form” remark.

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