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He might as well have said, ‘your unicorn’s dead... go inside while I throw the body overboard.’ Paxton bawls harder.
At the same instant I start to wonder if the unicorn really is dead, the horned critter opens her eyes.
Tammy dashes over, mouth agape. “What just happened? Is she okay?”
Maple zips down to land on Paxton’s shoulder. “Her grief maybe pulled the unicorn back from the darkness.”
I glance at Anthony. “Or maybe she had a little help from an angel.”
He gives me a ‘really, ma’ stare.
“Stop the cry!” yells Maple while slapping Paxton on the cheek. “Look!”
It’s not as bad as it sounds. A slap from Maple is like a poke from a normal person.
Paxton finally notices the unicorn’s opened eyes. As she squeals in delight, the ship shudders again from another thunderous slap. The Kraken is still here.
“Grr. Enough of this!” Tammy stomps off, her bare feet clapping on the steel deck. She approaches the railing at the side and unbuttons her jeans.
“Tam, what the heck are you doing?” yells Anthony.
Like something straight out of a cartoon, Tammy jumps straight out of her clothes in a hazy mist of green leafy fog and falls out of sight while yelling, “Megalodon!”
Half a second later, The Bonnie Lass rocks to the side as a splash way, way, way, too big to have come from Tammy geysers up into view.
“Looks like she gained a little weight,” says Ant.
Yeah, I think to myself. About fifty thousand pounds.
Chapter Twenty
Not So Baby Shark
Tammy hangs in the water, momentarily disoriented from the sensation of jumping off a large ship.
She hadn’t truly known what to expect, having taken a gamble on the unpredictable side effect of the unicorn’s presence interacting with her magic. If trying to summon a single flower ended up filling their entire house with plants… shapeshifting would also most likely go to the extreme.
Taking the shape of birds, cats, big cats, wolves, and even mice had become like second nature. Tammy didn’t have any trouble adjusting to the sensory changes that came with going from two legs to four, or wings. Sure, she’d gone through a brief period where flying as a bird proved quite scary, until she finally convinced herself that it was rather difficult for birds to fall. Even if she slipped off a high enough place in human form, she could easily turn into a bird before hitting the ground. This mostly cured her fear of heights.
However, fate hadn’t yet given her much opportunity to try shapeshifting into an aquatic animal. The forest faerie magic might not have even included the ability to become an animal not commonly associated with forests. Her spell amounted to asking for help from various animal spirits, sort of how Mom borrowed Talos’s body from time to time. Only… Tammy’s body directly changed into an animal. She didn’t do some crazy dimensional switcheroo thing where her human form sat alone on some rocks in a desolate otherworld.
For a second or two, Tammy has no idea what to do with herself. It almost feels like someone has wrapped her up in duct tape since she can’t move her arms or legs. Drifting, she spots the ship above her. It looks small, tiny even. Problem is, a giant black blob with tentacles has clamped onto the boat from below. The creature’s body looks to be at least four times the size of the ship. To Tammy, it reminds her of a cat trying to eat a shoe.
She attempts to look around and discovers her head really can’t move much. Her arms flap sorta. Wait, those are fins. Moving her legs translates into swishing a shark’s tail. Somehow, she can see underwater at night. The ocean around her appears so clear that she may as well have been floating in midair. Swimming feels more like flying.
Holy crap! It worked. I’m a friggin’ megalodon.
She flicks her tail and launches herself upward like a torpedo. Both the ship and the creature get bigger and bigger as she rockets upward. Whatever the shadow monster is, it does not appear to have any eyes pointing downward.
What the heck am I going to do now?
Tammy keeps racing upward.
I guess there’s only one thing a shark really can do, right? She cringes. This is going to taste like crap.
The ship continues to get bigger as she nears. She figures she’s probably about the same size as the boat or close to it. That makes her about a quarter the size of the monster squid. She’d pushed ‘shark’ to the most extreme her magic could do.
I’m as big as I can be. And this thing isn’t really a squid. It’s some magical monstrosity. I shouldn’t expect it to act like a real animal.
