As if by mutual agreement, we stopped, turned - and hit the dirt as if our legs had been swept out from under us.
Animals slipped from the trees and into the Gypsy camp.
Grace drew her weapon, but there were too many of them for it to do us any good if they suddenly heard or smelled or sensed us up here and decided to attack. In fact, there were a lot more of them than there should be.
Grace flicked a glance at me, eyebrows furrowed. She was having the same double-vision problem that I was.
Out of the trees lumbered two grizzlies, two cougars, two zebras - was there an ark around here we weren't aware of?
Multiple animals continued to appear. More than two of each in the categories of monkeys, snakes, and birds but also more than what I'd tallied the first day.
To my amazement, the cougars weren't tearing apart the zebras. The grizzlies weren't eating everything. They appeared to be one big, happy family, and they all seemed to be waiting for something. Then Malachi stepped out of the trees.
I tensed. Just because the grizzlies were trained, or at least one of them was, didn't mean Malachi might not be mistaken for breakfast.
But he walked among them unafraid, touching certain animals on the head, the shoulder, the tail. He even leaned down and brushed his fingers across the back of a snake. Straightening, Malachi opened his arms as if welcoming them.
Mist spread from his fingertips, swirling across the assembled throng. Clouds formed above those he'd touched, and the sun sparkled through the haze, seeming to rain diamonds onto the backs of the chosen ones.
They shimmered, and then they shifted.
One second a great lumbering grizzly bear gaped at the sky; the next a naked Hogarth straightened from four legs to two. A cougar became Molly; a zebra turned into the lithe young woman with the streak of white through her dark, dark hair. Two monkeys morphed into slightly hairy older men - one I recognized as the snarly ticket taker. Another became Edana, the fortune-teller, which kind of explained her joke with the paw. The snake grew and grew, writhing, expanding; then, in the blink of an eye, Sabina stood in its place.
"Oh boy," Grace breathed.
I couldn't speak at all. I could only stare at Malachi while the mist swirled around him.
The good news? He wasn't an animal.
The bad news? I doubted he was entirely human, either.
Chapter 33
"You can come down now. " Malachi looked up. "No one will hurt you. "
The people and animals wandered off to their respective wagons, except for Sabina, who stared at us, too. Snakes trailed over her bare feet, and one twined up her ankle.
"Sabina!" Mal barked.
She lifted the snakes into her hands, tossing several around her neck and over her shoulders before heading toward their enclosure.
Mal started toward us. I guess running wasn't an option.
Grace and I climbed to our feet. She kept her gun in her hand, though she did point it at the ground.
He stopped in front of us, casting a quick, almost guilty glance in my direction.
"When were you going to tell me?" I asked.
"I just did. "
"You told me nothing. We snuck in and watched. "
"He knew we were here," Grace said.
"How?"
"He can change men and women into beasts and back again. You think he isn't aware of everything that goes on around him?"