I felt restless and weird. Like I was on the edge of something. Like life had gotten unbalanced since the day before.

"Rachel's right," I said out loud, just to hear a voice. "They're bugs. Termites. And besides, I got away in the end."

57 I walked outside to feel the sun on my skin. My human skin. Without really thinking much about it, I went into the barn to the refrigerator we use to store perishable food for the animals. I took out a frozen grasshopper and stuck it in my pocket. And then I headed toward the edge of the forest.

"Hey, Cassie," a thought-speak voice said as I crunched noisily through the woods. "What's going on?"

I looked up and saw Tobias go skimming by. He flared, turned on a dime, and landed on a branch. He dug his ripping talons into the soft bark.

"Not much," I said.

"I heard it was pretty bad last night. "

"Yeah? Who did you talk to?"

"Ax. Who else? He was definitely weirded out by the whole thing. " I stopped walking. It was something in the way he said "weirded out." "Tobias, who else did you talk to?"

"Maybe Marco," he said.

"And Marco told you I went nuts, right?"

"Actually, the word he used was "insane." Also "Looney Tunes." And "wacko." But he meant it all in the nicest possible way. "

I laughed bitterly. "Well, I guess I did go a bit wacko," I said.

"Welcome to the club," Tobias said. "None of us is going to come through all this completely normal. You know that. Too much fear. "

"Well, I'm pretty sick of it," I said. "I had to destroy the termite queen. I know, she was just a bug. But you know, who am I to decide that it's okay to kill one animal and not another? Here I am, the big Earth Mother, tree-hugger, animal-lover, as Marco would say, and when it gets down to it, I'm just like ..."

"Just like me?" Tobias asked.

"Just like any predator," I said lamely.

"You feel bad because you had to kill the queen in order to survive. "

"I shouldn't have been there. It's their world, not mine. Those little tunnels in a rotten piece of wood -- that's their whole universe. I invaded it. And when they got in my way, I reacted.

Who does that remind you of?"

"Look, you are not a Yeerk, and termites are not human beings," Tobias said. less-than 58 There's no comparison."

I didn't bother arguing. "Look, I have to morph. There's something I need to do."

"What?"

I sighed. "It's something stupid, all right? There's this mother skunk we have who's injured.

She has a litter of kits who are going to die. I think I know where they are, more or less, but I can't get there walking like a human."

For a moment Tobias said nothing. less-than Skunk kits? Near the edge of the Yeerk logging compound?"

"Yes."

"I can show you where they are. "

For a frozen moment of time I refused to understand what he'd just said. I didn't want to think of why Tobias . . . why a red-tailed hawk would know the exact location of a litter of skunk babies.

I took a couple of deep breaths. I tried to keep my voice level. "Are they still alive?"

"There are four still alive," Tobias said.

I felt an emotion I don't feel very often. I felt it boiling up inside me. I glared furiously at him. At the ripping talons. At the nastily curved beak.

I could picture the scene in my mind. The way he would have swooped down, raked those talons forward, snatched the defenseless kit off the ground and . . .

I was shaking. I laced my fingers together, just to stop them from trembling.

"I'm going to save what's left of them," I said. My voice didn't sound like my voice.

"I'll help you," Tobias said.

59 Chapter FIFTEEN

I used my osprey morph and flew behind Tobias as he led me directly to the spot I had seen the night before. I carried the frozen grasshopper in my talons. I didn't ask Tobias any questions, and he didn't say anything.

He pointed out the almost-invisible entrance to the skunks' lair. And then he flew away. I knew he'd go to Jake and tell him what I was doing. And I knew that I had hurt Tobias by treating him so coldly.

But, to tell you the truth, I didn't care right then. I just wanted to find those baby skunks. I don't know why, but somehow in my mind those baby skunks had become very important.

When Tobias was out of sight, I began to morph.

It wasn't a difficult morph. I kept eyes and ears and a mouth all the way through the change.

Not like becoming a bug.

There was the now-familiar sensation of shrinking. And there was the surprise of having a huge, bushy tail growing from the base of my spine. But I had morphed a squirrel before.

This was pretty close.

But the fur was a new experience. Oh, I'd grown fur before, but never any so long and luxurious and dramatic. This was a regular fur coat, so to speak. Mostly black, but with an impressive swipe of white down my back and into my tail.

The senses of the skunk were nothing dramatic. The hearing was a little better than human, maybe. The sense of smell was good. The sight not as good as my own human vision.

And the skunk's body was not swift or strong. I shuffled and sort of waddled when I tried to walk. When I tried to run I just ended up waddling a little more.

My front paws could grasp and hold things, but they were far inferior to my own human hands.

It was the skunk's mind and instincts that seemed strangest of all. I've been inside minds that were all fear, or all hunger. Minds that were keyed up, like they lived on adrenaline.

But this mind, this package of instincts, was so ... gentle. So unafraid. Not cocky and swaggering like a big cat, just unafraid.

I was an animal no bigger than a house cat. No sharp teeth or talons. And yet just about nothing in the forest messed with me. 1 felt the gentleness of absolute confidence.

I could hear the mewing sounds of the skunk kits within the burrow.

I waddled over to the opening and pushed my head inside. It was dark, but I could make out four of them. Tiny, helpless little things. No longer infants, but not yet able to defend themselves or hunt like skunks.

I know some people think animals don't have emotions. But those kits were happy to see me.

And something in the mind of the skunk was relieved and joyful to see them.

60 I retrieved the frozen grasshopper, now completely thawed. I crawled inside that little hole in the dirt. I curled around, and the kits nuzzled up against me. I fed them the grasshopper.

I knew I only had two hours in morph. But even though I had just gotten up a few hours earlier, I suddenly felt sleepy. The meal was done. The kits wouldn't starve. And I was sleepy and very, very peaceful.

Even in my sleep I knew what was happening to me. See, I had always loved animals.

Always. But now, I think was falling out of love.

Nature wasn't all cute and fuzzy. The strong ate the weak. The weak ate the weaker. It's what the Yeerks were doing: trying to make prey out of the ultimate predator, Homo sapiens.

WHUMP!

"Hey! Hey! Are you in there? Cassie!"

I woke up. Where was I? It was dark. Was I in my bedroom? Was I ... oh, no, was I in the termite colony?!

The four kits still slept, curled up against me. I was in the skunks' den.

"What?" I said.

"It's me, Jake, Cassie, get out of there. Now! You've been in morph for almost two hours!"

That woke me up all the way. I shot out of the burrow and instantly began to demorph.