After the nuts he’d consumed, it was almost sickly sweet. Chewing contentedly, he padded down the hall to a partway-open door and peered in. At first, he was confused—it looked as though there was a pond countersunk into the floor. It was filled with a mixture of water and bog plants. But when he squinted, he made out a small form with everything but the nose and mouth submerged.
He withdrew and continued along the hall, finding three more rooms with the strange sleeping accommodations. One had a larger pond with two forms snoring within—no doubt the primary pair. The other three rooms must house their children.
Perfect.
He shoved the last bite of fruit into his mouth and skulked his way into a room with a particularly tiny occupant—likely only a toddler. The adults he’d seen were barely four feet in height, but they’d been so swathed in hooded garments that he had no idea what they looked like until now.
Lucas peered into the water. The child had smooth skin that resembled that of an amphibian, which explained the sleeping accommodation. In the dark, it was hard to discern color, but it was highly speckled. The face had a slight snout for the mouth and nose, but the forehead was high, the eyes quite large and tilted upward, and it appeared to have only holes for external ears.
Lucas approached the child cautiously. Children were perfect targets for him. With one touch, he could manifest it as the adult version dictated by their DNA. It meant there was less chance of someone recognizing him, something he’d had close calls with, in the past.
He crouched down beside the pond bed. The child’s hand lay just beneath the water. He slipped his into the fluid—it was warm, almost his body temperature.
The lightest of touches, and he had the first part of what he’d come here for. He withdrew from the room and backtracked down the hall. On the kitchen’s other side, he located his next target—the family laundry.
Ten minutes later, he was back outside and rounding the corner of the woodshed with a bundle of cloth beneath one arm. He munched on his second piece of fruit as he handed Aria another.
“Are you sure it’s edible for us?”
“No.”
She raised a brow.
“I’ll eat it if you don’t.”
Aria sighed and took a bite. She wrinkled up her nose. “It’s awfully sweet.”
“We don’t know when we’ll be able to eat next.” He sorted through the jumble of cloth. “Not sure any of this is going to fit you. I picked the biggest cloaks I could find.
When she didn’t reply, he glanced up. The narrow-eyed look was most definitely a glare.
Oops.Lucas swallowed. “I don’t mean you’re big, just bigger than them.”
“They’d better be tiny, or you have some explaining to do.”
In answer, he shed the scales and let the morph take him. As the residents were bipedal, and had the same number of limbs and features, the size was the most difficult part of the transformation. He had to focus a bit on the hands—they had four fingers but two opposable thumbs that required extra concentration. After a few moments he was an amphibian, spotted skin and all.
“I’m still about ten inches too tall,” he stated when he finished. “And you’ll have to slouch a lot and stay in the shadows, or you’ll stick out like a sore thumb.”
Her gaze was fastened somewhere south of his waist, but now she wrenched it away. “They—you—are an odd-looking species.”
“They look like a cross between a human and a frog,” Lucas commented.
Aria frowned. “What’s a frog?”
“A creature that lives in wet areas. They are usually small and have the same kind of skin, plus webbed fingers and toes.”
“Oh. So you’re a giant frog. Only you aren’t a giant. Aren’t there any taller residents here?”
“Yes,” he admitted. “But the houses in this region all seem to belong to this species. So this is the best we can do.”
“Nikolai will be a behemoth among this lot.”
Lucas’s stomach knotted. “We’ll have to stop him before he enters the town. He’d cause a huge stir.” He handed her a hooded cloak that had an odd extended piece. “Their skin must be really susceptible to desiccation. This wraps around your face. It will help with your disguise.”
“Do I have to keep it wet?”
“Don’t know if anyone will notice, but it’s a good idea if you want to blend in. There are public ponds in every square I passed, and they were sleeping in ponds in the house.”
