Aranya (Shapeshifter Dragons) by Marc Secchia

returned, stunning her into silence. “May I see it properly?”
    Aranya nodded. It was all she could manage just then.
    In a moment, she stood in front of her new mirror–one neither cracked nor inhabited by twenty spiders–as Beri gently untucked her headscarf from beneath her chin. She slid the thin material back from her forehead before unclipping the opaque hairnet from the braid coiled beneath it. Aranya shivered. She was fully clothed, but felt naked. Now the thick braid, liberated from its pins, tumbled down past the small of her back.
    “By the mountains of Immadia, there’s a sight,” Beri said.
    Aranya shivered as Beri pushed back her hair to reveal her left ear. “Aye, Fra’anior right there, petal. Ears of the seven enchanted Isles, they call these. Anyways, who cares about ears? They’re always covered up. Beran loved your mother, pointy ears and all. Risked his life to kidnap her. Someday, some man’s going to fall in love with these ears and this multi-coloured waterfall of hair.”
    “Beri! You’re making me blush.”
    Aranya had always thought of Fra’anior as one Island, but in reality there were seven Islands clustered together like jewels on a bracelet–the seven points of an ancient volcanic peak, she had read. Her mother was not from the main Island of Fra’anior itself, but from another in the cluster called Ha’athior. The caldera between the Islands was active, sometimes covered in Cloudlands mists, sometimes not. Her mother’s land had a strange reputation, legends of magic and Dragons and strange happenings. Perhaps that came along with living in the edge of an active volcano, and apparently making a national sport of kidnapping women for marriage. King Beran had beaten them at their own game.
    She wished she had asked him to tell that story before she left. She had so many questions.
    Beri combed Aranya’s braid out with her fingers, saying, “Where I come from there’s a story–I grew up in a village called Reayho, which lies right on the northern tip of Immadia Island, beyond the mountains–well, this story was old when I was a child. And that’s old .” Aranya smiled at her in the mirror. “It’s about an enchantress who could change her shape into whatever animal she desired. ‘And strange hair she had, the Lady of Immadia, hair shaded as the rainbows that grace the Cloudlands. This is the hair of an enchantress, a magic most rare.’ Of course, the enchantress in the story is as beautiful as the suns-rise, as wise as the hills–”
    “Anyone here?” called a voice from the doorway to Aranya’s chamber.
    Beri moved faster than Aranya could credit, for an old woman. Slamming the bathroom door behind her, she confronted the girl–the same wretch from several days before, Aranya realised, peeking through the hole she had made in the door. She quickly moved back out of sight.
    “You dare return?”
    “I-I’m sorry, I knocked. But the snake … it wasn’t me,” the girl stammered. “You have to believe me. I would never … please. I don’t know what happened.”
    Aranya’s fingers moved rapidly upon her hair, reworking the customary braid. She pulled the mass of tresses over her shoulder and worked down toward her waist, drawing together the many-coloured strands of her hair. There was some unintelligible conversation out there, before she heard Beri growl:
    “I can speak for myself, but not for the Princess of Immadia.”
    “I have to be her guide. I’m assigned.”
    The girl made it sound like a life-or-death matter. Aranya frowned, slipping in her pins with practised skill. So, she thought one little justification would make up for a slew of insults, did she? That girl had the manners of a mountain goat.
    Shortly, having covered her hair, she emerged from the bathroom.
    Beri said, “Aranya, I would like to introduce you to Zuziana, Princess of Remoy.”
    “My friends call me Zip. Short for Zuziana, Princess. Get it? People seem to think it’s cute.