The Shape-Changer's Wife by Sharon Shinn

blue and rust of the burning minerals in the flames, and he knew he held an ounce of the ocean in his hand. So he silently recited the spell that would change an object back to the thing it had once been, and the fire went out and became water and dripped through his fingers to the floor.
    â€œThe sea,” Aubrey said.
    â€œThe sea,” Glyrenden said. “Now I am a little impressed.”
    That was the first thing Aubrey had ever changed from one thing to another, and he was very excited. To change an inanimate object from one state to another, even though the change returned it to its natural form, was not the most difficult part of shape-changing, but it was hard enough, and Aubrey was pleased with himself. He had read the truth behind the altered façade and he had spoken the spell of transformation properly. And Glyrenden was pleased with him.
    That whole week he changed many things to many other things and back again. It was easiest, as Glyrenden showed him, to change something to something else that it resembled or would eventually become. For instance, it was a simple matter to turn a lump of coal into a diamond, a caterpillar into a great, multicolored butterfly. The essential truths and structures were in the items themselves, only to be learned and carried out.
    Much more difficult, Glyrenden said, was to take something and twist it entirely from its purpose.
    â€œBut it can be done,” he said. “It is difficult and it requires great skill and it can almost never be reversed, but it can be done.”
    Glyrenden kept in this room a carved wooden box filled with a string of pearls, which, he said, had belonged to a mistress he had loved long ago and now hated the very memory of. “She gave me the box and I gave her the necklace and now I have both,” he said, and the smile he gave Aubrey was touched with devilishness. “She must have thought that was unfair, but it is hard for a wizard to lose in the game of love. Or do you know that already? I wonder sometimes what it is you do and do not know.”
    Glyrenden was talking as usual to try and distract Aubrey from the task at hand, which was to change the wooden box to a crystal one. Aubrey tried to block out the smooth, hypnotic voice, putting all his attention on the jewel case before him, but he could not help but hear some of Glyrenden’s words.
    â€œLove, now there is something I think you could tell me about. We are both magicians—we look on these affairs with eyes attuned to alterations. What do you think? Is love the ultimate illusion? Or is it what it seems to be—the greatest transformation of all?”
    Without Aubrey’s willing it, Lilith’s perfect face took shape at the back of his mind. He was so surprised that Glyrenden would frame such a question, his concentration slipped. The box remained wooden and obdurate. Glyrenden smiled with a certain satisfaction.
    â€œDo you know what an attractive boy you are? I feel certain you must, but you don’t trade on it often. I sense a certain naivete beneath your earnestness and a certain shyness behind your easy charm. Let me tell you, there is more than mere shape-changing I could teach you if you had the heart for the initiation.”
    Aubrey resolutely closed his mind to the sense of Glyrenden’s words, though his voice was so well-trained and perfectly pitched that it was impossible to ignore it completely. He focused instead on the silky, polished grain of the cedar box, the veins in the wood that marked its age and its history, fifty years old before the lumberjack had arrived with his axe and saw and laid a charcoal marker across the line he intended to cut. Aubrey felt, as if his fingers were upon them, the oily, creamy texture of the pearls inside, piled on top of each other with a sort of sensuous abandon, the braided silk wire running through their hearts on a perfectly symmetrical plane. As if he had chopped down the tree himself,