A White Crow

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Allina turned around. She was surrounded by half-men, but they all stayed a good five or six paces away from her: no half-man wanted to be anywhere close to a witch, even a skinny twelve-year-old one.

She stared at the mob, and they stared back in shock. Whispers rose: "I did not know a witch could shift forms," said a man with the upper half of a robin. "Yes," agreed another, whose legs were that of a toad, "and look, she has kept aspects of her mouse form, as we do."

Allina looked down to her tail. It dragged on the ground behind her like a slithering, ugly thing.

"A witch is still a witch!" cried the mouse-man who'd captured her, and some of the half-men inched forward. Allina's circle of safety grew smaller; Alejandra couldn't help, trapped in the cell as she was, and busy with something else.

"She is a disgusting monster! Witches—" began a man with an ant's legs for arms and ant wings sprouting from between his shoulderblades.

He was cut off by a shrill half-rabbit. "Magic is cruel! Demonic!"

The mouse-man began shouting again. "These simple creatures don't know how to control the magic they summon! If they keep—"

The half-ant jumped up and down. "Kill her! Kill her!"

"She is a danger!" "A beast!" "A monster!" "Kill her! Kill her!" Now so many half-men were shouting that Allina couldn't tell who was saying what. Those closest inched even closer, and she had nowhere to go: either she pressed herself against the bars, or she leapt into the mob. So she stayed put, waiting for some half-man to hit her.

The attack did not come from the mob in front of her, however. There she was, watching the half-men in front of her, but all that time she had forgotten to watch for someone coming from above.

Before she could even so much as scream, a man with a crow's legs, head, and wings landed on her shoulders and picked her up. His feathers were white and his legs and beak a pale pink. His claws dug into her skin, but she didn't bleed. He dropped her, but it didn't hurt when she hurt the ground.

Allina picked herself up, confused. What did Alejandra do to me?

The half-men stared at her in shock. "She cannot be hurt," one whispered, and the others began shouting.

"Again! Try again!" shouted the half-rabbit, and before Allina knew it, she was in the air.

She didn't let the crow drop her, however. Allina reached up and grabbed his legs, unhurt as his claws slashed at her. He flew further upward, hoping to shake her loose, but she held tight and climbed up until she had a hold on his left wing.

"Let me go! Let me go!" the crow-man shrieked, but she did not. Allina remembered that a bird's bones were hollow.

He wishes to kill me, she thought to herself, and broke his wing with her hands. She did more than simply break it: she ripped the crow-man's wing from his body.

Screeching, the crow-man plummeted to the stone, and as he fell, Allina could feel her invincibility fading. She clutched the wing to her chest and dropped to the ground like a stone.

When she stood, sore and bruised, she was covered in the crow-man's blood. "Why are you trying to kill me?" None of the half-men heard her, or perhaps they did but simply didn't care.

The half-ant and half-rabbit ran for her. Allina leaped and dodged; perhaps she'd retained more than a tail from her transformation into a mouse. She punched at the half-men, managing to break the half-ant's wing and poke the half-rabbit in the eye.

More half-men ran at her. Allina did her best to dodge, but so many came at her that she couldn't manage to avoid every hit. She kicked feebly at toad legs and ripped robin feathers from skin. Allina could only manage so much.

A half-man grabbed her tail and pulled at it. Allina fell flat on her face; her nose started to bleed. She struggled to her feet, shaking as she did so. Allina picked up the crow's wing from the ground as if it might shield her.

Another half-man began to fly toward her: a loon with the head of a man. She stumbled to the side, head spinning. The loon-man stopped in his tracks. Other half-men gasped.

Allina turned to see what the matter was. Behind her, the iron bars of the cell rotted away to dust. Alejandra stood there, and a wicked grin crossed her face as she stepped out of the cell. "Keep a good hold on that wing, young Allina," said she, "it is now a very magical object indeed."

Alejandra said a few words in what Allina thought might be Sumerian, and some of the iron on the stone turned into a stake. She handed Allina the stake.

They battled their way to the dungeon stairs. Allina wielded the stake, with some difficulty. Between spells, Alejandra said grimly, "We are going to see the king." 

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