Amber Silverblood: Rogue Wolf

Chapter Twenty One

I stepped back as the gigantic shadow took a step toward me. The light from the mid-day sun fell on it, and...I blinked in surprise when I found myself looking at the last thing in the world I expected to see.

"What's the matter, Amber?" it—or, rather, she—asked. "Don't I get a hug?"

It was...I shook my head, unable to believe what I was seeing. It was an old lady! Her hair was a mix of white and gray, her face was covered with wrinkles and laugh lines, and she wore an old fashioned dress and heart-patterned apron that still had a light dusting of flour on it. If she hadn't been a freaking giant, I would have been hard pressed to find anything the least bit intimidating about her.

She bent down, putting her hands on her knees, and smiled invitingly at me. "Amber, darling! Don't tell me you've forgotten your poor old granny!"

"Y- You're not my..." My words trailed off. Was that my voice? That high pitched, squeaky thing? It was like...like I had just huffed an entire tank of helium. Either that, or...

Slowly, I brought my hands up in front of my face, and gasped. They were my hands. The way my fingers wiggled on command proved that. But they weren't my hands. My hands were big. The skin was rough and cracked from years of violence and hard labor, with dirt so far under my nails that I'd long since given up scrubbing it out.

The hands I saw in front of me right now were small, the skin pink and unblemished, with stubby little fingers that looked more suited to popping bubbles than strangling villainous lowlifes.

And then suddenly it all made sense. My hands. My voice. The size of the door and the old woman who had come through it. Everything else hadn't gotten bigger. I had gotten smaller. I was...

A little girl. Not even four years old, if I guessed right.

"What the hehhh—" My throat clenched up. "What the hhh...the hhhhhh..."

"Amber, you're not trying to use naughty words in front of Granny, are you?"

"What's going on?" I demanded in my humiliatingly high pitched voice.

"You've come to visit me," the old woman said with another smile. "And you're just in time. All your cousins are in the playroom! Why don't we go join them?"

She reached for me, and my first instinct was to back away again. I didn't, though, and her large, wrinkly hand took my smaller one as gently as if she were picking up a timid butterfly. She smelled like cinnamon and sugar. Warmth blossomed in my chest as soon as we touched, and I didn't resist as she led me inside.

What are you doing? the voice in my head demanded. Run!

I didn't. It wasn't that I couldn't. The old woman's hand was holding mine so gently that I could have easily slipped free and run back down the garden path if I'd wanted to. The thing was, though, I didn't want to. As soon as we touched, all my fears and worries seemed to melt away. It was like she really was my granny, and I was really a little girl whose only hope was to get some milk and cookies out of this visit.

Still, it would have been stupid to let my guard down too much.

"What is this place?" I asked as she led me deeper into the house.

She beamed down at me. "This is Granny's cottage, Amber! It's been so long since you've visited. I'm not surprised you don't remember it."

The inside of the cottage looked exactly like what the outside suggested. Hard wood floors that had been polished to a gleam. The smell of fresh baked cookies wafted from nearby. Pictures of children hung from the white painted walls, all of them around my age—my new age, I should say. I didn't know any of them, but when I looked I could feel a strange sense of familiarity stirring inside of me. Like I was looking at people in my family that I had seen once, but had been too young to fully—