When Zack woke up he felt sick. A solid pain throbbed in the back of his head, there was a sour, burning taste in his mouth and throat, and his vision was a little out of focus, not much but enough to make his eyes water. He glanced around, and found himself lying on the muddy ground in the middle of his neighbor’s pasture. The old man, Gilar, was running toward him, a concerned look on his aged face. Zack propped himself up on his elbows and started to get up to meet him, but he had twisted one ankle in the fall. The old man reached out a hand and helped him to his feet.
“What happened, son?”
“I — ” Zack began to answer, but his voice sounded a little rough and he cleared his throat. “I don’t know.” His voice remained rough, and he didn’t seem to be able to help it.
“We better get you to the doctor’s,” Gilar said, his voice and face full of concern. “You took a pretty nasty knock to the head there.”
Zack felt the side of his head and winced. “Ow. It’s just a bump … I think. I’ll be okay.”
“Are you sure?” Gilar gave him a tell-me-the-truth look. “At least let me clean that up for you.”
Zack took him up on his offer, but he felt a little dizzy and his ankle hurt so much Gilar had to half-carry the boy back to his house. The old man washed and dressed the scrape on Zack’s head, then bandaged his ankle so thickly he couldn’t move it if he tried. Zack went on his way with a friendly pat on the back and a pear in his hand.
Zack walked home slowly, stopping several times to will away the fierce throbbing that kept pounding on his skull. When he reached his own house he was panting for breath, squinting to see, a film of sweat on his pale face. He fumbled the door and almost fell inside. He gritted his teeth, shut the door, and carefully picked his way across the permanent disaster area that was his half-sister’s house. He had his own room, so he had all the privacy he wanted, but even if he hadn’t, the two-year-old twins kept his half-sister — and themselves — running hither and thither so that half the time she ignored him and the other half … well, she ignored him the other half, too, since she took only just enough time to be civil to him and not a second more.
Halfway up the stairs, a door banged open and she came tearing down the steps, nearly slamming into him and knocking him back down to the landing below. She brushed past him with barely a wave, the best she could manage with both babies in her arms, and hurried out the door. Zack hadn’t even gotten the most cursory of glances from her. Shrugging, he trudged up to his second-floor bedroom, flopping onto the bed after having unceremoniously tossed his pear out the window. Mulch, he rationalized. His head didn’t hurt so much now, but there was still a dull, persistent ache that didn’t let him think. After several minutes of debating with himself whether he had the energy to do so, he got up and tottered down to the kitchen to take off the blood-soaked scrap of cloth Gilar had put on him and wash off his head. The cold water numbed the pain and made him feel better, but then his neck started to cramp, and he decided the tradeoff wasn’t worth it. He gently patted his hair dry and hung the towel back on its hook. He was turning away when his arm twisted back, pulling the towel down. He raised his hand, the towel hanging by a loose thread caught on a fingernail. Zack thought the thread must have caught on a splintered nail, but when he tried to pick the towel free, he noticed that his fingernails were getting thicker and more pointed.
“That’s odd,” he muttered to himself, and yanked the towel free by snapping the thread. On his way back to his room, he considered filing his nails down, but decided it would take more effort than he was willing to expend at the moment.
He flopped back down onto his bed, still fully dressed, and fell asleep within a few minutes.
It was still light when he woke again. He lifted his elbow off his eyes and squinted at the window; he hadn’t slept for much more than an hour.
He also saw the fine gold hairs beginning to grow along his arm.
Zack frowned. First his nails, and now this. And the pain. Now it wasn’t just his head, his whole body ached. Zack fell back on his bed, breathing hard, as the ache slowly grew to nearly intolerable. Then gradually, the pain stopped growing, faded rapidly away, and flared again. This time the pain was not all over his body; instead, it was only concentrated in his toes and fingertips. It lasted only a couple of endless seconds, then disappeared as quickly as it had come. And returned the same way, now in his teeth. Then in his ears. Then in his eyes — Zack couldn’t help crying out — in his nose, in his lower back, then his neck, from where it traveled down his body just as before, in flashes, from his neck to his shoulders, along both arms, from biceps to elbow to forearm, on his chest, his ribs, his belly, his thighs, knees, and calves. The pain exploded one last time inside his head, and when it faded, Zack’s consciousness faded with it.