A Glimmering Girl by L. K. Rigel

the top of the rise.
    “Goosie! Goosie!” The monster launched another run, chubby hands outstretched, fat fingers kneading the air. “Goosie!”
    Monster eyes, blue and green and brown all at once, sparkled with fascinated greed. A beam of sunlight seemed to set its writhing red hair aflame.
    It was terrifying. The goose dodged and ran.
    Lurched and waddled, rather. Her legs were so short, the grass so close to her chest, and the blossoms in the trees were so unnaturally far away, high up in the sky. As if she’d somehow shrunk to a fraction of her usual height. She flapped her arms, and her bottom bounced side to side as she fled.
    It was all very disconcerting and wrong.
    She tried to scream Aaiiee!
    What came out was Hyonke! Hyonke!
    The red monster was quick. Enthusiastic. And gaining ground. The goose parried and dipped and ran, ended up making a circle, and went the wrong way.
    “Wennie, stop.”
    That voice. Familiar. Commanding. Safe.
    The monster paused—but only to say, “Auntie Zoelyn, I want goosie!”—then it leapt.
    The goose stumbled and rolled and braced to be crushed.
    “Igraine reditum!”
    The words were a wyrd. Vibrations permeated the goose’s body, flooding her with relief and a sense of being righted with the world. The red monster shrank, even as it kept coming, and the goose grew larger… larger… and became human again.
    She lay on the ground near a small lake, her bare legs and hips on a silk carpet and her arms and face on the grass. The cool green blades felt different against this skin, this human skin, but the world sounded the same—wind in the trees, ducks splashing.
    Black swans floated under the arching bridge to the island at the lake’s center. At the shore two geese stared indignantly. Had she betrayed her own kind?
    Was she woman or goose?
    “Grainie!” With a raucous belly laugh, the monster fell against her. Not a monster at all but a ginger-haired little girl with merry hazel eyes.
    “Wennie!” Speaking burst a dam in the woman’s brain. I am Igraine. I'm twenty-three years old, a wyrding woman of Tintagos. I live in Kaelyn’s cave near the Small Wood north of the castle keep.
    Today she was visiting her childhood home, Avalos, the island sacred to the wyrd. She and Lowenwyn were having a picnic. It was the last day of November, Wennie’s third birthday.
    That’s it. To entertain the child, she had transmogrified into a goose.
    “You lose yourself to the creature’s animus, Igraine.” The commanding voice belonged to Zoelyn, abbess of Avalos. “Still. After all this time.”
    The abbess wore a pale pink tunic and sleeveless mantle embroidered with apple blossoms in silver, gold, and green thread. Her blue-gray eyes were kind but reserved, full of love and responsibility and secrets. A silver and gold circlet of willow branches and apple blossoms rested above her brow over her braided, gray-streaked hair.
    She tossed Igraine a length of light silk the color of the sky and helped herself to a strawberry from the platter of fruit and cakes on the carpet.
    “Get up.” Igraine nudged the little girl off her lap. “Let me get dressed.” She pulled the loose tunic over her head and ran her fingers through her tangled hair, wishing she’d secured it in a net.
    “Velyn is here, Lowenwyn.” Zoelyn never called anyone by their nicknames. “He’s come to take you out on the lake.”
    “My boat!” Wennie scrambled to her feet and ran to the water, passing up unenchanted geese for the boatman, who lifted her into a rowboat just big enough for two.
    The day was warm, as ever, and Velyn was shirtless, as usual. His dark hair fell over the tattooed crosses—Druid, Celtic, and Christian—on his arms and shoulders. He pushed the boat off, and his muscles expanded as he rowed.
    “You’re right,” Igraine said. “Sometimes the animal feeling is too much. The excitement. The hunger.”
    Zoelyn followed Igraine’s gaze to the boatman. “The uncomplicated