One afternoon, I was riding the thermals, the upswelling hot air. I rode them way up into the sky. The bottoms of low clouds, heavy with moisture, scudded just a few feet above me.

I looked down and focused my laserlike eyes. My fierce eyes, I could still read - I hadn't forgotten how to do that. I could see the big red-and-white sign that said: DEALIN' DAN HAWKE'S USED CARS.

I pressed my wings back, closer to my body, and began to fall. Down, down, down! Faster. Faster!

I fell through the warm, early evening air like a rock. Like an artillery shell falling toward its target.

All was silent except for the sound of the air rushing over the tops of my wings. The ground came up at me. It came up like it was trying to hit me.

I saw the cage. It was no more than three feet on each side. In the cage was a hawk. A red- tail.

Like me.

The man was close by. I recognized him because I had seen him on his TV commercials. He was Dealin' Dan Hawke. He owned the car dealership.

He was the one holding the hawk prisoner.

She was a mascot. On the commercials he called her Price-Cut Polly. It made me sick. It made me furious.

I saw the camera. There were three guys standing around. They would be shooting a live commercial soon. I didn't care.

Dealin' Dan went to the hawk's cage to feed her. It was locked with a bike-style combination lock. Four numbers. I could see them as he turned the combination. 8-1-2-5.

I was two hundred yards up, plummeting to earth at seventy miles an hour. But I could see the numbers as he turned them. And the human part of me, Tobias, could remember.

He opened the cage and tossed in some food. Then he closed it again and spun the lock. Brilliant lights came on. He was starting the commercial. It would be live on TV all over the area.

What I was planning was insane. That's what Marco would have said. It was one of his favorite words. Insane.

I didn't care.

A hawk was in a tiny cage, being used as a prop for some lowlife car dealer. That wasn't going to go on. Not if I could help it.

"Tseeeeeeeer!" I screamed.

Twenty feet from the ground, I opened my wings. The strain was terrible. I absorbed most of the momentum and used the rest for speed. I shot across the parked cars to the cage.

I landed on the bars and grabbed on with my talons.

I used the hook of my deadly sharp beak to click the first number into place.

"Hey! What the - " someone yelled.

The bright TV light focused right on me.

"Well, ladies and gentlemen in TV-land," Dealin' Dan yapped in surprise, "I guess we have a bird trying to break into our Price-Cut Polly's cage. Boys, you better shoo him away."

Yeah, right. Shoo me, I thought.

I clicked the second number. There were people coming for me. I saw a mechanic swinging a long steel wrench. But I wasn't going to leave without freeing this bird.

Hawks do not belong in cages. Hawks belong in the sky.

But they were all around me.

"Get him, Earl! Hit the thing!"

"Look out for that beak of his!"

"Maybe he's got rabies!"

WHAM!

The mechanic swung the wrench! It barely missed my head. I was dead if I didn't get some help.

Fast.

<Rachel?> I cried silently with my mind. <Rachel? Now would be a good time!>

<Sorry! I missed the first bus. I just got here!> Her voice was in my head. We call it thought- speak. It's something we can do when we morph.

I breathed a sigh of relief. Help was on the way.

"HhhuuuurrHHHHEEEEEAAAAH!"

"What in the world was - " the mechanic cried.

I knew what it was. It was Rachel. Pretty, blond Rachel. Although right at the moment she wasn't pretty - impressive, but not pretty.

BOOM! Cr-u-u-u-nch!

"Oh. My. Lord," Dealin' Dan gasped. "Forget the bird! There's an elephant stomping over the convertibles!"

I would have smiled. If I'd had a mouth. I finished turning the lock. I yanked open the cage door.

The hawk was wary. She was a true hawk, with only a hawk's mind and instincts to guide her. But she did know an open path to the sky when she saw one.

Out she came, in a rush of gray and brown and white feathers. She didn't know that I had freed her. That kind of concept was beyond her thinking.

And she felt no gratitude.

But she flapped her wings and rose into the air. Free.

And right then I had the strangest feeling. Like I should go with her. Like I should be with her.

<Can we get out of here now?> Rachel asked.

She was bellowing loudly, tossing her big trunk around and stomping various cars. Having a very good time, by elephant standards. But it was time for us to leave. For, Rachel to resume her human form.

I looked up again. I saw the sunlight shine through the hawk's red tail. She flew toward the setting sun.