Fairy transformation

The fairies hovered over the pool. After a few moments Seth surfaced. In flawless synchronization, the cloud of fairies swooped, diving toward him. He yelled as blazing rays of light began flaring around him, and ducked underwater again. The fairies plunged in after him.

He came to the surface gasping. The water churned.

Seth floundered at the center of an underwater pyrotechnics display. Kendra rushed to the edge of the pool.

"Help!" he cried, raising a hand out of the water. The fingers were fused together like a flipper.

Kendra screamed. "They're attacking Seth! Help! Somebody! They're attacking Seth!"

He flailed toward the side of the pool. The roiling mass of fairies converged on Seth again, hauling him to the bottom of the pool amid eerie bursts of light. Kendra ran and seized the pool skimmer, swinging it at the relentless horde of fairies, never touching any of them no matter how dense the swarm appeared.

Seth resurfaced at the edge of the pool and threw his arms up onto the flagstones, trying to drag himself out of the water. Kendra stooped to assist him but shrieked instead. One arm was broad, flat, and rubbery. No elbow, no hand. A flipper coated in human skin. The other was long and boneless, a fleshy tentacle with limp fingers at the end.

She looked at his face. Long tusks curved down from a wide, lipless mouth. Patches of hair were missing. His eyes were glazed with terror.

The frenzied fairies mobbed him again, and he lost his grip on the side, vanishing in another pulsing succession of colored flashes. Steam sizzled up from the seething water.

"What is the meaning of this?" Grandpa Sorenson hollered, hustling to the edge of the pool. Lena followed behind him. The water in the pool flickered a few more times. Many of the fairies whizzed away. A few flew over to Grandpa.

One fairy in particular chirped angrily. She had short blue hair and silvery wings.

"He did what?" Grandpa said.

An unrecognizable monstrosity heaved itself out of the water and lay panting on the flagstones. The deformed creature had no clothes. Lena crouched beside him, placing a hand on his side.

"He had no idea that would happen," Grandpa complained. "It was innocent!"

The fairy twittered her disapproval.

Kendra gaped at the freakish form of her brother. Most of his hair had fallen out, revealing a lumpy scalp stippled with moles. His face was broader and flatter, with sunken eyes and tusks the size of bananas protruding from his mouth. A misshapen hump swelled high above his shoulders.

On his back below the hump, four blowholes puckered for air. His legs had united into a single crude tail. He slapped the ground with his flipper arm. The tentacle writhed like a snake.

Chapter 8