Celebrate by Kim Dare Page A

safe side.”
    “His birthday is the 11 th of April,” Raynard said, before Ori had a chance to add a date to his explanation.
    Ori looked from Hamilton to Raynard and back again. It wasn’t unusual for Raynard to speak for him. Hamilton had long since ceased looking to Ori for confirmation of every answer his master gave on his behalf. Luck was on Ori’s side; Raynard and Hamilton were looking at each other rather than at him. Neither could have seen his expression slip.
    Ori dropped his gaze to the dusty floor.
    “If that is all?” Raynard said.
    Hamilton finally got the hint and walked away, taking the other elders with him. Only Ori and Raynard remained alongside the cages.
    “Do you have something to say, Ori?” Raynard asked.
    You got my birthday wrong. Ori swallowed those words down. There was no need to utter them out loud. The date wasn’t important. Acting like it was a big deal would be silly.
    “I…um…” Ori cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t think the cages would be this…”
    Raynard smiled slightly. “Before you first stretched your wings you wouldn’t have found them anywhere near so unsettling. It’s only because you know what it feels like to fly out in the open air that you can understand how appalling a shifter can find being caged.”
    Ori nodded on the general principle that his master was always right about everything. Well, right about everything except dates of birth…
    Raynard took a bunch of keys from his pocket. Metal clanked loudly against metal as he unlocked and opened the cage nearest them. “In.”
    “Sir?”
    “You won’t be comfortable making a decision unless you see for yourself what it’s like to be locked in a cage for a little while.”
    Ori stared up at Raynard. The explanation made perfect sense, but Ori couldn’t ignore the fact that being caged was a punishment. His heart raced; he hated being punished. He hated knowing he had let his master down and deserved to be punished.
    Ori swallowed rapidly and reminded himself that he was being foolish. He hadn’t done anything wrong. Raynard had no reason to punish him. Unless, of course, Raynard had noticed his reaction to him getting his date of birth slightly wrong. Reacting badly to something so incredibly unimportant after everything Raynard had done for him—that was certainly worth a punishment.
    “The sooner you go in, the sooner you’ll be out again,” Raynard said.
    Great, now he had Raynard thinking he needed to coax him into obeying a perfectly reasonable order. Heat rushed to Ori’s cheeks. He turned toward the cage door. His mind was desperate to show he wanted to obey his master, but his body had other concerns. He had to force himself to put one foot in front of the other and overcome a visceral aversion, but he did it.
    The lock clanged shut. Ori jumped. All at once, he was caged, trapped. It didn’t matter that he could see through the bars on three sides. The close confines made the breath catch in his throat. He automatically sought for security by adopting his rest position with his hands folded neatly behind his back, but there was no air.
    “Ori.”
    Ori turned around. Raynard stood just outside the cage.
    “Come here.”
    Ori didn’t need to force his feet into action this time. He was soon less than a foot away from Raynard. He stared up at his master, doing his damnedest to ignore the bars between them.
    “Tell me how it feels, fledgling.”
    Ori cleared his throat. “Trapped. Enclosed. Confined.” Ori rolled his shoulders. Logically, he knew that if he moved his hands from behind his back, he could stretch his arms out and still not be able to touch any of the bars. In his swan form, he’d have room to unfurl his wings too. But it didn’t feel like it.
    “Do you feel like the cage binds you too closely, that your freedom is too restricted?”
    Ori nodded rapidly. “Yes, sir.”
    “You’re wrong.” There was no anger in Raynard’s voice, but the