Switchers by Kate Thompson

hesitated, thinking of her own mother and her love for her garden, wherever she found herself. And her father had a fancy car and good suits and worked in what Lizzie scornfully referred to as ‘business’. If they had bought a house here instead of near the park, it might have been her own garden they were intending to ‘trim’. She looked at Kevin. He was waiting eagerly for her reply. They were living on opposite sides of the tracks, she realised. And yet, they were alike.
    ‘You thinks about things too much, young lady,’ said Lizzie.
    ‘That’s true,’ said Kevin. ‘She’s right for once.’
    ‘You bad-mannered little pup!’ said Lizzie. ‘Go on, the two of you. Get out of here and eat some shrubs while you still has the chance.’
    Kevin winked at Tess and looked around. They were well hidden, there among the bushes and trees.
    ‘Make sure you isn’t white, now, whatever else you does,’ said Lizzie. ‘I don’t want anyone coming blaming my Nancy.’
    Tess was converted. While Lizzie watched, they made their change. Nancy stared around the edge of the bushes, astonished by the sudden appearance of two goats, one brown and one black.
    ‘Ooh,’ said Lizzie. ‘That did me the power of good, that did. Makes me feel young again.’
    But none of the three goats understood a word that she said.
    Tess and Kevin hopped over the stone wall which bounded the scrubby field and into a small orchard. Behind them they could hear Nancy bleating pathetically at the loss of her new friends. For a moment or two they dithered, drawn quite strongly by the call of one of their own kind, but then they moved off among the trees.
    Tess knew immediately why the others had been so keen that she try out being a goat. She had been sheep, cattle, horses, and recently she had quite often been a deer along with the others in the Phoenix Park, but none of them had felt quite like this. She had realised quite some time ago that her ability to experience the lives and beings of other creatures had an effect upon her personality as a human being. Each time she changed, something of what she learnt of the animal character stayed with her. She had developed quickness of reaction and awareness of her surroundings from the timid creatures of the fields and woodlands: the mice and squirrels and birds. From the farmyard animals she had learnt patience and a kind of resignation. Now, as she felt the full-blooded mischievous nature of the goat, its sharpness and its love of life and wildness and freedom, she became aware of how tame and careful her life had always been. The values that she had absorbed in her succession of comfortable homes and high-class schools had prejudiced her more deeply than she supposed. She had always avoided those animals which had characteristics that she perceived belonged to people of a different, inferior class. She had never experienced life as nature’s scoundrels because of her fear of their human counterparts. Foxes, bats, crows and magpies, rats and stoats were all villainous creatures in her imagination. She had seen herself as being on the other side of an ongoing battle between good and evil.
    Now things were beginning to change. Some of that change was certainly brought about by the days and nights of existence as a rat, when she had experienced for herself how it felt to live outside the law, despised and hunted. But there had been good things about it, too. She had discovered a new sense of courage, and a willingness to stand up and put that courage to the test when she had to. It had been exhilarating. She remembered how she had felt when Long Nose had bitten off her tail. She had been utterly fearless at that moment. It had been a very different feeling from her prim and petty resistance of Kevin when they had first met, and she suspected that she would have more useful resources to draw on now if a similar occasion arose. Her time as a rat, and even more so this new, exciting exploration of