You are not imagining me, my love. I am your Timothy. Whether I am in this form or another, I am still the same. My brain doesn’t change. I am never just a wild animal, unhampered by human morals. I am me at all times, even if I don’t seem to be the same.
A pooka is magical, you see. We come from the hills of Ireland, but there are few of us left. Perhaps I am the last. I do not know.
“A pooka, like in your gallery?”
Yes, I was trying to prepare you. I wanted you to know. I needed you to understand what I am.
“The last? Why? Can’t pookas have children?”
I do not know, Penelope. There is no one to ask.
I am hoping that you and I can have children, but that isn’t certain. Something seems to have gone wrong with our species — if that’s what we are. Perhaps, the rest of the pookas went back to Fairie. That is where we originally came from, according to the ancient lore of our kind. But maybe the other pookas were all killed. It is a mystery to me; one I cannot solve without leaving this realm.
I was standing with my hand on his shoulder, petting him, when he did his switching. He was suddenly back to Timothy. I dropped my hand and stepped back.
“Please, don’t hate me for keeping this from you. I was afraid that you would leave me.”
I turned my back and went to the chair where he’d been sitting moments before. I slouched down and tried to think.
This was impossible. Magic wasn’t real. Yet I’d seen Timothy transform. I’d petted him as a horse, talked to him, and watched as he switched back.
“Can you always control the change? Do you have to be an animal during a full moon or something?” I asked.
“No,” he laughed softly, but it wasn’t his full laugh. This one was filled with bitterness and sadness.
“A pooka can remain in his human form as long as he desires. The change requires little of me. Magic, it is theorized, drains the person, but that’s not true for a pooka. Changing for us is as easy as clapping my hands or taking a step. It’s a part of me.”
Timothy took a step closer.
I held up my hand, still unsure, still quaking with the shock of this strange demonstration of what he’d told me and shown me — this impossible, and very melodramatic exhibition, this ridiculous fantasy in a bedroom upstairs of a mansion owned by the man who’d been dating me.
“You have not run away screaming. Have I not appalled you?” he asked.
I sighed loudly, then waited a moment, thinking. “I don’t know. I think I’m in shock. Perhaps I’m asleep? Or drugged. Did you put something in the scrambled eggs?”
I gathered breath like a small child picking flowers. In out, in out. But my hands were still shaking. My knees felt like wiggly gelatine. I closed my eyes, then reopened them, not sure I it was safe to let this individual out of my sight. What might he turn into next? Had I been slipped some LSD. That made people see strange things. Right?
“You’ve been given no drugs, my darling, but if that doubt remains foremost in your mind, we can wait a few hours, and I will show you again. Would you like me to change into a rabbit or a cat rather than my horse form?”
I ignored the question, my mind flitting elsewhere, to something I was more ready to handle. “Do the people in this house know about you? Do the chef and . . .”
“I will not speak of others, Penelope. Each person owns his own story, whether he or she is human, pooka, or other. Andrew isn’t a pooka. As I said, I am the last pooka to my knowledge.”