At first, when I held you in my hands, you drew into your shell. But, after some time, you stuck out your head and looked at me with these tiny, ringed eyes. I petted you and asked if you could feel my touch because I read that turtle shells are like skin, living cells crackling with nerve endings. You seemed to nod and reach out to me with your fin-like hands. I drew a shallow bath and placed you in the tub with some rocks from the rain garden outside the apartment. You quickly perched yourself on a rock and basked in the sunlight streaming in through the bathroom window. I cut carrots and lettuce into small pieces and let you eat the bits out of my hand.

When I got home from work, you were human again, pink and naked, asleep in the tub. I woke you and you looked around and stretched, arms and legs pressing up against the basin and wall tile. What was I this time? you asked, hanging a leg over the edge. I helped you out of the tub and, as you dressed, I showed you the notes I had taken.

I think you recognized me, but I don’t know. Do you remember anything?

I wanted to feel safe, you said.

We ate dinner on the floor among boxes we still haven’t unpacked. Since downsizing to a one-bedroom, we will have to get rid of most of our things. Just throw it all out, you said. But I can’t. Not yet. At night, while I graded papers, you rested your head on my shoulder and said you’re sorry you can’t work anymore, that we had to move here. I stroked you, your hair, your soft human skin.

The next morning you were an ocelot. You paced the length of the bedroom along the foot of the bed. Back and forth you went. Your long slender body rippling. I said your name and you swung your head to me. Your muscles tensed under your dappled fur like a tightly wrung rag. You let out a low growl and sized me up with your big eyes and, after a few moments, you resumed your pacing.

I got ready for work, moving slowly and quietly so as not to startle you, threaten you. I showered with the bathroom door closed and made my lunch facing the bedroom where you continued to pace like the wild cats at the zoo. Captive and bored. Aware of being studied. Before I left, I set a raw chicken breast on the kitchen floor with a dish of water.

I taught a class about foxes in my ethology class. How, through selective breeding, a Russian scientist was able to domesticate silver foxes over the course of sixty years. A student asked, When people turn into foxes, do they turn into domesticated foxes or wild foxes?

The time you turned into a silver fox, we were watching the news. The anchor announced that, following months of conjecture, the WHO had officially classified the Serenity Virus as a sexually transmitted disease. People could take off their masks and use less hand sanitizer. I looked over and you were curled into the corner of the couch, your shirt still hanging off your sleek body. I tried to touch you, but you yipped and tore down the hall. A slithery streak of black. This was when we still had our house. You rushed from room to room, searching for a way out. And when you couldn’t find one, you tried burrowing into the couch cushions.

They turn into wild foxes, I told the student.

When Serenity Retreats first developed their treatment for mental illness, they found that wild breeds, ones that had evolved without human interference, produced the best results. Spending a week as a frog or a lioness proved to be more therapeutic than spending the same amount of time as a bulldog or a cow.

For a few years, it was just a thing rich people did. They would go on the retreat and then talk about it on podcasts. How being a ferret for a week had cured them of their depression or their schizophrenia. But then the virus became transmissible and mutated into something it was never intended to be as it passed from person to person.

At lunch, a colleague came to my office, and we ate our sandwiches together.

How’s your research paper coming along? he asked.

I have a lot of notes, I replied. And not a lot of conclusions.

I chewed on my ham and cheese. My colleague waited for me to continue.

She’s turning more frequently, I told him. Almost every day now.

Do you recognize her when she does?

That’s the question, isn’t it? What I see when she turns, is it her, or am I projecting something that isn’t there onto a wild animal? Humans love to project human traits onto non-human things.

It’s a problem, he said.

It is.

So how are you going to solve it?

Domesticated foxes have a white patch of fur on their foreheads, which differentiates them from wild foxes. Other researchers who study turnings have been looking for a physiological hallmark that differentiates a person who has turned from an ordinary animal. These are studies with large sample sizes conducted across the world. But I’m an ethologist. My sample size is just her. I’m trying to draw a map of her, so I can trace an ethos that remains present in every form she takes.

Maybe you need to expand your sample size.

Maybe.

I heard there’s a home opening for turners who have nowhere else to go, my colleague said. The directors might let you observe the guests if you give them a call.

I shrugged. Couldn’t hurt.

When I got home you were human. On the couch, reading a book.

I must have just finished eating something terrible when I turned back, you said. As soon as I woke, I threw up all over the floor.

It was raw chicken, I said as I peered around the corner at the kitchen.

Don’t worry, I cleaned it up. I’m at least good for the occasional house chore.

I didn’t mean to—

It’s fine.

I dug my notebook and a pen out of my shoulder bag and sat down across from you.

I don’t remember much, you said, closing the book in your lap and crossing your arms over its cover. I was carnivorous. Hungry. Even after I’d eaten, I was thinking about my next kill.

Did you recognize me?

You shook your head. I made a note.

Do you know what you were?

You shrugged. A cat maybe.

I nodded. Ocelot.

You made a face.

It’s like a small panther, I said. About the size of a Maine Coon.

A Maine Coon?

I held up my hands a few feet apart to demonstrate the size.

Yeah, a Maine Coon.

Okay.

That night, in bed, you draped an arm across my chest and said, Aren’t you afraid one day you’ll wake up and I’ll be a bear or a wolf or something else that might hurt you?

You wouldn’t hurt me.

Wouldn’t I?

Your breath was warm on my neck. I thought of the first time you turned. You were a gecko, perched on my nose. The virus and speculation on how it spread had been all over the news for weeks. I held you and felt your tiny heart beating fast against my finger. I could have crushed you if I wanted.

I canceled classes and went to the St. Francis Home for Turners. It was a large facility converted from a mansion outside the city, nestled into a hillside of lush gardens and artificial habitats. One of the directors met me in the lobby. He shook my hand and introduced himself as Dr. Venkata. He gave me a tour of the facility. We started in the guests’ quarters, where they lived while in human form. Then we entered a great room filled with terrariums customized to nearly every climate, all big enough to fit a human comfortably. Most were empty, but I noticed a desert snake basking under a heat lamp in one terrarium and a bright tree frog hanging from a wet leaf in another.

We passed through a few rooms that smelled of sawdust with cages meant for rodents and rabbits. Then we went outside and Dr. Venkata showed me the aviary. A few colorful birds darted around the large, netted enclosure. Off to the side, within the aviary, but sectioned off from the other birds, a hawk was perched on the highest branch of a tree. That’s Samuel, Dr. Venkata said. He’s been like that for a couple weeks now. We are planning to build a larger aviary just for raptors soon. Hate to see him unable to stretch his wings in there.

Could he stay like that forever? I asked.

It’s possible, Dr. Venkata replied.

Would you ever release him?

Dr. Venkata grew very serious.

If Samuel were to ever turn back mid-flight he would almost certainly die.

Samuel gazed down on us as we passed below him. He flapped his wings, rising a few inches off the tree branch, and bit at the netting between his enclosure and the sky.

Next, we saw habitats built for large mammals, semi-aquatic mammals, even one for penguins, though it was empty. Beyond that, there was a fenced-in pasture where a couple horses and a sheep grazed. We finished the tour at the outdoor visitor area.

Many of our guests come to us because their families don’t have the means to take care of them anymore, Dr. Venkata explained. Most people would prefer to visit their loved ones while they’re in human form. But as the turnings become more frequent, it sometimes isn’t possible. So, we have set up this space for the guests to interact with their families in their current forms. And of course, we have an indoor visiting area as well.

A woman sat in the grass with an armadillo. A father and his child fed vegetables to a goat, speaking to it in soft voices. But what caught my eye was an old woman sitting in a lawn chair with a silver fox resting at her side. She pet the fox and the fox licked her hand. As we got closer, I looked for a leash. Dr. Venkata suddenly grabbed my arm.

Oh no, he said. You shouldn’t approach them.

The fox heard us and sat up on its haunches and bared its teeth. Its forehead was perfectly black. No patch of white fur. No leash. The old woman shot us a look and we backed away.

That fox is tame, I said as we went back into the facility.

With her, he is.

When I got home you were a roadrunner, hiding behind some boxes. You had a beautiful plume of feathers on your head and bright, intelligent eyes. After some time, you let me take you in my hands and carry you outside. I’ve read that roadrunners fly low to the ground and for only a few seconds at a time. So there was no danger of you falling out of the sky. I set you on the grass and you sped away, darting under bushes and around trees. You ran across the playground in the middle of the complex and into the parking lot, where you stopped between two cars. I trailed you, like an ornithologist.

As I got closer, you ran across the street into an undeveloped plot of land, spreading your wings every once and a while, taking off and diving down to catch crickets in the grass. Your wings caught the sun and they glowed a bright auburn. It’s like you were dancing. Leaping and diving. When you grew tired, I caught up with you and we went home.

I made you a nest out of a towel and set it behind a stack of boxes. I sat and waited for you to find the nest and settle into it. I touched your wing and said, I’m sorry. For thinking you could be mapped like the stars.

The next day you were still a roadrunner, and the day after that. I prepared for lectures, finished my research paper, and fed you insects I bought from the pet store. Finally, on the third day you were human again when I got home from work. You wanted to take a hike before the sun set so we drove to a trailhead that would lead up to a view of the city and the whole valley.

When we reached the overlook, we sat in silence for a long time. From so high up, everything below appeared to be unfolding in slow motion. The cars on the road, the people on the sidewalk, the trees swaying in the wind.

It looks like someone took a scoop out of the earth, you said.

Kind of does, yeah.

Another silence.

I finished my paper.

Yeah?

Yeah.

A chipmunk skittered through the dead leaves behind us.

I said, You were a roadrunner this time.

I remember wanting to be free.

You tossed a rock over the ledge.

One day I won’t turn back, you said.

I know.

Promise that you’ll bring me here.

I thought of all the cages at the home for turners. The way you can fit into the palm of my hand sometimes. You looked at me, all squinty-eyed in the sunlight. Wild as the day we met. A bit of your hair fell across your face and caught the sunlight just as your wings did. And we sat there, listening to the forest, the animals.

Someday when I come here, I’ll be listening for you. But not yet. We got up to hike back, dusting the leaves and bits of the forest floor from our pants. You lingered for a moment on the ledge. I was about to call to you when a red-tailed hawk screeched overhead and dove into the great basin below.