ow covered with thick fur, even as
the limbs were gnarling--

Then, suddenly the door opened. Brother Lorenzo stepped out, his kindly
pious face wrinkled with sleep but otherwise showing no irritation or
displeasure at being summoned from his rest. At first, the monk seemed
not to have noticed Ambrose's form, for he gazed above him and away.

Ambrose kept on shrinking.

Finally, Brother Lorenzo's gaze chanced to glance downward. But still,
his features mirrored no recognition or alarm; only puzzlement.

_Now_, thought Ambrose, _now is the time for me to snarl_.

But no snarl, nor semblance of a snarl, emerged from his lips. Rather,
his lips had elongated into long sucking proboscises, while already a
third pair of limbs had commenced growing from his furred-over abdomen.

This was not a wolf-like form, he was assuming, Ambrose suddenly
realized in terror. But if it was not lupine, what was it? Had he
misread the incantation? Had he mispronounced a simple word?

The weird crawling form into which he had metamorphosed was now hardly
an inch higher than the surface of the floor. But Ambrose's eyes had
bulged into great many-faceted orbs capable of seeing objects with
greater clarity than ever. Inches away from him, he made out the segment
of scroll he had discarded after reading aloud from it. Crawling over to
it, he perused the beginning words of the spell.

And it suddenly dawned on him (while what passed for a heart and
ventricles within his pulpy form began simulating horror) that the
ancient monk of centuries ago who had first copied the incantation must
have been as careless of spelling as he. For the charm obviously did not
convert its user into a werewolf, but rather some other animal ...

Dredging up all the miserable Latin he knew, Ambrose fished for some
word similar to _lupinus_.

And suddenly he had it!

_Pulicus!_ That was the word the sloppy copyist of yesteryear had
wrongly transcribed.

From the word _pulex_, meaning "flea."

Not how to become a wolf-like man, but a flea-like man--that was what
the formula had described.

Ambrose, the flea, braced himself. Gathering his powerful legs under
him, he leaped in soaring flight to land upon the object of hatred--the
giant Brother Lorenzo, who towered so high above him.

But the gentle and considerate Brother Lorenzo, who probably would not
have hurt hair nor hide of any other creature on Earth--even he knew
full well that there is only one thin