Millie doesn’t know she she can change shape. Here’s the scene where she finds out in my current draft of Wild Magic, the 4th book in Many Kinds of Magic.

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They heard the crowd before they saw them, yelling insults and curses, some in incredibly explicit language that painted Millie as an enchantress who consumed men. Millie could hear the coachman shouting at the crowd.

“I should have accepted the guard I was offered,” said Mr. O’Brien. “Mrs. Hexworth, if the crowd manages to breach the carriage, I am going to change into my wolf form. Leap onto my back and hang onto my neck. You can take tight hold of the thick skin and a handful of skin. You won’t hurt me. I’ll take us clear of the crowd. The carriage driver knows our first stop and will meet us there.”

He had time for no more than that when what he feared happened—someone wrenched the door open. Millie could feel the change in O’Brien’s aura as his power moved and began to shape him into a different form. And even as she sensed the way he changed, she found her own power imitating him, shifting her bones, her flesh, everything about her. The man who was trying to reach into the carriage fell back, his mouth open in astonishment or fear, and she heard the low grumble of Mr. O’Brien’s growl.

Furthermore, the carriage seemed suddenly ten times the size, and the face of the intruder was enormous. When she opened her mouth to make her own sound, it came out as a loud caw, and when she tried to leap onto O’Brien’s back, holding out her arms to balance herself, her arms caught the air and lifted her off her seat. In a moment, instinct took over. She flapped her arms hard and soared out of the carriage over the heads of those who were trying to break into it.

Looking behind her, she could see a large red wolf leap out of the carriage over the heads of the attackers. But she had little time to think about it, for she had problems of her own.

Her legs were doing no good, though she was trying to run with them, for she was twenty yards or more above the street. Her arms had turned into wings, and they had lifted her way up here. She tucked her legs up underneath her and swept the wings down in another strong beat, and then another and another, for she was flying, not in a graceful manner, but lurching from wingsweep to wingsweep as she got the hang of it. She climbed higher and higher, soaring away from the street and flying over the roofs of the buildings.

Could she circle in the air? Yes, she could. Down below, she could see the wolf—O’Brien—looking up at her. He must have realized she was watching him because he began to pad along the road, and she, still a little ungainly but gaining confidence and grace as she learned how this body moved in the air, followed him.

Millie’s bird form was able to keep pace with the wolf, and she flew on and on, following O’Brien’s red shape, which more or less kept to the ribbon of the road, but avoided places with crowds of people, leaving the road when he saw he was approaching a village and skirting through fields until he came back out on the road on the other side.

She wondered if he would have any trouble with other travelers, but here in England, where wolves were no longer in the wild, they must have assumed he was as human as they were and left him alone. For his own part, he simply padded along, ignoring the other travelers.

Eventually, when Millie’s chest and shoulder muscles were beginning to ache, he stopped within sight of a village that must have been about an hour and a half’s drive from Chester. Millie hadn’t seen the carriage they’d left behind—or at least she hadn’t noticed that one of the carriages on the road was theirs. Perhaps she had overlooked it, or perhaps it had passed them during one of their diversions around a village, because it was waiting for them outside the inn in the village.

O’Brien did not enter the village, but leapt over a gate into a field and sat there, his muzzle pointed up toward her, and his tail tucked neatly around one side to lie across his front paws. Did he want her to join him?

It suddenly occurred to Millie that she’d never landed before. Well, there was a first time for everything. The first thing to do was to drop low enough to consider how to reach the ground. Birds she had watched circled in order to come into land. That seemed a good idea. She tried it, stalling a couple of times as she scooped too much air under her wings and stopped in the air instead of merely slowing down. But each time she recovered.

O’Brien was probably laughing at her. It was hard to tell from his wolf’s face, though he was sitting there with his tongue flopping out one side of his muzzle as he watched her.

She learned from those two stalls and managed to circle down until she was not far above the ground. The last part was the bit she wasn’t looking forward to. It was, she supposed, a matter of a controlled stall as her feet hit the ground. She spread her wings ready, cupped the air, and held her breath. It wasn’t too bad an effort for a first time. She had to walk forward quickly, but she didn’t plant her face in the dirt as she had been very much afraid she might.

She should have said plant her beak, she supposed. She had a rather splendid one. And from what she could see, she was black all over. She rather thought she might be a raven or a crow. Furthermore, a raven or a crow she was likely to stay, because she had no idea at all how to change back.