The dragons were a boisterous lot when they gathered. She couldn’t really tell anyone’s gender, nor their age, though if her parents were right, everyone would be at least a couple of years older than she. Dashers mingled with creepers, and creepers with tramplers—no one seemed to care much who was who, and no dragon was alone. Even Jennifer, who was trying to sit back and observe everyone else over her own ketchup-splashed sheep bits, found herself laughing at jokes she overheard, and smiling back at those who passed her on the porch.
“Time for a story!” one of the dashers called out after most of them had finished eating. “Where’s old Crawford? Crawdad, tell us a tale!”
“I’m right here! But why doesn’t anyone ever write these things down when I tell them, so you don’t have to keep bugging me?” Her grandfather’s voice was boisterous, and made the others laugh. “Very well, a story. It is our tradition after all, especially when newer dragons are among us. This is how our people hand down history and legends—around a meal, and under a crescent moon. We don’t keep much in the way of libraries or archives—my sitting room has more fiction than fact, I’m afraid—but I’ll tell you a story some say is true, and some say not.
“There was a time, centuries ago, when people accepted dragons, adapted to their presence, and even revered them in parts of the world. Civilizations believed dragons to bring luck, weather, or even life and death. People changed their crops, tactics in battle, and who they would marry, all on the whisper of a whim of a forked tongue.
“At that time, there was a force that kept dragons vital. We do not know much about it now except for its name: the Ancient Furnace.”
“What, you mean like a big fireplace?” This interruption came from a young-sounding dasher who sat next to Alex. Their wing patterns were similar, and so Jennifer guessed this was Alex’s brother, Patrick. “This is a story about a dumb fireplace?!”
Crawford’s own granddaughter, and the more seasoned weredragons assembled, knew how little the elder cared for interruptions in the middle of a story. But he shook the comment off, showed a thin smile, and continued.
“Whatever sort of machine it was, it filled entire caverns with its grinding and roaring, and bathed entire forests in bright blue and green flames. But these fires grew the trees, rather than consuming them. Over a thousand years ago, the Ancient Furnace forged a magical refuge for weredragons, covering Crescent Valley with moon elms suitable for our kind.”
Several of the dragons nodded their heads in recognition. This was driving Jennifer nuts—what the heck was this Crescent Valley? And now “moon elms”? But she knew better than to stop her grandfather.
“One night, a tribe of werachnids crept into Crescent Valley. They had learned of the Ancient Furnace’s power, and they coveted it. Using sorcery, they wove webs about the Furnace’s defenses, poisoned its workings, and stole its secrets. But as they tried to escape, the Furnace ground its gears in a last blast of effort, waking up the dragons and bringing them charging.
“No werachnid made it out alive, but the Ancient Furnace’s machinery was irretrievably broken. Its light dimmed, its rumblings fell silent, and soon after that, it was lost.”
“Lost?” This from Patrick again.
Crawford, irritated at the second interruption, snapped. “Yes, lost, boy! As in ‘never found again.’ ”
“Why doesn’t anyone just go to the same cave where it was, and look around? Maybe we could fix it?”
“You’re a bright young man,” the elder said without seeming at all to mean it. “No doubt you’ve got a map to the Ancient Furnace’s true location, and a shovel and a pick, and enough superglue and know-how to fix it right back up again!”
Jennifer was enjoying the lashing—nobody lost patience like her grandpa in midstory—but a more basic question urged her forward. “Um, Grandpa… what’s a werachnid? I mean, weredragons, werachnids … how many of us werethingies are there, anyway?”
He turned to face her, but with a softer expression. “Ah. Sorry, Niffer. I’ve told so many of these stories over and over again, I can’t remember who’s heard which, anymore. Well, let’s see… werachnids… yes, I think I know how to explain. Follow me, everyone.”
It was a short walk down to the lakeside, where Crawford opened up a large wooden box there. Jennifer always figured it held fishing tackle or life preservers, so she was surprised when he pulled out some ceramic bowls and little plastic bags of something she couldn’t make out.
“Different dragons would answer Jennifer in different ways,” he said taking one bowl with a swift wing claw and scooping it into the lake. “I’ll answer like this: There really is only
one
set of ‘werethingies,’ as you put it. Watch as I add these ingredients…”
They all watched him uncertainly, even the older ones among them. He shook the contents of the first small bowl onto his claw carefully, and then scraped at the leavings for quite some time before he spoke.
“Fifty grains of salt, for the ancestors that first fought,” he muttered. He tipped them into the bowl. Then he lifted the second small bowl and counted something else out onto his palm.
“Fifty seeds, to bear the fruit of future generations.” These went into the bowl as well.
“Fifty minutes, for how long this answer is taking,” whispered Catherine, who had settled next to Jennifer. The younger dragon snorted.
“As some of you know, fifty is a number of some significance among weredragons,” explained Crawford while mixing the ingredients of the large bowl with one finger claw. “A dragon is not considered mature until he has seen fifty morphs. The oream hunts use fifty hunters from each clan. The newolves use fifty different chords to speak to us. And so on.”
Jennifer felt a fresh surge of irritation. She had asked what a werachnid was, and now her grandfather was talking about oreams, and newolves, and a bunch of other things she didn’t know or care about! She had a sudden insight into why her father was the way he was—it must be in the genes.
Hold on
, the icy thought struck.
Does that mean
I’ll
be like that when I’m older
?
Crawford’s voice shook her from that horrific thought. “No one knows why fifty is the number, but fifty it is. And so this drink I have made, with fifty grains of salt and fifty seeds, is a ceremonial drink among weredragons. It honors our past, our future, and the changes in between. We drink, and we adapt. Here.”
He breathed a small spurt of flame over the large bowl and then held it out to Jennifer. She took it in both claws and examined its contents. Various seeds—tiny kiwi seeds, acorns, even a peach pit—peered back from the salty water.
She brought it up to her mouth and sipped. The first thing she noticed was how difficult it was for a reptilian head to sip—the liquid dribbled past her pointed teeth and down her long, narrow chin. The second thing she noticed was that this was, essentially, hot salty water.
“Yeouch!” she squeaked, dropping the bowl.
Her grandfather sighed as he surveyed the muddy seeds at her feet. “Yes, well, anyway, tradition is important. I’m sure you all get the idea.”
“Sorry,” Jennifer mumbled.
He winked at her and continued. “To get back to your question on werachnids, they come from the deep past, like ourselves and our traditions. ‘Fifty times fifty years ago,’ we dragons say when we mean longer than anyone knows. And back then, according to legend, there was only one set of people who could change shape. They were the
mutautem
, and their exploits influenced Greek, Central American, East Asian, and Norwegian mythologies: people, who some mistook for gods, shifting from one shape to another. Each
mutauta
could change to just about any living thing—fish, bird, bear, dragon, insect, even a tree—but the copy was a poor imitation.
“That is, until the First Generation came. They were the fifty children of the most powerful
mutauta
, a woman by the name of Allucina who could turn into pure living light. Each one of Allucina’s children could change into a different form—one form only, but with more accuracy and grace than their forebears. There was Brigida, the eldest and first perfect dragon; and Bruce, the first perfect spider. And Bardou the wolf, Bulbul the songbird, Bennu the eagle, Bian the sea monster, and many more whose names are lost to us now.”
Jennifer tried to imagine what the call downstairs to dinner must have sounded like with all these “B” names, but she kept her thoughts to herself.
“The last child was Barbara, who took no other shape, but kept her human form.
“There was great tension between many of the children—in part because there were fifty of them, and stress was only natural. But between Brigida and Bruce, the first- and second-born, there was something deeper than dislike. The dragon was fond of flying in the open air and laughing gusts of flame. She looked darkly upon her spider brother and his preference for quiet crevices and spinning webs. In return, Bruce thought his sister to be arrogant and foolish, and he was afraid of her recklessness. Their mutual fear and distrust soon evolved into hatred.
“As children, they played unkind pranks on each other—worms tucked inside a meal, tears and burns on each other’s clothing, that sort of thing. Once older, Brigida and Bruce favored traps, like exploding toys and books with poisoned pages. They enlisted the younger children in alliances, and before long the family was torn in two.”
Jennifer was startled. Was this what it was like to have a brother or sister? She supposed her parents spoiled her as an only child, but it seemed vastly preferable to the alternative, even if this was just a myth.
“Allucina would not stand for this, and so she turned to her youngest, Barbara, who had not allied with either side. She gave Barbara incredible powers, and mastery over the beasts. And as Allucina died—some say Bruce poisoned his own mother—she left her youngest daughter as her sole heir to all her possessions and powers, and she named Barbara matriarch of the family.
“This did not sit well with Brigida
or
Bruce—or any of the rest of them, for that matter. After years of hatching plots and setting snares, the family finally broke out into full-blown violence—Brigida and her allies, Bruce and his, and Barbara standing alone. Brothers killed sisters and vice versa, and when all was done, there were only the three of them left.
“Brigida fled to the steepest mountains, where Barbara could not chase. Bruce slipped away into a labyrinth of shadows. And to this day, thousands of years later, their brood remain dispersed, hating the sight of the others, hoping to finish the job their ancestors left undone.”
Crawford finished the story and let them sit in silence for a while.
Patrick finally spoke first. “So the werachnids are people, like us, except they change into spider form? It sounds like we could just talk to them, get to know them better. I mean it’s been thousands of years. Surely they don’t hate us that much anymore?”
Jennifer was sure she saw her grandfather hesitate for an instant before he nodded. “They do, Patrick. They are less human now, and more spider. Out of instinct, they still hate us. They’ve gathered in enough numbers over the centuries to drive us out of one home after another. The last place they destroyed was Eveningstar.”
Jennifer again thought back to that fateful night when she turned five and her world turned upside down. If she closed her eyes, she could just make out the screaming of unknown beasts…
“But why don’t we fight back?” asked Catherine. “We
must
be stronger than them! I mean, we can fly! We can breathe fire! Spiders are small. A dragon can squash a tarantula, right? They’re just bugs!”
Crawford seemed caught between a rueful smile and a forgiving wince. “These ‘bugs,’ as you call them, Catherine, are not small. Not small at all.
“And while they cannot do what we can do, they have their own abilities. Centuries of hiding and trapping have honed their skills. You say we can fly? They can jump, and jump high, to catch their prey! They don’t miss. They have excellent vision, and the most powerful among them can see across space and time.
“In their lairs, their chieftains spin new recipes for poisons and, some believe, sorceries. When their forces attacked Eveningstar, they had a weapon we didn’t think anyone but us had: They could breathe fire.”
Jennifer hugged herself with her wings. She was not crazy about spiders when they were an inch long and spun harmless webs in the front doorway. The thought of a spider her size that could launch into the sky like a rocket and breathe fire past poisoned fangs on the way down was plainly terrifying.
“What about Barbara’s descendants?” Patrick asked.
To her own surprise, it was actually Jennifer who began to answer. “I’ve seen one,” she whispered. She was loud enough that the others turned to look at her in surprise. “The dream … Ms. Graf. She was wearing shining armor and a crown. They use swords, right? She did. They speak Latin, I think… and I remember talk of justice, and laws, and prophecy. And death.” She felt Catherine’s wing claw reach out and grasp hers. Looking up at her grandfather, Jennifer shivered. “They’re brutal.”
“They are brutal,” he answered sadly. “But I’m afraid even your potent imagination does not do them justice, Jennifer. While the werachnids act out of animal instinct, the beaststalkers—so we call them—act out of religious fervor. Barbara is their patron saint, and they seek us out in an effort to smite evil.
“Beaststalkers often have swords as you suggest, but they do not need them. They are masters of the duel, walking weapons that use light and sound to subdue even the most powerful of Allucina’s other children. Their very voice can paralyze their foe. Some even—”
Suddenly Crawford stopped, as if something had occurred to him. He sighed and smiled apologetically. “I don’t mean to scare all of you. Other than in dreams”—he looked meaningfully at Jennifer—“no weredragon has reported seeing a beaststalker for years. Be glad of that.”
This did not completely reassure her. She looked into the lingering darkness under the sunlit trees nearby, half-expecting to see huge, bulbous eyes or the glint of a curved sword. But there was only the empty eagle nest.