“Listen, Jennifer. If it’s important to
you
, it’s important. And you need to talk, believe me. I’m not that much older than you. Sometimes, fourteen years old seems like yesterday.” Catherine sounded surprisingly sad. Jennifer was confused. Weren’t the last couple of years in high school supposed to be the time of your life?
“I wish I had connected with my family more back then. I didn’t realize until my first morph how much I really depend on them. When I was alone out by the highway, I was running away from home. They had told me about the whole weredragon deal, and I was freaking out. I didn’t know whether to believe them or not. Either way, I was furious with them.”
“Huh.” Jennifer didn’t know what to say. This sounded too familiar.
“Girls!” Ned’s aged voice came trembling from deep down in the cave. “Gimme a wing claw here… I think… I’m stuck…”
After freeing Ned’s right hind claw from between two rocks, where it had slipped after contact with a patch of not-so-dry dung, the two of them convinced the elder dragon to get on with the lesson nearer to the cave entrance.
The trick to lizard-calling, according to Ned, was in the smoke you used to prep the ground.
“You gotta
pepper
th’ dirt… like an omelet that ain’t quite right… watch now…”
He snorted vapor from his nostrils and watched it float over the rocky floor of the cavern. Then, with a roar far louder than Jennifer thought this old man could manage, he punched the ground with a clenched claw.
An instant later, an enormous Gila monster came crawling out of the receding smoke. It twisted its massive head about, flicking its tongue, seeking its master. Once it found him, it curled up at his feet and stared at the astonished younger dragons.
“He’s waitin’ … for orders,” Ned explained. The careful Missouri accent didn’t sound so slow and dumb to Jennifer all of a sudden. “He’ll stick ‘round … up to ‘n hour. Then you gotta … call new ‘uns.”
“We’re going to do
that
?” Jennifer stared at the Gila monster. It looked large enough to swallow Phoebe with minimal effort.
“What did you think lizard-calling would be like?” snickered Catherine.
“Well, I dunno, but I didn’t think we’d be …
calling lizards
. Cripes, that thing is huge!”
“You won’t get ‘un… like Trixie here. Not right away. More likel’ a mud turtle … or garden snake. Give a try, Cat.”
With furrowed brow bent low, Catherine puffed smoke onto a patch of dung-lined pebbles. Jennifer peered in closer to get a good look at whatever came out.
After a few seconds, Catherine roared—not as loudly or well as Ned—and pounded the ground.
For a second nothing happened. The smoke dissipated. Jennifer was just about to ask what Catherine did wrong, when the pebbles suddenly began to shift, and out popped a tiny black and yellow box turtle. Without hesitation, it scurried to the cover of its mistress’s left wing.
“Oh!” Catherine herself seemed surprised at the result. “He’s so cute! I love box turtles. Oh, Ned, will I always get him?”
“Love at first sight,” chortled Jennifer. Catherine stuck out her forked tongue.
“There are ways t’get th’ same ‘un back.” Ned nodded. “Assumin’ you don’t get ‘em killed.”
“Killed?” Catherine gasped. “How would that happen?”
“We use them in war,” Jennifer guessed.
Ned nodded again. Catherine’s olive skin paled.
“But you can’t… I won’t…”
“Oh, Catherine, no one expects Boxy here to sail into battle. But Gila monsters could, right Ned?”
“And snakes. Snakes’re best for fightin’. They’re fast. Poisonous. Take stuff personal. Your turtle there, Cat… heeza good-lookin’ fella… prob’ly a family man … we won’t draft ‘im just yet.”
His easygoing smile calmed Catherine a bit, and Jennifer stepped up to take her turn.
She let the smoke flow from her nose and mouth. It built up quickly and covered the ground around her wing claws. She realized in a panic that her foreclaws were not anywhere as muscular as Catherine’s or Ned’s.
I’ll have to make up for it in the vocals
, she told herself. Her tail twitched nervously.
A deep breath later, she let loose with the most ferocious roar she could manage. The noise blasted off the cavern walls and hurt her own ears. Ignoring the pain, she rolled up her tiny clawfingers and brought her fist down upon the cave floor.
To her utter astonishment and dismay, a pygmy owl fluttered out of the scattering smoke. With a panicked hoot and flurry of feathers, it scrambled up to her shoulder and buried its small but exceedingly sharp talons into her collarbone.
Jennifer tried not to wince in pain and embarrassment as she turned to Catherine, who looked ready to bust a gut laughing, and Ned, who seemed unimpressed.
“Okay, see, I have
no
idea where that came from…”
The new moon came, and then another crescent quickly after that. About two and a half weeks would pass before the moon would shift again into its peculiar shape, and Jennifer into hers. As Thanksgiving approached, Jennifer found herself more and more accustomed to life on the farm, whether in the shape of dragon or girl.
Most of the dragons would leave the farm before they changed back to their human form. Surprisingly, one didn’t leave—Joseph Skinner, the young creeper who took Mullery’s camouflage lessons with Jennifer. Without much explanation, he set up in one of Grandpa Crawford’s guest rooms, and his host did not argue at all, or ask questions.
“You’ll find,” he explained to her privately, “that every once in a while, a young weredragon will show up with no roots. I’ve heard a bit about this boy’s background, Niffer, and I’m not surprised he’ll be staying with us. This isn’t just a refuge for our kind during crescent moons, you know. It’s a haven every day, of every week, for as long as I own this cabin. That’s my duty.”
Jennifer thought of Skip, and his moving to Winoka with his father after his mother died. “What’s Joseph’s story? Doesn’t he have any family to go back to?”
“That’s none of your business, or mine,” he chastised. “It’s enough that he wants to stay. There’s room enough at the Thanksgiving table for all, no worries about that!”
That didn’t satisfy Jennifer completely, but Thanksgiving reminded her of something else. “Catherine told me before she left that her grandmother’s still hearing rumors from the dragonflies. Something’s supposed to happen sometime after Thanksgiving. But you didn’t seem to think much of her predictions a while ago.”
Crawford slumped down onto a sitting room couch and rubbed at his fringe of white hair. “True, but I’ve heard a lot since. And I was more worried the first time than I let on, I suppose. Winona Brandfire’s no fool, and she doesn’t pass on news unless she thinks it’s for real. What else have you heard?”
“Something plans to attack Crescent Valley. Something that doesn’t belong.”
He looked thoughtful. “And does that bother you?”
Jennifer shrugged. “I dunno. I don’t even know what Crescent Valley
is
. And no one will tell me for fifty freaking morphs!”
“Forty-seven, now. Crescent Valley doesn’t open itself up to just anyone, Niffer. You have to earn your way in. And there’s no sense in telling you what it’s about until you’re ready to go there. The venerables wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“Okay, see, that’s the sort of thing that drives me nuts about you. I ask about one thing, and you bring up something else I’ve never heard of. What’s a venerable?”
He chuckled. “Sorry, Niffer. It’s just going to take some time. In any case, those rumors sound like the same thing I’m hearing. Something plans to come, maybe to Crescent Valley and maybe not. Maybe it plans to come
here
. In any case, we’ve all got to keep our eyes open, in all phases of the moon.”
“Beaststalkers?” she said breathily.
“Could be. Ned and some of the others, they’ve sent lizard scouts out around the ruins of Eveningstar, and other places. Something’s gathering again. Hard to say who or what. Not friendly, though. Some of the elders think it may be looking for the Ancient Furnace again.”
“The Ancient Furnace? But that was lost long ago—and it’s just a story anyway. Why would anyone think it’s here, or in Crescent Valley? Wouldn’t we have found it by now if it was?”
“They don’t care if we’ve found it or not. Wherever our enemies think it is, they’ll go. A few elders also believe now that it was rumor of the Ancient Furnace years ago that attracted the werachnids to Eveningstar.” He sighed. “How’re your skills coming along?”
She welcomed the change of subject. “I can do tree bark and nest mix pretty well. And Alex says he’s never seen a new dragon tailshock so well. I can flick a beetle off a leaf as I fly by!”
“Great! And how about lizard-calling?”
Jennifer’s smile disappeared. “Oh. That’s going all right. Catherine’s been getting blue-tongued skinks pretty regular, now. And she even managed a hinge-back tortoise before she left.”
“And you?”
She brushed her hair to one side and poked at the couch cushion. “Well, at least the owls stopped coming. But I can’t get much more than a Jaragua, no matter how much smoke I make, or how hard I pound my fist.”
“A jaguar?!?”
She sighed. “
Jaragua
. They’re these lizards so small that they can fit on a quarter. I’m not surprised you haven’t heard of them—only someone who sucks as much as I do can summon one.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Niffer. Most dragons can’t cross skills at all.
You’ve
got two and a half so far. Plus your fire-breathing is solid, your flying is second nature, and I’ve seen you turf-whomping and fishing. You’re really catching on.”
“I guess.” She gave him a look. “You’ve watched me turf-whomp? What’re you doing spying on me, anyway? Did Dad put you up to it?”
He diplomatically ignored the question. “You hear from your dad yet this week?”
“Not yet.” Her father had called every couple of days to check in. The conversations were always brief, but friendly enough. What Catherine had told Jennifer about wanting to see her own parents made more sense as time went on. “I kinda miss him, and Mom.”
“Hang in there. Thanksgiving’s only a couple days away. They’ll be proud of your progress. Maybe you’ll decide go back home with them for a while.”
“Maybe. I bet they’ll drive me nuts in ten minutes.”
***
It was actually more like three and a half, Jennifer mused Thanksgiving morning as she slumped in the cabin’s dining room, back in dragon form. After hugs and kisses from both parents, and a satisfying slobber from Phoebe, her father asked how she was doing. When she made the colossal mistake of telling him, he wouldn’t rest until he gave her an array of pointers on how to make better smoke, and pound harder, and a bunch of other stuff she felt was pointless since her father wasn’t a trampler and had never summoned a lizard in his life.
True, the father who had left her on the cabin porch weeks ago had been uncharacteristically curt that day. But at least she had gotten in a word edgewise!
Elizabeth was more reserved than usual. Perhaps it was the presence of a virtual stranger the entire day—Joseph was polite to his hosts, though not much of a conversationalist. Or maybe it was because she was the only one not in dragon form. But it was plain to Jennifer that her mother had missed her. The older woman remarked occasionally about the crescent moon, and how it wouldn’t wane enough for a few days for everyone to change back. Then she would look at Jennifer with obvious longing for her daughter’s human face.
Thanksgiving night she lay in bed. The thought of changing back to her boring bipedal form raised mixed feelings. She both dreaded it and yearned for it, sort of the way she felt about carrying on with high school this year.
Then she remembered that for her, the change was even worse: School was probably over forever. What on earth would come next?
With that unanswered thought, she drifted off to sleep.
“Home at last!” she crooned, stepping dramatically through the front door to her own house back in Winoka. They had waited out the next crescent moon up at the farm, and it was a good week into December. So many things seemed so long ago. She almost felt newly born again—her human limbs weren’t as weak or clumsy as they had been after her first morph, now over two months ago.
“Hey, where’s the sullen teenager we’ve grown to love?” her mother teased softly.
“I’ve eaten her, because I’m starved. When’s dinner?” “As soon as your father can get it on the table.” Jonathan started for the kitchen. Jennifer went to the office computer to check emails. There were over a hundred for her.
They missed me
! she thought with a warm glow, recognizing several of her school friends’ addresses. She settled in for a comfortable hour of writing back.
It didn’t take long for her good mood to evaporate. What on earth would she tell these guys? That she could summon an owl by slapping her wing on dirt? That skin camouflage was best mastered first thing in the morning, when she was freshest? They wanted details on her “hospital stay,” but Jennifer had never been to a hospital as a patient—only to see her mother at work.
She discussed the problem with her mother, who looked thoughtful. “Tell them you’re glad to be back, the food sucked, and the doctor was really cute but talks too much.”
“Doesn’t sound like a lot to say.”
“Honey, that’s all they want to know.”
“Hmm. Maybe. But isn’t this lying?”
Elizabeth kept an even expression. “You
are
glad to be back; you said it yourself. The food
does
suck at the hospital—I can vouch for that. And there’s this cute new surgical intern there who likes to flirt over head traumas—”
“All right, all right, it’s all true, just
please don’t say anymore
?”
Returning to school the next day brought two bits of good news to Jennifer: First, the animal shapes were gone. There were no more Canada geese drifting through the school hallways, or horses galloping through the gymnasium. Her eyes let her see everyone as their normal self.