Jennifer wiped her eyes and nodded again.
“So he told you about the tunnel?”
“Oh.” It seemed pretty obvious to Jennifer now. “You finished the tunnel?”
“As soon as we rebuilt the house and moved in eight years ago. I promised your grandfather I’d hand the house over to you someday. I didn’t promise him I’d hold off an endless assault. Your father and I agreed we could hold off a few rogues if any showed up while we finished our business in Winoka, but if it got bad, we’d just slip away and fight another day. I’m sure your grandfather knew.”
Her daughter pulled back a bit. “So you weren’t going to try to die last night?”
“Honey, the only thing I’m ever going to die for is standing in front of me right now.”
Jennifer tried a weak smile. “You mean Grandpa’s stove?”
That earned a light punch to the shoulder. “I cook worse on this stove than any other appliance in creation. I just thought I’d make breakfast this morning, so your father doesn’t have to. I don’t know how much help that is, though.” She turned serious again. “He’s taking this hard, of course.”
“Can I talk to him? I mean, does he want to be alone, or will he talk to me?”
“Honey, you’re probably the only person he wants to talk to, right now.”
Jonathan turned as soon as he heard Jennifer open the patio door. A cold wind blew moist lake air into her face. He tried a smile but it failed miserably. “Hey, ace.”
She felt herself crumble right away. “I’m so sorry, Dad! I tried to save him, but it already had him. Before I could hit it more than once it yelled and took off through the window and it vanished so I—”
He stepped over and hugged her. “Ssshhh. It’s okay, Jennifer. You don’t have to apologize. I know you did your best.”
She couldn’t keep the tears back. “I should have been able to stop it!”
“Listen carefully. You are not responsible.”
“I was just outside for a second to put food in the truck,” she started. Before she knew it, the entire story poured out of her—the gunshot she had heard, the dark beast upstairs, and its attack, and the words she heard in her head.
“No father,” Jonathan mumbled when she told him.
“And it didn’t stop until I stabbed it,” she continued. “Then it just screamed and threw me off. I thought it would start to attack me, too, but then it yelled again and bolted.”
“It came just for him,” he deduced. “It didn’t want to fight you. At least not yet.”
“But why would something like that come after Grandpa? And what was it?”
“I have a theory.” Jonathan sighed. “But I don’t want to share it right now. Later, I promise,” he added quickly, seeing the frustration on her face. “We’ll be going to Crescent Valley later tonight and there should be time before then. But there’s no sense in getting everyone riled up before I think this through. First, I need to call a friend of yours.”
With her father on the phone behind a closed door for several minutes, and both parents locked upstairs talking further for nearly an hour after that, Jennifer had a lonely, empty morning. It helped a bit that her parents had thought quickly enough last night to bring both Phoebe and Geddy with them. While the dog and the lizard didn’t usually get along, today they seemed willing to share Jennifer—the former resting at her feet with her muzzle over the girl’s ankles, and the latter curled up on a shoulder by her left ear.
She tried morphing into dragon shape and blowing a few fire rings for Phoebe to jump through, but nobody seemed to have the heart to do it for long. It was a beautiful, crisp day for flying, or turf-whomping, or even lizard-or bird-calling. Jennifer felt like none of these. It wasn’t right. Grandpa was dead, and the world went on—clouds sliding gently overhead, light glistening off the water’s surface, insects strumming in her ears.
It wasn’t right.
Finally, at about ten o’clock, her father came outside and suggested they take a walk to the end of the driveway. “Someone’s coming and I want to make sure they don’t run afoul of your grandfather’s bees.”
“Who?”
“You’ll see.” He tried to smile. “He’ll be helpful in working this out; and in any case, I thought it might raise your spirits.”
All the way walking down the winding gravel driveway, past trees and grazing pastures and sheep and horses and exotic wildflowers and at last the huge hives of extraordinary bees that guarded the borders of the farm, Jennifer tried to think of the person her father could call that could both help them and lift her heavy heart.
Just as they reached the stone pillars that marked the driveway entrance, she saw a taxi come down the highway toward them. It pulled off the road right in front of them, and out stepped…Skip Wilson.
“Skip!” She hugged him right away, and he blushed.
“Hey, Jennifer. Hey, Mr. Scales. Thanks for covering my cab fare.”
After the taxi was paid and gone, they walked back to the cabin. Many bees swirled around Skip at first, but sensing the presence of an escort, they soon left him alone. He looked uncomfortable anyway.
“Skip, what are you doing here?”
“All in good time, Jennifer.” Her father gave her a serious look. “We can talk it all out before our friends arrive from Crescent Valley for your grandfather.”
“I’m sorry about your grandpa, Jennifer,” Skip whispered in her ear. “Your dad told me some of what happened. I wish I could have been here to help.”
She smiled at him and grasped the hand he was offering. “Thanks. I don’t know what you could have done, though. This thing was…horrible. I didn’t even have time to change into a dragon, really. Even that might not have been enough.”
He gave a slightly indignant look. “Maybe I could have helped! My aunt says I’m pretty close to—”
Jonathan raised a hand to stop the conversation. “I’m fairly certain that even both of you together would have had your hands full. And once you hear what this thing may be, you may not be so quick to attack it.”
“What does that mean?” Jennifer murmured to Skip, but he only shrugged.
After lunch—Jennifer caught and prepared a few sheep from the pasture, thinking wistfully of her grandfather and his love for hunting—Elizabeth and Jonathan finally sat Jennifer and Skip down and answered their questions. Jennifer nervously stroked Geddy, who was still curled up on her left shoulder.
“First things first,” Jonathan began. “Last year, I told you two that Dianna Wilson and I were good friends.”
They both nodded.
“Well,” he went on awkwardly, “we were actually more than that. Much more. In fact, Jennifer, before I met your mother, Dianna Wilson and I were married.”
“Married!” Jennifer nearly fell off the sitting room couch, and she felt her pet gecko leap for the safety of the throw pillows. “You were married to someone else before Mom?” She stood up and turned to her mother. “Mom, did you know about this?”
Despite herself, Elizabeth actually chuckled. “Yes, I knew, honey. You don’t have to be outraged on my behalf. Your father told me everything he’s about to say, soon after I met him. When you were born, we agreed we would tell you in time.”
“In time?” The anger Jennifer felt toward her father bled over to include her mother as well. “Like the way you agreed to tell me about Pinegrove? Or how you agreed to tell me about my being a weredragon?”
“You’re getting a bit off track—”
“No, this is the track!” She was embarrassed that this was all coming out in front of a boy she liked, but there was no helping that now. “It never ends with you two! The secrets, the lies, the long and tortured explanations after something traumatic happens. I thought family members were supposed to trust each other! That means sharing, and telling the truth! You guys are always so big on honesty and integrity, but you can’t practice what you preach!”
“Jennifer, I’m sorry.” Her father sounded both apologetic and irritated at once. “Perhaps when you become a parent yourself, you will earn the qualifications necessary to critique our own performance. In the meantime, if you sit down and listen, you’ll learn all you need to know.”
Partly mollified, partly chastened, and completely red-faced, Jennifer sat back down without looking at Skip. Geddy slowly worked his way back to her shoulder.
“As I was saying, we were married,” Jonathan continued. “Over twenty years ago, and secretly, of course. Love doesn’t hold well to social boundaries, and we both knew the dangers involved. Skip, you may already be aware what your people do to those who consort with their enemies. Whatever you are going through now for associating with my daughter, it would have been worse for your mother, years ago.”
Jennifer turned to Skip, who didn’t show any emotion. Despite all the trouble she was having with the other weredragons and beaststalkers for her own identity and friends, she never thought about what it must be like for Skip. Was Aunt Tavia really as pleasant and understanding as she seemed at the fund-raiser?
Jonathan continued. “Our plan was to be married for several years, and gradually bring around friends and family so we could forge a loyal core receptive to the truth. For a year or so, we kept our secret. But then disaster struck one day—Dianna informed me she was pregnant.”
Jennifer froze. She didn’t like at all where she guessed this story was heading.
“We were surprised. And terrified. We couldn’t reveal the baby without revealing our marriage, of course. Despite my urging, Dianna wouldn’t even go to a doctor, for fear that word would get out.
“But she was a brilliant woman, and she soon had a plan. She arranged to take an extended trip abroad—places far away from Minnesota like Africa, South America, and so on—so no one would see her condition. During that time, she undertook research she assured me would solve our problem, with no harm to anyone.
“As you know, some of the more powerful werachnids have a gift for sorcery, and for seeing across space and time. Dianna was one such woman, and her specialty was exploring other dimensions.”
“Other dimensions?” Jennifer felt her ears prick at the idea. “You mean, like different worlds, where trees grow upside down, or rabbits are twenty feet tall?”
“Sort of,” interrupted Skip. Jennifer knew that he was even better with mathematics than she was. “I’ve been going over this with Mr. Slider during independent study. He says the easiest way to think about it is this: If we were all flat shapes, like squares and circles, we’d only live in two dimensions, right?”
“Length and width,” Jennifer agreed. “Like living in a piece of paper.”
“Exactly. But if one of us discovered a third dimension—height—then that would freak us out. A ball bouncing across the paper would look like a circle that disappeared and reappeared in different places!
“Now apply that to our real world, with three dimensions. If someone found a fourth dimension, they could do all sorts of disappearing and reappearing acts. Instead of keeping cars in our cramped three-dimensional garages, they could park them ‘up’ one dimension, out of the way, until we needed them again.” He turned to Jonathan. “So that’s what Mom hoped to do? Put this baby someplace out of the way, until you were ready for it?”
“Someplace safe,” Jonathan stressed. “She was sure she could open a portal to a place where time would stand virtually still, and the baby could remain unharmed, until we could reveal our marriage to family and friends. Ever optimistic, she worked on the mathematics and sorcery the whole time she was away. Seven months into her pregnancy, she sent for me. I can still remember her the night I arrived in the Australian outback.
“She was glowing with the aura of discovery, and triumph. I’ve found the perfect place, she told me, and it will keep our little Evangelos safe. The stars had told her the baby was a boy, and that was what she wanted to name him—Evangelos, Greek for ‘angel’ or ‘messenger of light.’ As I said, she was optimistic.
“After a few days together gathering supplies and enjoying each other’s company, we parted. She told me to return home—I would only be in danger if I stayed—and not to worry. She would remain in a quiet corner of the outback, give birth with the help of a midwife she had come to trust, and then work her sorcery to hold our child safely until the right time came. Wanting to stay but trusting in her instincts, I kissed her good-bye, told her I loved her, and left. It was the last time I ever saw her.
“A week after I left, under the crescent moon, I received a cell phone call from the midwife. Her voice was strangled and I understood only two words—bad portal. The call was quickly cut off. Unable to get back in touch with anyone, I took a desperate chance and flew over the Pacific on my own wings. It was days before I got there, and by then there was little I could piece together.
“Here is what I know or can deduce: Evangelos must have decided he was ready early, because there were clear signs in the house of a premature birth. The birth happened under the crescent moon, given the timing of the phone call. But Dianna was gone, and the midwife’s body was not far from the house. The cell phone was ruined in her hand. Scratched in the dirt, using the midwife’s blood, Dianna had left a brief and gruesome message:
No child
.”
“Yech,” Jennifer spat.
“Using blood in writing is an old werachnid custom,” Skip explained. “Aunt Tavia told me about it. After battle, a werachnid will often write the tale in the blood of whatever enemies have fallen, so that we pass on the knowledge of what we learned.”
“That’s gruesome,” Elizabeth sniffed.
“It’s handy,” he countered.
Jennifer decided to change the subject. “So how can there be a child, if it died?”
“There was no body of a child,” Jonathan pointed out. “At the time, I saw some evidence of lingering sorcery, which I assumed to be what was left of a portal. While I’m no expert on such things, I could see plainly that it wasn’t prepared well. Perhaps Dianna was rushed by the premature birth, or she misjudged the stars, or the midwife who assisted her made some miscalculation. When they attempted to place Evangelos in the portal, I guess it killed him. That would have explained the dead woman—Dianna wasn’t normally given to murderous rage.”
Jennifer looked at her mother, but the woman’s expression was inscrutable. “Why didn’t you just ask Ms. Wilson what happened?”