Grandpa Crawford had left only two words for a message:
crescent valley.
The letters were scrawled with charcoal; a large piece of it was left on the floor of the sitting room, next to the newsprint he had written on. Neither parent would tell Jennifer what Crescent Valley was or when they expected her grandfather back—and they reminded her that sleep was probably a good idea.
The sitting room was, as Jennifer remembered it, quite spacious. The plush couches and chairs were already up against the walls, which were carved with oak shelves filled with leather-bound books. The sundry titles on these had always fascinated Jennifer.
The Withered Head, Hornets You Can Breed, Four-Dimensional Mapping
, and so on. Some of them, such as
Early Wyrms That Got the Bird
and
Shapes That Never Shift
, took on new meaning to her now.
Carefully retracting her claws so that she wouldn’t scrape the hardwood floors or tear at the furniture, she edged up to one shelf of books that had always been her and Grandpa Crawford’s favorite. She felt a tear in her silver, alien eye as she recalled the subject of the fantastic tales he told best—dragons.
Well, duh
, she thought now.
There they all were—modern classics like
The Hobbit
, various tales of the Chinese dragon Nü Wa, and children’s versions of more complex works like the story of Saint George the Dragon Slayer and
Beowulf
.
One book lay atop all the others—an oversized, flat leather volume with deeply worn edges. Jennifer reached out with a wing claw and grasped the binding. The title was in gold letters:
Grayheart’s Anatomy
.
Jennifer did not say this as openly or often as she used to, but she admired her mother’s work as a doctor. She knew that biology was her favorite of all the sciences, even though she had just started her own high school course in it. Working with living things, understanding what makes them move and breathe and see, was all utterly fascinating to her. And
Grayheart’s Anatomy
represented the intersection of that interest and the love of dragons that Grandpa Crawford put into his stories.
It was the journal of an eighteenth-century explorer in North America who had come upon the body of a recently deceased dragon, taken it apart, and studied it. The layers of skin, the organs, the bone structure—all was in exquisite, illustrated detail. It used close study of the creature’s anatomy to make guesses at how it lived, hunted, slept, fought, and even fell in love.
The pages were large and thick enough for Jennifer to flip through them, if she laid the book on the floor. She did so, while tears welled up. This wasn’t a fanciful examination of a fictional corpse. This was
her
, or something very like her. Every muscle pulled back for analysis, every chamber of the upper and lower hearts split open for discovery …
Upper and lower hearts
? The thought struck her cold.
She put one claw over her left breast.
Thu-thump, thu-thump
.
Then she let the claw slide slowly down and to her right side, about where her appendix would be if she were a human girl.
Da-da-thump, da-da-thump
.
After all the pain of the metamorphosis, seeing her new body for the first time, observing her father, trying to walk, and everything else, this finally brought home the full impact of what had happened to her.
“All right, to hell with sleep,” she told her parents, who were rolling out large oriental rugs at the other end of the room. “I have questions, and I want answers.”
They stopped short, dragon and woman, then blinked and nodded in unison.
“First question. Why did you wait until
today
to tell me this? It isn’t fair! I’ve had no time—”
“You’re right, Jennifer. It isn’t fair. We’re sorry.”
She was stunned at how quickly her father apologized.
“But we didn’t know this was going to happen so quickly. We thought we had years. Most weredragons don’t experience their first change until later—sixteen or seventeen years old, at the youngest. Then we saw how fast and strong you were getting, but we still thought it was all a few months away. The dragonflies at school were a complete shock—as you’ll learn, that sort of thing is a practiced skill among elder dragons.
“As soon as you did it, we knew we had to tell you so you would be prepared. So we did. But even earlier today, we didn’t know for sure if you would turn this lunar cycle, or next, or even a year from now.”
“So what am I doing like this, two years early?”
“We’re not sure.” Jonathan sighed. “It’s probably because your mother isn’t a weredragon. You’re a hybrid. That would probably affect you.”
Jennifer cringed. “So let me get this straight. Not only am a I freak among
people
, I’m a freak among
dragons
, as well?”
“Honestly, Jonathan,” her mother hissed. “A
hybrid
? The
dog
is a hybrid. Could you come up with less insulting language?” She turned to Jennifer desperately. “Please don’t see yourself that way. I know this is hard, but…”
“SHUT UP, MOTHER, YOU
DON’T
KNOW. YOU CANNOT POSSIBLY SEE THIS THROUGH MY EYES.”
The three of them stood silently for a while. Then Jennifer asked her next question.
“Dad, we look pretty different from each other. Is this
also
because I’m a freak?”
He paused and scratched behind his middle horn, clearly dreading the answer. “You appear to have some unusual characteristics.”
“I’ll take that as a yes. Next question: Who’s taking care of Phoebe?”
“I called the Blacktooths with the cell phone, on the way up,” her mother said quietly. “Eddie will go over and feed the dog until we get back.”
“Am I going to be like this for a few days?”
“Four or five.”
“Then I’d like Phoebe to be up here with me.”
“Sweetheart, the dog—”
“
I’d like her up here with me
.” Jennifer crouched down and curled into a ball. She would have thought even her parents could understand this.
“Okay,” Elizabeth agreed. “I’ll go to get her tomorrow morning.”
“Fine.” Jennifer stretched her neck out. “Do the Blacktooths—does Eddie—know about weredragons?”
“No,” her father answered quickly. “As you can imagine, Jennifer, many people would get upset if they learned the truth. And we have some enemies you will learn about later. There are not many of our kind left. Those who survived Eveningstar have been hiding since. You’ll meet them once you’re ready.”
“Eveningstar.” Memories came back to Jennifer of the early morning of her fifth birthday. “That was our home. Someone attacked the town.”
“Yes.”
“You woke me up, and we escaped…”
“Yes.”
“…over the river in a boat…”
“Yes. Well, no. You and your mother were actually riding on my back as I swam. You seemed nervous, since you had never seen me as a dragon before. So I used my voice to convince you who I was. That worked well enough to get you on my back and over the river.”
Jennifer closed her eyes. “There were fires all over the town. We saw them from the other side of the river. And there was screaming—I don’t remember what.”
“It was a war, Jennifer.” Her mother was talking now. “The weredragons were very nearly exterminated. Families and friends who had grown up together for generations scattered. We each moved to different towns, hoping to hide. There’s no one else in Winoka who knows the truth about you and your father.”
“That’s not completely true, is it?” asked Jennifer. She was trying to be calm, but as she pieced more things together, she became angry—at her parents, at herself, and at her neighbors. “The rumors that went around town when we first moved. The way they made you miserable at church. They must have known something.”
“They did probably feel that something was not quite right with us,” Jonathan said carefully. “It’s impossible to keep a secret like this completely. Crescent moons happen at very inconvenient times, and the stories we told to cover the truth may have changed as they passed from person to person. Your mother and I felt there may have been a presence there at the church that was not completely friendly to us. Rumors found fertile ground, and I was not around often enough to help your mother dispute them.”
Jennifer saw her mother’s hand squeeze his wing claw as he said this. She decided to change the subject.
“When will I meet some other weredragons? I mean, besides you and Grandpa.”
“Soon,” her father said. “While we’ve been careful to keep you away from this farm during crescent moons, you’ll find it’s a very different place around then. This is a refuge, one of only a few left, where we can stay away from prying, unfriendly eyes.”
“And I’ll change like this, every crescent moon, for five days, just like you?”
“Pretty much. There are small differences from one weredragon to the next. During the waxing of the moon leading to the first quarter, and the waning of the moon into a new moon, our bodies feel intense pressure to change. You’ll need a minimum of four days in this state, but most weredragons need five. But for however long, it happens on both crescents, every time.”
Jennifer slapped her wing to her forehead as another thought struck. “This is going to keep happening, twice a month! I’m going to miss school! My friends are going to figure this out—Eddie may not know about us now, but what he and Skip saw last night—”
“They saw nothing,” said Elizabeth. “When I talked to Mr. Blacktooth on the phone, he was quite positive you were on drugs. Of course, I assured him that you were not. The story we will use with people like the Blacktooths, and school, and everyone else is that you are falling seriously ill. Something chronic, and perhaps even incurable.”
“Lovely. You know, I can already hear and feel the air whistling as my friends abandon me.”
“Give your friends some credit, Jennifer. They’re not that shallow. They’ll understand your absence and support you when you’re there. We’ll keep the name of your ‘clinic’ to ourselves to avoid visitation requests, and set up a long-term plan before the end of the school year.”
“ ‘Long-term’? You mean we might have to move?”
“Yes, probably. I’m sorry, ace, but a school-age weredragon presents tons of opportunity for you to be discovered, or worse, hurt and killed.”
Jennifer’s face fell. “I’ll never go back to high school. Never go to a prom, or play varsity soccer.”
Elizabeth took a step forward. “You’ll miss those experiences. But you’ll do and see things that no one else will. Things
I
never will. You said it yourself—I’ll never see the world through your eyes. No one can.”
“That’s not exactly what I meant—”
“You know that we still love you, more than anything else in the whole world. Right?” Her mother seemed honestly unsure of her daughter’s answer.
“Hmmph.” Jennifer felt herself start to soften a bit, but would not allow it. She looked away.
“Do you have any other questions?” Jonathan asked.
“Thousands. But that’s enough for tonight,” she said grudgingly. “You guys are right, I should get some sleep.”
Elizabeth pulled a couple more oriental rugs out of the closet. She unrolled these across the hardwood floor of the sitting room while her husband shut the patio doors.
“We’re all sleeping here, in this room? But there are plenty of guest rooms, and the beds are large enough!”
“It wouldn’t be right to leave you alone, on your first night,” Jonathan answered. “Besides, your grandpa hates it when your mother and I use his bed.”
Elizabeth couldn’t totally stifle her giggle.
“Aw, yuck,” Jennifer groaned. The image of her parents smooching in bed together was particularly disturbing, if not downright revolting, given the shapes she saw before her now,
“Relax,” said Jonathan. “What you’re thinking is downright impossible. Anything that would gross you out happens
outside
of a crescent moon—”
“
Please
stop talking, Dad.”
Elizabeth flicked off the lights, and only the barest slice of moonlight ventured through the patio doors. It was enough so Jennifer could see her father curl up against the sofa, and her mother lie down next to him and set her head against his belly.
She stayed in her own corner of the sitting room, spread out on top of a green and brown runner they had just unrolled.
This is cute
, she sniffed to herself.
Just like on the wildlife channel, except with oriental rug accents
.
This time, Jennifer knew it was a dream right away.
First, she was flying, which of course only happened in dreams. Second, there were hundreds of oranges and soccer balls in the air, falling like hailstones. She knew she had to kick them all back up into the sky, though she didn’t have the faintest idea why.
She slid through the air, spreading human hands and feet to dart toward one target—an orange.
Fwap
, the kick sent it up and back through the clouds. Next was a soccer ball.
Fwap
. Another and another—
-fwap-fwap
.
Then the oranges and soccer balls turned black. Jennifer squinted to get a better look. They weren’t oranges or balls anymore. Thick, bloated bodies with spindly legs cascaded down from the thunderheads.
It was raining spiders.
Several dropped with shrill cries onto her head. She felt their hairy appendages squeeze her skull as their fangs danced right before her eyes …
“All right!” shouted Jennifer to no one in particular as she started awake and slapped at the empty air around her nose horn. “Enough with the dreams already!”
She was alone in the sitting room, and the faint mid-morning sun filtered through the patio doors. They were open enough for her to smell the chill of autumn.
Under daylight, she could see the colors of the forest and lake outside more clearly than she had last night. Grandpa Crawford’s trees were gorgeous this time of year, every color a leaf could ever turn now on display—purple, gold, orange, brown, yellow, and stubborn green. A few less brilliant hues continued around the large lake. The lake itself was calm, with sparse waves cresting and disappearing quickly over clear water.