Jennifer Scales and the Ancient Furnace Page 4

  She screamed and then flinched. A roar of an animal burst through the chaos in her ears. A lion or an alligator? There was no one around her, though some of the bushes nearby cast deep shadows.

  Pine Street was quiet, with no joggers and only an occasional car. Most people were settling into prime-time television or a late dinner. Jennifer was both glad of this and alarmed—she didn’t want anyone else to see what she knew was about to happen, but she didn’t know if she could make it back home without help.

  The veins under her skin thickened and rose. Blue tinted her hands, then her wrists, then her arms. Her hair cleaved itself to her neck and shoulders; she could feel strands pressing beneath skin and weaving among capillaries.

  She let out another scream—the animal roared again—and stumbled to the sidewalk. Her knees scraped the ground, but she felt something tough under her jeans, something like leather, take the blow. An unbearable heat rose in her throat. It was hard to breathe.

  “Mooooom! Daaaaad!” Her voice was slower and deeper.

  Over her lengthening blue snout, Jennifer tried to spot home. It was less than a block away, but the lights were off. Where had her parents gone? They were likely out looking for her, probably frantic. She should have stayed in her room. They would know what to do. It would still be horrible, but at least they would be there.

  She had no idea what would happen to her next, and the thought terrified her.

  “Mooooom!” She coughed. What felt like vomit poured out of her mouth. A ball of flame singed her gums on the way out. The fire coursed over the paved sidewalk for a few feet.

  Her eyes glazed over and she crumpled to the ground.

  But she could still see, still feel, even hear? Yes, she could hear better now. A car coming, tires shrieking, a door opening, and then her mother’s voice.

  “Jennifer!”

  Hands pulled at her legs. Trusting the touch of her parents, Jennifer let herself slip into unconsciousness.

  She woke up to the familiar hum and vibration of the family minivan. Her parents had put down the backseat, and she was lying, curled up, in the cargo space.

  The first thing Jennifer noticed about herself was that everything still ached.

  The second thing was the astoundingly obvious horn perched at the tip of her snout, right before her eyes.

  She turned to look at the rest of herself.

  It was just as they had warned her. She saw the body of a large and mysterious lizard. Leathery, electric blue scales gave way to horizontal silver stripes, all the way into a slender forked tail. The belly of the lizard—her belly—was soft gray.

  She was larger than she had been before, and a bit longer—much longer, if you counted the tail. Strange new muscles rippled with every movement she made. Five-inch claws tipped her powerful hind legs.

  And she had wings! Two of them, folded neatly along her back. Jennifer moved her elbow, and one unfolded. She wiggled her fingers, and tiny batlike claws at the end of that wing waved back.

  She fainted again.

  The next time Jennifer woke up, she did not look back at her new lizard body. Instead, she stretched her neck until she could see past the middle row seat. Her mother was in the driver’s seat. Beyond the windshield, the crescent moon was lifting higher into the nighttime sky.

  She began to chew her tongue thoughtfully.

  “Ouch!”

  Of course. Sharper teeth. Jennifer chided herself for the near tongue piercing. Elizabeth turned briefly.

  “You’re awake?”

  Even this first hint of normal conversation made Jennifer seethe with resentment. “What, can’t you see my monster eyes glowing in the dark?”

  Elizabeth turned around again. “Oh, yes. I can now. They’re beautiful. Silver, darling. How do you feel?”

  “I’m a dragon, Mother. I feel like a freak. No, beyond freak. Like a monster.”

  Her mother didn’t reply right away. “You won’t feel like a monster forever.”

  Jennifer hissed. It sounded very dangerous, which only made her angrier. “I feel that way now.”

  No response.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Grandpa Crawford’s place.”

  That made sense. Her father’s father had a quiet, secluded place out on the lake.

  Plus, she liked Grandpa Crawford. Every Christmas, he came downstate with a truckful of presents, mostly books. He always skipped the ritual “how big you’ve grown” speech. Every summer, she’d visit his farm for a week. She loved relaxing in his enormous sitting room surrounded by crammed bookshelves, and she fondly remembered sitting on his lap as a small girl and hearing the most outrageous stories. Even now, she could picture his twinkling gray eyes . . .

  “Oh.” It came home to her. “Him, too?”

  “Well, of course. After all, your father . . .”

  “Where is Dad?”

  Her mother nodded to the right side of the minivan. Jennifer looked out the window. Not twenty feet from their car, a dark and winged shadow soared. It kept pace easily with them along the edge of the highway.

  The reptilian head turned toward them, and Jennifer saw the gray lining her father’s silver eyes.

  CHAPTER 4

  The New Weredragon

  Crawford Thomas Scales was a man who had made his fortune in unusual agriculture and ranching. His estate sprawled over hundreds of acres, most of it farmland and forested hills surrounding a generous lake. A crumbling stone wall stretched for miles around his property, more of a landmark than a real barrier to trespassers. But Grandpa Crawford didn’t see many of those anyway, since no stranger dared take the first few steps onto his property without a proper escort.

  A single break in the southern edge of the wall allowed for a long, winding gravel driveway. On either side of the driveway, and stretching along the inside of most of the wall, were clusters of strange-looking hives. These hives contained bees of extraordinary size and temper. They never flew beyond the confines of their owner’s property—but they relentlessly attacked any stranger foolish enough to enter. Worse, they appeared impervious to weather, and remained active even through the harsh Minnesota winters.

  Beyond the hives was a strip, a dozen acres thick, of wildflowers. No two blossoms were alike—Jennifer could never figure out how her grandfather grew such diverse and amazing wildflowers—but each stood as a tiny and unique monument to nature. These were primarily for the benefit of the bees, but Grandpa Crawford occasionally brought some around the countryside to sell to local flower shops.

  After the flowers came grazing pastures, with horses on one side of the road and sheep on the other. Jennifer didn’t enjoy riding horses but had to admit her grandfather picked, bred, and raised some amazing animals. There were two or three that she particularly liked: black Arabians with faint white markings on the hooves.

  The sheep, on the other hand, were too numerous and short-lived for her to bother with—hundreds of them, left to roam largely free over the gently sloping hills.

  A brief band of untended grassland lay between the pastures and the modest forest that surrounded both the lake and Grandpa Crawford’s cabin. Bur oak, black walnut, red maple, and Norway spruce trees clustered together at the edges, and then gave way to a small open meadow to the north. Set at the back of this meadow, on the edge of the broad lake beyond, stood the cabin.

  They called it the “cabin,” but it was much larger than any ordinary cabin, with room for at least a dozen guests. It was enormous. Grandpa Crawford had built the place himself, forty years ago, with additions every ten years. The first story of the cabin was lined with stone and covered nearly four acres, for every building was attached— garage, toolshed, supply house, even the barn. The wooden upper-story of the living quarters had a smaller footprint, and was pushed northward toward the lake.

  Jennifer stared out the window at these landmarks for some time before she realized she was seeing them in the dark, in color, with crystal clarity. Night vision—like a
monster. Her surroundings were so familiar, yet so completely different when seen through these eyes.

  Her mother turned the minivan off of the driveway and drove carefully around the east end of the cabin until they could see the north side. The entrance to the barn was already open, and they drove right in. Jennifer recalled the layout of the house, and how she always thought it odd that everything was attached to each other with big swinging doors. The far end of the barn would lead into a large mudroom, and then into the kitchen, and then into a massive sitting room. The sitting room faced north through double-wide sliding doors onto a patio, and a short-cropped lawn, and the lake beyond.

  It made perfect sense now, she thought as her mother stopped the car and got out, that Grandpa Crawford would have such a large living area, with such an entry. She could tell already that normal-sized rooms, normal-sized doors, and normal-sized porches just weren’t an option for the next few days.

  Elizabeth lifted the minivan’s back door and waited.

  Jennifer stared back. “What?”

  “You need to get out now, unless you want to spend the entire week in the back of the van.”

  “Right . . .” Jennifer looked warily at her legs. She had no idea how to do this. She measured her mother, up and down. “I don’t suppose you could carry me again?”

  “You’re about a hundred pounds heavier than you were two hours ago,” her mother estimated. “Not exactly portable. Thought about going on a diet?”

  “What a perfect time for fat jokes, Mother. After all, I just turned fourteen and morphed into a gigantic iguana.”

  “Actually,” Jonathan called out from the far end of the barn, where he was working a claw into a deep groove beneath the frame of the double doors, “more eagle than iguana. Like dinosaurs, we weredragons have more in common genetically with birds than with reptiles. Your mother’s actually done some research into this. As you develop your more raptorlike capabilities, you’ll see what I mean . . .”

  “And my father’s first words come in the form of a biology lecture.” Jennifer groaned. “I can see that I may have changed, but you two are as clueless as ever.” She tried to step majestically out of the back of the minivan with her right wing claw, but misjudged her weight placement and ended up tumbling tail over head onto a bed of hay. The horses in stables to either side snorted—derisively, she was sure.

  Jonathan sighed as his claw caught the hidden lever he sought, and the doors into the cabin proper swung inward. The mudroom lights came on automatically, and Jennifer took a good look at her father for the first time.

  The first things that caught her eye were the three thin horns that pierced the back of his head. They shone silver, like his eyes. Jennifer self-consciously reached back and felt her own skull—yep, she could feel three evenly spaced spikes back there as well.

  But unlike his daughter, Jonathan Scales had no nose horn. And there were other differences.

  While her blue was a sharp, electric shade, his was a deeper, almost purplish hue. Black stripes crossed over his back and wings, and his belly was a truer blue than his back. His wings were much larger in proportion to his body than hers were, and the arms at the leading edge of each wing were thinner. And while her tail had two prongs at the end, his tail had a slender, tapered point. Overall, his build was slighter than hers . . . and thinner, Jennifer noted with some self-contempt.

  “Liz, why don’t you go on in. It doesn’t look like Dad’s having any guests over this cycle. He may have left a message. I’ll stay in the barn and help Jennifer with her new motor skills.”

  “Grandpa Crawford isn’t here?” From her sprawled position on the ground, Jennifer was disappointed and curious. If Grandpa was also a weredragon, shouldn’t he also be in dragon form now? If so, wasn’t home the place to be? If not, when would he be back? And what was this about guests and cycles? She had been to this cabin many times, but had never seen any guests other than herself and her parents.

  “He probably left for the lake. He may come back later. Get up if you can,” said Jonathan Scales, ignoring his daughter’s pout. He raised his wings, pushed gently off the doorway with a hind leg, and floated onto the hay next to her. Elizabeth went inside.

  Jennifer squirmed on the ground. Flipped on her back like this, it wasn’t easy to get up. She wriggled, got nowhere, and groaned. “This is so embarrassing.”

  “Fold your wings in and roll,” he suggested.

  She did, and was soon on all fours, her hind legs pushing her fat bottom higher up into the air than it ever had been in fourteen years, and her wing claws grasping at the ground fruitlessly. Her snout was in the dirt. All she could see was the hay two feet in front of her.

  “The humiliation just never stops, does it?”

  “Push off on your front claws a bit, so your head’s off the ground . . . there you go . . .”

  This was better. Now Jennifer was crouched like a cat ready to spring. She was certain she couldn’t move, but she felt somewhat poised as long as she stood still.

  “Walking is not a dragon’s forte,” Jonathan explained. “Even trampler dragons prefer galloping and leaping to a simple walk. But you’ll have to learn a simple step or two before you can even think about flying.”

  He took her through the basics. Jennifer quickly learned that four-legged creatures have more independent movement of legs than bipeds like humans. She discovered she needed to keep her hind legs a half step ahead of the front ones, and she needed to use a scratch-and-pull method with her batlike wing claws to get anywhere. Progress was not easy. She was still pouting, and her father seemed determined to ignore her mood. So he talked more and more, and she said less and less, and before long the walking lesson was a nearly uninterrupted stream of words from the elder dragon.

  “Bend your leg a bit more, that’s it, keep your wings in closer to your body or you’ll just zigzag. No, more, there, now scratch and pull, not bad at all for a first day! No, see, you fell because you weren’t looking up. . . . Wow, that looked like it hurt. . . .”

  “Okay, enough lessons!” she announced, after maybe ten minutes. “I can do enough to get inside and go to bed.”

  Her heart sank as she remembered her size. How would she fit through a bedroom door, much less in a bed?

  Jonathan didn’t seem worried about that. “Sure, okay. This is a lot to take in. But there are one or two things we should go over tomorrow—”

  “Whatever,” she groaned. She scratched and pulled her way across the barn, then delicately navigated the three wide wooden steps . . . and then nearly somersaulted through the open doors as she stepped on the tip of her wing with a hind leg. “Aaargh!”

  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 Hob-bit, various tales of the Chinese dragon Nv 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.