Jennifer Scales and the Ancient Furnace Page 5

  “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.

  CHAPTER 5

  Sheep, Bees, and Fish

  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.

  The house was silent. Curious, she ambled on all fours through the rooms until she came to the barn.

  The minivan was gone.

  With a brief gulp of panic, Jennifer clawed her way quickly across the barn. She pushed the large doors open and peered outside. No one was there.

  “Mom? Dad?” She tried not to sound alarmed as she scurried awkwardly around the northeast corner and scrambled up onto the patio. There was a reason why they had left, she told herself. Only Mom could drive the car, so she must have run an errand.

  Then she thought of last night. Of course, she had gone to get Phoebe. Jennifer had demanded it. She would be back soon with the dog.

  That left her father . . .

  “Heads up!”

  Jennifer looked up just in time to duck away from the huge, furry ball leveled like a bomb at her skull. She briefly thought of the giant spiders from her dream, but when the missile landed she calmed down, if only a little.

  It was a sheep, one of Grandpa Crawford’s. Its matted wool was streaked with blood, and its hind legs were broken. It was bleating in terror.

  “Dad!” This didn’t strike Jennifer as funny at all.

  He landed on the porch next to the sheep and balanced a hind claw on the sheep’s throat. “Sorry, I didn’t see you come out until I had let go of it.”

  “What are you doing mauling sheep anyway?” She was pretty sure she could guess the answer and she began to feel sick. “Grandpa’s going to get really mad at you.”

  “I think you know as well as I do that he won’t. Why do you think he goes through more sheep than he can breed every year? He can’t live on honey alone, and he likes his horses too much to eat them.”

  Jennifer was relieved she wouldn’t have to watch her father eat an Arabian stallion. Then she was disgusted all over again. “Ugh. That’s not just for you, is it?”

  “Of course not. I’ve already eaten. I brought this one back so I could show you how to skin and cook them. After that, we’ll see to the horses, and then I’ll give you your first flying lesson.”

  The word “cook” settled Jennifer’s stomach a bit. The word “flying” pricked her imagination.

  Then Jonathan Scales twisted the hind claw that clenched the sheep’s throat, and the crack and gurgle that followed had her sick to her stomach again. “Aw, Dad . . .”

  “It’s a sheep, ace, not a kindergartner. You eat this sort of thing all the time.”

  That brought another question to Jennifer’s mind. “Um, Dad, we don’t ever eat . . . people . . . do we?”

  Jonathan looked at his daughter with silver-eyed patience. “No matter how much you try to tell yourself otherwise, Jennifer, you are not a monster. You are not a freak. You still eat the same things you did before yesterday, and you’ll still like doing the things you did before yesterday. We’re going to cook and eat our meals in as civilized a way as we can manage. We’ll have trout tonight for dinner, just like we always do here at Grandpa’s. I’ll make risotto to go with it—your triple-chambered stomach will find your mother’s cooking as horrific as your single-chambered stomach did.”

  She choked back a giggle.

  “You can use the same charcoal and paper Grandpa has lying around to do sketches. Your wing claw can manage it. There’s even a soccer ball in the garage, once you get your balance back. You are still Jennifer Scales, and you’re all the things that make you a terrific daughter.

  “I’m not saying there won’t be new things to learn. But if you see them as additions, and not subtractions, you’ll have an easier time with this. Understand?”

  Jennifer nodded slowly.

  “Great. Now let’s gut this sheep and roast it!”

  It wasn’t as gruesome as she thought it would be. Her father showed her how to use her claws to skin the animal, slice open the belly, separate the edibles from the nonedibles, and slice the meat into manageable chunks. She had an uncle on her mother’s side who used to treat venison for hunters, so she had seen this sort of thing before. It wasn’t completely enjoyable, but it seemed more like butcher’s work than a beast’s.

  With ten neat cuts of meat lying on the porch, she looked up at her father with something approaching pride.

  “Excellent. Now we cook ’em.”

  Grandpa Crawford had an enormous grill on one end of the porch—it was three times the size of most grills. Jonathan poked a wing claw under the grate, arranged the coals beneath, and then shot a bullet of flame out of his nostrils. The coals began burning immediately.

  “All right. Put those cuts on there, and put the cover down. From here on in, it’s just like barbecue.”

  “Neat.” Jennifer couldn’t hide a smile. “I don’t suppose there’s any ketchup in the fridge?”

  As Jennifer finished—surprising herself by downing all ten pieces in ten ketchup-tinted gulps—the minivan drove up onto the north lawn. A familiar shape was poised in the passenger seat with its head out of the window.

  “Phoebe!”

  She wasn’t sure how the collie-shepherd would react to a seven-foot-long reptile with a family member’s voice, but to Jennifer’s unending delight, there was never a question in the dog’s mind. Phoebe leapt out of the open window and raced up the porch steps to lick her pack sister’s scaly face. Then, in a
black dash, she was off around the house and through the forest.

  Jonathan grinned. “Off to find sheep of her own. She never could resist herding them.”

  “How’s it going?” called out Elizabeth. She was getting something out of the car.

  “We’ve had breakfast. I’d like to do a few more things, maybe get in a bit of flying before lunch.”

  “Well, I got what you asked. You sure this is safe?”

  Of all the things her mother could have pulled out of the minivan, Jennifer never imagined she would see a trampoline. She looked at her father with startled eyes.

  “It’s safe,” he assured both of them. “But before we get to that, we need to cover fire-breathing. Could you check on the horses for me, Liz?” He turned to Jennifer. “I started the fire that cooked your breakfast, but you’ll need to learn how to do your own fire-breathing if you want to have anything but raw meat for yourself.”

  “Okay,” Jennifer agreed. With a full stomach, a good night’s sleep, and a growing acceptance that her transformation wasn’t immediately fatal, she was ready to learn a few things. Plus, the thought of her crawling on her belly and eating uncooked food for five-day stretches did not sit well.

  Elizabeth set the trampoline against the porch, and then went off to check on the horses, Phoebe, and the sheep.

  “Come on.” Her father gestured. “Let’s practice into the lake, with the wind at our backs.”

  Fire-breathing, as it turned out, involved just about every vocal action short of actually speaking. A cough, a snort, a growl, even a sneeze—each of these, her father explained, opened a small valve at the back of the throat that released the fire element. Then, as with speech, the placement of the lips, tongue, and teeth did the rest.

  While sneezes generated short but impressive fire-works from the nostrils, a rough clearing of the throat issued a volcanic flow that cascaded over the grass and into the lake. Most spectacular of all, a shrill whistle let loose a volley of flame rings that grew as large as hula hoops.

  “Check this out,” he told her, calling Phoebe at the top of his lungs. “Once in a while, like when you’re off at summer camp, your mother and I bring the dog up here during crescent moons and teach her tricks.”