“He was born twenty years ago. But who knows how fast time passed, where he lived? He could look like an old man to us, or a precocious toddler.”
Jennifer sighed. “That doesn’t exactly narrow it down. It sounds like there’s only one way to catch him.”
Jonathan nodded. “We’ll have to wait for him to strike again. I just hope we’re ready this time.”
Looking back on her grandfather’s funeral, Jennifer had to admit it passed by her like a surreal dream. Set alongside her experience of Jack Alder’s funeral, her grandfather’s ceremony felt too strange, too mysterious…and far too brief.
After traveling at least fifty miles with their burden, they came to a stout cylinder of a plateau, which broke through the surface of the moon elm forest like an enormous tree stump among weeds. They descended and came to rest upon the unnaturally smooth stone. The northern half of the large circle was covered with etchings, which Jennifer could not decipher. The southern half was bare, and about fifty elders were waiting upon it solemnly. Winona Brandfire was foremost.
Ned and the others laid Crawford’s human body down gently where the plateau’s designs ended, and Jonathan guided Jennifer back to a place in front of the gathering. She made out some familiar faces, including Xavier Longtail. The prickly dasher did not acknowledge her, but kept his attention on the corpse before them.
Wordlessly, Winona motioned to the other elders, and together they drew closer to where Crawford lay. To Jennifer’s alarm, they all breathed in deeply and let out a sustained inferno that rippled over the plateau and washed over her grandfather. She almost cried out, but relaxed at the reassuring touch of her father.
The fire went on for a long time. When it finally ended, she gasped—there was nothing left but a few ashes, and the rock beneath was glowing with molten heat. The smell of sulfur settled upon the plateau.
Winona stepped up and dipped her wing claw into the pool of hot, liquid rock. As her finger swirled a foreign pattern, she called out the words that when cooled would remain etched into this rock forever.
“Crawford Thomas Scales. Elder of the Scales family. Survivor of Pinegrove. Warrior at Cloverfield, White Lake, and Eveningstar. Grandfather to the Ancient Furnace.” (Jennifer flinched a bit at this.) “Master hunter, and ambassador to the newolves.”
Then Winona looked up at the other elders. One by one, they said other words, and the eldest dutifully etched them into the bubbling plateau surface.
“Shepherd.” This came from Joseph Skinner, the young weredragon who kept up Crawford’s farm. Jennifer was surprised to see him here before his fiftieth morph; but it made sense given his close relationship to the elder.
“Friend.” This came from a shaken Ned Brownfoot.
“Guardian.” A toneless Xavier Longtail.
“Mentor.” Her own father.
Suddenly, Winona’s stare was upon Jennifer. She didn’t know what to do or say. How could she pick one word to describe what this man had meant to her?
But after a moment, she thought about her fondest memories—sitting on his lap at the cabin as a little girl, while he told her tales about dragons and angels and sea monsters and everything else that seemed part of an impossible world…
“Storyteller,” she finally managed. Winona nodded, carved the last swirl, and whispered over the new designs.
As the rock cooled, Jennifer spotted a slim, pale violet shadow slip up into the air. It spread two wings as it faced the crescent moon, and then it vanished.
“The elder has joined the venerables,” Winona announced. She turned to Jonathan. “You are the elder now, for your clan.”
He nodded, accepting the fact without ceremony. “I would like to propose, Eldest, that we postpone the Fifty Trials for my daughter. Not only are we grieving, but it is imperative that we find and stop the killer. No one who knows me is completely safe. Jennifer and I must focus our efforts on stopping any further attacks.”
Winona shifted her head just enough to eye Xavier. “Do you have any objections?”
The dasher looked like he wanted to say something, but reconsidered. “No, Eldest. But perhaps a Blaze could advise the Elder Scales on his next steps. He deserves a ceremony of initiation, if nothing else.”
“A good idea. Jonathan, do you have time to join us in full Blaze tonight?”
Now it was her father’s turn to hesitate. Jennifer wondered herself at Xavier’s apparent change of mood—probably in respect for her grandfather, she guessed.
“I have time, Eldest,” Jonathan finally answered. “I will need to make arrangements for Jennifer.”
“Leave that to me. Jennifer.” The ancient trampler’s face softened at the sight of the young dragon before her. “My granddaughter can perhaps comfort you in this difficult time. I’ve let her back into Crescent Valley, and she is waiting at our home. For now, we’ll all fly back to Flames Mountain together.”
Like a dark flock, the dragons all lifted into the air together and left the plateau. Behind them, they left the sounds of newolves baying a dirge in the wilderness.
Catherine hugged Jennifer with trembling wings as soon as the younger dragon landed in front of the trampler’s cave. She insisted on waiting on her guest wing claw and foot, and wouldn’t hear anything of going out for training or turf-whomping or anything else Jennifer wanted to do. “At least not until you’ve had a bit more time to rest. After all, you’ve gone through so much these last few days! You need to take care of yourself.”
After a few hours in the Brandfire household, Jennifer thought a lot better of Catherine’s advice. A trampler cave had furnishings most caves would not, such as comfortable straw beds, oream wool blankets, and large rough-hewn fireplaces. Also, since tramplers were lizard-callers, there was always a large alligator fetching water buckets from the nearby stream, or a Burmese python dragging firewood across the cave floor with its coils. All in all, it was a restful place to recover from the recent turmoil.
“So your grandma’s not mad at you anymore for coming to Crescent Valley?” Jennifer asked later that night.
Catherine gave a rueful smile. “Oh, I wouldn’t go that far. Grammie Winona’s not as narrow-minded as Xavier Longtail, but she’s still pretty hung up on tradition and loyalty. I’ve got my penance to do.”
“What’s that?”
“I’ve gotta gather wood for the clans’ fires while I’m here. Also, back on the other side, I can’t drive her Ford Mustang convertible to school for the rest of the semester.”
“That doesn’t sound too bad.”
“You’ll disagree after you’ve ridden in a convertible! Anyway, she’s just being Grammie. She was harder on my dad, before he and my mom died. Did I ever tell you about the first day Grammie and my father met? She insisted on meeting him early on. So my mom brought him over to prove he’s a proper trampler and all, that sort of thing.”
“Huh.” Jennifer tried to imagine the kind of boy she could bring home who would satisfy her mother and her father.
“So the evening’s going well enough, but then Grammie puts a pile of venison on his plate. Of course, he doesn’t eat it.”
“No? Why not?” Jennifer loved venison.
“He was a vegetarian!”
“Oh? Oh.” Jennifer giggled. “He was a weredragon? A trampler? And a vegetarian?”
Catherine’s violet-crimson eyes rolled. “He told Grammie if bears can make it on berries and nuts, so can we. I’ve tried the diet myself. Made it about thirty-six hours before I gave it up. Killed about five of your grandpa’s sheep on the next—Oh, Jennifer, I’m sorry. That was dumb. Stupid, stupid, stupid!” The trampler smacked herself over the horns with her tiny wing claw.
Jennifer wiped the scales under her eyes. “It’s okay. I don’t mind thinking of him. And it was a good story. The kind he’d tell.”
As the evening stretched on, Crescent Valley changed. Jennifer generally didn’t spend that much time here at once, so she spent some time with Catherine out among the mo
on elms, gawking at the shifts in nature around them.
While neither the light, nor shape, nor altitude of the moon changed, the crescent did slowly roll end over end around the horizon. Catherine told her it took a full day for it to complete a revolution through the sky.
“I haven’t watched it for that long myself, of course,” she said with a twinkle in her eye, “but this really cute dasher told me he’d gone to the amphitheater once, when no one else was around, and just laid back and watched it. He told me the moon was in endless motion, like nature, and friendship, and love…”
Jennifer started gagging. Catherine laughed.
“Yeah, and he probably would have come up with a few more poetic comparisons, but then Grammie Winona caught him rubbing his wing up against mine and sent him home with a stomp mark on his tail.”
“Oh, look at the lichen!” It was shifting again. It had changed from lavender to a deeper purple as they first set out for their walk, and now it was moving to a deep crimson that matched Catherine’s irises.
As if on cue, some newolves howled a midnight chord in A minor, six times, from far away.
“Do you see them much?” A memory of the road not far from Grandpa’s cabin, where she had seen her first newolf, made Jennifer sigh.
“Oh, the newolves? Not as much as I’d like. Grammie keeps me on a pretty short leash, and I’m not exactly allowed to go hunting, for obvious reasons.”
“I’d like to see them up close someday,” Jennifer sighed. “Really, really see them. But even before everyone here freaked out, my dad told me there were dragons who wouldn’t look kindly on that. I guess he meant folks like Xavier Longtail.”
Catherine hesitated a long moment, then finally brought it out: “Jennifer, do you think he’ll—someone like that—do you think he’ll ever change his mind? Accept you? Your family?”
“Translation: Will he try to smack me on the back of the head with his tail again before he sees the light?”
“Well…yeah.”
Jennifer sighed. “I have no idea. I guess…I’d like to think…he and those like him can accept me if for no other reason than they loved my grandfather. You can’t tell me Xavier Longtail isn’t capable of love. And if Grandpa Crawford meant anything to him, my dad and I should.”
Catherine sighed after a moment. “Sure. That sounds right. It’s a logical way of looking at it.”
Sure, Jennifer thought. Logical.
Early the next morning, as the lichen turned pale yellow, their elders arrived. Neither wanted to talk much.
“It’s been a long meeting.” An exhausted Jonathan yawned as Winona sleepily offered him an extra patch of straw and wool to collapse on. “Can I fill you in when I wake up?”
“If you think you can get to sleep with a beaststalker battle shout going off every three minutes, be my guest,” Jennifer said with a smile.
“Ugh, all right. Well, it’s official: You don’t have to do the Fifty Trials.”
“That only makes sense!” Jennifer was a bit insulted that it had taken so long for a Blaze of weredragons to come up with that.
“But,” he continued, “you are not completely off the hook. As a substitute for that ancient tradition, you have been given a charge.”
“Let me guess…”
He nodded. “You must find your grandfather’s murderer, and bring him to justice. The elders believe Evangelos could be a threat to all weredragons, not just my family. By facing down this enemy, you will prove your loyalty and worth to the skeptics among the Blaze.”
“Skeptics like that annoying prig Xavier?”
“Jennifer.”
“Dad!”
“Jennifer.”
“He totally is.”
“Jennifer.”
“All right, all right…dazzle me. Tell me how he’s respected and has had a hard life, blah-blah, I’m already bored.”
“Xavier is a respected voice in the Blaze,” Jonathan said. “He has had a hard life. His distaste for the unknown, and suspicion of strangers, is rooted in massacres like Pinegrove. It will be hard for him, and those like him, to completely accept you. But they may yet come around.”
“If I stop Evangelos.”
“If you stop Evangelos. Of course, I’m free to help you. You and I are under the same shroud of suspicion. Many of my fellow elders will feel better about me as well, after this is done.”
For some reason, that made her laugh. She startled herself…but it felt good all the same.
“You don’t have to accept,” Jonathan hurried to add. “If you would rather, you can leave Evangelos to me and your mother, and our peers will accept the Fifty Trials as evidence of your trustworthiness. It’s your choice.”
She sat and thought for a moment. “What do you think I should do?”
Her father’s face strained slightly, and his silver eyes bulged. A wing claw clutched at his scaled chest as he tried to keep his balance. “Can’t…think straight…teenaged daughter…asking me for advice…everything…going dark…”
She sighed. It was good, at least, to see him joke again. “Really, Dad. I don’t know what to do. I’m not sure I can face…well, on the other hand, I don’t want to leave you and Mom—”
“Whatever you do,” he interrupted with sudden seriousness, “do not do it because you’re worried about your mother and me. We can take care of ourselves. If you want to face down Evangelos with us, okay. If you don’t think you’re ready, then you should prepare for the trials instead. And there’ll be no shame there. If Evangelos has half of his mother’s powers, he will be a force. We can’t be sure of his age, as I said before; but he’s probably older than you. And you can protest all you want—but you are still technically, legally, biologically, and physically a child.”
“Wow. What every teenager loves to hear. Why did I ask for your advice again?”
“Regardless, your reasons must be for yourself.”
She nodded and realized the decision was easier than she thought. “I’m ready,” she said. “I want to face him. With you and Mom.”
He examined her face, as if looking for some sign of uncertainty. He didn’t find it. “Okay. Let’s get back to the farm later today and meet your mother there. But first,” he finished as he slumped on a bed, “I need to sleep off that meeting!”
“Do you think you can do it?” Catherine’s face glowed with amazement when Jennifer told her about Evangelos and the agreement with the Blaze. They were whispering in a corner of the cave, far enough from their sleeping elders to avoid disturbing them. “From what you’ve told me, your half brother sounds kind of horrifying.”
“I don’t have a lot of choice,” Jennifer pointed out. “He’ll be coming for me soon. I’d rather learn everything I can about him so I’m ready when the time comes. You know, the best defense is a good offense, and all that. Besides…I want to stay close to my parents.”
Catherine grinned. “I bet that felt weird to say.”
“For their own protection!” Jennifer knew it was more than that, but she insisted. “If our family’s going to stay together, that means being outside Crescent Valley. Outside Crescent Valley, Dad’s vulnerable. I’d feel better if I were there to help Mom with Dad. Besides, this way I can keep an eye on Skip, too. After all, he is Dianna’s second kid.”
“Skip’s your boyfriend, right? I hope I can meet him someday. I don’t think I’ve ever met a werachnid.”
“Well, I don’t know if he’s my boyfriend…he’s my friend who’s, you know, also a boy…”
“You talk about him all the time. And aren’t you two going to that dance together at your school?”
It occurred to Jennifer that the Halloween dance in two days was back on, since Winona Brandfire and her peers had set aside the Fifty Trials. She supposed she should be happy, but too much had happened recently.
“I guess. But I still don’t think of him as my boyfriend. Not yet. It’s just so complicated right now.”
“Boy, talk about complicated!�
��
It was the following morning, the day before Halloween, and Jennifer’s first chance to talk to Skip at Winoka High since they had learned about their startling ties to Evangelos. The two of them were walking together down the hall to history class.
“Yeah. This is weird. I don’t know about you, but I liked the idea of being an only child a heck of a lot better than this.”
“You can say that again,” Jennifer said fervently.
“Also, I think your mom hates me.”
The change of subject startled her. “What makes you say that?”
“She didn’t say a word to me on the way home from your cabin. Probably not a big fan of spiders, eh?”
“Oh…” Jennifer coughed. Awkward! “She’s just like that sometimes.”
“She could have at least put on the radio.”
Jennifer fingered the necklace Skip had given her, desperate to change the subject. “So you think your own mom’s trips around the world, studying native cultures, seeking magical artifacts…you think she was trying to find a way to locate Evangelos? You know, bring him back?”
He shrugged. “I try not to think much about Mom anymore.”
Jennifer didn’t know what to say.
He gave an uncomfortable smile. “You’re right, this is weird. The two of us having the same half brother.”
“Yeah. Weird. It’s not like we’re related or anything, but…” Jennifer stalled at the expression of horror on Skip’s face and decided on a rapid change of topic. “Well, it’s just weird. Um, do you still want to do the Halloween dance tomorrow night?”
Yes, the Halloween dance! Jennifer was glad now she had never gotten up the nerve to cancel on Skip. “Sure. I mean, if you still want to.”
“Okay. What are you going as?”
Skip couldn’t stifle a dark chuckle. “Ah, the possibilities! I could win a lot of friends around here, and go as a fanatic warrior bent on killing anything with more than two legs…” His expression turned murky. “But I imagine I’ll come as something truer to myself.”
Jennifer Scales and the Messenger of Light Page 11
