Winona didn’t bother asking if anyone was coming over to join them. She and Forrester had tried to cheer their mother up by inviting guests over for meals, but Patricia’s mood made this an increasingly awkward practice. Nowadays, the only dragon who visited at all was Tasa, and he slipped up only as far as the back door for whispered conversations with Winona, when Forrester was out and Patricia was asleep or engrossed in television. How’s she doing? he would ask with clear concern, and How are you holding up yourself? Occasionally, he’d ask after Forrester, especially on nights like tonight. On this topic, he was typically blunt: Do you think he’ll make it back? I heard a friend of his died last week. How many does that make now? Someone’s got to do something, don’t you think? When Winona suggested Tasa himself stop bugging her and go do something if it was so damn important, he would sniff, smile, and race off like a bullet into the air. Where he went, and what he did, Winona never asked.
In any case, tonight was dinner for two. She pulled a plastic vat of frozen gumbo out of the freezer, put it in the microwave, pressed a button, and ambled back into the living room.
“Just a few minutes,” she promised her mother from the doorway. When Patricia only grunted without taking her eyes off the television, Winona wrinkled her nose. The movie was a black-and-white oldie about vampires. It was always something like this nowadays. Vampires, werewolves, ghosts, mermaids, faeries, talking cars, dancing dinosaurs—as long as it wasn’t real, it was something Patricia would watch.
“How about a courtroom drama, Ma?” she suggested, still standing a few feet behind the motionless figure in the wheelchair. “You and I like watching those together.”
Patricia didn’t answer. The vampire on the screen jumped in front of the heroine, who screamed atop severe orchestral music. Before she could escape, her predator was upon her, piercing her neck and drawing blood. Paralyzed and helpless, she fainted and gave herself up.
“Ma? Don’t you want to watch something else?”
“Gumbo’s gonna be ready soon. I can smell it.”
Winona wrung the dish towel in her hands. “Why don’t you ever answer my questions? Aren’t I good enough to talk to, instead of at?”
Vampire and prey shrank into darkness. “You wouldn’t understand any of my answers.”
“I understand you fine when you talk to me, Ma. You just don’t want to talk. Not since that girl paralyzed you in the street. Shouldn’t we talk about that? Or see a doctor?”
“Dr. Longuequeue’s already looked.” Longuequeue was a dasher who’d recently immigrated to the area from Europe. “I’m never changing back again.”
“I didn’t mean that kind of doctor. I mean a doctor you could talk to.” Or I could.
“I don’t need anyone in my head. I remember clear enough what happened that night.”
Something in her mother’s tone made Winona press. “And what do you remember?”
“I remember you not doing what you were told. I remember your brother not doing what he was told. Then I remember getting hurt.”
Winona reached up and rubbed her ear. “That’s not fair, Ma. We didn’t get you hurt.”
“You didn’t stick a pitchfork in me, you mean. You still stabbed me in the back.”
“Before that happened, you were burning that town to the ground. There were people screaming, with no weapons or any fight in them at all, and you and your friends were torching them and burning their homes and laughing, and—”
“Cowards,” Patricia corrected her. “Cowards, not people. Cowards who hid in the shadows. We had to smoke them out so they would fight. It’s not a pretty business, Win. I didn’t expect you to understand. I did expect you to stay home. To follow the rules.”
“And the rules about killing innocent people—where are those written down?”
“If they were innocent, they wouldn’t have lived hand in hand with the troublemakers.”
“Guilty by association, you mean.” Winona had learned this term from one of the crime dramas her mother didn’t want to watch anymore. “What does that make me, after you killed those two people in the middle of the street?”
“There was just the one. Just the man. Their leader. He had already killed Jeffrey Swift. I needed to stop him before he killed again. He’s the only one I killed.”
“That’s not true, Ma.” Winona tried to collect herself. “I mean, maybe you didn’t see everyone. But there were three people in that intersection. One man, two girls. You killed that man, and you killed a girl. And you would have killed the other one, too. The one that hurt you. Somehow, she survived.” Satisfaction filled Winona as she let all this out. Was she happy the girl had survived? Well, happy a girl had survived, she supposed. It was generally a happy thing when a girl didn’t die a horrible, burning death. What the girl did after she survived didn’t make Winona so happy, even if it led to a certain . . . what? Justice?
“Those weren’t girls. Those were soldiers.”
Winona supposed Glorianna Seabright could be some sort of soldier. But not that other girl. And not all those innocent, scared people scattering across downtown. Now what will they become? She thought of the trucks parked at the Seabright farm that evening, and the woman in the truck with the tents and the sleeping bags and the food.
“So that’s what Forrester’s gone off to try to kill,” Winona finally said. “Soldiers.”
“What Forrester’s gone and done isn’t any of your business,” Patricia snapped. “You mind your ma and dinner.”
The microwave beeped. Reaching up to rub her ear again, Winona went back into the kitchen. She carefully poured the gumbo into two ceramic bowls, breathed in the smell of spiced sausage and shellfish, and then put tin foil over one. The other one, she stirred with a spoon and brought into the living room, keeping the dish towel underneath.
“Why am I still here?” Her mother spat the bitter words at the vampire who had returned on screen to ravage another beauty. “What good is a weredragon who can’t change her shape? Who can’t fly or turf-whomp, hunt or breathe fire, visit Crescent Valley or . . .”
“What’s Crescent Valley?” Winona asked, sitting down on the arm of the couch next to her mother’s wheelchair and putting a spoonful of gumbo up to the older woman’s lips.
Patricia grimaced, gummed the spoon, and swallowed. “. . . Or mingle with the newolf packs, or call the fire hornets to her side. No good, that’s what.”
“I can’t do any of those things,” Winona pointed out.
This only angered her mother. “What good is anyone, without any of that?!”
Winona offered another spoonful with a steady hand. “You have your two kids, Ma.”
“Go away.”
“We love you. We need you.”
“Go away.”
The spoon faltered, and Winona rubbed her ear with a free hand, blinking hard. With great effort, she brought the utensil back up to her mother’s lips. “I love you, Ma.”
The second spoonful disappeared, all but a couple of grains of rice. When her mother didn’t say anything after swallowing, Winona offered a third spoonful, and a fourth, in silence. They got through the whole bowl that way, the only sound coming from the television. The treacherous creature with the black cloak and sharp teeth took two more maidens.
Once the last spoonful was done, Winona took the bowl and spoon into the kitchen, rinsed them, took the foil off the waiting bowl, found a clean spoon, and had her own dinner alone in the kitchen. Then she cleaned off those dishes and the original plastic container, wiped off the kitchen counter, hung the dish towel up on the oven door handle, and walked out the back door. The last sound she heard from the Brandfire house came from the television, yet another girl screaming as she was taken by the monster.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Tasa’s coils rippled anxiously as he tried to keep up.
“Don’t you have some toddlers to murder?”
“That’s not what we do. Winona, did you just leave your mother alone in t
he—”
“Forrester should be home. If he comes home instead of hanging out late with his friends, she’ll be fine. If he stays out late, or gets himself killed, then she’s in trouble, isn’t she?”
“You’re crazy!” Tasa cried. “You’re killing her!”
“I’m not doing a damn thing to her. All everybody has to do is what they’re supposed to do for once, instead of relying on me. Rules aren’t only for me. They’re for everyone. Rule number one: Don’t kill. Rule number two: Do what your mother tells you.”
“She told you to leave her to die?”
“She told me to go away.”
He snorted. “So back to my original question. Where do you think you’re going?”
Winona wasn’t sure, so she said nothing. They walked in silence through the mid-September evening. Each time a car passed, Tasa blinked into a yellowing crop pattern.
About an hour later, as she turned onto a familiar rural road, he sighed. “You’re kidding.”
“It’s a place I know I can stay.”
“They’ll kill you!”
“They have no idea who I am.”
“Okay, how about, they’ll kill me?!”
“No one invited you. Besides, you know they won’t see you.”
His scales rippled again as an eighteen-wheeler passed on the paved highway behind them. “They’ll hear us talking. If they look hard enough, they’ll figure out what’s going on.”
“You know the solution to that.”
He sulked the rest of the way, about two miles of invisible shuffling through gravel. The sun lowered in the sky, casting their shadows in front of them. Winona wondered if anyone else would somehow detect him, when they got there. Why did Tasa insist on coming along? She didn’t need his protection.
As they crested the hill and saw the Seabright farm, she gathered doubts. Unlike last time when there were a dozen or so trucks in the driveway, the entire far yard was now filled with them, as if parked for a county fair. There were also vans and recreational vehicles and campers. Behind them all, between the house and the crops where workers toiled, were rows and rows of tents, ranging in size from small, individual domes to palaces spun from nylon and canvas.
Closer to them, the front yard was filled with people, many of them clustered around either the porch or two bonfires that were halfway between the house and the road. They were armed much better than the crowd the dragons had terrorized in spring.
Before long, a couple of large men near the top of the driveway noticed her. “You here for the rally?” one asked, walking up. He had a short black beard and a sword slung off his belt. Winona looked around nervously—there was no trace of Tasa, not even a shadow—and nodded.
The other man was taller and held a sheaf of papers. “Name?”
“Winona.”
“Last name?”
She paused. “Victoria knows me.”
The man with the papers smiled. “Victoria’s busy. You want in, give us a last name.”
Thinking quickly, she seized on a few rumors her brother had passed on. “I don’t want my friends to know I’m here. Some of them scare me. I thought I could come here to be safe.” This made them pause. Her smooth, dark arms gestured up to the crescent moon. “If I were going to turn into a frog, wouldn’t I have done it by now?”
They both laughed, and the man with the papers wrote her first name down. “Winona. We’ll be telling Victoria you asked after her. If she asks for your last name, you’d better give it.”
“Thanks.” She gave them a smile for their trouble, and walked down the driveway.
She didn’t see Tasa, but his disembodied voice carried arrogant admiration. “Quick thinking. Lucky for you, they don’t know much about when dragons come of age.”
“Lucky for you, I didn’t scream ‘dragon, dragon!’ and point in your general direction.”
This made him chuckle. “I think I’ll be okay in this crowd. They’re not looking for anything like me. Too busy making lists of who’s naughty and who’s nice.”
They mingled, though Winona could never be sure when Tasa was at her side, silently comingling, and when he was altogether gone. She thought she saw a bonfire reignite briskly once; and on another occasion an entire table full of trays of grilled meat tipped over, ostensibly because a large man at one end leaned too hard on it.
She moved among her enemies like the crisp September wind, trying to understand them. Had they all lost family to dragons? Were the stories she was hearing true or exaggerations? There was the woman who said a dragon had burned two of her sisters to a crisp and eaten them both, along with a third who was still raw and screaming on her way down the beast’s gullet. There was the elderly couple who had lost all four of their children, and eight of their grandchildren, to a single attack on a town like this one. There was the teenager, a year or so older than herself, who claimed the missing lower third of his left arm was in a fire-breathing lizard’s belly, instead of where it ought to be.
Around and around she went, chewing on the tales these warriors spun, unsure which were true. Was it possible they were all true?
From her position by the bonfires, she heard hushing. Looking up across the crowd, she spotted two familiar women on the farmhouse porch. One was her mother’s age and had her hands raised for quiet. The other, standing behind Victoria, was the teenaged brunette warrior who had crippled Patricia Brandfire. Glorianna Seabright, I presume. The thought of what this girl had done to her mother weighed Winona down. I shouldn’t have left Ma, she told herself. I’ve endangered her. Forrester won’t be back in time. People are depending on me. I should . . .
“Hey!” She wriggled in surprise as the invisible cloak of Tasa suddenly wrapped around her. “Get off me, you pervert!”
“Hush.” His hot breath warmed the back of her left ear. “Can’t you see her staring straight at you? You don’t want this kind of attention. You have to hide!”
“Fine, get off me!”
He shrugged his invisible shape off of her as she walked away, hoping to lose Glorianna’s attention in the play of light and shadow between two bonfires. Is this how it will be from now on? she wondered. Will I be running away from her forever? Is that what I deserve?
Once she was farther away, she stopped despite Tasa’s protests and watched Glorianna and Victoria talk to the crowd. They spoke of bravery and justice. They invoked the memories of the cherished dead. Then, they ended with a chilling, rallying cry.
“Death is on our side! Death is on our side!”
She backed away from the crowd’s fringes until Tasa dared to flex a few visible scales. “Still feel safe here?” he jeered softly, as the crowd pumped fists and weapons into the air.
Before she could answer, a small group of these warriors pushed through the crowd and climbed up onto the stage. One of them whispered fervently in Victoria’s ear, and she stood up straight. Victoria passed the message on to Glorianna, and soon the teenager was calling for quiet again. The crowd obeyed.
“Our scouts tell us there is a new attack, on a new town. It is not far from here. I will go fight these demons. Who will join me?”
The entire mob cried out at once.
What followed was a remarkable display of coordination and tactical planning. Most of the warriors had already been assigned a squad with an experienced leader. They left the farm with assignments and maneuvers—the bravest souls to accompany Glorianna and Victoria into the heart of battle, teams of archers to swing wide of the town and cut off escape routes, and some small teams armed with pyrotechnics to serve as diversions and distractions.
Within fifteen minutes, the entire field was almost empty, with only a skeleton crew to stand guard and see to the grounds and equipment. It wasn’t until the last of the red taillights disappeared into the distance that Winona realized who these warriors were hunting tonight.
From the obituaries of various local papers the following week:BRANDFIRE, 42 BRANDFIRE, 18
Patricia Lee B
randfire, 42, died in her home Thursday evening due to complications related to previous severe spinal cord injuries. Forrester Astin Brandfire, 18, died earlier the same evening from multiple stab wounds related to gang violence. Authorities do not believe the two deaths are connected.
Patricia Brandfire, née Redhorn, was born and raised in Roseau, and then received her Bachelor’s degree in Agricultural Sciences from the University of Minnesota, Morris. Her marriage to Lamar Joseph Brandfire lasted sixteen years, before the latter’s accidental death in a boating incident.
Forrester Brandfire was born and raised in the area. He planned to attend St. Olaf College in Northfield next year.
They are survived by Winona Emma Brandfire, 15, the second child of Patricia and Lamar.
When Winona Emma Brandfire, the sole surviving member of the Brandfire clan, had her first morph one month later, she was utterly alone. Most of it happened in front of a full-length mirror, where she watched the violence inflicted upon her body with revulsion and despair.
Not me, she found herself thinking, and before long she was screaming it out loud. Not one of them! Not like them!
CHAPTER 14
Following Instincts
By the time Winona began her studies at Carleton College—hours away from her hometown, but right across the river from where Forrester would have started St. Olaf three years earlier—she still hated what happened every crescent moon. She wanted no part of her family. The Brandfire farm had fetched a good price to developers, giving her plenty for college and a future without dragons.
A small college like Carleton was the perfect setting for someone like Winona. The quiet, intimate campus had enough remote corners for solitude, and still supplied plenty of company when she needed it. There were idealists bound to notions of truth and justice, and cynics certain no such goals were attainable. Both sides argued themselves hoarse in classrooms throughout the day, and in dormitory hallways throughout the night. She had found a true community, where the only thing everyone she met could agree upon was that the idea of real-life dragons was not nearly abstract enough to be interesting to anyone.
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