There were five of them on the porch—Jennifer, her grandfather, Catherine Brandfire, Patrick Rosespan, and a creeper Jennifer hadn’t seen before, with lavender scales and a shield of spikes protecting the back of his neck. They were the newest weredragons, and they were getting a short lesson from their host.

Patrick looked them all up and down after Crawford’s remark. He grinned.

“No disrespect, sir, but I feel pretty real!”

Crawford took the snickers from the students in stride. “Thank you, Mr. Rosespan. You’re as literal as your older brother, I see. I suppose I should be more exact. We are real, physically. And we have spiritual strengths that I will help you access in the weeks and months to come. But to the rest of the world, we do not exist. Or haven’t you noticed?”

Patrick shifted uncomfortably. “I always kinda wondered why I never saw Eveningstar on the news after my family escaped.”

“My first morph was right alongside the highway two months ago,” offered Catherine. She frowned. “Sure, it was nighttime, but nobody stopped to check on me. Not even the state patrol.”

“We hide here, but we probably don’t even have to,” Jennifer suddenly realized. “Nobody ever sees us flying, or hunting, or anything, do they?”

“They do not have to,” Crawford answered. “A beast flying through the air like you, a beast suffering in a ditch like Catherine, a whole town of beasts burning to death like Eveningstar—these are all things that can be ignored by the larger world. Eveningstar, after all, was populated nearly entirely by weredragons. It was a rare refuge in a world that would rather not notice us. Simply put, we are not mundane enough.”

“We’re freaks,” offered Catherine. The term startled Jennifer. “But I always thought that would mean more people notice me, not less.”

“It depends, doesn’t it? People typically react one of two ways to something different. They ignore it if they can, and they try to stop it if they can’t. They only seek a third way, to accept and adapt, if they have no choice. And we’re not so different ourselves when we’re human, are we? Before your first change, some of you may have missed a thing or two you ought to have seen or heard.”

As he spoke, the elder dragon’s eyes settled on Jennifer. The meaning was clear—she felt a sudden pang of guilt about her father and her remark yesterday about not trusting him. Sure, he could have told her earlier about weredragons. But couldn’t she also have made more of an effort to find out? How many times might he have tried to tell her, only to have her snap at him, or ignore him? Heck, she tuned out so many of his lectures, he could have given a slide presentation on weredragon anatomy in the kitchen and she probably would have missed it.

Crawford saw his message hit home and continued. “Our position is precarious. We’re too strange to merit notice. Were we to force the issue, we’re too few to defend against the inevitable backlash. The consequences would be horrible. Our refuges—this farm, others like it around the world, even Crescent Valley—are hidden, but they are not impregnable.”

“This is depressing stuff,” the creeper complained. “Why are you telling us this—to make us feel worse?”

“Not at all! But you need to know the truth. Many young dragons come to this change with a lot of anger, or resentment, or despair. They try to change what they are to get the world to accept them—or else, they try to change the world too fast, to make it again like it once was when people revered and respected us.

“Change comes to us all, and it will come to the world—slowly and steadily, like a tide that the moon pulls across an enormous beach. You cannot push the waves faster, and no one can build walls of sand thick enough to stop it. It comes when it comes.”

“So we just sit here and wait for things to happen to us?” Jennifer asked. “That doesn’t sound very productive.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to sit and wait for anything,” Crawford said with a smile. “You will each have your role to explore in our community. You can see this in the way each clan supports the others. Tramplers are built for strength and ferocity, dashers for speed and grace, creepers for stealth and strategy. In our customs, our battles, even our hunts, each clan has a role to play. And within those clans, each individual finds his or her passion.”

Jennifer thought about that. What did that mean for her? She didn’t look or feel like she belonged to any of the three. Did she have a role in this community, or would she be cast out once everyone realized how different she was, and how badly she fit?

“Each of you will spend time this week with a more experienced dragon who can help you learn the skills specific to your type,” Crawford continued. “Joseph will learn camouflage, Patrick will learn tail strikes, and Catherine will learn lizard-calling.”

At this, Jennifer slouched, seething with resentment. “And what am I going to do? Learn nostril-picking with a wing claw?”

“You,” he answered with narrowed eyes, “are going to learn all three.”

“I’ll bet my father put you up to that.”

“Actually, Niffer, it was my idea.” He closed in and bent over so that only she could hear him. “This isn’t going to be a vacation, my dear. If you think your father was bad, wait until you hear my lectures!”

After several doses of this sort of thing, Jennifer decided learning new skills from the other tutors—doing stuff—was a bit more appealing.

She and Joseph needed to pick up the finer points of camouflage from none other than Mullery, the creeper who had emerged from the brush the day Jennifer had watched the hunt. He was a bit surly, and never let on if “Mullery” was his first or last name. Jennifer often had the impression he would rather be somewhere else.

The first lesson went passably well, given the dark cloud hanging over their tutor. When Joseph tried a tree-bark pattern, he was able to get appropriately rough-hewn lines. But Mullery ruled that the color was two shades too light, and the texture too spacious.

Jennifer herself could manage a lay-low camouflage that mimicked fallen leaves, but not much else. An attempt at tree bark ended up in a sort of rudimentary plaid, and her try at a rock, in Mullery’s curt words, required “more mineral, less vegetable.”

Tail-striking with Patrick, under the tutelage of his older brother, Alex, was a better spirit-raiser. Alex liked to speak in military shorthand (just like Eddie, Jennifer thought wistfully). According to the older Rosespan brother, dashers had strange oils throughout their bodies, allowing their nervous systems to act as generators. The prongs at the end of Jennifer’s tail were longer than most dashers’—and of course, she was larger to begin with—so right away, results were spectacular.

“Wow!” exclaimed Alex, as a cascade of sparks blew apart an empty hornets’ nest they were using for target practice. “Nice work! You acquired that target like an old pro. You’ll be on dasher duty if we ever get you on a Crescent Valley hunt, and that’s an order!”

That sounded agreeable enough, albeit vague, Jennifer decided later that week while lolling through woodlands with Catherine and Ned Brownfoot. It certainly seemed more exciting than Ned’s first lizard-calling lesson.

Jennifer still wasn’t sure what lizard-calling was, exactly, but to hear Ned tell it, it required near-perfect weather and ground moisture conditions. After putting off their first lesson for two days because “the moon war’nt right,” Ned—who was at least as old as Grandpa Crawford—spent at least an hour looking for the right patch of ground to work on.

His kind, elderly, southern Missouri drawl made Jennifer impatient and tired all at once. “Young ’uns,” he said as he paced, “never get th’ hang . . . of summonin’ crap . . . without th’ proper beddin’.”

“Here now . . . this otta work,” he finally called out, right before Jennifer and Catherine gave up for the day. He was at the entrance to a low cave that was at least a quarter of the way around the lake, in a part of her grandfather’s forest Jennifer had never been before. The leaves were scarce and the dirt less spongy. It reeked of dried dung left by indeterminate animals. “Now, girls, come on in . . . ’n’ watch yer heads . . . It’s my job . . . to find th’ right spot . . . but it’ll be yer job . . .”

“To die of the stench?” whispered Catherine.

“. . . ta duck.”

“Ow!” Catherine rubbed the back of her pale olive head where it had just scraped against a dip in the cavern’s ceiling.

“Hey, Catherine,” Jennifer asked when they had a moment alone. (This happened fairly quickly, as Ned felt—immediately upon their arrival at the cavern—that an even more choice spot of ground must lie deeper within, and so went exploring.) “Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure,” Catherine said, grinning through vermilion eyes.

“You ever see, um, weird things when you’re human?” Catherine shrugged. “I daydream now and again. In Mr. Soule’s history classes, I often drift and imagine myself flying or floating.”

“Hmmm.” Jennifer wasn’t sure their experiences quite matched up. “Nothing about beaststalkers? Raining spiders? Sheep people? Vomiting up hearts?”

“Ugh. No.” Catherine’s reptilian face showed concern. “Have you talked to your grandfather about that?”

“Not yet. It’s hard for me to separate what’s normal for a dragon from what’s not. I’m trying not to bother him with stuff that may not be important.”

“Listen, Jennifer. If it’s important to you, it’s important. And you need to talk, believe me. I’m not that much older than you. Sometimes, fourteen years old seems like yesterday.” Catherine sounded surprisingly sad. Jennifer was confused. Weren’t the last couple of years in high school supposed to be the time of your life?

“I wish I had connected with my family more back then. I didn’t realize until my first morph how much I really depend on them. When I was alone out by the highway, I was running away from home. They had told me about the whole weredragon deal, and I was freaking out. I didn’t know whether to believe them or not. Either way, I was furious with them.”

“Huh.” Jennifer didn’t know what to say. This sounded too familiar.

“Girls!” Ned’s aged voice came trembling from deep down in the cave. “Gimme a wing claw here . . . I think . . . I’m stuck . . .”

After freeing Ned’s right hind claw from between two rocks, where it had slipped after contact with a patch of not-so-dry dung, the two of them convinced the elder dragon to get on with the lesson nearer to the cave entrance.

The trick to lizard-calling, according to Ned, was in the smoke you used to prep the ground.

“You gotta pepper th’ dirt . . . like an omelet that ain’t quite right . . . watch now . . .”

He snorted vapor from his nostrils and watched it float over the rocky floor of the cavern. Then, with a roar far louder than Jennifer thought this old man could manage, he punched the ground with a clenched claw.

An instant later, an enormous Gila monster came crawling out of the receding smoke. It twisted its massive head about, flicking its tongue, seeking its master. Once it found him, it curled up at his feet and stared at the astonished younger dragons.

“He’s waitin’ . . . for orders,” Ned explained. The careful Missouri accent didn’t sound so slow and dumb to Jennifer all of a sudden. “He’ll stick ’round . . . up to ’n hour. Then you gotta . . . call new ’uns.”

“We’re going to do that?” Jennifer stared at the Gila monster. It looked large enough to swallow Phoebe with minimal effort.

“What did you think lizard-calling would be like?” snickered Catherine.

“Well, I dunno, but I didn’t think we’d be . . . calling lizards. Cripes, that thing is huge!”

“You won’t get ’un . . . like Trixie here. Not right away. More likel’a mud turtle . . . or garden snake. Give a try, Cat.”

With furrowed brow bent low, Catherine puffed smoke onto a patch of dung-lined pebbles. Jennifer peered in closer to get a good look at whatever came out.

After a few seconds, Catherine roared—not as loudly or well as Ned—and pounded the ground.

For a second nothing happened. The smoke dissipated. Jennifer was just about to ask what Catherine did wrong, when the pebbles suddenly began to shift, and out popped a tiny black and yellow box turtle. Without hesitation, it scurried to the cover of its mistress’s left wing.

“Oh!” Catherine herself seemed surprised at the result. “He’s so cute! I love box turtles. Oh, Ned, will I always get him?”

“Love at first sight,” chortled Jennifer. Catherine stuck out her forked tongue.

“There are ways t’get th’ same ’un back.” Ned nodded. “Assumin’ you don’t get ’em killed.”

“Killed?” Catherine gasped. “How would that happen?”

“We use them in war,” Jennifer guessed.

Ned nodded again. Catherine’s olive skin paled.

“But you can’t . . . I won’t . . .”

“Oh, Catherine, no one expects Boxy here to sail into battle. But Gila monsters could, right Ned?”

“And snakes. Snakes’re best for fightin’. They’re fast. Poisonous. Take stuff personal. Your turtle there, Cat . . . heeza good-lookin’ fella . . . prob’ly a family man . . . we won’t draft ’im just yet.”

His easygoing smile calmed Catherine a bit, and Jennifer stepped up to take her turn.

She let the smoke flow from her nose and mouth. It built up quickly and covered the ground around her wing claws. She realized in a panic that her foreclaws were not anywhere as muscular as Catherine’s or Ned’s. I’ll have to make up for it in the vocals, she told herself. Her tail twitched nervously.

A deep breath later, she let loose with the most ferocious roar she could manage. The noise blasted off the cavern walls and hurt her own ears. Ignoring the pain, she rolled up her tiny clawfingers and brought her fist down upon the cave floor.

To her utter astonishment and dismay, a pygmy owl fluttered out of the scattering smoke. With a panicked hoot and flurry of feathers, it scrambled up to her shoulder and buried its small but exceedingly sharp talons into her collarbone.

Jennifer tried not to wince in pain and embarrassment as she turned to Catherine, who looked ready to bust a gut laughing, and Ned, who seemed unimpressed.

“Okay, see, I have no idea where that came from. . . .”

Most of the dragons would leave the farm before they changed back to their human form. Surprisingly, one didn’t leave—Joseph Skinner, the young creeper who took Mullery’s camouflage lessons with Jennifer. Without much explanation, he set up in one of Grandpa Crawford’s guest rooms, and his host did not argue at all, or ask questions.

“You’ll find,” he explained to her privately, “that every once in a while, a young weredragon will show up with no roots. I’ve heard a bit about this boy’s background, Niffer, and I’m not surprised he’ll be staying with us. This isn’t just a refuge for our kind during crescent moons, you know. It’s a haven every day, of every week, for as long as I own this cabin. That’s my duty.”

Jennifer thought of Skip, and his moving to Winoka with his father after his mother died. “What’s Joseph’s story? Doesn’t he have any family to go back to?”

“That’s none of your business, or mine,” he chastised. “It’s enough that he wants to stay. There’s room enough at the Thanksgiving table for all, no worries about that!”

That didn’t satisfy Jennifer completely, but Thanksgiving reminded her of something else. “Catherine told me before she left that her grandmother’s still hearing rumors from the dragonflies. Something’s supposed to happen sometime after Thanksgiving. But you didn’t seem to think much of her predictions a while ago.”

Crawford slumped down onto a sitting room couch and rubbed at his fringe of white hair. “True, but I’ve heard a lot since. And I was more worried the first time than I let on, I suppose. Winona Brandfire’s no fool, and she doesn’t pass on news unless she thinks it’s for real. What else have you heard?”

“Something plans to attack Crescent Valley. Something that doesn’t belong.”

He looked thoughtful. “And does that bother you?”

Jennifer shrugged. “I dunno. I don’t even know what Crescent Valley is. And no one will tell me for fifty freaking morphs!”

“Forty-seven, now. Crescent Valley doesn’t open itself up to just anyone, Niffer. You have to earn your way in. And there’s no sense in telling you what it’s about until you’re ready to go there. The venerables wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“Okay, see, that’s the sort of thing that drives me nuts about you. I ask about one thing, and you bring up something else I’ve never heard of. What’s a venerable?”

He chuckled. “Sorry, Niffer. It’s just going to take some time. In any case, those rumors sound like the same thing I’m hearing. Something plans to come, maybe to Crescent Valley and maybe not. Maybe it plans to come here. In any case, we’ve all got to keep our eyes open, in all phases of the moon.”

“Beaststalkers?” she said breathily.

“Could be. Ned and some of the others, they’ve sent lizard scouts out around the ruins of Eveningstar, and other places. Something’s gathering again. Hard to say who or what. Not friendly, though. Some of the elders think it may be looking for the Ancient Furnace again.”

“The Ancient Furnace? But that was lost long ago—and it’s just a story anyway. Why would anyone think it’s here, or in Crescent Valley? Wouldn’t we have found it by now if it was?”

“They don’t care if we’ve found it or not. Wherever our enemies think it is, they’ll go. A few elders also believe now that it was rumor of the Ancient Furnace years ago that attracted the werachnids to Eveningstar.” He sighed. “How’re your skills coming along?”

She welcomed the change of subject. “I can do tree bark and nest mix pretty well. And Alex says he’s never seen a new dragon tailshock so well. I can flick a beetle off a leaf as I fly by!”

“Great! And how about lizard-calling?”

Jennifer’s smile disappeared. “Oh. That’s going all right. Catherine’s been getting blue-tongued skinks pretty regular, now. And she even managed a hinge-back tortoise before she left.”

“And you?”

She brushed her hair to one side and poked at the couch cushion. “Well, at least the owls stopped coming. But I can’t get much more than a Jaragua, no matter how much smoke I make, or how hard I pound my fist.”

“A jaguar?!?”

She sighed. “Jaragua. They’re these lizards so small that they can fit on a quarter. I’m not surprised you haven’t heard of them—only someone who sucks as much as I do can summon one.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Niffer. Most dragons can’t cross skills at all. You’ve got two and a half so far. Plus your fire-breathing is solid, your flying is second nature, and I’ve seen you turf-whomping and fishing. You’re really catching on.”

“I guess.” She gave him a look. “You’ve watched me turf-whomp? What’re you doing spying on me, anyway? Did Dad put you up to it?”

He diplomatically ignored the question. “You hear from your dad yet this week?”

“Not yet.” Her father had called every couple of days to check in. The conversations were always brief, but friendly enough. What Catherine had told Jennifer about wanting to see her own parents made more sense as time went on. “I kinda miss him, and Mom.”

“Hang in there. Thanksgiving’s only a couple days away. They’ll be proud of your progress. Maybe you’ll decide go back home with them for a while.”

“Maybe. I bet they’ll drive me nuts in ten minutes.”

True, the father who had left her on the cabin porch weeks ago had been uncharacteristically curt that day. But at least she had gotten in a word edgewise!

Elizabeth was more reserved than usual. Perhaps it was the presence of a virtual stranger the entire day—Joseph was polite to his hosts, though not much of a conversationalist. Or maybe it was because she was the only one not in dragon form. But it was plain to Jennifer that her mother had missed her. The older woman remarked occasionally about the crescent moon, and how it wouldn’t wane enough for a few days for everyone to change back. Then she would look at Jennifer with obvious longing for her daughter’s human face.

Thanksgiving night she lay in bed. The thought of changing back to her boring bipedal form raised mixed feelings. She both dreaded it and yearned for it, sort of the way she felt about carrying on with high school this year.

Then she remembered that for her, the change was even worse: School was probably over forever. What on earth would come next?

With that unanswered thought, she drifted off to sleep.