Jennifer Scales and the Messenger of Light (10 page)

“Pinegrove. There was an invasion of beaststalkers. Lots of weredragons were killed, or driven from their homes. Right?”

“Perhaps your father should—”

“I’d rather hear it from you. Is it true?”

Elizabeth searched the yard as if seeking help, and then looked right at Jennifer. “It’s true.”

“Was Grandpa Crawford there? Is that why you and he don’t get along so well?”

“Jennifer, this is really not—”

“That sounds like a yes to me. So what happened to Pinegrove after the weredragons left? Werachnids razed Eveningstar, but Catherine says the beaststalkers—”

“I won’t discuss this with you now!” The vehemence in her mother’s voice stopped Jennifer cold.

Without another word, her mother sheathed her sword and went inside.

“You have learned enough in our first several weeks together for me to reveal a secret,” Mr. Slider told the geometry class the following Monday. His black gaze roamed the room as he powered his wheelchair by the front row of quizzical looks. “For the rest of this year, this secret will underlie everything we do together.”

Jennifer scanned the faces of her classmates. Most of them, like her, seemed to assume that this was a creative but still ultimately lame attempt to excite their attention for a few precious moments.

His wheelchair stopped, and he held his head up high. “Geometry is not math.”

Above average, she graded the effort. But still a bit lame. Of course it’s math!

The wheelchair resumed down the rows. “There are angles to measure, perhaps, and lengths and volumes to calculate. But that’s simple math, numbers plugged into formulas, and you all know how to do that.

“No, geometry is about logic.” Mr. Slider’s head snapped around fast enough to whip some thin blond strands into his face. “It is about taking certain pieces of information and pushing them together, like a puzzle, until you get the full picture!”

The surly junior girl behind Jennifer punched her on the shoulder and passed her another note from her unknown admirer, which she read:

So you haven’t told me yet if you can go to the Halloween dance if you can go to the dance I would like that very much so let me know thanks
.

It was, like every note she had received weekly in this room since the start of the school year, unsigned.

This was exasperating. She was just about to turn around and begin interrogating boys one at a time—starting with Gerry Stowe—when she heard Mr. Slider’s voice and chair approaching her.

“Let me give an example, class. Assume, for a moment, that Ms. Scales here is a beast of some sort.”

She sat bolt upright at that remark and stared at the teacher, but he was smiling congenially. “Ms. Scales, help me out. When I was a boy, all the girls at school wanted to be horses or unicorns, but I don’t want to be sexist. What kind of animal do you want to be?”

“Errrr…a unicorn would be fine, I guess.”

“Very well. Please step up in front of the class. Thank you. Kay Harrison, pick another animal.”

The junior in the seat behind Jennifer squirmed uncomfortably. “Um, do I have to do this? This seems kinda dumb. Why do we have to be animals?”

“All in good time, Ms. Harrison. I would appreciate it if you just played along. Your animal?”

“Ummm…a cat?”

Bob Jarkmand and another boy sitting at the back of the classroom whispered to each other and began snickering. Kay shot them both a venomous look as she got up slowly and walked up next to Jennifer. Standing there, she shifted from one foot to the other and twirled her red, stringy curls with a finger. “This is so stupid,” she muttered under her breath. Jennifer tried to give her an encouraging look, but the other girl’s dull gaze was glued to the floor.

“We need a third volunteer,” Mr. Slider chirped. His gaze passed over the whole class. Susan was the only one not quick enough to look away in time. “Ms. Elmsmith?”

“Ugh. Okay, a shark.”

“Terrific! Up you go.”

The three girls endured a bit more chuckling from the rest of the class as they waited in a row for Mr. Slider to get on with whatever he had in mind. Jennifer tried hard not to look over at where she knew Gerry was sitting.

“Let’s say I want to put you three in a parade,” the teacher began. “I want you in order of animal size. Who would be first, second, and third?”

A few hands went up. Mr. Slider motioned to one of the boys in the front row.

“First the cat, then the unicorn, then the shark,” the answer came.

The teacher gave no sign beyond a mysterious smile.

Another hand went up. “Cat, shark, unicorn?”

The smile did not disappear.

Jennifer caught on. “You can’t know yet,” she said. “We don’t know what kind of cat or shark. Plus, we have no idea how big a unicorn is since there’s no such thing.”

“Excellent, Ms. Scales. In other words, to solve this puzzle we need more information. We need to know what we don’t know.” He let this sink in for a moment. Jennifer liked the way Mr. Slider seemed to enjoy his work.

“We need to know what we don’t know,” he repeated. “Is the shark a nurse shark, or a great white? Are unicorns the size of kittens, or the size of elephants? Let’s try another parade. What if I said I wanted you in increasing order of the number of legs you have?”

The boy in front who had spoken first raised his hand again. “We know the shark comes first now. But the other two could be in either order.”

“That’s right, Paul! Of course, we need to make an assumption on unicorns based on the way they’ve always been described—as four-legged horses with a horn. Okay, now let’s say we want to put them in decreasing order of how many times we’ve seen that animal in the last month.”

A girl toward the back of the class spoke up without raising her hand. “On television, or real life?”

The corner of Mr. Slider’s mouth raised. “Good question. Say real life.”

“Cat, shark, unicorn!”

“Not for me!” The boy in front smiled back at the rest of the class. “My dad works at the aquarium!”

“This is excellent.” Mr. Slider powered his chair back until he was right next to Jennifer and the other two girls. “Things that we assume are an important part of geometry. For the rest of this year you’re going to work with what are called proofs—logic puzzles that begin with assumptions and lead to an inevitable conclusion. Logic is an amazing tool—it’s accurate and ruthless, and sees through lies.

“For example, you could start with a proof with two assumptions: ‘There’s no such thing as unicorns’ and ‘Jennifer is a unicorn’—and end the proof with your conclusion that there’s no such thing as Jennifer!

“Of course, we know Jennifer exists—we can see that much! So logic makes us go back to our assumptions and ask if either of them could be wrong. If Jennifer exists, either unicorns are real, too, or she’s not a unicorn!”

“I swear I’m not a unicorn,” Jennifer offered helpfully. This got the class tittering a bit. Mr. Slider looked up at her and the others gratefully.

“Thanks, girls, you can all sit down now. Class, you’ll use proofs and logic all year to figure out things where you’re missing information. ‘What shape is it?’ ‘How large is it?’ ‘Will this hold enough liquid?’ And so on. But the most important questions are those I mentioned earlier: What do we know, and what don’t we know?

“For now, let’s apply logic to some geometric shapes…”

He began working at the chalkboard, but Jennifer didn’t pay much attention to the rest of what happened that class. A thought consumed her. Mr. Slider had said logic was accurate and ruthless. And he had said you could use it to figure out things when you were missing information.

And there were definitely some things going on where she was missing information.

Walking home from school alone, she recognized Eddie’s voice calling her. She didn’t turn around.

“Jennifer, come on, wait up! Just for a second!”

She answered without slowing down. “You want to talk, move faster. And don’t expect me to answer!”

His footsteps quickened to a jog, and after a few seconds he was walking next to her and breathing heavily. “You don’t have to answer, just listen. It’s important. I’m starting to hear stuff, Jennifer. Not just from my mom and dad. People are talking, all over town. They say something bad is coming. Some even say it’s already here.”

“Must be the horrible Scales family on the rampage,” she quipped. “What, you’ve told every idiot in town that we’re weredragons?”

“No, I wouldn’t do that,” he insisted. “But I don’t know if my parents have. It won’t take long anyway before people trace trouble back to you guys. At that point, you know full well you’re outnumbered. How long do you think it will take?”

She stopped, grabbed him by the collar, and yanked him down and around so that his back was nearly parallel to the ground. “How long do you think what will take?”

To his credit, he didn’t flinch. “How long do you think it will take for this town to turn on your mother, once and for all?”

Then it clicked. Logic. Accurate. Relentless. She dropped Eddie with a satisfying smack onto the sidewalk and began to run. She didn’t stop until she had gotten home.

Both of her parents were sitting in the living room, listening to Wagner’s Ring des Nibelungen at an unnatural volume. She flipped the stereo off and faced the couch squarely.

“When did Pinegrove change its name to Winoka?”

They both blinked in silence.

“Okay, let’s try another one. Why the hell are we living in a town full of beaststalkers?”

They both blinked again. Phoebe padded into the living room to greet Jennifer, took in the tension for a moment, and then padded away with ears down and tail between her legs.

“How did you find out?” Elizabeth finally asked.

“I used logic. Sixty years ago, beaststalkers invaded a town called Pinegrove. Then they settled there. The Blacktooths are beaststalkers. Eddie talks about more beaststalkers being around, and us being outnumbered, and the town turning on us. Should I go on?”

“That’s not exactly airtight—”

“Then tell me I’m wrong.”

Jonathan lifted his hand. “You’re not wrong, Jennifer. Winoka reincorporated, and changed its name from Pinegrove soon after the weredragons were pushed out. The beaststalkers wanted nothing of the town’s old identity to remain, not even its name.”

“So after Eveningstar burned down, you guys decided it would be smart to move into a town full of people who would kill Dad and me if they knew what we are?”

“I imagine,” he replied carefully, “that for weeks, the entire town has been learning who you and I are, via the Blacktooths.”

“Then why hasn’t anyone come to kill us?”

“Because of me,” Elizabeth answered. She nodded at her daughter’s stare. “There is a sacred agreement among beaststalkers which protects each beaststalker’s family and friends. Many beaststalkers have used this unwritten law to extend protection to others—people who are afraid of monsters they’ve seen, or have heard of. They move into towns full of beaststalkers so that they aren’t afraid anymore.”

“And because we’re family, we’re okay, even though we’re weredragons?”

Her mother nodded. “The idea of a beaststalker wanting to protect a weredragon has never come up before. I imagine the townspeople of Winoka are struggling with that dilemma as we speak.”

Jennifer realized something. “That’s why Mrs. Blacktooth didn’t kill me in front of you that day last spring.”

“Yes. Even if she had managed to kill you before I intervened, it would have been hard for her to explain to others.”

“Eddie said we might be attacked soon anyway.”

“As I said, Winoka is struggling with the idea of our family, and the problems we pose. I’m not exactly a favorite in this town to begin with. I have often disagreed with those in power. I’ve been excluded from the local church, as you know. What you don’t know is that church is run by city hall—and it has many people in it I once counted as friends. Their distrust made my participation impossible. As more people learn about your father, that distrust will evolve into hostility. Fewer and fewer of them will care about beaststalker law.”

“The murder of Jack Alder makes things worse,” Jonathan added. “Hank Blacktooth was friends with Jack, just like I was. And just like my sources discovered weredragon DNA on the scene, I am sure his have as well. In fact, he and others may even guess that the murderer is related to me. That will add fuel to the fire.”

“Then we can’t stay here!” Jennifer couldn’t believe they were all still in the well-appointed living room. “We’ve got to get out of Winoka!”

Her parents nodded. “Your mother and I have been talking about this since you showed an interest in Pinegrove. We thought you might learn the truth eventually—and that you would feel this way. It might not be a bad idea for you to make for the farm again, and stay there for some time. You could relax a bit before the trials, next week.”

Jennifer had almost forgotten about the Fifty Trials and the Blaze. In fact, she had never really gotten around to telling Skip that she couldn’t go to the Halloween dance. The time, it seemed, was never right—and, anyway, how would she explain the Fifty Trials, and the reason for them? But now none of that mattered.

“Not just me—you and Mom have got to come, too! None of us should be here! We should never have moved here!”

Elizabeth stood and held her daughter’s hand. “Honey, your father and I can’t go just yet.”

“What?” Jennifer yanked her hand away from her mother. “That’s crazy!”

“The crescent moon comes tomorrow.” Jonathan stood up, too. “Your mother will stay here to protect me. I need a day or so to figure out what happened to Jack, plus my work for the new hospital center—”

“You’re nuts.” Jennifer spun and ran out of the room. Feeling tears gathering, she shook them away. She didn’t want to think about what staying now would mean for her parents. If dozens of beaststalkers came knocking tonight, her mother would be overwhelmed. And her father, without a crescent moon, would be unable to help much. Why didn’t they see that?

She knew it was useless to argue. Still fighting back tears, she went up to her room. In a few minutes, she had on her leather training armor and twin daggers. That was all she would need. Without saying good-bye to her parents, she slammed her bedroom window open and jumped out into the cold October afternoon. Moments later, her winged shape slipped up through the clouds.