Hydra (20 page)

Jala speaks to us now as her grandfather brews tea.

“You’ve arrived at a critical time. We have been discussing whether we should attempt to send you a message or travel to see you, but we were reluctant to leave the area. The lake we’d mentioned previously, the one Eudora has been visiting, is teeming with the sea creatures we told you about.”

“Sea creatures?” Ram repeats.

At the same time, my mother clarifies, “
teeming
?”

And my father asks, “Can you describe the creatures to us?”

His question may sound elementary, but from what I know of my dad, I’m pretty sure he wants to learn as much as he can of what the spies have observed of the water yagi, before he colors their perception with his own observations. We don’t want to assume too much.

“They remind us of yagi,” Jala explains. “We’ve never been able to study one up close. They live in the lake, and their numbers are swelling. At times, the lake’s surface appears lumpy, rippling with the heads and backs of all these creatures swarming over one another. Eudora mostly visits the lake at night, which makes it very difficult to see what she’s up to, but we have footage of events which—” Jala pauses as her grandfather hands cups of tea to his visitors. Then she sighs, “I suppose, rather than try to describe it, I’ll let you watch the footage yourselves.”

Jala turns to a widescreen monitor and pulls up the file she’s looking for. “I apologize for the dark images. It was night. Even with light-sensitive equipment, this was the best we could do. This footage was captured over the course of several different nights, beginning about two weeks ago.”

My family members and I fill the cabin’s main room, which is open to the kitchen. We’re sitting close together on the sofa and loveseat, with my dad standing next to Xalil in the kitchen, where he still has a good view of the monitor.

I sip my tea as a dark panorama fills the screen. The lake glitters with the reflection of stars shimmering on the roiling water. In spite of the darkness, I can see the lumpiness of the lake’s surface, just as Jala described it. Beyond the lake, on the shore, I can see the outline of trees and the shadows of mountains outlined by the starry sky.

Then something streaks through the sky, a glowing something. For the first fraction of a second, it looks like a meteorite, but as it nears the camera it becomes clear what it is.

A dragon.

It’s got something dangling from its legs, towed by ropes, a billowy sheet of something ephemeral, almost like a parachute. And then it swoops down toward the sea and uses the chute like a dragnet, scooping up water and teeming forms, like it’s fishing.

Then it rises again and flies out of sight, beyond the horizon, the net dripping and swelling with dark shapes I can only assume are that crossbreed between roaches, mercenaries, sharks, and squid. The stuff of my nightmares.

Water yagi.

The room explodes with questions as the footage continues to play past a splice, showing the dragon’s return at a slightly different angle, as the great flying beast flies to the north end of the lake, circles round again, and disappears. Then another splice, and the dragon again emerges, scoops up another net full of water yagi, and flies away.

Jala attempts to answer as many questions as she can, hushing my family. “We saw this happen two nights before we set up the camera. These images were captured on four different nights, none of them successive nights. There was one night between the first two visits, and then two nights between each of the later three.

“The dragon appears to be transporting the creatures—we can only assume he’s taking them to other lakes. Based on the fact that he returns on unsuccessive nights, I’d guess the trip is too far for him to go and return in the same night, and then he rests up from his travels in between.”

“So, the dragon is a ‘he’?” My father asks.

Jala looks stunned and unsure of herself, as though she’s been blindsided by a sudden light. “I’d assumed it was a
he
because Eudora isn’t a dragon anymore, and the rest of you all haven’t been up here, have you? There isn’t any other dragon in the world except the one that lives three miles from the lake. I guess I’d just assumed it’s Ion.”

But my mother’s studying the screen and frowning. “That’s not Ion.”

“It’s—it’s not?” Jala looks embarrassed now.

“What color was he?” My mom asks. The image is a blur of light on dark, the sensitivity of the equipment enhancing the contrast between darkness and pale darkness, obscuring the color completely, making the dragon a blur of light, almost white.

Jala looks at her grandfather. “A sort of fiery yellow…”

I recall what I’ve been taught about Ion. He’s always been described to me as being a pale green, a silvery gray green.

“Yellow-orange?” Xalil suggests.

Yellow-orange isn’t that different from pale green, is it? Especially when observed in the dark of night from some distance.

Jala shakes her head. “A bright fiery yellow, tinged with orange.”

“Ion is a pale gray-green,” my mother notes.

“I’m sorry.” Jala hangs her head. “I haven’t seen him in dragon form since I was two years old, and there were many dragons in the sky that day.”

“Including Eudora, who was yellow.” My mother places a hand on Jala’s shoulder. “It’s understandable that you’d assume this dragon is Ion. I knew him far better than most.”

My brother Ram clears his throat. “Is it possible he’s changed color in the twenty-plus years since you’ve seen him, Mother?”

“Only if he’s also changed shape.” My mom clicks a button and freezes the image on the screen, a side shot of the dragon flying, showing the profile clearly. “Ion was slender. Tall and strong, but slender. This dragon is curvier, with rounded hips and a broader chest.”

My father steps past the kitchen countertop for a closer look at the screen. “You’re right,” he agrees. “This isn’t Ion. The head shape is wrong, as well. See the nostrils? They’re further back, wider set. Ion has a narrow face. Neither has Eudora learned to change herself back into a dragon. She was a shade of yellow, but with a greenish cast, not bright or orange, and she was smaller, wirier. I’ve never seen this dragon before.”

Felix appears to be visibly excited. “Do we have any way to tell whether this dragon is male or female?”

I understand precisely why he wants to know. If it’s female, it could be a mate for Felix or Ram. If it’s male, it could be a potential mate for Rilla, or even Zilpha if she continues to insist on refusing Ed.

And if this dragon is already married, then it could have offspring of its own, potential mates for any of us.

I turn to look at Zilpha. She’s riveted to the screen, an eager, almost happy look on her face.

And my heart starts to pound uneasily.

There’s another dragon in the world. It’s great news, I guess. It’s what we’ve always wanted. Except…

“Don’t start making wedding plans yet,” Ram cautions, reading our brother’s thoughts. Then Ram puts my fears into words with a somberness that flattens even Felix’s smile. “Whoever this dragon is, it’s working for Eudora.”

Even though I’d almost reached the same conclusion, his words still knock the wind from my lungs. The implications hit me like a rain of blows. Eudora knows another dragon. The dragon is working for Eudora. Maybe the dragon knows other dragons. Maybe there’s a whole team of them working for Eudora. Maybe we’re outnumbered.

And alongside those blows, I’m struck by the realization that Zilpha is still looking at the screen, watching the next scene, and the next, as the dragon swoops by on return trips. It’s still the same dragon each night, but that’s not what bothers me. No, Zilpha doesn’t look at all bothered by Ram’s observation.

Doesn’t she mind that this dragon is working for Eudora? Is she seriously excited about the possibility of finding a mate besides Ed? Based on what she’s said to me before, I suppose she is, but where does that leave me? If Zilpha marries some other dragon, Ed will be rejected. Ed will be available.

I could marry Ed.

At this point in my frenzied thought process, I stop watching my sister and instead turn to Ed. He’s standing behind the love seat, behind my brothers, watching the scene on the screen.

But he must have noticed the movement when I turned my head toward him, because he looks my way and raises his eyebrows in that open invitation, as though asking me my thoughts.

I look down at my tea cup. It’s empty.

Standing, I slip past my family members and meet Ed in the kitchen, but even as our paths cross, I realize we can’t talk in the kitchen any more freely than in the living room. I step outside onto the porch and Ed follows me. The sun is up and I feel my weariness acutely, in spite of the adrenaline that’s surged through my veins since we’ve been at the cabin.

“What do ye think?” Ed asks quietly once the door is closed behind us.

“I had wondered how the water yagi were getting to all those bodies of water. They’re not all connected by rivers and oceans. They had to go over land somehow.”

“Looks like he was carryin’ dozens, maybe several dozen if they were not yet full grown,” Ed observes.

I suppose Ed wants to know my thoughts about the mysterious other dragon, but I’ve got to work up to that, and I’m glad he doesn’t push me. “Do you suppose that dragon is working willingly for Eudora?”

“Sure looks like it, unless she’s got him enslaved or somethin’, but ye’d think he’d have a chance to escape, flyin’ so far like he does.”

“Do you think there are more of them?”

“Dragons?”

I nod.

Ed shrugs. “By the time I hatched, most dragons lived in hidin’, but me parents told of a time when it wasna always so. Granted, the Crusades were over. Much of Europe had been purged of dragons by then, and yet, me parents could recall a time when there were many, even if their numbers had dwindled. They’d meet and frolic in the sky, a rainbow of different colored dragons. I always tried to imagine it. Bein’ with your family these last few days is the closest I’ve ever come to knowin’ what that’s like. Still, I can’t imagine they’re
all
gone. A remote place like this, yer more likely to find one, I suppose. The worry’s that they’re workin’ for Eudora.”

Ed’s words remind me that he’s far older than my parents, than even my grandfather. He’s like a window into history, filtered through the wavy glass of Loch Ness.

“Do you really believe there are more dragons?” I ask.

Ed nods hesitantly. “It’s more like a hope. Can’t say as it’s been a steady hope. I’d resigned myself to never seein’ another of me own kind, and then ye showed me yer hand.” His voice grows thick.

We’re leaning against the railing of the cabin, facing the woods, neither of us looking at the other directly, though we’re standing close enough our arms touch. And now I lean against Ed’s arm, glad for his warmth in the cool Siberian morning. Glad that I found him in spite of the vast distances between us. Glad he’s no longer alone, that I took the risk of letting him see the real me.

Ed clears his throat. “What’s more likely: that all the dragons, immortal though we are, have really been purged from the earth? Or that we’re just all in hidin’, so afeared of findin’ another Eudora, we canna even show our faces to ourselves? I’m not too shocked there’s another. Just disappointed Eudora found him first.”

I lean on Ed’s arm and we fall into companionable silence. My thoughts are shouting too loudly for me to attempt to make conversation. I certainly can’t say what I’m thinking, which is that more dragons mean more potential mates, which means Zilpha doesn’t have to marry Ed, which is clearly a relief to her, but leaves me in a quandary.

I hate to think of Ed going back to the loch alone. Maybe I could try to hook him up with Rilla, but she seemed less interested in him than even Zilpha, and Rilla’s always said she won’t marry until she finishes her degree, no matter what, and that won’t be for two more years unless she hurries through her program and graduates early.

Which leaves me.

And there’s part of me that thinks it would be fabulous, living at Nattertinny castle, visiting the loch with Ed, eating beef and fish and trying to keep a straight face whenever castle guests share their theories about the Loch Ness Monster.

But even as I dare to consider such a thing, the rest of me is screaming
no! It’s a trap! Run!

I can’t say how long we stay like that, leaning against the porch railing in silence, when my father steps outside and invites us to come in and bunk down for the night in the big open loft of the cabin. We start to follow him back inside, but Ed hangs back, and I pause, too, and look up into his face in question.

“I want to thank ye, Wren, for yer courage—that ye didna hide yerself from me. ‘Tis a gift, knowin’ ye.”

His voice is soft.

I should probably say something, but my heart is beating in such a panic, I couldn’t find the words even if I knew what message I wanted to convey. I feel so confused.

All I can do is nod and dumbly follow my dad back inside. What could I admit to Ed? I’m glad, too, that I followed my instinct and let on who I really am, though to be honest that had as much to do with Ed’s courage as mine. He befriended me first. He hinted at the ways he was different. I wouldn’t have been brave enough, otherwise.

But I don’t know how to say anything of this to him, and it’s crowded inside the cabin. I take my turn brushing my teeth while my sister explains the plan for that evening.

Once we’ve all slept most of the day away, we’re going to split into groups and investigate. Some of us will go down to the lake with Ed’s camera equipment, while others will hike the lake area looking for signs of Eudora’s operation. We’re going to see what we can find.

And based on what we find…we’re going to come up with a plan.

*

I awaken to the scent of roasted meat and join the others just as everyone’s assembling and discussing who will be doing what. It’s only mid-afternoon, but we need to get going if we’re to have enough light to see by, even if that increases the possibility that we, too, could be seen.

We’re breaking into three groups. One group will go out on the lake on Xalil’s rowboat and use Ed’s camera equipment to peer under the water. The other two groups, one led by Xalil, one by Jala, will scout around the lake looking for anything we can find that might be related to the water yagi operation.

Xalil and Jala have already observed Eudora coming and going near the north end of the lake, but they were never able to get close enough to see what she was doing, partly because they didn’t want her to know they were spying on her, and partly because she kept disappearing.

Yes,
disappearing
.

No matter how close they crept, or how vigilantly they tracked her, somewhere near the north end of the lake she stepped out of their sight, only to emerge hours later and go back to her fortress. Subsequent searches of the area where she disappeared revealed nothing. We’re hoping, with more of us searching, and with our extra-sharp dragon eyesight, that we’ll spot something Xalil and Jala missed.

And since they haven’t checked the area in a few weeks—not since they first spotted the dragon with the drag net, and turned their focus to recording footage of the flying creature’s activities—there’s a chance something has changed. Maybe Eudora has since left behind some trace of where’s she’s disappeared to, that Xalil and Jala wouldn’t have been able to find weeks ago.

My sister quickly volunteers to go with Jala’s group. My dad is interested to go out on the lake with Ed.

I’ve already gotten far closer than I ever wanted to the water yagi, so I don’t want to go out on the boat. And I’m not particularly keen on ending up in the same group with my mother, who seems to still be upset with me. Since there are nine of us (my six family members, plus Ed, Jala, and Xalil) that means three persons per team. I volunteer to go with Jala and Zilpha, making a full team of three.

Ram decides to go with my dad and Ed, leaving my mother and Felix to scout around the lake with Xalil.