In taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior.
—SIR FRANCIS BACON
PROLOGUE
The Elder’s Diary
August 5, 8 P.M.
No. I’m not doing this.
August 6, 8 P.M.
Seriously. Not gonna.
August 7, 8 P.M.
Mom, Dad: you can shove this blank book and a pen in my face every evening for the next fifty years, and I’ll never write more than twenty words. Okay, thirty.
Also, we’re out of milk. Also also, I hate how powdered milk tastes. I know we’ve got to make sacrifices. But I dislike milk in powder form. Just sayin’.
August 8, 8:30 P.M.
Phllllbt.
August 9, 1 P.M.
Honey—this isn’t entirely about you. As your father has told you, it’s important to tell your story. People are counting on you. Not just now, but in the future. They need to see what you’ve seen, learn the lessons you’ve learned. It may not seem fair, but you owe them that.
August 9, 8 P.M.
MOM!!! YOU READ MY DIARY! AND YOU’RE WRITING IN IT! WHAT KIND OF MOTHER DOES THAT?!? DO YOU EVEN UNDERSTAND HOW COMPLETELY TWISTED THAT IS, OR ARE YOU TOO BUSY BEING A PSYCHO TO GET IT?
August 10, noon
Hey, ace. Don’t be mad at your mother. She knows this is important to me—to all of us, really—and she volunteered to sneak a peek at what you’ve done so far. Can’t say either of us are totally impressed; but we’re still hoping
you’ll come around. You know, almost better than any of us, how deep the abyss is that we’re all staring down. (This isn’t
Seventeen
magazine, ace, and your privacy isn’t more important than our survival.) I don’t believe this town can last through another winter. What may be left of us is on these pages. So what say you crank it up a notch and write a note or two for posterity?
August 10, 12:30 P.M.
Ugh, I knew I should have moved this thing to another hiding place after Mom invaded my privacy. (’Scuze me, the privacy that isn’t as important as our survival, vomit vomit vomit.) No point now—both parental slugs have left their eternal slime in this journal, and now there’s nothing to be done.
I’d burn this thing tonight if I didn’t think we’d need to save every bit of paper to make it through another winter.
August 11, noon
Jennifer, I guess you’re going to be totally annoyed that I’m writing in here; but your parents begged me so I’m writing this while Gautierre and I came to visit you today. You just stepped out of your room to take a pee break. Did you know you take forever? (How long can it take, Jenn? I mean, geez.) Gautierre thought it was weird, but I said it was a girl thing, so he dropped the whole thing. They have a point. Your folks, I mean. You gotta do this. Gautierre agrees. Okay, you flushed so I gotta go; good-bye!
August 11, 12:03 P.M.
Having thrown Susan, the artist formerly known as my best friend, and her boyfriend out of my room for conspiracy to commit phenomenal embarrassment, I would like to state for the record that I, the Ancient Furnace, do NOT pee or flush. I am more powerful than that. I can simply will my urine away.
Away, urine! See? (I’m no longer pretending this is any sort of a private document.)
Okay, everyone, I’ll make you a deal. If you can all go twenty-four hours without molesting my journal, I will start serious entries tomorrow. Deal?
August 12, 12:04 P.M.
All right. Thanks, everyone, for refraining from sharing further tales of my bathroom habits. Guess I should keep my end of the deal.
My name is Jennifer Caroline Scales. I live in a town called Winoka with three major problems.
First, those of us who turn into dragons don’t call it Winoka. We call it Pinegrove, because that was the name it had before a woman named Glorianna Seabright led an army of beaststalkers here, wiped out the inhabitants, and renamed it. That was about forty years ago.
Second, last November Mayor Seabright died, and on that night a barrier rose that blocks off this town from everything else around it. It’s enormous and translucent and blue and round, like my ass when I’m in dragon form.
The only thing that makes it through is weather—snow, rain, sun, wind, okay you probably know what weather is! For a while, electricity made it through fine, too—but then
a bad January storm knocked out more of the grid than we could repair with what we had. The town began rationing fuel. Since then, it’s gotten harder.
Third, everyone outside this barrier appears content to wait for us to die. More on that tomorrow.
CHAPTER 1
Andi
Winoka—or Pinegrove, as Andeana Corona Marsabio knew some called it—sat in a river valley. The Mississippi cut a wide boundary to the north and east, and the only crossing for miles was Winoka Bridge. Its aging gray steel arch connected the eastern higher ground to the western lowlands, where the town’s city hall and oldest neighborhoods lay.
“It’s beautiful,” she murmured as she took it all in from her perch atop the riverside cliffs. The shimmering blue dome that covered it all only made it look more magical. There had been nothing like this in the dark places where Andi had once lived. Here, she found beauty. Here, she found light.
Here, she found Skip Wilson.
“It’ll look even better after they’re all dead,” she heard him say.
She turned to where he was sitting, a few feet behind her and to the left. The rising sun made her squint. She wondered if he placed himself like that on purpose. He was drawing now, letting a sketch pencil fly across a large pad. Maybe he was drawing her. Sometimes he liked to do that, when he wasn’t drawing creatures.
“They don’t need to die,” she reminded him.
“I disagree.” The pencil didn’t stop.
Is this turning me on?
she wondered.
Or scaring me? Or boring? Boring would be bad.
Her arms crossed, and she massaged the insides of her forearms with her thumbs. “They have as much right as you and me to live.”
“I disagree.”
“It’s inhumane.”
“I dis—”
“Yeah, well, you disagreeing doesn’t mean piss to me.” Andi turned back to the trapped city. (Asked and answered: this was
not
turning her on.) Rainbows bled through the eastern half of the dome; a wisp of mist from a recent shower had slipped through the barrier that let almost nothing else through. “I should let them out.”
Finally, she heard the
skritch-skritch-skritch
of his pencil pause. “We’ve gone over this. We don’t know enough about the sorcery to bring it down even if we wanted to. Which we don’t.”
She liked him, yes indeed, but he could be somewhat—what was the phrase?
High-handed. Yes.
Certainly he seemed to have no trouble speaking to her . . . not to mention
for
her. “It doesn’t seem difficult. Why not try?”
“Wrong question. Why try at all?”
“High-handed,” she muttered.
He didn’t notice . . . or didn’t care. “We can pass through that barrier. You did twice on the night it went up, didn’t you?”
She swallowed. “That’s a cheap—”
“Once to leap in and kill your mother, the rotten mayor of that stinking town, and once to make your getaway.”
She couldn’t believe—she couldn’t
believe
he was using her shame and fear to make his point. “I was under the influence of my father’s sorcery! I had no choice!”
“Hey, I’m not complaining.” Skip smiled and seemed puzzled by her outburst. “Mayor Seabright was a murderous bitch. If your dad were still alive, I’d shake his hand.”
“If my father were still alive, he’d have killed you by now.”
He chuckled. “Yeah, from what I’ve heard of him, he was a real piece of work. Who calls themselves The Crown, anyway? Sounds like he might have had some fantasies about sixteenth-century Portugal.”
It was a remark designed to piss her off, and they both knew it. Her tan features crinkled, and her blood roiled. “He wasn’t European.”
“No, that was your mother’s side, wasn’t it? The beaststalker side.” He snapped his fingers, as if remembering for the first time. “Your father’s side was from south of here. Not Texas-south.
Way
south.
Rain forest
-south.”
She uncrossed her arms, grabbed two fistfuls of grass, and held on.
“I don’t remember much about all those countries down there. My mother and I visited a few years ago, but I was really young. Mostly, I recall lots of vines, strange animals, and simple people who smelled bad.”
This is sick,
she told herself as she tore herself from the ground and launched herself at him.
He’s sick. I’m sick.
By the time she reached him, he had flung the pencil and pad away and was ready to catch her. They rolled over a few times, her fists pummeling away at him. She started with two, but soon she was pretty sure she had sprouted more. He didn’t even try to stop the blows—he didn’t have enough arms to do so. She supposed he could turn into something with eight legs, but that wasn’t the point.
He laughed at her, an unkind sound meant to provoke more violence. He got it.
A few minutes later, they were sitting across from each other, sullenly examining their wounds. Andi was reasonably certain (more so than usual, even) that this was not in any way a healthy relationship. It was even more aggravating because she wasn’t quite sure who needed fixing. Him? Her? Both?
She thought of Jennifer Scales yet again . . . that girl had beat on Skip once or twice herself, hadn’t she? What did that say about her—or him?
Probably me,
she thought glumly.
I’m the sick one.
“So,” Skip began. He paused, spat a tooth, then tried again. “Ready to kiss and make up?”
“Shut up.” She sighed.
“We could just kiss.”
“Skip.”
“Because I’m ready to let bygones be bygones.” He patted his mouth with his sleeve. “Also, I would like very much to stop bleeding from the mouth.”
She grinned; she couldn’t help it.
“You want—”
Something whizzed past her face like a giant mosquito and slammed into his left foot. As Skip screamed, she recognized the feathered markings immediately. So did he.
“Eddie, you shit! Come out and fight like—”
“Sit still,” she ordered, seizing his ankle and trying to keep him from running after the archer. “I’ll fix it.”
“I don’t want you to fix it—I want his eyes out of his skull!”
Aw,
she thought, hiding how much this amused her.
That’s so romantic.
Skip jerked his foot away and snapped his fingers. Out of the grass popped twenty beetle- sized shapes, each thinner than paper and waving dozens of antennae.
“Find him! I want to know where’s he’s hiding!”
“Skip, they never—look, hold your foot still, and I can—you have to get this arrow out.”
I had to say that aloud,
Andi thought.
I actually had to tell him that
out loud
. Because he’s way more concerned with getting even than alleviating his own pain. Also,
she realized glumly as she watched the band of two-dimensional insectoids leap through the high prairie like dolphins,
he has made yet more creatures bristling with phallic doodads.
So,
she considered, rubbing her bloody palms on her thighs,
megacool? Or megacrazy?
“Fuck the arrow,” Skip snarled, which was about what Andi expected. “Eddie’s getting ready to fire again while you’re dicking around with my foot!”
“ ‘Dicking’? I’m trying to help you. And Eddie Blacktooth has never fired more than a single shot, which, if you’d put your angst into park, you’d remember.”
“Yeah, he’s never
hit
with a shot before, either. Dammit, leave it alone.”
Why am I bothering?
“I can help.”
“Right after Eddie’s dead.”
“Skip, he’s got a head start the length of two football fields. Your little bug patrol isn’t going to catch him. If you give me five minutes, I can pull the arrow, staunch the wound, and—”
“I’ll get it out myself.” In an instant, Skip had morphed into a massive fisher spider. His bloodied boot morphed into a slim tarsus at the end of a long, spindly leg with beige and gray bands. The arrow lost its purchase and slipped free. Skip hissed through his mandibles.