Page 11 of Rescued By My Dragons

”More like twenty-five, Ma’am,” I said.

Looking from us to her granddaughter, Sarah said, “I see.Neal showed me pictures of what you are…when you’re not like that.But even from seeing photographs, it’s so difficult to believe there’s an entire world full of such creat…”She suddenly gasped and stopped herself, putting a hand to her chest, before she could finish the word she was about to say:Creatures.“I’m so sorry,” she said anxiously.“I didn’t mean.It’s just…”

”It’s all right, Mrs. Callaway,” said Byron.“We understand you’ve never met anyone like us.I promise you we’re not monsters.”

”No, they’re not,” said Jenna.“They’ve built a whole civilized world, just like we have.You don’t have to be afraid of them, Nana.I wouldn’t have brought monsters home with me.”

”I’m sure you wouldn’t,” said Sarah.“It’s just…”And she looked at us as if she were trying to look through us—or into us.“They’re so human.”

”They’re as human as we are,” Jenna reassured her grandmother, putting one hand on her shoulder.“They’re just something else too.”Then, to the guys and me, she said, “I think maybe we should let Nana see for herself your other shape, and let her see that you’re still you even in those bodies.”

Byron spoke up.“Perhaps it’d be a bit overwhelming for your grandmother to see all of us change at once.This is your home—her home, after all.We’re the guests.Maybe right nowjust one of us should change for her.”He looked over at me.“I think it should be you, Elliot.”

”That’s a good idea,” said Jenna.“Come on, Nana, have a seat.”And she led her grandmother to one of the comfortable chairs.Sarah sat down while Jenna crouched beside her, and I stepped a bit away from my friends.

“Okay, Mrs. Callaway.This is me,” I said.

And I let my human shape go.My neck lengthened and turned serpentine.My hair disappeared, my skull turned reptilian, my face grew a snout and horns.Scales covered my skin and my hands became claws.My wings spread from the slits in the back of my top and my tail unfurled from the slit in my bottoms.Sarah Callaway drew in a long gasp and put a hand to her bosom again, watching a dragon appear from a man standing in the living room of the home that she cared for.She leaned back in her seat and stared at my transformed shape, awestruck, disbelieving—but unable to deny what she was seeing.I looked anxiously with my dragon eyes from Sarah to Jenna and back, hoping I hadn’t shocked Jenna’s grandmother too much.

Holding Sarah’s hand and looking into the older woman’s mute, stunned expression, Jenna said softly, “Nana?Nana, say something.”

Sarah could only say in a low, trembling voice, “Oh, Jenna…Jenna…”

Keeping her grandmother’s hand in hers, Jenna turned to us and said, “Elliot, I think you’d better go human again and I think I’d better show you guys out to the deck.You can sit out there for a while and I’ll bring you something to drink.Nana and I should have a chance to talk alone.”

”Okay,” I said, sending my dragon shape back into my human body.With my friends I traded looks of concern like the one Jenna was now giving her poor, stunned grandmother.

Quickly, Jenna took us out through a door at the far end of the living room which let out onto the deck.The sunshine of this Malibu in a place called California poured down on us, with the salty-smelling air filled with the murmuring sound of the ocean.Jenna went back inside, and a few minutes later she returned carrying a tray with a pitcher of juice and glasses filled with ice.She set it down on a table on the deck.“Guys,” she said apologetically, “she just wasn’t prepared…”

”It’s okay,” I said, giving her a little kiss on the cheek.“I don’t think there could have been any way to prepare her.”

”I’ll be back as soon as I can,” Jenna said.

”Take your time,” said Byron.

She left us there on the deck with the drinks and the sunshine and the beach and the air.Byron poured the juice into the glasses and we each took one.He raised his glass as if he wanted to make a toast, and said, “Guys, we’ve got to face facts here.This world is a place where, as Jenna has mentioned to us, ‘dragons’ are nothing but big, stupid, slobbering lizards without any wings.We’re in a place where we’re aliens.”He looked soberly from me to Cade and repeated for emphasis, “Aliens.”

Byron took a sip from his glass and Cade and I did the same, letting that word and everything that it implied settle in.Our other forms had to be as much of a secret here on Earth as Neal Callaway’s “phone” had to be on Tellus.We’d taken a risk just letting Jenna’s grandmother see me the other way, and now Jenna was probably in the house making sure her “Nana” understood that no one must know what her houseguests were.

I looked past Byron to the big windows of the living room and saw Jenna sitting there with Sarah, the two of them having a deep, deep conversation.Whatever Jenna was saying to her grandmother, it had better be the most persuasive thing that anyone ever told anyone on Earth.

CHAPTER 6

Jenna

After Nana and I talked, she regained enough of her composure that she could go back from being a shocked human to a doting grandmother.Her wits returned and she went right about one of the things she loved to do best, which she hadn’t had the chance to do in much too long:making dinner for her granddaughter and yes, also her granddaughter’s very unusual guests.

While I entertained the guys in the living room by playing them some of our music and showing them some of our television, Nana went to work, and soon the house was filled with smells that I knew and loved well.She ushered us all into the dining room, where a beautiful meal of roasted hens, mashed potatoes, steamed vegetables, warm bread, and pitchers of iced tea greeted us.The guys loved it.As we dined, Nana at the head of the table watched me sitting next to Elliot, and Byron and Cade sitting across the table from us, and I could guess at some of the things she must be thinking and wondering about, and some things that she might be guessing.

I had told her about everything but the most intimate things.The parts about being abducted by the Gorgonos followers and being held captive by Nidaag, and Elliot and Uncle Neal coming to save me, had just about frightened her out of her wits.Compared to Elliot’s reveal of his dragon form, that was the thing from which she most had to recover her wits, and I felt a bit guilty having to scare her that way.She seemed more frightened hearing it than I’d been while living it and that was only natural, I supposed.Terrified as I’d been, I was still onlynineteen and Nana was an old lady.It had actually scared me more having to tell her about it than having to go through it.But still, there was that other part that I’d so far kept from her.How would I ever explain my real relationship with the guys?How could she ever understand that?

During the meal, Nana said to Elliot and her other guests, “My sons, Marshall and Neal, were always more interested in things they didn’t know than in familiar things.It was always curiosity with them.Curious, always curious, my two sons.If I’m really honest, they were always going to worlds where I couldn’t follow, even while they were still right here with me.Space, the sky, the ocean, atoms and molecules—things I never really understood.But I loved how much they loved those things.As their mother, I was glad they had something they loved so much.To them it was magic, but the kind of magic they could see and touch, not just the kind of magic that you believe in.Jenna’s mother was more like me.She was more about believing things than knowing things.But she respected Marshall’s work.She knew she was married to an explorer.”

“What happened to her?” Elliot asked.

“Oh, there was an accident—a terrible thing.Cars piled up on the freeway, so many people hurt and Jenna’s mother—lost.”She closed her eyes and shook her head.“It was the most painful thing that ever happened to my poor Marshall and my poor Jenna.”

I looked over sadly at Elliot and held his hand under the table.He gave my hand an affectionate little squeeze, which I appreciated in light of this memory.I had never told him about Mom.I welcomed his sympathy.

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