Elvenbane

squirrels, one of rabbits, and any number of lizards.

It was her own secret, and the only place she felt secure even from the dragonets. They couldn't come in here, no matter what, even if they'd known where it was. It made a good place to go when Keman was busy and Foster Mother elsewhere, leaving her without protection.

She had begun building her own little cache of jewels here; a handful of gems that Keman had given her, augmented with things she had found in deserted lairs, and the odd agate she found, water-polished, in the beds of streams. She kept them in a dragon-skin pouch at the back of the crack, out of the reach of what little weather penetrated to the bottom.

She had high hopes for that little treasure trove.

She counted the stones over in her mind as she climbed up to the base of the crack, sun hot on her back, her shadow crawling up like a spindly twin. The others used jewels to help them change, sometimes. Keman said that jewels helped to focus power.

She scrambled over a boulder embedded in the hillside to reach the entrance to her hideaway. That was how she had found it in the first place; she'd fallen off the boulder and rolled into the entrance. Then she'd gotten curious, seeing the sun shining on something green in the depths, and had gone all the way inside. The crack in the hillside was barely visible from below, because of a fluke of structure it looked as if the entrance to the crack was simply part of the hillside jutting out, casting shadows on the hill behind it.

But the crevice was very real, and quite deep, and Shana slipped into it sideways, trusting to the boulder to shield her movements from eyes below.

Once she was a few steps past the opening, the crack widened considerably. A few more steps, and she could spread her arms and only touch the walls with her fingertips.

Light poured down through the crack above and behind her, illuminating a thin strip of rock along the back wall and falling on the carpet of grass at the bottom. There was always dust in the air, and the sun blazed through in a thick beam, like pale honey, full of dancing motes, shining through each grass-blade with such intensity that against the dark walls they glowed like tiny spears of emerald. Shana seated herself on the soft grass, full in the sun, and took her little bag of gemstones from a depression she had scooped out at the back of the crevice. The bag had been made from Keman's skin, and she hoped that was a good omen.

His scales sparkled in the sunlight like tiny gems themselves, emeralds and sapphires, each brushed with a dusting of gold. Her tunic was too dust-covered to sparkle, but when it was clean, the larger scales looked less like jewels and more like enameled metal plates, very similar to some of the elven-work Shana had seen.

She poured her jewels into the palm of her hand, focused her eyes on them, and concentrated on what Keman had told her. First, I find the center, the place where all the power comes from. Foster Mother said that's where you balance, too, and I know where that is...

She stared at the pool of light and color in her hand, and tried to find that elusive balance-point. The gems glowed at her, each one seeming to be alive, and she finally closed her eyes and 'looked' for that same glow inside herself.

I... think this is it...

There was a place, just about at her navel, that seemed to pulse with the same, living glow she imagined in the stones. She thought very hard about that place, 'squeezing,' as Keman had told her, and was rewarded with a definite strengthening in the 'glow.' It was becoming very hard to think, or rather, to form thoughts into words. Was that good, or bad?

She squeezed harder. Now she felt the power elsewhere, running through her with little tingles; it seemed to be coming from the pile of sun-warmed gems cupped in her palm. Feeling hopeful now, she encouraged the flow, and it did, indeed, increase.

She gave up on trying to put her thoughts into words; doing so felt like trying to swim through mud. Instead she concentrated with pictures and feelings. Now she began picturing herself as she should be; a tall, strong dragonet, as tall as Rovylern, but much more supple, with scales of purple and blue, like the amethysts and lapis she held in her hand.

She saw herself, deep in her mind's eye; saw the way her wings would lift to the sky, the whipping cord of her tail. She built up every detail, down to the smallest scale, and all the while she kept up the pressure on her power-center, until she felt as if she were about to explode from tension.

Then she released it all, in a burst of power that left her inner eyes dazzled for a moment. She opened her real eyes, fully confident that she would find her gems cupped in a purple-scaled claw.

Only to find them still held in a very human hand.

Sunset filled the crevice with scarlet light, as if Shana sat in the heart of a great ruby. The light poured in from behind her, illuminating the entire rear of the crack, and her shadow stood etched blackly into the red-glowing rocks. It was beautiful, but Shana had no eye for beauty just now. She was exhausted; her arms quivered with strain, and all she wanted to do was lie down and rest. Sweat dripped down her forehead, beaded on her upper lip, and ran down the back of her neck.

She had been trying for hours to work the change from human to dragon with no more result than when she'd tried it the first time. The power was there, she could feel it every time she started. She was doing everything right.

And yet nothing whatsoever happened when she released the power.

She stared at the hand that clutched her gem cache, the knuckles white, the hand quivering, and suddenly knew that no matter how hard she tried, she was never going to be able to shift. It wasn't a matter of being too young, nor of not having the power. She had the power, and she had been able to speak mind-to-mind long before the others of her age could. She had everything she needed...or rather, almost everything.

Because Myre and the others were right. She was an animal.

All the taunts that Myre and Rovy had thrown at her came back to her with the clarity of the hatred that had spawned them.

Myre: 'Alara picked you up as a pet for Keman. Mother found your two-legger mother dying, and took you because she felt sorry for you.'

Rovy: 'Alara's brought Keman lots of pets. The only difference between you and them is that you won't admit you're a pet!'

Myre: 'Beast. Two-legger! Animal! You're nothing but a rat, a great big rat!'

'Rat! Rat! Rat!'

The taunts rang in her mind, and Shana flung the jewels away from her with a cry, hurling them at the stone of the crevice. They pattered against the stone like hard little raindrops. She scarcely heard them.

She was too lost in her own blackly bitter thoughts; the things she was only now piecing together.

Foster Mother would never tell her about her real mother. Alara only said she 'knew' her, and that Shana's mother had died in the desert. Then she'd change the subject when Shana asked what her mother looked like, what kind of a person she was. Alara wouldn't look at her, either. Foster Mother had acted as if she were hiding something.

Myre had been full of details, though...details Shana had always dismissed as false, until now.

The rest of the Kin treat me like I was some kind of animal, too. Keman said that was because Shana was stuck in this two-legger shape, but if it was her real shape...

...then I am an animal to them.

She could think of countless times when the adults had talked to Keman about her as if she weren't there, or couldn't understand them, and when they had something to tell her to do, they used the same kind of voice on her that Keman used on his loupers.

Alara had never treated her that way...nor Father

Dragon. But they were the only ones among the Kin who didn't. Shana had always thought that was going to change once she could. After all, it was easy to think of her as an animal while she wore an animal's form.

Foster Mother taught her just like Keman...but when she talked about the Kin, she never had said that Shana was one of the Kin. She didn't talk that way to Keman...