He limped into the garden and down the lawn. Bee and I ran to the window.
A spout of water swirled up from the river like an unraveling thread pulled off the fraying hem of a piece of cloth. The water poured into the headmaster. His human shape changed. I suddenly understood that his human form was nothing more than an elaborate illusion. The body absorbed the water and grew into a glistening dragon, one with a mouth large enough that it could eat me in one gulp. The slippery texture of its black scales swallowed light. Its head had a whiskered muzzle, and a shimmering crest ran down the length of its spine, waving like grass in the wind. Its body tapered into a flat tail more like a fish’s than a bird’s. Yet despite the creature’s perilous aspect and daunting size, it waddled in a remarkably ungainly way down the sloping ground.
A roil of movement stirred the river. Creatures surfaced.
“They’re mine!” Bee’s face had the shine of a mother’s smile. “Don’t you recognize them?”
She ran outside.
I halted in revulsion by the garden door. Eleven silvery-white eels the size of children humped up onto the shore, blowing and wiggling as they snuffled along the grassy bank. They were the ugliest things I had ever seen, except for their startling gem-like eyes. The dragon huffed a smoky breath that stopped them in their tracks and compelled their attention. Every pair of glowing eyes fixed on him.
A twelfth grub squirmed unremarked onto the shore farther down the bank, beyond a small wooden pier to which a rowboat was lashed. A hawk dove down to investigate its movement. The stray hatchling’s sapphire eyes tracked the hawk’s flight as the bird settled on the bare branch of a tree. The raptor and the grub studied each other. Then the hatchling lunged forward. In the time it took me to suck in a shocked breath, not sure who was going to devour whom, it changed.
As if the tide of a dragon’s dream swept its unformed body, it molted its ungainly larval form and rose as a large hawk, beating for the sky. The true hawk followed.
I dragged my gaze away from the birds to see the eleven hatchlings molting their ugly grub forms. They transformed into smaller versions of the scaled beast. The air around the headmaster shivered as if rippled by a blast of heat. The shining black body of the beast turned in on itself and became that of the man we knew, thankfully in his clothes. A brief circle of dense rain splashed around him, as if he were raining away the water he had earlier absorbed.
In a frenzy of imitation, the grubs also changed, although they did not change size.
Eleven youthful persons stood dripping wet and naked on the shoreline, with no thought for modesty. They had the size and features of innocent boys who are no longer children but not yet grown. They surged forward to crowd around Bee, touching her, patting her, sniffing her.
Maestra Lian came striding down the lawn. With brisk gestures and snapped words she herded them away from Bee and toward the house.
Bee ran to me, her face so opened by joy that she seemed ready to fly. “Did you see, Cat? They know I’m the one who hatched them!”
She glanced past me, and the brilliance of her gaze softened. I turned. Kemal stood in the garden door, watching the youths flock into the house. An expression of unimaginable grief seared his pale features.
“Maester Napata, I hope we have done nothing to disturb you,” said Bee in the same tone she might use to coax a wounded dog out of its hiding place.
He muttered, “What have you not done to disturb me?”
“Are you a dragon, too?” she asked, more lightly.
He flushed, glancing away, then took in a sharp breath and faced her. “This is the only body I have ever been able to wear. Since it is a man’s body, can I then call myself a dragon?”
Her frown usually presaged a scold, but she spoke in a mild voice. “If you hatched as these others did, out of a nest in the spirit world, then aren’t you a dragon regardless of what body you wear?”
“The others say I am too much of a weakling to change,” he muttered in a low, shamed voice.
“I hope they shall say no such thing where I can hear it!” she retorted. “I am sure there is some other explanation.”
The headmaster walked into the garden alcove. “There is an explanation.”
He ushered us back into the study. There he sat at the desk and sipped at his cooling tea as if our conversation had not been interrupted by the arrival of eleven—twelve—inhuman creatures out of the unseen smoke of the spirit world’s fathomless ocean.
“As with all that is born into the spirit world, our essential nature is one of change. When a hatchling first emerges into the mortal world from the Great Smoke, it does not comprehend that it has a true nature, the kernel of its being. That is why we must meet our young ones at the shore, so we can shepherd them into their true shape. Kemal came to shore among humans. It is remarkable he was not killed the moment he breached the water, for that is usually what happens if a young one wades onto land where no kinsman is there to aid it. But he was not killed. For all his childhood he thought he was human. I am not sure if the family that took in the small orphan child did so because they felt pity for him or because they knew in time they would be able to receive a substantial pension from the emperor. In the Empire of the Avar, any child with the white skin and hair we call albino must be handed over to the emperor. Those who bring such a child forward are rewarded, while those who try to hide such a one are punished. I found Kemal in a sacrificial lot being made ready for the Wild Hunt. It is known among the Avar that in rare cases these albino children are dragons, although most such albino children are perfectly human. However, that is why the empire exposes them on Hallows’ Night, because the Hunt will always kill one of us if it can.”
“How awful,” said Bee, glancing at Kemal.
“A maze of mirrors will always confound the Hunt,” the headmaster went on. “I rescued Kemal by this means, but I had found him too late. He had spent so many years in a human body believing himself human that he was too old to learn how to change.”
Kemal stared at his hands as if trying to pretend we were not talking about him.
“Your Excellency, just now on the shore, I saw one turn into a hawk and fly away,” I said. “What will happen to it?”
“It will live a hawk’s life and die a hawk’s death. It is impossible to find those of our children who are lost in this way. These examples illustrate how important it is that we be the ones who greet our own children and welcome them to this world. If they do not know we are what they can be, then they will never know and are lost to us regardless.”
“Can the rest of you change shape at will?”
“Yes. All except Kemal.”
“Then why do you live in human form, Your Excellency?” Bee asked.
“As your kind spread across the lands and began to discover our young ones and kill them out of fear, we discovered our best camouflage was to walk in the world in human form, and to live among you.”
“How do they know whether to be male or female?” I asked.
His smile reproved me. “It is not the same for us as with humankind. When we hatch in the spirit world and swim in the Great Smoke, we are grubs, neither male nor female. When we come ashore in the mortal world, we become male.”
“How do you breed and produce nests, then, if you are all male?” Bee demanded.
“Would I ask you such a intimate question? Do not presume to ask it of me.” The brown of his eyes flashed with the spark of emeralds, as if his control of his human shape was slipping. He spoke in an edged tone I had never before heard from the man who had famously not once lost his temper at the academy. “I am weary, and growing restless. Is there some favor you came to ask that you believe I can help you with?”
Bee twisted her hands together. Her hesitation surprised me, as did the way she chewed on her lower lip as if nerving herself to speak.
“Your Excellency.” Maestra Lian appeared at the door. “They are clothed and settled in the upstairs room for safety. A fifth claimant has arrived.”
He leaped to his feet with such a hiss that Bee and I both jolted back. I grasped the basket, wondering if I would need to throw the skull at him.
“We are done here,” he said in a hostile tone that killed the interview. “You must go.”
Bee sucked in a huge breath and let it out all in a rush.
