Mercedes Lackey - Elvenbane

Myre was too stupid to think up anything for herself, even a lie, so that "animal" stuff must have been something she got from Rovy. Shana rubbed her eyes and the back of her bruised neck, seething with anger. Right now she'd have given anything to get back at both of them. Rovy hated her too, but that was mostly because Shana was a way he could get at Keman. He d hate anything Keman liked .

But there was more to it than that. The expression on Rovy's face; that had told her he'd loved every minute of pain she'd felt. He really wanted to hurt me bad. And now that Keman hurt him to protect me, he'll try to take it out on me .

She couldn't hide from him forever. I've got to figure out how to protect myself .

She pondered the problem, and decided that the best way to keep herself safe would be to learn how to change back into one of the Kin. Once she was in draconic form, she'd have the protection of all the adults in the Lair. They didn't care a seed for an orphaned "animal," but an orphan of the Kin was entitled to the protection of every adult of the Kin.

And if they didn't protect Shana from Rovy once she was obviously Kin, they'd be in trouble with every other Lair. That'll work .

She shoved herself away from the rock and stood up, brushing the red dust and sand off her legs and arms. She kept herself sheltered behind the rocks, and peeked around the edge of the boulders to make sure that Myre wasn't lurking somewhere, the back of her neck prickling with nervousness, before she moved cautiously out into the open.

There was no sign of the young dragonet out in the wash, nor even at the entrance to it, but Shana was taking no chances. She turned around and trotted a little farther down towards the back of the wash, until she reached the dead end. A spill of gravel pouring down the steep hillside at the rear gave her a climbable, if slippery, ramp up to the narrow ledge that ran around the side of the cliff.

It wasn't an easy climb. For every two steps she made, she slipped back one, as the loose gravel slid out from under her feet. Shana was out of breath by the time she made the ledge itself; hot and sweaty, and covered with dirt, with both elbows skinned and her knee bleeding again, she sat down on the ledge to rest for a moment before getting on.

She took slow, deep breaths, as her foster mother had taught her, and stared out over the wash. The ground was still torn up where Rovy and Keman had tussled; with no rain due it would probably look that way until fall. She just didn't understand what was wrong with Rovy. Why did he want to hurt people? Why did he always have to be the biggest and have the best of everything? He was already stronger than anyone else in his group. His mother gave him anything he wanted. So why did he have to bully the rest of the young?

She wiped her wrist across her forehead, and stared at the smear of mud on her hand; licked the sweat off her upper lip. It tasted salty and gritty. She thought wistfully that if she had been that big and strong, no one would want to hurt her. Maybe they'd even want to be her friend. They'd let her play in their games, and she'd get them to let Keman in, too. Rovy could have anything he wanted if he didn't keep trying to take it.

She had finally caught her breath, so she got to her feet, and tried to ignore how her elbows stung and her knee ached. She squinted at the bright blue sky, making a guess about the time. She couldn't see the sun, here against the cliff-face, but by the shadows it was probably late afternoon. There should be plenty of time to get to her favorite hiding place and master the shift before supper. And even if there wasn't, well, she had some roots she'd put away in her sleeping-place, in case Foster Mother either forgot to save her something, or felt she should share Keman's punishment. This wasn't the first time she and Keman had been sent to bed supperless, and it probably wouldn't be the last.

Poor Keman. He doesn't even have a bone to chew on . She sighed, and wished she was bigger, there was no way she'd be able to carry in something big enough to feed Keman, even if she knew how to kill it.

Then she brightened, and began edging her way along the ledge. Once she learned how to change, she could go make a kill, and she would be big enough to take it to Keman. Something like a two-horn, maybe, or a grassrunner. Those wouldn't be too big to carry, if she was Keman's size. If she could sneak it in through the back way, Foster Mother would never know she'd done it. She'd just have to learn how to shift, that was all. If Rovy could do it, it couldn't be that hard.

Shana had never even taken Keman to her favorite hiding place; she'd found it when she was just old enough to be climbing around in the hills by herself, and had literally fallen into it. It wasn't that she didn't want to share it, but one problem with showing it to her foster brother was that Keman probably would not have been able to fit through the narrow entrance. Another was that if Keman did fit through the entrance, it would be a very tight squeeze to have both of them inside at the same time.

It was another cul-de-sac, but this time halfway up one of the hills. From above, it looked like a very narrow chimney-crack, but the crack itself got wider just beneath the entrance, and was quite large enough for Shana to move about in it at the bottom. Since it faced westward, there was sunlight shining down into it for most of the day. Enough rain and dew collected that short, springy grass grew in the bottom, and there were even a few small animals making their homes there. Swallows nested on the walls, and Shana had seen at least one family of ground 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.