CHAPTER 5

Elliot

Jenna knew the place already, of course.She slipped the ring into her backpack and turned around, smiling and nodding at the familiarity of it.The rest of us just alternated between watching her and looking at what she said was the lab and workshop where her father and uncle had created the ring.Under those tarps and sheets draped over things around us, I guessed, were the devices that Marshall and Neal Callaway had used in their work; things that probably only Jenna would even begin to understand if we could see them.I was tempted to pull those coverings away and have a look at those contraptions.I reminded myself, though, that we were guests here and we needed to respect Jenna’s home the same as we respected Jenna.

At one side of the room was a stairway.We heard a door opening and footsteps on the stairs.Jenna faced in that direction and said, “Nana…?”

A figure appeared on the steps, a short, grey-haired lady in a light sweater, blouse, and skirt.She came down the steps and looked curiously into what I now guessed was the basement of Jenna’s house.A smile blossomed on the elderly lady’s face.“Jenna…?” she called.

Jenna went right to the lady and threw her arms around her.The lady hugged her back, chuckling warmly.“Nana, I’m home!” Jenna said.

“So I see, darling,” said the lady, pulling out of the hug enough to touch Jenna softly on the face and get a look at her.“I wish you could have called.”

”I know, Nana,” Jenna said sweetly.“But you know phone calls between dimensions don’t work.”

”Hmph!” said “Nana” in response.“You’d think your father could have come up with something for that.I’ve had no way at all to get in touch with him in I don’t know how long, and I just covered up all his equipment so I wouldn’t have to disturb it by coming down here to dust the place, and…”

She looked past Jenna at the three of us.We must have been some kind of sight for her—three young guys in sleeveless outfits, me in my bodysuit, Cade in his black leather and denim, Byron in his flannels, all strangers in the basement of the home of “Nana” and her family.

“Dear,” she said to Jenna, “perhaps you’d like to introduce me to your friends.Who are these boys?”

”Oh,” Jenna said, stepping to one side and keeping a hand on the lady’s shoulders.“These are my friends from…over there.They’re going to be staying with us while I’m back for a visit.”To us, she said, “This is my grandmother, Sarah Callaway—Daddy’s Mom.Nana, this is Elliot Ladon, Byron Ledger, and Cade Taisce.”

”How do you do, Ma’am…”, “Nice to meet you…”, “A pleasure, Ma’am,” we said with our best politeness.

”I see,” said Sarah Callaway, looking us over, seeming as if she were trying to decide what she thought of us.To Jenna, she said, “Well, they’re awfully handsome boys, aren’t they?You don’t usually see boys like that outside of soap operas and the covers of those, ahem, romantic books.”

The three of us smiled and softly chuckled at that.None of us knew what “soap operas” were, and the idea of “singing soap” seemed to me like a very strange kind of thing.We could guess what she meant by “those romantic books.”In our world, human females read books like that.Many of them were about women having sex and all sorts of adventures with Scaler men.

Then Sarah, as delicately as she could, asked her granddaughter, “Are your friends that kind or our kind?”To us, Sarah said, “No offense, boys, it’s just…”

”It’s okay, Mrs. Callaway,” I said.“It’s natural for you to ask.”

”There’s a lot I have to tell you, Nana,” said Jenna.“What do you say we all just go upstairs now?”

In the part of the house immediately above the basement, Jenna and her grandmother showed us into a large, spacious room of wood and stone, with comfortable furniture arranged around a round glass table, area rugs, potted trees and plants, a huge stone fireplace, and one whole side taken up with floor-to-ceiling windows and glass doors looking out on a beach of bright sand with the ocean rolling in.We could see off to one side that there was an outer deck, as comfortably furnished as this room, with iron railings and a stone stairway leading down to the beach.

“This house has been in our family for years and years,” Jenna said to the other guys and me.“Daddy inherited it, and Uncle Neal lives here with us and since Daddy and Uncle Neal and I have been on Tellus, Nana has been taking care of it for us.”

”It’s beautiful,” I said.

“Lovely home,” Byron agreed.

”Nice,” said Cade.

Studying us again, Sarah said, “The last time my son Neal was here, he showed me some pictures of your world.He said he had to be careful taking them because phones with cameras like we have here don’t exist over there.Instead, he said, you have mirrors that you carry around that work like phones.”

”That’s true,” said Sarah.She took out her own mirror and showed her grandmother.“See?This is one of the Tellus mirrors.”

Sarah took the piece of thick glass that worked like the device that she called a “phone” from Jenna and studied it.“But it doesn’t look like anything.This could be a coaster.”

Jenna took the mirror back and said, “No, Nana, it’s a lot more than that.”

Facing us, Sarah said, “And you’re a lot more than just three boys.How old are you?Twenty-one, twenty-two…?”

”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 now just 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.