Hydra by Finley Aaron Read Free Book Online

than black water through the window below.
    Just as Ed and I are getting our rhythm down and I’m starting to think we make a fine rowing team, he announces were in a good spot and can stop rowing. The boat glides gently along the lake, which is calm and mirror-smooth, save for the dying ripples of our wake.
    “Now what?” I ask after a long silence and no sign of any monsters.
    Ed shrugs. “Some people fish. Some just sit and enjoy the stillness. Some might want to explain why they’re afeared of being pulled under.”
    I look uneasily his way.
    He raises an eyebrow, not so much in question, but in open invitation for me to share.
    He’s not pressing me for answers, even though I nearly cut off the circulation to his arm with my clamped fingers earlier.
    Maybe it’s the stillness of the lake or Ed’s patience, or the hope that he might take my side in spite of the fact that my own family failed to believe me. For whatever reason, I sort my thoughts, arranging the story in my head first to be sure I can tell it without giving away that I was a dragon, in full dragon form, for the duration of the events I’m about to relay.
    Okay, I can do this.
    “I nearly drowned last summer.”
    His eyebrow, which had gone back to a relaxed position, darts up again, willing—even curious—to hear more.
    “We were swimming in the Caspian Sea. I’m from Azerbaijan, which is on the western shore of the Caspian Sea, and we’ve vacationed on the Sea every summer for my whole life. My sisters and I have been going to school in the United States ever since we started high school, six years now, but we always go back to Azerbaijan in the summer.”
    “You’re triplets?” Ed clarifies.
    “Yes.” I don’t go into detail. We’ve always referred to ourselves as triplets, and my sisters even claim my birthdate for legal purposes, so we don’t raise any eyebrows, but technically we’re not triplets the way most people think of triplets. We’re more like littermates or hatchlings from the same clutch.
    Dragons lay eggs, just like any other reptile. My sisters and I were born from the same clutch of eggs, but technically Rilla was hatched the night before me, and Zilpha the day after me. Likewise, our eggs were laid over the course of a few days, too.
    But I don’t tell any of this to Ed. I just nod and keep on with my story.
    “We’re triplets,” I confirm. “We have an older brother and a younger brother, and we’ve always summered on the Caspian Sea. I’ve floated and fished and gone swimming there more times than I can count. I never felt unsafe and never had a problem.
    “But then, last summer was a busy summer because now that we’re in college we have a lot of other things going on vying for our time, and we didn’t get much time at the lake, only a couple of days. I wanted to soak it up, you know? Spend every moment I could on the water. So the first afternoon when we got there, I went out on the lake and didn’t worry about coming in when it got dark.”
    What I don’t explain to Ed was that I was fishing, in dragon form, floating on my back in a boat made of my own wings, with a basket on my belly and my tail drooping down in the water, a glowing lure to bait the fish, which I then reached down and grabbed out of the water with the claws of my bare dragon hands when they swam near.
    I’ve done the same thing more times than I can count, eating fish, tossing them in my basket, being lazy and basking in the pure joy of being a dragon and virtually weightless in the water all at once. It’s a freeing feeling, one I’d always relished, until it got turned on its head and became something to fear.
    “And then what?” Ed prompts me, and I realize I’ve been silent for a while.
    “I’d floated pretty far from the others, I guess. I felt safe. I wasn’t worried. And then, with no warning, something grabbed my legs and pulled me under. For a second I thought maybe one of my siblings was playing a trick on me,