Hydra by Finley Aaron Read Free Book Online Page A

only they’ve never done that before, and whatever it was that had me didn’t let me go or start laughing or anything. They pulled me down deeper toward the cold water, and I fought them and fought them until I thought I’d never get away. My lungs were burning. I’ve never been so terrified.”
    “But you got away?”
    “I scratched and clawed and got loose and made my way to the surface.” What I can’t tell Ed is that I used my talons, horns, and the spikes on my tail to fight off my assailants. Then I flew back to shore, well above the water, back to my family in a frenzy. But I do tell him the other part, the very important part. “I got back to my family and told them what happened, and my dad and brothers went out to look. But they didn’t see anything. Didn’t find anything. They went out the next two days. Nothing. No sign of anything. It was like it had never even happened.”
    “But, weren’t you scratched or bleeding?”
    I shake my head. Being a dragon at the moment, I was pretty impervious to spears or knives or claws. But that doesn’t even matter so much because of the nature of the attack. “It wasn’t teeth that got me, or claws or talons. It was like something grabbed hold of me with its hands.”
    “Not a human?”
    “How could it have been human? They pulled me down. They never rose above the water. They didn’t breathe air.”
    “They? There were more than one?”
    “There had to be at least two or three, maybe more.” I’m trying not to be overwhelmed by the memories, hands clutching my arms, my legs, my tail. “My brothers came up with a theory that I’d floated into a thick patch of seaweed and got tangled up and it pulled me down.”
    Ed is looking at me earnestly, and I’m staring right back into his face, waiting for his verdict, for him to laugh off the attack and tell me my brothers are probably right, that I’d freaked out myself and my family all because I got in over my head with a tangle of weeds.
    But he doesn’t say this.
    “Did you see anything? You’re sure it wasna scuba divers?”
    “I couldn’t see anything. It was getting dark out. The sun was going down—it was a glare of red across the surface of the water, mostly darkness, just enough to stun your eyes and make it more difficult to see. But I felt them.”
    “What did they feel like?”
    “They had heads. Smooth heads. And arms that were flat like paddles, but with hands at the ends. They had bodies. I kicked their bodies. No scuba tanks. No tubing or gear. If they’d had scuba gear I could have pulled out their mouthpieces and sent us all up for air.” I’ve described them now in as much detail as I gave my family, and I fully expect Ed to lecture me about the fact that nothing in the world fits that description, that I had to have misunderstood my enemy.
    That my fear overpowered my good sense.
    That I was wrong.
    Instead he asks, “Can you remember the place in the lake where you were attacked?”
    “Yes. Vividly.” I can picture myself rising up from the water like a shot, hovering there above the sea for a few seconds, gasping for breath and staring down for some visual confirmation of the enemy I’d just fought. But there was nothing more than a swirl of water in turmoil, a few bubbles, and then still, lapping waves.
    Then I’d looked to shore, spotted my family, and flown like a streak back to them, only to receive a lecture about flying too high in dragon form before it was fully dark out, my glow too bright and boats too close, risking that I might be seen. I think it was perhaps their need to justify their lecture, their anger at my overreaction, that kept them predisposed against my story once they failed to find any sign of the monsters I described.
    But Ed gives me no lecture and shows no predisposition against my theory. Instead, he seems ravenously curious about these water monsters. “Can you take me there?”
    I’m completely thrown by Ed’s request. “You want to go to