He cleared his throat. "Hello, dancing boy! I mean, girl. I mean—obviously you're a girl." He glanced down at her body, then froze and quickly raised his eyes. "I mean—not obviously. Not that I care. I mean, whether you're a boy or a girl, or—"

She reached him and placed a finger against his lips. "Shush, juggling boy. You're only digging yourself a deeper hole."

Tanin sighed. "I'm as clumsy with words as I am with juggling."

She laughed. "But I think you're cute. I'm Feyna." She gave a little curtsy.

"My name is Tanin." His heart leaped. Cute indeed!

For years now, wandering from town to town, Tanin had tried to forget the girl he had loved in his youth—the girl who had broken his heart, who had turned against him after learning his secret.

She called me diseased, he remembered, wincing. She shouted for her father to kill me—the dirty weredragon, the monster she had kissed.

Tanin looked at Feyna's green eyes, her bright smile, and her tresses of red hair, and his heart rose again. Maybe this day, this new life, wouldn't be so bad. Maybe there was some hope for him—for acceptance, for love.

Music was playing at a stage nearby. Ask her to dance, Tanin told himself. Ask her to drink some ale. He gulped. Ask to walk together in the fields or—

As he was stumbling with his tongue, Feyna pointed at the puppet show and gasped.

"Oh, look, Tanin!" she said. "A weredragon." Upon the stage, the heroic doll was now battling two wooden dragons, slashing them with its sword.

At once, Tanin's heart sank again. "Anyway, how about a dance or—"

But she seemed not to hear him. Her face changed—turned bitter, disgusted. She shuddered. "Foul creatures, weredragons. Even as dolls they chill me. They say they drink the blood of babies. Thank goodness our town has arrows to shoot down those monsters."

"They're not monsters!" Tanin said before he could stop himself. He instantly regretted those words.

Stupid! he told himself. Do you want another village to shoot arrows at you, chase you into banishment?

Feyna turned toward him, narrowed her eyes, and tilted her head. "Not . . . monsters? Have you met one? My father saw a weredragon only this moon—a great beast in the village of Oldforge. The creature burned ten men." She sneered. "One of those men was my uncle. I hate weredragons and would slay them all myself if I could."

That creature was my father, Tanin thought. He burned them after they tried to kill him, after they pierced him with ten arrows.

But he could say nothing. How could he? He turned away, feeling ill.

"I have to go." He began to walk away, eyes stinging.

I have to leave this village, he thought. I have to keep going, to keep traveling, to keep looking for others like me.

His throat felt too tight and his eyes burned.

Her voice rose behind him. "The juggler! He loves weredragons!" She laughed bitterly. "A weredragon lover among us!"