He couldn’t help it. They were monsters—all of them. Ven felt sick at the sight of them. He started to shake. His limbs trembled. His scaled legs grew too weak to support him, and he fell to his knees on the stone floor. He wanted to say something, but he couldn’t. His throat was thick with tears he refused to let himself shed. He clasped his arms around himself and curled in on himself. He bowed his head and bowed his back, bowed himself before his siblings with a moaning cry that was not human.

They gathered around him, surrounding him, supporting him. Arms that were strong and scaled and cool clasped him and held him. His sister’s arms. His sister’s voice, soft in his ear.

“You will not be alone anymore, Brother. From now on, you will never be alone.”

17

THE CHILDREN OF THE DRAGON THEY WERE CALLED, THE half-human/half-dragon creatures that were Ven’s half brothers and sisters.

Ven spent a long time among them that day and listened and watched and wondered. He thought he should be pleased to know that, as his sister assured him, he was not alone in the world, that there were others of his kind. He wasn’t. He was repulsed whenever he looked at the grotesque monstrosities—bits and parts of human and dragon bodies joined together without rhyme or reason.

He tried not to stare at them, for he hated it when people stared .it him, yet he couldn’t help himself. He tried averting his eyes, but that was worse, for he, too, knew how terrible that felt. When a little boy came running up—his dragon’s claws scraping the ground and his dragon’s tail thumping the floor behind him—Ven felt his stomach heave, and he had to look away or retch.

Fortunately, the child didn’t notice. He sniffed at Ven, much as a dog sniffs, and said cheerfully, “Pew! You stink!”

“It’s the human smell,” said his sister as she might have said, It’s the garbage. “Their stench clings to everything.”

The little boy ran off to play with other children of the dragon—some older, some younger, some with tails, some with wings and tails, some with clawed hands and no tails.

If I held up a looking glass, I would see the same expression of shock and revulsion in my eyes that I saw in the eyes of my own brother, Marcus, when Marcus first looked on me. I despised Marcus for that look, but the truth is, I understood how he felt. I feel the same way when I look at myself.

What is strange, what I can’t understand, is that they don’t feel that way about themselves. They are proud of what they are. They are not ashamed.

He simply couldn’t fathom it.