Claws (9780545469678)
Read Claws (9780545469678) Online
Authors: Rachel Mike; Grinti Grinti
CRAG FACT OF THE DAY:
“The word crag was first used as slang to refer to trolls because of their gray, rocky, âcraggy' skin. Today, it's popularly used to refer to any magical creature such as dwarves, ratters, hags â and cats.”
CragWiki.org
“I
s that it?” Emma asked as they pulled up in front of a rusty gray trailer. The yard was overgrown with weeds and surrounded by a rotting wooden fence. Behind the trailer, a line of oak trees marked the boundary of the magical forest.
“That's it,” her dad said. “That's our new home.”
Emma's stomach dropped. She couldn't think of anything to say. Their old house hadn't been big, but it was near her friends, and there'd been a library and park Emma could walk to. She missed it already. The trailers here all looked beat-up, the roads were full of potholes, and the only thing she could walk to was the forest. The trees grew close together, and between them were huge bramble bushes and weeds as tall as Emma's waist. Years ago, before Emma was born, the forest had magically grown and swallowed up half the city, but now it just sat there, still and menacing.
It was all her sister Helena's fault. They wouldn't have had to move if Helena hadn't disappeared three months ago. But Emma tried not to think about her. She was tired of crying. It never made anything better. It didn't bring her sister back. And she tried not to think about what her friends would say when they found out she was living in a trailer park with a bunch of crags. She'd tried to explain it to her parents, but they didn't listen. Some days it felt like they forgot she was still there.
“Does it even have running water?” she asked. “We're not going to have to put out buckets when it rains, are we?”
“It's got water and electricity and everything,” her dad said. “It won't be so bad, I promise.”
Her dad had also promised the police would find Helena. Then he'd promised that the private investigators he'd hired would find her. He hadn't kept either one of those promises. Emma knew it wasn't his fault, but still. You were supposed to keep your promises.
“It's only temporary,” her mom insisted. “Just until we get our finances together and your dad takes care of a few things.”
“Think of it as an adventure,” her dad added. “The police told me it's safe enough for humans as long as we stay out of the forest.”
“As long as we stay out of the backyard, you mean.”
“Nope, just you,” her dad said. “We're still allowed in the yard.” He glanced back at her from the passenger seat, smiling.
It wasn't a very convincing smile. Emma knew he was trying to act like everything was okay. But every day that Helena didn't come home, his face looked thinner and more of his hair turned gray.
“What kinds of crags live here anyway? Are there trolls and stuff?” She'd read about trolls on CragWiki, but she'd never seen one in real life. They mostly stayed in the forest these days, like a lot of crags that were too strange or dangerous to fit in with humans. But not too dangerous to live in Emma's new backyard.
There hadn't been any crags at all in their old neighborhood. She'd only ever seen any when they went into the city or drove past the forest, and then only through the car window. Meeting a troll or a harpy sounded a lot more exciting when you were reading about one on CragWiki than when you might have one as your next-door neighbor.
She looked past the trailer, trying to see into the shadows of the forest, but she didn't even know how to tell if a troll was lurking. From the pictures she'd seen, trolls were huge and had rocky skin with plants growing all over. Maybe they just blended into the trees until it was too late . . .
“Your father says it's just dwarves and some satyrs and dryads,” her mom said.
“Mostly just dwarves,” he said, though something about the way he said it made Emma wonder what he wasn't telling them. “That's not weird, right?”
“Uh-huh. Maybe if we were dwarves,” Emma said. But it made her feel a little better. Dwarves, satyrs, and dryads were supposed to be pretty safe.
They got out of the car and her mom popped the trunk. They all grabbed a box and walked up the metal steps to the trailer's front door.
“So you weren't scared off after all,” someone called from the neighboring trailer.
Emma looked over to see a man sitting in a hot tub. Well, the top half of him was a man. She was pretty sure the bottom half was all snake. The end of his scaly tail hung over the side of the hot tub. The way the scales glistened grossed Emma out, and she couldn't help shuddering even though she knew it was rude. She tried to focus on his face instead.
“I saw you moving boxes earlier, and I thought: That human can't possibly be moving in here. But here you are, with a family and everything.” The way he said it was almost a question. Like he found it just as odd to have a human neighbor as they did living with crags.
“Yes, here we are,” Emma's dad said, trying to sound friendly. “I'm Chien Vu. This is my wife, Hanh, and my daughter Emma.”
“George. George Simbi,” the snake-man said.
“Well, it's nice to meet you, George,” her dad said. There was an awkward pause. “You're a naga, yes? I used to see your, ah, your people back when I was a kid in Vietnam. I've never met one, though.”
“And you still haven't,” Mr. Simbi said, just a little frostily. “The naga, though similar in appearance, originated in Asia. The coatl, which is what
I
am, were native to what you think of as Central America, and a few parts of South America.” He sounded like one of Emma's teachers.
“Oh,” Emma's dad said. “I didn't know that.”
“Please don't mind him, George,” Emma's mom added quickly. “He tends to put his foot in his mouth sometimes. I think he likes the taste. I'm sure we'll all get along just fine, though.”
“Oh, it's all right, I suppose.” Mr. Simbi sighed. “Humans never seem to be bothered to learn about us. Not that you can really blame them. Most crags you'll meet here are respectable citizens like me, but there are some in these partssss . . .” He trailed off, hissing the last part of the word, and stared past them to the trailer on their other side.
Emma followed his gaze. She thought she could see something peering out from between closed blinds â a pair of eyes and wrinkled skin â but then she blinked and it was gone.
Her mom put a hand on her dad's arm. “Chien, what does he mean by that?” she asked in a low voice.
“Nothing, nothing, just . . . you know how it is, the forest nearby and all that,” her dad said. Mr. Simbi looked like he was about to say something, but her dad went on quickly. “It was nice meeting you. I'm sure we'll talk more later. Come on, Ems, I want to put this stuff down before my arms fall off.”
He opened the door for Emma and her mom, then propped it open with the box he'd been carrying. Emma wondered about the eyes next door as she walked in. They'd looked like human eyes, she thought. But then again, Mr. Simbi's eyes looked human, too, if that's all you saw of him.
Inside, the trailer had a heavy, musty smell. The carpet was torn and stained, and black specks of mold dotted the edges of the ceiling. The curtains were old, the bottoms in tatters. Her parents had already moved in most of the stuff from their old house, and boxes were piled up all over the living room. It felt cramped.
