Free Jennifer Scales and the Ancient Furnace by MaryJanice Davidson

bug you’ve ever seen” stuck in her mind. Her mind went back to the butterfly in Ms. Graf’s classroom, and the menacing cloud of dragonflies.
    What bug might she see someday that she
did
have to worry about?
     
    For the rest of the day, they worked on flying and landing. The only interruption was lunch. Elizabeth produced two vatfuls of slightly overcooked macaroni and cheese, and then stayed with them for the afternoon to watch her daughter’s progress.
    By the time the sun was low in the sky, Jennifer felt mildly comfortable taking off and landing in an open field. She ventured as high as a hundred feet once, but lost her nerve as she realized she was coasting over prickly pine trees. Two unusually large golden eagles swooped by her ear and convinced her to seek firm ground. It was enough—she decided as she landed without stumbling for the first time to applause from her mother and praise from her father—to get this far.
    “Excellent!” her father cheered. “You’ve got a real gift for this, ace. Your grandfather had to work with me for at least three days. He finally lost his patience, took me up to the roof of the cabin, and shoved me off toward the lake. Speaking of which—”
    He spread his wings and kicked off the ground, soaring into the air. Jennifer noticed his perfect, effortless form with a small twinge of jealousy. She struggled to follow him up, while her mother began a jog back to the cabin.
    “I need to catch dinner,” Jonathan explained. “You should just watch for this part, I think. No sense in you drowning just yet.”
    They turned north and let their wings stretch as they coasted over the lake. Jennifer tried not to think about the fact that landing here would be impossible, and that the tree-lined shore was hardly better terrain. Instead, she focused on following her father as he climbed in broad circles. Eighty, ninety, a hundred feet—Jennifer caught a small crosswind but shifted her wings quickly to compensate—two hundred feet, three hundred, and still Jonathan climbed.
    Jennifer kept her head up. She knew the distant view of water and trees below would terrify her. They were going far higher than she ever had outside of an airplane.
    When they reached five hundred feet, her father turned his head. “The first thing you have to do is follow the shadows. Clear your mind and keep your eyes on the water.”
    He looked down, and Jennifer reluctantly did the same. The setting sun cast an uneven light over the surface of the lake, and at first she couldn’t make much out. But by letting her eyes relax, she found that she could both ignore the altitude and see small shapes underwater.
    “You hover and wait until they come near the surface,” she heard her father continue. “Then you dive. Okay, remember, just watch for now.”
    An instant later, her father plunged with his feet forward and down and wings stretched back behind him. He looked to Jennifer like a massive, indigo hawk.
    Seconds later, just before he dove into the lake itself, he broke his own fall with a furious beating of wings, jabbed into the water with both hind legs, and plucked out two silvery shapes. He lifted off again, circled over the lake to the shore, and dropped the fish into a large plastic crate his wife had pulled out into the yard. Then he circled up to meet Jennifer again.
    “Dad, I’ll never be able to do that. That was crazy!”
    “You’ll be doing it by the end of the week. Tomorrow, if we have time.”
    Without waiting for an argument, he dove again, this time face first and with wings held close around his trunk and tail. Jennifer almost screamed when she saw his head slam right into the water, followed by his body with a surprisingly small splash. She hovered uneasily. Was that his shadow she saw? Yes, of course: it let out a stream of bubbles as it sliced through me water. He was much faster underwater than she would have expected.
    A few seconds later, he emerged from the lake, this time