Completely unnecessary. A huge overreaction. I killed ONE dragon, who deserved it.
“What did he do?” Moon asked Mightyclaws. “I mean, what was so bad about him?”
Please keep in mind I’ll be terribly offended if you believe this scrawny dragonet and his monster fantasies over me.
“He killed, like, twenty dragons,” Mightyclaws said. “All at once. With his MIND. He could make anyone do anything he wanted to.”
Is that true? Moon demanded, appalled.
I did not kill twenty dragons. Maybe two. On two separate occasions, and I had to. Moon, come on, I promise not to eat anyone’s brains.
Mightyclaws was not faking his terror of the Darkstalker, though. A million nightmares from the last few years were replaying in his head. She also saw a game where the young dragonets took turns pretending to be the Darkstalker, hiding for a long time, then bursting out to chase and attack the others. Mightyclaws had never liked that game; it always made his nightmares worse.
“Does anyone know where he’s buried?” she asked.
Mightyclaws wrinkled his snout at her. “Of course not. That was thousands of years ago.”
“What about the old NightWing kingdom?” she asked. “Where was it?”
“I have no idea,” he said. “What’s with all the questions?”
“Oh,” she said. “I just — I wondered — I mean, you’re right, I missed out on all the stuff a NightWing dragonet should know. I thought maybe if I … knew more, I’d … be more of a NightWing.”
Mightyclaws stepped around his easel to look at her canvas. She’d painted (quite badly) an evening sky, twinkling with stars and all three moons, over a quiet rainforest scene of green leaves and crooked trees. He took one look at it and snorted, then grabbed his painting and threw it on the floor at her feet.
It was a painting of the volcano she’d seen so many times in the NightWings’ heads. Red-and-gold lava spilled down the sides of the black mountain, and a dark cloud of smoke hung over everything, so you couldn’t tell if it was day or night. It took her a minute of looking at it to realize that Mightyclaws had painted hidden eyes and teeth all over the volcano, as if it was watching, waiting to devour someone.
“That’s really —” Moon started, wanting to tell him how good it was.
“This,” Mightyclaws said. He pointed to her painting, and then to his. “This is why you’ll never be one of us.” Because everything was awful, and you escaped, and it is not fair.
He stormed out of the cave before she could respond.
Moon sighed.
What’s really not fair, Darkstalker pointed out, is everyone blaming you for a choice your mother made.
Moon picked up the volcano painting and propped it carefully back on the easel to dry. She gazed at it for a moment, then suddenly glanced back at her own painting.
The sky …
Her heart flipped over.
My egg was laid under two full moons and hatched under two full moons. Her mother had told her the story of the moonlight and the way her egg had turned strangely silver. Is that why I have powers and no one else does? Do the NightWing powers come from the moons? Maybe that’s why they disappeared … because there was no moonlight on the volcanic island, and the eggs were all hatched deep inside the caves.
Darkstalker rumbled inside her head. Of course our powers come from the moons. One full moon at hatching gives a dragonet either mind reading or prophecy. Two gives them both. Three is so rare…. the theory for a while was that perhaps the animus powers were a third gift, but we eventually determined that those are genetic, not moon-given. We think the third moon makes the first two powers even stronger.
Moon brushed the silver scales by her eyes. Are these a sign of our powers? Because Fatespeaker has them, too.
They should be, but I’ve seen absolutely everything in that silly dragon’s mind and she’s certainly not a mind reader. Nor a prophet, I believe, although she may have a very weak power. Perhaps she nearly hatched under the moons, or was supposed to.
The Talons of Peace had her egg, so she wasn’t on the volcano, but she probably wasn’t out in the moonlight either, Moon thought. And they also had Starflight’s, but I know for sure he hatched underground.
Yes, on a brightest night, with three full moons, Darkstalker growled. What a waste. Think of the power he could have had.
He paused. But the connection between moonlight and NightWing powers was common knowledge in the tribe. How could everyone have forgotten that, even in two thousand years? Why would the tribe risk losing all our powers by hatching their dragonets away from the moonlight?
“I have a guess,” Moon whispered.
What?
She put her own painting down in a clear space on the floor. The blues and greens were too bright, all the lines too unsure, and the trees looked like blobby mushrooms. She set it on fire.
“I think … it was because of you.” She watched the flames for a long moment. “The other NightWings were so afraid of your powers and what you did with them — whatever the truth is, whatever you did — that they stopped having their eggs in the moonlight. They gave up the NightWing powers on purpose, because they wanted to be sure there would never be another Darkstalker. Another you.”
He was silent.
Moon wrapped her wings around herself and watched her painting burn to ashes.
“I can’t set you free,” Moon whispered to the wall that night, after Kinkajou and Carnelian were asleep.
Do I really seem evil to you, Moon?
She buried her nose in a pile of moss, but she knew she couldn’t hide the answer from him. No.
We don’t know what really happened back then, after Clearsight and Fathom tricked me. We can’t be sure the tribe ran and hid and gave up their powers because of me. I mean … nothing I did was awful enough for that.
Moon rolled onto her back and gazed up at the ceiling. What about the things they knew you might do, in the future?
A rumble in her head, like flames building: Is it fair to judge me for possibly dreadful deeds I never even did? We all might do terrible things. Your friend Turtle might kill his sister. This SkyWing in your cave might smother Kinkajou in her sleep just to shut her up. The IceWings might conspire to murder Peril, or you might let a killer escape, or you might send a friend to certain death.
What are you talking about? Moon asked. Do you know what’s going to happen? Have you had visions of all those things? She sat up. Do you already know if I’m going to free you or not?
He sighed. Moon, I told you. With a prophecy gift as advanced as mine, I can see all the possibilities. I see futures where you free me, and futures where I live like this, trapped in the dark, alone, for thousands more years. All your choices spiral off into different futures. The visions you’ve had are only brief glimpses of the most likely outcomes; you see them about as clearly as you’d see a dark cave with one burst of flame. And they could still all change.
So you could manipulate me into freeing you, Moon pointed out. You can see exactly what you need to say to make me say yes.
A long pause.
That’s not fair, Moon. What can I say to that? Anything will sound like a trick to you. But it’s not manipulating you if I tell you that what I’m going through now is torture. That’s just the truth. This is not what the tribe planned for me; Clearsight would not have wanted this. How can I not tell you these things, if they might convince you?
However, he went on, I cannot make you do anything. You make your own choices. That, unfortunately, is the essential problem with prophecy. Every dragon has the power to choose their own future. He let out a low, sad chuckle. Except me, of course. Ironically.
You’re going to haunt me for the rest of my life if I don’t free you, aren’t you? Moon asked.
He chuckled again. I’d argue that this is not so much “haunting” as it is “clinging desperately to my only conversational companion.”
At last Moon fell asleep, straight i
nto another night of dreams about the Jade Mountain Academy collapsing around her and her friends. Now Darkstalker’s face from the scroll loomed over the whole nightmare. A warning? A promise?
Was the fall of Jade Mountain something that would happen if she freed Darkstalker — or something that would happen if she didn’t?
* * *
The next afternoon, the Jade Winglet met in the music cave with Anemone’s group, the Silver Winglet. Moon could hear the deep warbling sound of didgeridoos as she climbed up the tunnels behind Kinkajou. The sound seemed to swallow her up, reverberating in her bones, and then the dragonets emerged into a vast cave full of echoes.
It was like being inside a singing bowl; the music catapulted around the high, smooth walls like thread winding around and around the assembled dragons.
Moon recognized Anemone’s clawmate, the little SandWing named Ostrich, as one of the players. She held a wing-shaped harp and was plucking the strings with her claws. Beside her, Umber was trying to keep up on a hollow stringed instrument as tall as a dragon that boomed in a deep bass register.
“Let’s join in!” Kinkajou cried happily, shouting over the music. She seized a pair of gourds that rattled as though they were full of dry seeds, and she tossed Moon a wooden box.
The box was square, as long as Moon’s forearm, and looked like it had several metal tongues of different sizes attached to the top of it. A label carved into the side said it was a mbira. When she plucked one of the tongues with her claw, a reverberating, twangy noise came out, and it turned out to be a slightly different noise for each tongue.
She sensed Winter arriving, wrapped in chilly discomfort. Moon couldn’t imagine him or Carnelian ever making music. Almost at the same moment as she had that thought, she caught Kinkajou thinking the same thing about her. Moon — too shy to make music — sad, she’s missing out. The reception was blurry in here, with all the noise happening, and everyone’s thoughts were fragmented.
Still, Moon caught enough to understand the gist of it, and she focused her attention back on the mbira, trying to feel determined and stubborn instead of downcast and small.
Soon after that, Qibli came bounding into the cave and straight over to the drums, where he ousted a bewildered-looking SkyWing. As he began to play, Moon managed to stop thinking about Darkstalker for the first time all day.
Qibli drummed with his whole body, like he was dancing and drumming at the same time. His tail thumped a rhythm on a huge bass drum behind him, while his front talons jumped and skipped and bumped from one small drum to another. Anemone grabbed Turtle and started dancing, and after a moment, Kinkajou, the other RainWing, and the other MudWing joined in. The RainWings whirled together, their scales shimmering from color to color in time with the music.
Moon wished she were brave enough to dance, or to drum along with Qibli. Maybe one day. Across the cave, he grinned at her, and in his mind she saw an entire drum circle of SandWings around an oasis pool, firelight flickering behind them. No sign of his family there; only trusted friends and a leader who danced along with them. Outclaws. Thorn. Safety. The scene melted back into the thundering rhythms.
It was even better than the raindrop trick; here, with the drums echoing off all the walls and swallowing individual thoughts, Moon felt like her head was clear and she didn’t have to worry about anything.
It seemed to work for Qibli, too. For once, his mind was moving at about the normal speed of other dragons, absorbed in the pounding below his talons.
Afterward, to Moon’s surprise, Winter caught up with her on her way to the library.
“I want you to look at my scavenger,” he said brusquely. Don’t make eye contact! he was shouting at himself inside his head. Don’t think about her! You’re a disgrace to the royal IceWing lineage, Winter! Your brother would never have been so weak!
“Oh,” she faltered, “I — I mean, sure, but — I don’t really know anything about them.”
“Then use your intuition or whatever,” he said. Or … whatever, his mind echoed ominously.
Moon didn’t like the sound of that. “I was just, um, going to the library,” she said, preparing to add, “so maybe later,” but he started talking over her.
“Fine, I’ll bring him there.” He whisked away before she could protest.
“Oooo,” Kinkajou said, pouncing on Moon’s tail from behind her. “What did he want? What did he say? Can you believe he initiated a conversation and aren’t you so excited?”
“It was nothing,” Moon said.
Oh, Moon. Sometimes it’s like talking to a tree, Kinkajou’s mind sighed.
“Um,” Moon said quickly, “just, he’s bringing Bandit to the library for me to look at.”
“Oh, wow!” Kinkajou said. “He must like you, to be asking for your help, right?”
Moon searched Kinkajou’s face and thoughts, but found no jealousy under those words. Kinkajou seemed as delighted by the prospect of witnessing a romance as she was by the idea of being in one; it was all part of the thrilling new drama of school to her.
“Well, no. I’m pretty sure he hates me,” Moon pointed out. It was odd, because she thought she, of all dragons, should be able to be sure about how another dragon felt about her. But being able to read Winter’s mind somehow didn’t make him any less confusing. It almost seemed to make things worse, actually, as if she were trapped in a maze of icy mirrors. She wondered if that was how he felt all the time.
Sunny and Fatespeaker were in the library with Starflight; Fatespeaker was reading to him and Sunny was sorting a new bundle of scrolls into neat piles.
“Hi there,” Sunny greeted them warmly.
“We have some free time before history, and Moon said she’d help me practice my reading,” Kinkajou said, turning her scales the color of old scrolls with black speckles.
“That sounds great,” Starflight said. “Did I hear Carnelian with you?”
“Yes,” Carnelian muttered behind Moon, making her jump. She hadn’t realized the SkyWing was there, which meant the raindrop trick was really working. “Is there any news from Queen Ruby?” Maybe calling me home? Or at least sending me new battle formations to learn?
“You got a letter this morning,” Fatespeaker said, producing a small scroll from under the desk. She handed it to Carnelian, who inspected the seal suspiciously and then retired to the darkest corner to read it.
Kinkajou had just chosen a scroll called Journeys in the Ice Kingdom when Winter came hurrying in, carrying a covered cage. He set it down in front of Moon and whisked the cloth off.
She crouched to peer inside, trying to ignore how furious and resentful he felt about asking for help.
The cage looked a bit like a tall birdcage, but with an elaborate little environment constructed inside of it. There were stairs, a kind of running wheel on the lower level, a nest with tiny blankets piled on it on the upper level, and a swing hanging from the top bars of the cage.
It took Moon a moment to spot Bandit, because he was buried in the heap of blankets on the nest. But as the light filled the cage, a furry head slowly emerged, and then the rest of him, emitting little groans and rubbing his arms.
“Awww, he’s so cute,” Kinkajou said.
Winter snorted.
“Did you build all this?” Moon asked, touching the cage lightly with one claw. It was very detailed; it must have taken a long time and a lot of thought.
He nodded. “All the stuff inside. I thought he’d like it, but he’s hardly used any of it — he won’t climb on the swing or use the running wheel. Mostly he eats and then goes back to sleep. I thought scavengers were curious and unpredictable, but he’s been unbelievably boring.” The IceWing gave her a sideways look. “Any suggestions? Is he sick? I’ve been feeding him fruit, so he’s eating fine. Why won’t he do anything?”
What can I say without making him suspicious? Moon extended one claw through the bars of the cage. The scavenger jumped back, then looked up and seemed to recognize her. Tentatively Band
it stepped forward and put one paw on Moon’s talon.
Again, she could sense feelings without words, but strong, complicated feelings. She could feel that he was still afraid, but now there was mostly sadness huge enough to engulf Moon. She felt a sudden immense longing for her mother.
“Maybe —” she started, then hesitated. She didn’t like the feeling that Winter was testing her, but she wanted to help the little scavenger.
“Maybe he’s depressed,” Sunny interjected, coming over to peek inside. “Webs was like that for a while after the Summer Palace attack. He didn’t get out of bed for months.”
“Oh, poor little Bandit,” Kinkajou said.
“Webs is a dragon,” Winter pointed out. “This is a scavenger. Next you’ll be telling me the cows and fish in the prey center are moping.”
“Actually my theory is that scavengers are a lot more complicated than we think,” Sunny said.
“He could be lonely,” Moon said. She blinked at Bandit and withdrew her claw. He sat back down on the blankets, his shoulders slumped.
“That’s true!” Sunny said. “Scavengers usually live in packs. Although I met one who was happy with just the company of dragons for a long time, but Flower was kind of special.”
“Bandit might be special,” Winter huffed.
“He might be delicious,” Carnelian muttered from her corner. She was grumpier than ever, because the letter had rejected her official request to be sent back to battle training. “I can think of one good way to find out.”
Winter hissed at her. He turned to Moon and growled, “So, what? Should I get another scavenger, just to keep this one happy? What if that one is depressed, too?”
“Or you could make friends with it,” Moon suggested, and stopped, startled by her own boldness.
He folded his wings back and drew his head up. “What?”
“Flower and Smolder seemed to really like each other,” Sunny said.
“How am I supposed to do that?” Winter demanded. He flung the cover back on the cage. “This is useless,” he growled, and stormed back out of the library with it.