And so he agreed.
He nearly changed his mind when he saw the rainforest wingery, though.
It was even worse than he’d feared — exactly the sort of soft, cuddly, lazy, stupid setup he should have expected from a bunch of RainWings. They didn’t care if their dragonets grew up to be feeble and nonthreatening, so of course they left them to roll around like mammal cubs instead of launching their training the moment they hatched.
The main play area was an enormous trampoline made of springy vines and leaves, strung between several trees high above the ground. It was surrounded on all sides by tall, soft woven mats of branches that kept the baby dragons from falling over the edge. Six full-grown dragons guarded the perimeter — three NightWings and three RainWings, all of whom looked more alert and tense than anyone else Winter had seen so far.
One of the NightWings inspected each of them carefully before allowing them inside. She poked their small skyfire bags, sniffed the rocks, studied Winter’s snout with a worried expression, and spent a full minute examining Qibli’s deadly tail barb.
“It’s very safe,” Qibli promised her. “SandWing dragonets learn early how to avoid accidentally stabbing anyone.” He coiled his tail protectively inward and the guard jumped back.
“I don’t like it,” she said to Heliconia, the RainWing who’d escorted them to the wingery. “We’re supposed to keep complete strangers away from the dragonets. And this one looks … the mildest word I can think of is hostile.” She frowned at Winter.
“That’s just his face,” said Qibli. “And his personality.”
“He would never harm a dragonet,” Moon promised.
“I can speak for myself,” Winter snapped.
Grumbling under her breath, the NightWing finally let them pass. They flew up and over the woven wall, landing lightly on the platforms around the trampoline inside. Winter scanned the space and saw that it was full of peculiar toys that didn’t appear to teach anything or impart any valuable skills whatsoever.
Inside the wingery were nine dragonets less than a year old. At first glance, Winter thought they were all NightWings, because they all had black scales and were wrestling in a pile together. But when the newcomers landed on the platforms around them, nine tiny heads popped up, and seven of them became suddenly vibrantly pink-and-yellow.
“Pretty new dragons!” one of them cheered, and eight dragonets came rampaging over, staggering on the bouncy surface and flapping their unwieldy wings.
Winter backed up all the way until his wings hit the wall, but that didn’t stop three tiny RainWings from closing in on him.
“Glittery!” yelped one.
“I can do that!” said another. “Look look look.” He crouched, concentrating, and a wave of icy blue surged across his scales. A moment later he looked like a miniature version of Winter, without the extra ice dragon spikes and horns. He held out his claws and cooed admiringly at himself.
“Nice work,” Kinkajou said. She squinted at Winter as though he were an ice sculpture that needed improving. “You could add a little more dark blue shading around the spine and edges of the wings.”
“Sure!” The dragonet clicked his teeth together thoughtfully, and a moment later a subtle shift went through some of his scales, making the jagged ridge along his back look sharper and taller, a little more like an IceWing’s.
“Try this one,” called a dragonet who was circling around Qibli. The SandWing wrinkled his nose at her and she wrinkled hers right back. Her scales were already shifting to the same pale yellow as his. She spread her wings and studied the underside of them, then reached out and poked Qibli until he opened his wings for her to examine.
“Hrm,” she said. A shimmer of gold and bronze appeared on her chest, and then slowly melted into a color that almost exactly matched Qibli’s underscales. “Woo!” she cried. “Let’s see if I can do his snout!”
Winter watched tiny brown freckles and a small dark zigzag that matched Qibli’s scar appear on her scales. He tried to squash his amazement. Dragonets less than a year old could do that? Winter glanced around the wingery. Maybe they weren’t completely wasting their time in here after all.
Of course, camouflage scales weren’t as impressive or useful as hunting and fighting and survival skills. Hailstorm had battled a killer whale before he was one year old. Winter had been sent out to spend an entire night in a blizzard alone. Icicle was already combat training with dragons three times her size by her first birthday. These dragonets wouldn’t last a minute in IceWing training; they wouldn’t make a dent in the rankings at all.
His gaze fell on the one dragonet who was hanging back — a small, nervous-looking NightWing with a leaf bandage wrapped around one foreleg. The dragonet met his eyes, squeaked nervously, and tucked his head under his wings.
“Don’t mind him,” said the dragonet who’d turned himself the color of Winter.
“He’s so useless,” said the other NightWing dragonet. She was sleek and glossy, like a seal, and was studying the newcomers with more reserve than the wild curiosity of the RainWings. “He’s still having nightmares about the volcano every night, even though that was months ago. Toughen up, lizard!” she barked at him.
The bandaged NightWing slowly drew his head out and folded his wings back, shivering from horns to tail. Winter could see him fighting back his terror as he squared his shoulders and faced the new dragons.
“Some NightWing he is,” the female dragonet snorted. “We keep telling him what an important, dangerous tribe we are, but frankly, I’m not sure he’ll ever measure up. I guess some dragons are just —”
“Hatched in the wrong tribe,” Moon finished softly.
Winter tilted his head at her. Did she wish she weren’t a NightWing? Or had she heard other dragons wishing they could be something different?
Not me. He couldn’t imagine not being an IceWing. His whole life was about trying to be a true IceWing warrior. All he’d ever wanted was to rise to the top of the rankings and prove himself to his parents and the rest of the tribe. That was all he should want.
Until I met her. And now I want … what? To understand a NightWing? To have her care about me?
No wonder he hated himself.
“All right, scoot,” Qibli said suddenly, flapping his wings at the dragonets. “Leave us alone and go play. Quietly. Over there.” He herded the dragonets to the other side of the enclosure and came back, ducking his head toward Moon. “Are you all right?” he whispered.
Winter realized Moon was rubbing her temples. He’d forgotten that she must be hearing the thoughts of all the dragons around them. While the baby dragons were bombarding the newcomers with words, they must also be blasting the inside of Moon’s head with their thoughts.
“I’m fine, I just need to adjust,” Moon said, dropping her claws and shaking out her wings. “We can’t sneak away yet — the guards are too focused on us.” She glanced at Winter. “I’ll keep listening.” Her talons went back to her head and she closed her eyes.
“Guess what?” Kinkajou said, lightly bouncing the vines below her. Her claws had all turned dark green to match the wingery so it almost looked as though she had no feet at all if you didn’t look closely. “I think I figured it out! I was thinking about Moon’s prophecy while you were off chasing Icicle. The ‘stalker of dreams’ — that must be Scarlet! Using the dreamvisitor to bother people, right?”
“Maybe,” Qibli said. “Although there’s something a little ominous about ‘darkness’ and ‘stalker’ so close to each other in the prophecy. What if there’s a connection to that Darkstalker you mentioned, Winter?”
“Pfft,” Winter scoffed. “He’s been dead for centuries. If the prophecy is about him, it’s a little out of date.”
Was it his imagination, or did Moon just press her eyes closed even harder?
“Everybody shush,” Kinkajou ordered. “I’m telling you something. So I thought, if Scarlet is the stalker of dreams, maybe the ‘talons of power and fire’ i
s that freaky SkyWing everyone’s afraid of. What’s her name again?”
“Peril,” Winter growled. Of course it could be Peril. The dragon who could burn other dragons to death just by touching them. She’d stared at him with her creepy fiery blue eyes, standing there in the entrance hall of Jade Mountain as though she could go wherever she pleased. After everything she’d done and everyone she’d killed. Free and unpunished … it wasn’t right. “I could believe it. She’s murder waiting to happen.”
Qibli shook his head. “But she saved Clay’s life. I was there; I saw it. I don’t think she’s working with Scarlet anymore.”
“Then you’re an even bigger fool than you look,” Winter snapped.
“Hey, hey, quit being mean,” Kinkajou said. “Maybe that’s what ‘one who is not what she seems’ is about. Peril seems like she’s changed, but actually she is totally going to betray the dragonets and scorch the earth and kill everyone and all the other bad things at once.” She paused. “Suddenly I am not enjoying this conversation as much as I thought I would.”
“Did you see anything in Peril’s mind?” Qibli asked Moon, nudging her gently. “Was she planning anything terrible?”
“Peril’s mind is almost impossible to read,” Moon said, opening her eyes. “It’s all fire in there, like she’s burning from the inside, too. I think — I think she’s not a happy dragon, but I’m not sure she’s evil. I don’t really know, though. I mean, no one is completely evil.”
“What are you talking about?” Winter demanded. “Plenty of dragons are completely evil.”
“Not when you see what’s going on inside them.” Moon shook her head fiercely. “Dragons are complicated. Some are kinder than others.” She looked up at Qibli, then quickly away. “Or braver than others.” Here she glanced mysteriously at Winter, and he shivered. “And some of them do really cruel things. But everyone has both good thoughts and bad thoughts and reasons for what they do, reasons they believe are important.”
“I don’t have bad thoughts, do I?” Kinkajou asked Moon.
Moon laughed. “True, not that I ever heard,” she admitted.
“I’d better have them all now, quick while I can,” Kinkajou said, touching her skyfire pouch with a grin.
Winter puzzled over Moon’s words for a moment. He would have assumed that hearing other dragons’ thoughts would confirm that most of them were evil or at least halfway there. How could Moon be immersed in other minds all day and still believe in the goodness of dragons?
She hasn’t met very many other dragons, he told himself. Growing up in the rainforest, hidden away.
But she’d met the whole NightWing tribe (which surely was full of evil), and Peril, and Sora, the dragon who’d tried to kill Winter’s sister. And Moon had met Icicle.
“Don’t you think Icicle is evil?” he blurted. “I mean — I don’t, but —”
“No,” Moon said. “That’s what I mean. She’s doing what she thinks she has to do to save her brother. I wouldn’t make the choices she’s made, and she needs to be stopped, but I think I understand them. It is very cold and intense inside her head … I guess, I think it would be hard, growing up like she did, always knowing your parents are expecting — um, expecting big, um, things of you.” She trailed off, giving Winter a sideways glance.
She knows what my parents want from Icicle, Winter realized with a jolt. She knows Icicle is supposed to grow up to challenge Queen Glacier. But she’s keeping that secret … perhaps just to show me that she can keep secrets.
Don’t trust her, he reminded himself. NightWings are manipulative. She’s probably just saying what I want to hear.
Moon shifted her wings, turning to look at the playing dragonets, and a fan of sunshine brushed across her scales. They’re not just black, Winter thought. They’re more of a dark purple, with shades of dark blue and green mixed in.
“Back to the prophecy,” he said irritably, trying to focus. “So perhaps Scarlet and Peril are conspiring. Maybe they’re planning to take down Jade Mountain together. What does the old NightWing home have to do with that?”
“We should go there and see,” Kinkajou said. “It’s not far from here.”
“Maybe there’s something there we can use to stop them,” Qibli suggested.
“The third dreamvisitor,” Moon said suddenly. She sat up and flicked her tail over her talons. “Starflight said it was lost when the volcano exploded. Maybe we can find it.”
“Then we wouldn’t need to hunt for Icicle,” Qibli said, turning to Winter. “You could contact Scarlet yourself and ask about Hailstorm.”
“I can’t,” Winter said. “I’ve never seen Queen Scarlet. Icicle was part of the delegation that went to negotiate for Hailstorm’s release — unsuccessfully, obviously. So they met, and that’s why Scarlet can get into her dreams. But I couldn’t do it, even if I had a dreamvisitor.”
There was a pause. Qibli tapped his claws together softly, thoughtfully.
“I might be able to,” he said. “I saw her once. From far away, but … I think I could dreamvisit her.”
“So let’s go,” Kinkajou whispered. “Moon, how about now?”
Moon tipped her head sideways, then nodded. “I think they’re calming down,” she said. “But the little ones are still very interested in us. They’ll put up a huge fuss if we try to leave.”
“Oh, I have a plan for that,” Kinkajou said confidently. “Watch, it’ll be hilarious.” She fluffed out her wings, turned herself an iridescent blue like a dragonfly, and sauntered over to where the baby dragons were arguing in loud whispers about why Winter and Qibli had such weird tails.
“Hello,” Kinkajou said to them. “Want to play a game?”
“YES!” they all shrieked in chorus.
“It’s basically hide-and-seek,” Kinkajou said. “You know, where you try to find the camouflaged dragons. The four of us have a bet that we can each hide better than the others, even though I’m clearly going to win, because I’m the only RainWing.” She lifted her talons and dramatically changed them red.
“OOOOOOOOO,” went all the dragonets.
“So you all close your eyes, and we’ll hide, and whoever finds one of us first, wins!” said Kinkajou. “All right? Make sure you count to a thousand so we have enough time.”
“OK!” squealed one of the RainWings, covering her eyes. “One! Two! Three! Six! Seventeen!”
The others all covered their eyes as well and began shouting random numbers along with her.
“Whoops,” Kinkajou said, galloping back to Moon. “I forgot about how most RainWings can’t count. We’d better move fast.”
“Which way?” Qibli asked Moon. “Where are the guards?”
Moon closed her eyes and pointed at six spots around the circumference of the trampoline walls. “And two of them are also watching the sky, to make sure we don’t fly out,” she added, opening her eyes again.
“So we go down,” Winter said. “Over here.” He crossed to a corner with more shadows than the others, where a few curiously shaped branches and large seed pods were piled, as if for playing with. He moved them aside and touched the place where the wall met the woven vines. “If we make a hole here, they might not notice for a few minutes — long enough for us to get away.”
“I can burn a hole,” Qibli offered, small flames spurting from his nose.
“Put those away,” Kinkajou said, batting at his snout. “No fire in my forest, thank you!”
“This will be safer,” Winter said. He crouched, clenched his jaw, and summoned the cold from deep inside him. It hissed into his throat like a building snowstorm. Finally he opened his mouth and shot a shimmering blast of frostbreath at the web of leaves and branches.
He froze a spot just large enough for a dragon to crawl through, a small icy circle of silver vegetation.
“SIX HUNDRED!” one of the dragonets bellowed suddenly, leaping ahead a few hundred. The others gleefully joined in. “Six hundred and NINE! Six hundred and FORTY-TWO!”
>
“Quick,” Moon whispered.
Winter leaned forward and rapped sharply on the ice with his front claws. The circle cracked and then shattered into tiny frozen splinters, leaving a jagged hole at the base of the wall.
“What was that?” one of the NightWing dragonets asked, but he was drowned out by the others shouting, “Six hundred and NINETY-EIGHT! EIGHT HUNDREDY FIVE!”
“Go, go, go,” Kinkajou whispered frantically.
Winter dove through the hole first, catching his wings on a few remaining shards of ice. Moon was right behind him as he shot toward the ground and plunged into a thicket of enormous leaves. A moment later, Qibli and Kinkajou landed beside them with soft thuds. Kinkajou’s scales immediately shifted and she vanished like a snowball thrown back into the snow.
Moon was still as an iceberg beside Winter, her wings folded to hide the silver scales that sparkled underneath, her eyes closed and brow furrowed.
He leaned closer to whisper into her ear. “Did anyone see us?”
She shook her head. “But I can’t imagine those dragonets are going to believe we’re somehow hiding in there for very long.”
“You’d be surprised,” Kinkajou said. “Hide-and-seek is our favorite game in kind of an obsessive way. They’ll search every square inch of the wingery before giving up. I pulled a few things over to hide the hole, so with luck we’ll have a few minutes, at least.”
“This way,” Moon said, slipping off into the trees. Winter tried to stay low and in the shadows as he hurried after her. He spotted the flicker of black wings overhead as one of the guards circled around the wingery, but no one raised an alarm yet.
“How am I going to find Icicle?” he whispered to her. “Before anyone else does?”
She hesitated, giving him a worried sideways look. “I don’t know how much you want to hear about what I can do,” she whispered back. “I’ve never had anyone to talk to about it before, except — well, no one really. But I don’t want to freak you out.”