“Hello,” Clay said.
“Hmph,” the man said. “Do you know why I’m here?”
Because I called for you, Clay thought, but he didn’t say so.
“I’m here to judge whether you’re worthy to meet with the dragons. So far I’m not impressed.”
“How did you know that’s why I came?”
“The dragons told me.”
“How do they know?”
“Because the dragons have a different experience of time. In a sense, you’ve already met them. They live forward and backward at once.”
“Well, why can’t I just meet them, then? You’re making me jump through hoops for no reason.”
“It doesn’t work like that.”
“I need to ask them for help,” Clay said.
“Don’t. They will see no reason for a dragon to help a human.”
“Should I try to ally with them first?”
“No! That would be worse. These dragons are very proud. If you try to do favors for them, or start singing…” The Dragon Tamer’s eyes strayed to the sword in Clay’s hand. His expression darkened. “Your sword—is that the one they call DragonSlayer?”
Clay nodded.
“That is an evil thing. It is no sword for a Dragon Tamer. Be gone with it. If the dragons see that, they will burn you alive.”
“But—but your poem said to bring an enemy’s sword,” Clay stammered.
“That’s just an old saying, and I can’t imagine that whoever first said it was thinking of DragonSlayer! But perhaps…” The Dragon Tamer furrowed his brow. “Perhaps the sword may be of use after all. I shall send you to the dragons, if you like. But I warn you: It may not end well.”
“Thanks,” said Clay, wondering what not ending well meant. Could you be killed on the Other Side? Or did you just get stuck there?
“They will ask you three questions.”
“What questions?”
The Dragon Tamer shrugged. “The questions don’t matter. It is how you answer them.”
“How should I answer them?”
“The only advice I can give is to take your time about it. Years, if you like.”
“I don’t have years!”
“Dragons like to talk sideways, around a problem. To them, a quick answer is a careless answer.”
“Okay. So I answer slowly. Then what? If they like my answer, I ask if they’ll help me?”
“No. They already know why you’re here. Tell them you have a gift for them.”
“But I don’t have a gift.”
“The sword. They may not like it, but they will be glad to know it can never be used against a dragon again.”
Clay nodded. “And the Midnight Sun won’t be able to use the blood on it to make any more little dragon clones.…”
“What?” The all-knowing Dragon Tamer was mystified.
“Never mind,” said Clay. “I don’t totally understand how they do it, either.”
“Here, wrap the sword in this.” The Dragon Tamer handed Clay a tattered piece of cloth.
“How do I find them?” Clay asked.
“The dragons? Well, don’t go looking for them. That’s always a mistake.”
“Call to them, then? Like I did for you?”
“Like a child or a pet? Never! They would be very insulted.”
“What, then?”
“Close your eyes. Let them find you.”
“Okay, um, thanks.” He started to close his eyes, then opened them again. “You aren’t going to leave, are you?”
“No. You are.”
When Clay opened his eyes, he understood what the Dragon Tamer had meant. Clay was on the other side of the door now, in some sort of canyon.
It was daytime. No, that wasn’t right. It was day where he was, the sky a bright blue; but in the distance it was night, the sky a dark purple, with twinkling stars. As though he were looking into a different time zone. Or as though in this place all time zones were one.
Immediately in front of him was a gray, hulking rock formation. Farther into the canyon, there were a few trees scattered about, but mostly there were more rock formations. Hundreds and hundreds of them. Jagged and craggy and menacing. A white mist swirled around them, like a stream.
“Hello?” Clay said tentatively.
He turned around. There were no signs of life. Not so much as a fly to be seen, never mind a dragon.
He turned around again. By the time he’d made a full rotation, the closest rock formation was gone and an enormous dragon was staring at him—a dragon that would have made even Ariella look small, and would have made Bluebeard look like a puppy.
Behind the dragon, other rock formations were shaking, as if in an earthquake. Gradually, Clay could make out hunched shoulders, folded wings, curled tails; the rocks were dragons.
The dragon in front of him looked old in the way a mountain looks old: like it had taken millions of years to grow and would take millions more to crumble back into the earth. The dragon breathed, and its scales rippled, sending silvery shimmers across its massive body.
Hello, human.
“Um—hello…” Clay stammered.
Hello what? Hello, dragon? Hello, Mr. Dragon? Mrs. Dragon? No, dragons were neither male nor female.
You may call me Old One, said the dragon, as if it had heard Clay’s thoughts (which it probably had).
We have three questions for you, human. If you answer properly, we will consider your request.
Answer properly, Clay thought. Is that the same thing as correctly?
“Right,” said Clay. “Fire away.” As soon as the words fire away were out of his mouth, he regretted them: Not only was the phrase slangy in a way a dragon might not appreciate, but also there was the possibility that the dragon would take the words literally and fire away at him.
Thankfully, Old One didn’t appear to notice.
Here is your first question, human, said the dragon. What is the worst mistake a dragon can make?
Clay felt an immediate sense of relief: He knew the answer to this question from reading the Occulta Draco. But he remembered the Dragon Tamer’s advice about not answering too quickly, so he bent his head and pretended to think it over.
“A dragon cannot make a mistake,” he said slowly. “Whatever a dragon does, it has already done. So it’s not right or wrong; it just is.”
Yes. It just is. The dragon nodded, though it did not seem especially pleased by Clay’s answer.
Clay waited for what seemed to him a very long time, which was probably only a blink for a dragon.
Finally, the dragon spoke again:
What is the worst mistake a human can make?
This question was trickier. To kill a dragon, perhaps? No. Too risky. A dragon would be insulted by the very idea of a person killing a dragon.
He thought for another moment. Probably a dragon would think anything a human did was a mistake.
“To think he is like a dragon—that he cannot make mistakes. That is the worst mistake a human can make.”
The dragon looked at Clay without indicating approval or disapproval. Clay’s hands were sweating. Had he answered too quickly? He had meant to take his time, but nerves had gotten the better of him.
What is the greatest mistake you have made?
Clay thought of all the mistakes he’d made in his lifetime. Which was the worst? And did he really want to share it with Old One? If the mistake was truly terrible, would the dragon think him unworthy of help?
Then again, maybe his worst mistake was one he didn’t yet know he’d made. For instance, coming to the Other Side might have been his worst mistake. Or maybe it wasn’t a mistake at all. There was no way of knowing.
He wished his brother were there to help him with the riddle. But it isn’t a riddle, his brother would say. It’s just a question!
Yeah, yeah, I know, answered Clay in his head. Do you always have to be so logical?
“The worst mistake I’ve made is not forgiving the mistakes o
f others,” he said finally. Maybe it was time to forgive Max-Ernest. That was what Pietro had been trying to tell him, wasn’t it?
You are uncertain.
“Well, how can you be certain of something like that? I mean…”
Yes.
There was a long silence. Clay wasn’t sure whether or when he was supposed to speak.
“I have a gift for you,” he said, unable to bear the silence any longer. He unwrapped the sword and laid it down in front of the dragon.
The dragon glared at him.
“Its name is DragonSlayer,” said Clay nervously.
I know what its name is, human, the dragon roared. You dare call this a gift? This thing that has murdered so many of our kind.
“I was going to get rid of it, but I thought you’d want to do that,” said Clay, trying not to cower. “You know, to make sure it was done right.”
Have you used this sword yourself? Have you drawn blood from a dragon?
“No, never!” declared Clay truthfully. Silently, he thanked Ariella for forbidding him to use the sword.
There was another long and uncomfortable silence. Uncomfortable for Clay, that is, not for the dragon.
Very well, said the dragon at last. You have done right to bring us the sword. We will help you, and we will save our young if they can be saved—but when we are done, we will come back here and we will shut the door behind us. We dragons are finished with your world, and you are finished with ours.
Clay wanted to say what a terrible idea this was, how much he loved and admired dragons, more even than skateboarding and graffiti art and animals and magic and all the other things he loved (well, dragons pretty much were magic, but still…), and how he wished there would always be dragons in the world, and what a sad and boring world it would be without them, but all he said was,
“Thank you.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FOUR
THE RAID ON THE LABORATORY
Later that afternoon
Satya wasn’t afraid anymore. Not of Ms. Mauvais. Not of the dragons. Not of being stranded in the middle of a jungle in the middle of a crater in the middle of a desert. She figured she’d seen the worst of all of those things already, and she’d survived.
Survived. Like Cass. The survivalist. Satya’s new role model. Cass wasn’t afraid of anything.*
Still.
Not being afraid was no reason not to be careful.
She had Hero with her, of course. Her spy, bodyguard, and secret weapon. But Hero was unpredictable when it came to dragons. To say the least.
She looked at the laboratory building, trying to study it analytically.
Getting in wasn’t going to be a problem. She still had Gyorg’s keys. It was the getting out that would be tricky. Most staff members were occupied with salvaging materials from the castle and building temporary shelters. Nonetheless, it was more than possible that one or more guards might be chasing her. They might even go after her with a helicopter.
And then there was Bluebeard, still out there somewhere. Waiting to get revenge. Snowflake and Rover were back under the dome, but so far Bluebeard had evaded capture. The dragon had either found a way to deactivate its collar or flown so far afield that the collar no longer worked. All Midnight Sun staff were under orders to shoot the one-eyed menace on sight.
Satya had watched Dr. Paru exit the laboratory. Then she waited a full five minutes to make sure the scientist wasn’t coming back. (If Satya had hoped to find an ally in Dr. Paru, she’d given up; Dr. Paru was too married to her science, or too afraid of Ms. Mauvais, or simply too well paid, to question what the Midnight Sun was doing.) And now it was time. Satya unlocked the laboratory door and walked swiftly toward the nurseries. Hero was tense, even shaking a little bit, but the falcon seemed to understand that she was supposed to remain silent.
The little dragons, in contrast, were shrieking noisily. The last time they’d seen Hero, she’d really riled them up, and it appeared that they remembered. Satya wasn’t sure whether they regarded the falcon as friend or foe or food, but whatever the case, they didn’t find Hero’s presence soothing.
One by one, she released them from their cages. First the four babies, whom she called Louis, Percy, Sarah, and Garby (all named after former pets of Satya’s). Then Houdini and Bodhi, whose hoods and jesses she carefully removed. Usually so mellow, Bodhi wasn’t very mellow now. None of them were. There was total chaos in the room. Talons scratching walls. Bottles crashing to the floor.
Attempting to convey a sense of calm authority, she carried a cooler full of meat in front of her—the only thing that would focus the dragons’ attention—and walked out of the room. The little dragons followed her, fighting for the positions closest to the meat. They didn’t make a line so much as a writhing black ball. Hero circled the dragons, trying to keep them all going in the same direction, like a dog shepherding a flock of sheep.
Amazingly, the motley group made it outside without interruption. They appeared to be alone. Satya allowed herself a small sigh of relief as she marched her crew steadily forward.
Her father, she felt sure, would help her when the time came. They were to leave that afternoon, one way or another. He’d sworn it, and she intended to hold him to his promise. But they simply couldn’t leave knowing that all these baby dragons were still in captivity, property of the Midnight Sun.
So they would take the dragons. How? Vaguely, she imagined that she and her father would put all six dragons and Hero in a helicopter and then escape to parts unknown. An island, maybe. Or somewhere in the Arctic.
Realistic? Probably not. The dragons wouldn’t like being confined in the helicopter. How long before they revolted? And even if she and her father successfully relocated the dragons, what would they do when the dragons got bigger? But what other options were there?
One step at a time, she told herself. Or one flap of the wing, in the case of the dragons.
She noticed the silence first.
The chattering and the screeching, the flying and the fighting—suddenly, it had all stopped.
She looked down. There were no more little talons or teeth scratching and snapping at the cooler.
She turned around. Where were all the dragons?
A large fern drew her attention; a pair of yellow eyes stared out from the shadows beneath it.
Satya spotted the little dragons, one after another, peering out from the foliage. They were quiet but alert, quivering. She smiled uncertainly. Were they hiding from her? Was it some kind of game? No, they didn’t seem the least bit interested in her. It was something else. Something they feared.
Hero hissed in her ear.
Slowly, Satya raised her eyes to the sky.
Bluebeard.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE
THE THUNDER OF DRAGONS
“… and then Old One yawns, this huge, huge dragon yawn, with the big bumpy tongue and the big broken teeth, rows and rows of them, and everything, and suddenly it’s like the biggest windstorm ever, a really hot and smelly windstorm, and it sends me flying, and I guess I hit my head and get knocked out, or maybe there’s like some kind of sleeping gas in the dragon’s breath, and then I guess Ariella finds me and takes me home, because I wake up here in Puke Yurt with a splitting headache and you guys staring at me like my face peeled off or something, and…” Clay faltered, nervous. “Wait, it didn’t actually peel off, did it? I mean, I look normal, right?”
Leira and Brett peered down at him.
“Define normal,” said Leira.
Brett nodded judiciously. “Yeah, it’s hard to say without knowing what the bar for normal is.”
“You guys are always so reassuring.”
Clay sat up and surveyed the round room, filled with mysterious medicinal herbs and ointments.
“So, they’re not here… are they?” he asked, looking out the window. All that was visible were trees.
“Who?” asked Leira.
“Old One. And the o
ther dragons.”
“Here at camp? Should they be?”
“Well, yeah,” said Clay. “I mean, if they aren’t, then it was all for nothing, wasn’t it—the whole trip?”
“Why do you say that?” asked Brett. “It sounds sort of amazing, if you ask me. You got to go where nobody ever gets to go, or at least where, er, nobody ever gets to go back from.”
“Did I? How do I know it wasn’t a dream?” Agitated, Clay threw off his blanket. “I’m not even sure the dragons were real.”
Before Clay’s friends could respond, the yurt’s flap door was thrown back and Jonah stuck his head in. “Um, hey, guys?” he said, hesitant. “You might want to come look at this.”
Rubbing his eyes, Clay climbed out of bed, and they all peeked out of the yurt. Jonah pointed his thumb over his shoulder, toward the clouds.
The horizon was filled with undulating black shapes.
Dragons—hundreds of them—were sweeping across the sky, headed right for Earth Ranch.
And now it’s time to answer a question that (if you’re anything like me) has been eating away at you for the last few chapters:
What do you call a group of dragons? In other words, what is the correct collective noun? Is it a herd of dragons? A school? A flock? A pride?
Short answer: There are several answers.
While a group of dragon eggs may be referred to as a clutch, a group of very young dragons is a brood, and a group of grown dragons is most often known as a weyr. But that’s only if they’re on the ground. A group of aquatic dragons may be referred to as a lagoon. A group of dragons soaring through the sky is a flight, though some insist on calling it a stampede or a thunder.
If you’d found yourself among the dragons arriving en masse over the crater, I think you would have gone with that last word, thunder. With so many wings flapping at once, it was like being inside a hurricane; and if that wasn’t enough, their roaring and flame-spitting created a raging firestorm that was indeed thunderous.
Alas, Clay was the lone human to experience this firestorm. Leira and Brett had wanted to come, too, of course—all of Clay’s friends had—but Clay had insisted that it wasn’t necessary. (In fact, he’d asked Old One about bringing his friends along, only to be treated to an angry lecture about how dragons weren’t pack animals.) If a full thunder of dragons—a fleet?—couldn’t handle the job, what difference would a few kids make? As a compromise, Clay had agreed to wear the ski hat again, this time under the skateboard helmet. His head was hotter and itchier than ever, but he was grateful for the extra protection, especially with all the balls of fire streaking past him.