Winter Turning

by Tui T. Sutherland

  “Each IceWing animus spent years planning his or her one great enchantment. They could use their power just once, to create something that would benefit the whole tribe. Prince Arctic was only days away from his gifting ceremony when the NightWings kidnapped him.”

  “Wait,” Qibli said. “What happened if an animus didn’t do what he was told? What if he wanted to use his power for something else? Or what if he didn’t want to marry whatever princess was chosen for him?”

  “I don’t understand the question,” Winter said. “It is obviously an honor to marry into the royal IceWing lineage.”

  “But if you take away all of a dragon’s choices …” Qibli trailed off.

  “Stop being obtuse,” Winter shouted. “You are missing the point entirely. Prince Arctic was our animus heritage, and everything would be different if the NightWings hadn’t stolen and killed him.”

  “I’m just wondering if there’s another side to the story,” Qibli suggested, shrugging his wings.

  “No,” Winter said. “There isn’t.”

  “What I’m wondering is why you’re still so mad about it,” Kinkajou interjected. “It sounds like it happened hundreds and hundreds of years ago. Isn’t it time to move on? Who cares about all that ancient history?”

  “It’s not ancient history to us,” Winter growled. “We still live with the consequences every day.”

  “But you can’t blame the NightWings who are alive now — it wasn’t their idea,” she argued. “And it’s not like you can get your vengeance on Foeslayer or Darkstalker.”

  Moon dropped suddenly down toward the fortress. Startled and irritated, Winter had to wheel around in midair to follow her. When they caught up, she was sitting in the mouth of a half-caved-in tunnel, peering into the darkness.

  “I don’t think this is right,” she said as they all landed next to her. “This isn’t the lost city of night in the prophecy.”

  “It isn’t?” Kinkajou said. “Why not?”

  “There was a city before this one,” Moon said. “The NightWings used to live somewhere on the continent, back in Darkstalker’s time. But they fled their city after he was — once he was gone — and they came here. To hide from him, in case he ever came back.” She cast an odd, worried look at Winter. “I think that’s the city we need to find. The ancient one, the one that’s really lost.”

  “Oh,” Kinkajou said. “You couldn’t have maybe mentioned that a bit sooner?”

  “Sorry,” Moon said. “I was hoping this would work.”

  “So we don’t have to go look for a dreamvisitor in there?” Qibli said, nodding toward the tunnel. “Because I am all in favor of not going into the creepy smoking lava-filled tunnel.”

  “Me too,” Moon agreed, “except that I thought I heard … maybe …”

  “Icicle?” Winter demanded. “You think she’s in there?”

  “I’m not sure,” Moon said, but at almost the same time, they all heard a strange scrrrrrrrape sound from deep inside the volcano.

  “Oh dear,” Kinkajou whispered. “Now I’m really wishing we had saved the ancient evil dragon stories for somewhere less spooky.”

  Scrrrrrrrrape.

  Scrrrrrrrape.

  Scrrrrrrape.

  Winter was sure a moment before Moon turned to him with wide eyes. He saw the glint of silver-pale scales shimmering toward him as a figure crawled slowly out of the dark tunnel.

  It was Icicle. They’d found her at last.

  “She’s not all right,” Moon whispered to him. “Her mind is all scattered and foggy. I don’t know why.”

  A talon of ice trailed down Winter’s spine as he watched his sister stagger into the gray light. Her arctic blue eyes were bloodshot, crackled with dark blue veins, and the scratches she’d gotten in the fight at Jade Mountain still hadn’t healed. She was streaked with mud and blood — not just her own dark blue blood, but splatters of dark red that must have come from the NightWing she’d killed.

  Icicle’s scales had always been whiter than everyone else’s: her claws sharper, her teeth gleaming, and her spikes pristine even after clubbing a walrus to death. She plunged into the frigid ocean six times a day because she believed an IceWing who glittered like diamonds was a more menacing IceWing. In Icicle’s view of the world, grubby, dull dragons deserved to be Seventh Circle.

  Winter could never have imagined her looking this wretched.

  She clutched the edge of the tunnel with her front talons, leaning against the rocky wall and glaring at him.

  “Icicle?” he said. “Are you —”

  “Why are you here?” she spat. “To ruin yet another of my plans? You don’t feel satisfied that you’ve already guaranteed Hailstorm’s death?”

  “What’s wrong with you?” Kinkajou blurted. “You look terrible.”

  “Could be worse,” Icicle snarled. “I could look like you.”

  “I want to help you find Hailstorm,” Winter said. “If he’s really still alive —”

  “I don’t need your help, of all dragons,” Icicle said with a hiss, limping forward a step. “You don’t have the claws to do what needs to be done.” She touched her head, wiping away a trickle of blood from one of her horns. “And she’s probably killed him by now anyway.”

  “What did Scarlet say?” Winter asked. He spread his wings, blocking her path. “When she found out Starflight and the others were still alive?”

  “I haven’t spoken to her.” Icicle swayed a little on her feet. “I can’t — I don’t want to see her — to admit I failed — your fault — but what if she kills him in front of me — or what if he’s already dead … and she shows me his body …”

  She took another staggering step and Winter reached out to catch her, but she recoiled, snapping her teeth at him.

  “But how have you —” he started.

  “She hasn’t slept,” Moon said wonderingly. “Not since Jade Mountain.”

  “If I don’t sleep,” Icicle muttered triumphantly, “then she can’t get to me. She can’t visit my dreams if I don’t have any. Ha ha!”

  “But it’s been days!” Kinkajou cried. “You haven’t slept in days? Don’t you feel awful?”

  “I don’t need to sleep,” Icicle said. “Whenever I get tired, I lie down beside the lava until the pain wakes me up.” She spread her wings, and Winter saw with a shudder that she had blisters and small burns bubbling in spots across her scales.

  This he could imagine, too easily: his fearless, stubborn sister angrily burning herself, slashing pain across the body that betrayed her by daring to be tired.

  And he understood what she was going through, too. He’d lived with the guilt of losing Hailstorm for the last two years.

  “Icicle, we need to know if she’s killed him,” he said.

  “I’d wager a few camels that she hasn’t,” said Qibli. “He’s more use to her as a bargaining chip than as a corpse. Not very useful, corpses, as a rule. All right, shutting up now,” he added, catching the look Moon was shooting him.

  “Do you have any idea where she is?” Winter asked Icicle. “If we can get to her and find him —”

  “If it were that easy, I’d have done it,” Icicle snapped. “I’ve considered all the options, trust me. There’s only one way to save him, and that’s killing the RainWing queen.”

  “I’m not going to let you kill Queen Glory,” Kinkajou said stoutly.

  Icicle barked a ragged laugh. “And how are you going to stop me, you preposterous pink dragon?”

  Kinkajou lunged at Icicle, flying past Winter in a red-and-orange blur before he realized what was happening. The little RainWing knocked Icicle over onto her back and wrapped her talons around the IceWing’s throat.

  “Nobody threatens my queen!” Kinkajou shouted.

  “Hey!” Winter shouted.

  “Get off me!” Icicle raged. She swung her tail at Kinkajou’s wings but missed. Her vicious claws went up, the serrated edges glittering dangerously, ready for a killing blow at Kinkajou’s
underbelly.

  “Kinkajou!” Moon cried, jumping toward them.

  But before she could reach them, before Icicle could strike, before Winter could do anything, something small came whistling through the air and thunked into Icicle’s neck.

  Icicle let out a gasp and jerked back. Kinkajou jumped off of her with a yelp and looked up at the sky.

  Winter followed her gaze to the clouds and then watched as the gray melted and shifted, like dragonets bursting out of the snow, into nine dragons in shades of red and gold and green.

  “Icicle of the IceWings,” Queen Glory announced, “you are under arrest for murder and attempted murder.”

  “No!” Icicle roared, clawing at her neck. She rolled over and shoved herself upright, but her legs wobbled and her head was starting to droop. “What have you done to me? What is happening?”

  “It’s only a tranquilizer dart,” said Deathbringer, winging down to land beside them. “We find it makes transporting prisoners much simpler. You’ll wake up just fine in a few hours.”

  “No!” Icicle shrieked. “I can’t sleep! Don’t make me sleep!” She hurled herself at Winter, dug her claws into his shoulders, and shook him with all her fading strength. “Winter, stop them — help me — tell them I can’t — she’ll find me! She’ll tell me he’s dead and then it’ll be over and he’ll be gone! Winter, keep me awake!”

  “It’s too late,” Deathbringer said, studying her with a puzzled expression. “It’s not that bad, the dart sleep.”

  Icicle slowly collapsed forward onto Winter, her talons clenching open and closed as if she was trying to claw herself back to waking. “She’ll come for me,” Icicle whispered.

  “So let her come,” Winter said. He crouched as his sister’s weight pressed him down, bringing his mouth close to her ear. “Go ahead and sleep, Icicle. You can’t stay awake forever anyway. Talk to Scarlet and tell her she can still get what she wants.”

  “But she can’t.” Icicle’s voice was barely a mumble now. “I’ll be — prison —”

  Winter glanced up at the faces around them. Nobody could hear what he and Icicle were whispering to each other. Not unless they could read minds.

  Well, this was one way to find out if the skyfire really worked.

  He leaned closer to Icicle, close enough for the skyfire pouch to touch her scales as well as his own. And then, as his sister’s eyes closed, he whispered, “Tell Scarlet if she can prove that Hailstorm is still alive … I’ll kill Glory for her myself.”

  The healers’ pavilion near the RainWing village was large, quiet, and sunlit, with curtains of green vines shielding the interior from curious onlookers. And there were plenty of curious dragons — ones Winter could see and ones he could only hear, murmuring and twittering like a council of invisible birds in the trees. The rainforest was starting to give him the suffocating, spine-crawling feeling that he was always being watched.

  Only RainWings were allowed to carry the unconscious prisoner. Glory ordered all the NightWings to stay away and sent Deathbringer to make sure none of them came looking for her. She also didn’t object when Winter pushed his way into the pavilion and stood next to his sister, glowering around defiantly.

  “I’m staying right here,” he said.

  “Understood,” Glory said with a nod. She turned to survey the others as they edged through the curtain and stood back against the wall, out of the way.

  “Your Majesty — how did you find us?” Moon asked hesitantly.

  Glory glanced at Kinkajou, her scales shifting to starbursts of royal purple against deep blue.

  “I left her a trail to follow,” Kinkajou admitted, looking guilty. “Sorry, Moon — but she’s our queen. I wanted her there in case we really did find Icicle.”

  Moon nodded thoughtfully, looking back at the sleeping IceWing. “I guess it’s lucky you did,” she said.

  Winter wanted to disagree, but he remembered the desperate rage on Icicle’s face. She had been seconds away from killing Kinkajou. And even though Kinkajou was just a RainWing, he had to admit (only to himself) that he didn’t want her dead.

  Besides, whatever she has planned for my sister now, Queen Glory would have been much less merciful if Icicle had killed her friend.

  So it was lucky for Icicle, too, that Glory had found them right then.

  A pair of sky-blue RainWings was moving quietly around Icicle, cleaning her wounds. Another one, pale pink, stood by her head with a blowgun and darts at the ready in case she woke up.

  Icicle’s chest rose and fell in long peaceful movements, and her face was as still as Winter had ever seen it. The tortured expression was gone, for now. He hoped she would get a few hours of real rest before Scarlet came hunting through her dreams.

  “It’s odd,” one of the RainWing healers murmured to the other. “Look how much this scratch has bled, Bullfrog.”

  “She wasn’t letting herself sleep,” Kinkajou told them. “She hasn’t slept in four or five days.”

  The healers both made alarmed clicking noises with their tongues and bent over Icicle again, inspecting her more closely. “Why would any dragon do that to herself?” said the one named Bullfrog. “It’s worse than refusing to eat. Another day of it and she’d probably be dead. At least she’ll be able to heal now that she has to sleep.”

  “Going even twelve hours without sleep is one of my nightmares,” said the other.

  “Remember that RainWing a few years ago who couldn’t sleep? That was the saddest case I ever saw.” Bullfrog shook his head and his tail turned a glum shade of gray.

  “A RainWing who can’t sleep?” Glory echoed. “Isn’t that kind of like a SeaWing who can’t swim?”

  “It was worse than that,” said the pink dragon. “He couldn’t change his scales either.”

  “Because he couldn’t sleep,” said Bullfrog. “We figured out he had a snout deformity that kept him from sleeping for more than an hour at a time. But there was no way to fix it. It was awful.”

  “He was awful,” said the pink dragon. “Sometimes I would wake up from my suntime nap and he’d just be standing there staring at me. And he couldn’t camouflage himself, and you could never tell what he was feeling by looking at his scales.”

  “Brrrrrrrrgh,” said the other healer, shuddering from talons to tail.

  “It’s like he wasn’t even a RainWing at all,” said Bullfrog. “He was a lot grumpier than a real RainWing, too.”

  “So what color was he, if he couldn’t change?” Qibli asked curiously.

  “Kind of an ordinary lime green all over,” Bullfrog answered. He held out one talon and shifted the scales along his arm to demonstrate. “Very boring.”

  “And unattractive,” agreed the second healer. She gathered the damp leaves stained with Icicle’s blood and bustled off.

  “That’s our cautionary tale of what happens when you don’t sleep,” said the pink dragon. “Ahem. Your Majesty.”

  “I do sleep,” Glory protested. “Maybe not as much as other RainWings, but I’ve been doing suntime every day, no matter how busy I am. So quit your scolding, Jambu.”

  “I’m just saying.” Jambu resettled his wings, looking pleased with himself.

  “What are you planning to do with my sister?” Winter asked Glory. “I can take her back to the Ice Kingdom. I promise Queen Glacier will see that she’s punished.”

  Glory circled Icicle’s bed, studying the sleeping dragon. “She’s too dangerous,” said the queen with a flick of her tail. “She killed one of my subjects —”

  “On the way to killing you,” Kinkajou interrupted to point out.

  Glory waved this away with one talon. “I can’t let her just fly out of here,” she said to Winter. “I need to be a true queen to the NightWings, and that means letting them see justice. But I also don’t want to start a war with the IceWings, and I believe a queen should have a say in what happens to her subjects. So I’ll send for Queen Glacier, and together we can decide what happens to Icicle.”
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br />   That was more fair than Winter could have hoped for, and yet it made his stomach twist in a painful, anxious way to think of his queen coming here to judge him and his sister. The rankings, he thought, and, What will Mother and Father think?

  I need to find Hailstorm before she arrives, he thought. If I can free him, Queen Glacier will understand why Icicle did what she did.

  “In the meanwhile” — Glory sighed — “we’ll have to keep her tranquilized so she doesn’t try to escape or hurt someone else.”

  “Wait, what?” Winter rose to his feet and got his wings caught in a woven-leaf hammock that was hanging from the ceiling. He wrestled it off with a growl of frustration. “I need to talk to her.”

  “And I need a decent prison,” Glory said, snapping her tail back and forth. “The RainWings don’t have anything. Where am I supposed to put misbehaving dragons?” She turned to an older RainWing who was sitting in the corner, watching with stately composure. “Has no RainWing in history ever required punishing?”

  “We don’t imprison, we banish,” said the older dragon with an elegant shrug. “What could be worse than being thrown out of the rainforest?”

  “You see what I’m dealing with,” Glory said to Winter. “I have one prisoner right now — a NightWing — and we basically had to stick him in a quicksand pit. Every few hours his guards haul him out just enough so he doesn’t die, and then he starts sinking again.”

  “Yuck,” said Kinkajou. “But he deserves it, actually.”

  “And there are two others I should deal with, but Queen Thorn has agreed to keep them in her SandWing prison instead, until I decide what to do with them.” Glory’s sloth poked its head out from behind the queen’s shoulder and started climbing slowly up her neck. “I’ll figure out something else eventually,” Glory said. “But I’m guessing Queen Glacier wouldn’t appreciate it if I stuck one of her dragons in quicksand, so I’m afraid Icicle has to stay asleep for now.”

  “Your Majesty,” said a peach-and-plum-colored dragon, poking her head through the curtain. “Deathbringer would like a word.”