Dangerous Gift

by Tui T. Sutherland

  “Good morning,” Snowfall said, stretching. “Crystal, I have made a decision. If you would like to return to the Ice Kingdom anytime, for any reason, I give you my word I will not have you killed. Wait — unless you come with an army to try and steal my throne. Then I will probably have to kill you. So I guess I mean, if you would like to return to the Ice Kingdom anytime for any not-deposing-Snowfall reason, you are welcome, and you’ll be safe.”

  “Oh,” Crystal said. “I — thank you. If it helps, I have no intention of ever bringing an army to steal the throne. I really don’t want it.”

  “Weirdo,” Snowfall said, but nicely. “Also, you have my permission to marry Gharial.”

  “I wasn’t aware I needed that,” Crystal said wryly, “but thank you for that as well.”

  Snowfall waved one talon. “Permission, blessing, whatever you want to call it. Your queen will not be mad. You will not be banished.”

  Crystal tipped her snout down for a moment, then looked back up with suspiciously shiny eyes. “I appreciate that,” she said.

  “It is very silly,” Snowfall said, “that you are more emotional about me approving your MudWing than you were about me promising not to kill you.”

  “I know,” Crystal said with a little laugh, wiping her eyes. “I just came to say good-bye. I heard you’re flying home today.”

  “Yes,” Snowfall said. “We had an excellent council of queens yesterday and I was an extremely excellent queen part of it, wasn’t I, Lynx?”

  “Absolutely marvelous,” Lynx said.

  “We need a better name than ‘secret stealth team,’ though,” Snowfall said. “Anyway, the queens agreed that we’ll all stop eating scavengers, and we chose the group that’s going to go to Pantala to search for the abyss and the Pantalan humans. Which means they’ll have to carry another map back over to that continent, but it can’t be helped. Personally, I think they should eat it when they get there.”

  “I can’t believe it about scavengers,” Crystal said, looking a little green. “When I think … I just can’t think about it.”

  “I have a feeling a lot of dragons are going to be pretty horrified,” Lynx said.

  “And some others are going to violently deny that it’s true, so that they don’t have to feel bad about themselves,” Snowfall pointed out. “But that is a problem for another day. Today my problem is that going home means I’ll have to rearrange all the names on the stupid wall again.”

  “Oh, wow, the wall,” Crystal said with a laugh. “I totally forgot about that.”

  “How can you forget about the wall?” Snowfall said, shocked. “You’re still near the top of the First Circle! I kept you there!”

  Crystal shrugged. “I guess when you’re away from it for long enough, you realize how pointless it is.”

  Lynx made a face at Snowfall, like “this is what I was saying! Remember that time you totally yelled at me? I was totally right and look, she thinks so, too!”

  “Well, fine,” Snowfall said. “Say good-bye to your MudWing for us. I must go be inanely polite to the other queens for half the day before we can leave.”

  “You sound a lot more like yourself today,” Lynx observed.

  Was that true? Maybe a night with no visions had brought her back to herself completely. Maybe the visions were over? Snowfall tugged hopefully on the ring.

  Nope. Still stuck. She’d have to tell the guards to stay close enough to catch her in case she suddenly fell out of the sky on the flight home.

  The queens had decided that face a great evil with talons united meant they should send one dragon from each tribe on the mission. Personally, Snowfall thought a team of ten dragons wasn’t the most stealthy idea, but she wasn’t about to wade into the question of which tribes should be left out.

  Some of the choices were easy — they only had one HiveWing, for instance, and Sky had to be the SkyWing, and Tsunami didn’t bother to ask anyone’s permission to be the SeaWing, although Queen Coral seemed fine with it once she arrived.

  Luna and Sundew convinced Hazel to let them be the SilkWing and LeafWing representatives. Queen Thorn looked worried when Qibli said he wanted to go, but she agreed that he was the best choice. Snowfall could see how much she didn’t want to lose him.

  Queen Moorhen offered a brawny MudWing nearly twice the size of most of the other dragons, a volunteer named Bullfrog. Queen Glory had to choose two dragons; she settled on a serious-looking RainWing with the very silly name of Pineapple, and Moon for the NightWing.

  Snowfall had the hardest choice, in her opinion, because she had two IceWings who really wanted to go. On the one talon, she wanted Lynx to come back to the Ice Kingdom with her, to join her new council and keep Snowfall sane. On the other talon, she trusted Lynx more than any other IceWing, and Snowfall knew for certain that Lynx was smart and clever enough to be very valuable on the mission.

  On the third talon, Winter was occasionally quite smart, too, and she wouldn’t miss him nearly as much. But on the fourth talon, would sending him really count, if he was technically banished and not part of the tribe? Would Snowfall be risking the whole mission, just because she wanted to keep her friend close to her?

  She didn’t say any of that to them, but she did grouchily admit to herself that friend was the right word for Lynx after all.

  In the end, she chose Lynx. Winter would be useful in Sanctuary, overseeing the scavenger outreach project and keeping Daffodil safe. Snowfall did not like to think about how Wren would react if she came back from Pantala and someone had accidentally stepped on Daffodil.

  So the stealth team was gathered, and there was a ceremony for them that involved a lot of awkward talon-holding and speeches from the queens. Boring boring, Snowfall thought, and tried not to look at Lynx too often in case something stupid and wet happened to her eyeballs.

  She’ll be back. She has to come back.

  She watched Sky instead, who was SO EXCITED about all his new dragon friends and his valiant purpose and heroic destiny and absolutely EVERYTHING. Then she realized how much she was going to worry about his sweet, grinning face going into danger, and she had to fix her gaze on Bullfrog instead. There was no risk that she’d get sappy and sentimental about him.

  When the polite farewells finally began, Snowfall took a deep breath. There was something she had to do, even though it made her anxiety spike right up to the moons.

  She crossed the clearing to Sundew, who was sitting with her tail twined around Willow’s, holding one of her talons. Willow looked as though she’d been crying all morning.

  Sundew tilted her head to meet Snowfall’s eyes. “Yes?”

  “We don’t have weapons like the RainWing darts to offer you,” Snowfall said, nodding to the pile that Pineapple was sorting into pouches. “But I wanted to give you something else, since I’m guessing you’re going to be the leader of this team, or you should be, no matter what Tsunami thinks. And you’re right that our magic should have been able to help you, and if any piece of magic can help defeat that thing over there, I think you should have it.”

  She unclipped the gift of stealth from her wrists and Sundew sat up, shining like the northern lights. “Magic?” the LeafWing echoed.

  “This is how I made my army invisible,” Snowfall said, passing the wristbands to her. It felt a bit like snapping off her horns and passing them over, after so many days of having the reassuring magic weight of them on her arms. “We call them the gift of stealth, and since stealth is literally in the name, and that’s your whole mission, I mean … it just makes sense.”

  Sundew put them on reverently, the pale silver metal strange against her dark green and gold scales. “How do they work?”

  Snowfall explained everything from the notes in the treasury, and Sundew practiced turning herself, then Willow, then both of them invisible. When they reappeared, Willow wrapped her wings around Snowfall.

  “Thank you,” she whispered in Snowfall’s ear. “I feel a little less worried now.”

/>   What am I doing? Snowfall thought. Giving away one of the only animus treasures my tribe has? Maybe one of the last ones that will ever be made in this world?

  Giving up IceWing magic … to a strange dragon from a faraway land.

  Snowfall straightened her shoulders as Willow went back to Sundew’s side.

  I’m choosing to trust them. This is the right thing to do. They need it to defeat the breath of evil, and we all need them to succeed.

  “I’ll bring them back,” Sundew promised. “When we’ve won and everyone is safe, I’ll return them to you. Thank you, Queen Snowfall.”

  “Good luck,” Snowfall said. She took a step back, glancing at the gift of stealth one last time. And then she turned and went up to the lake to find Winter.

  “Hello,” she said, startling him into dropping the fish he’d just caught. “I hereby decree that you are not banished anymore. Unless you would like to be. Also, you can go back to that school, if you want to. I still don’t care.” She hesitated. “But … I guess there’s a VERY TINY part of me that … wantsyoutobehappy,” she finished in a rush.

  Winter dipped his front talons in the cold lake and smiled down at the water, looking a little surprised and embarrassed and pleased at the same time. “Thank you, Your Majesty,” he said.

  “Gaah,” she said. “It’s too weird. Just call me Queen Snowfall.”

  He laughed, and then his face turned serious again. “Snowfall, you’re my queen and the IceWings will always be my tribe, whether I’m banished or not. But Jade Mountain and Sanctuary … they’ve made me feel like I’m part of a bigger tribe. Like I’m worth something more than a place on a wall.”

  “Hmmm. I suppose you are,” Snowfall said. “It’s possible everyone is, but you didn’t hear that from me. Good luck with that little Daffodil human. Stay in touch, Winter.”

  Snowfall made her way through all the polite good-byes to the other queens and eventually found her guards waiting for her, ready to fly. Standing with them was Lynx, who also looked ready to fly.

  “Aren’t you leaving on a mission tomorrow?” Snowfall demanded, frowning at her.

  “Day after tomorrow, actually,” Lynx said. “I’m going to fly home with you first and then meet the others on Jerboa’s beach.”

  Snowfall did not let herself make the silly Sky face she felt her inner dragon making. “Oh,” she said. “Very well, I suppose that’s fine with me. Because you need something from the palace? Dragons to say good-bye to?”

  Lynx nudged her side and smiled. “Just want to hang out with you for a couple more days.”

  Snowfall scrunched her snout at her so that she wouldn’t either start beaming or burst into tears. “Well. Fine. All right. I SUPPOSE THAT’S FINE WITH ME, TOO.”

  It was late in the day when Snowfall and Lynx and the other ten IceWings reached the Great Ice Cliff. Snowfall saw it first, ahead of them in the distance, huge and glowing red-gold in the sunset.

  For thousands of years, it’s kept all other tribes out of the Ice Kingdom. We always thought it kept us safe. I thought it was so important, I wanted to extend it all around us, so my tribe could huddle safely in our igloos and ice palaces and no one would ever be able to get through our walls of ice.

  But if we’d all stayed hidden in the Ice Kingdom, Darkstalker’s plague would have killed us. We needed dragons from other tribes, working together, to recognize his magic and find a way to save us. We needed hybrids like Typhoon, who could cross the wall and were spared the plague, to bring us those earrings.

  We only survived because of our connections to the other kingdoms.

  Her wingbeats slowed. And if the breath of evil comes here … if it lands in the Ice Kingdom first … we may need those connections again.

  Besides, I want to know what happens on Pantala. I want dragons to be able to come tell me!

  I want Sundew and Sky to be able to fly right into my kingdom and find me, if they need to.

  She veered suddenly into a wind current that dropped toward the cliff. Startled, the others wheeled around to follow her.

  Snowfall landed on top of the cliff; she could see the sheer face of it dropping away on either side of her talons. Lynx hovered beside her, beating the air with her wings.

  “What’s happening?” Lynx asked.

  Snowfall adjusted her small, elegant crown. “Did I ever tell you what this does?” she asked, pointing to it. “It’s the tiara of strength. All right, all right, stop laughing. It makes me very, very, very strong, so laughing at me is an even less good idea than it usually is! Anyway, my point is that I’ve hardly gotten to play with it at all, since this turned out not to be the punching-dragons-in-the-snout expedition I thought it was going to be.”

  “I, for one, am quite glad we didn’t have to punch any dragons in the snout,” Lynx observed.

  “Want to see how strong I am?” Snowfall asked. She slammed her fist into the ice below her.

  Cracks shot out from the spot where her talons met the ice, and the surface below her shook. She punched it again, as hard as she could, and then had to lift into the air as the cliff began to shake harder, and chunks of ice broke off and started avalanching down toward the snow below.

  Snowfall hit the cliff again and again, triggering more cascades of ice and snow, until she had punched a pretty impressive hole in it, if she did say so herself.

  Ooof. Now her fists hurt, and her muscles ached, and she was VERY tired.

  But the look on the other IceWings’ faces was worth it.

  “That’s amazing,” Lynx said, flying down to swoop through the gap in the cliff, as if to make sure it was real. “Does that break the spell? Can other tribes fly through here safely now?”

  “I’m not sure,” Snowfall said. “We’ll come back soon with many more dragons and tear down the rest of it.” She shook out her claws with a wince. “Maybe I will let someone else wear the magic strength tiara, and I will do the ordering-everybody-around part instead.”

  “Wow.” Lynx gathered a talonful of snow and packed it around Snowfall’s claws. “What happened to ‘everyone is evil and can’t be trusted’?”

  Snowfall looked at her severely. “I have been six different dragons and a human this week, and only one of them was evil. I am basically an expert on other dragons now. And with my knowledge of everything, I can now say for a fact that several dragons are not evil after all.”

  “Several dragons!” Lynx said in mock surprise. “Are you sure?”

  Snowfall flicked her with her tail. “I might even say most dragons. Still dubious about you, though. Pretty sure that face you make when you think you’ve won puts you right into the evil category.”

  “Fair,” said Lynx, grinning. “As long as I still win.” She glanced up at the darkening sky, where stars were starting to glitter. “It’s getting a bit late to fly the rest of the way to the Ice Palace. Maybe we could make camp in the snow. What do you think? One more night away from the palace?”

  “Yes. Let’s do that,” Snowfall said. She turned to the guards. “If that’s all right with all of you.”

  They did a lot of startled blinking before one of them said, “Of course, Your Majesty, whatever you wish is fine with us.”

  It was pretty thrilling to be back in the Ice Kingdom, to be making their beds in piles of snow again. Snowfall rolled around in hers for a while, cleaning all the dust off her scales, until she felt shiny and cold again.

  Then she curled up and stared at the opal ring. It had been silent all day. Were the visions really gone? If so, why was it still stuck on her finger? Was it just lying in wait to spring a whole bunch of terrible dragons on her at once?

  “Hey, magic ring,” she whispered. “I put up with all your visions. I told those Pantalan dragons what you showed me. I made peace with scavengers! Is that what you wanted?”

  Twinkle, twinkle, smug twinkle.

  “I’m all right with no more visions,” Snowfall whispered. “No more visions would be totally fine. But if you do
have to give me another one tonight, could it please be the one I asked for? Can you tell me what happened to animus magic, and why it’s not working? If there’s a way to fix it, we could use it to help the Pantalan dragons. Or if not … then it would be good to know that, too, so we can stop worrying about it, at least. What do you think?”

  Twinkle twinkle twinkle, mysterious opal thoughts.

  “All right,” Snowfall said, feeling her eyelids droop. “Whatever you can do.” She yawned “Thanks,” and let herself slip into sleep.

  It is raining. As always. She hates the Mud Kingdom; hates everything about it, from the gloppy swamp between her talons to the incessant gurgling sound of water coming from somewhere. It’s never warm enough and she never feels dry, even when she retreats to her cave. She is constantly worried that Queen Crane might find her and she’ll have to flee to yet another kingdom.

  But she couldn’t stay in the Stronghold anymore. She’s not sure she’ll ever be able to set her talons in the desert again — at least, not until Queen Scorpion is dead. Which won’t be for a long time, thanks to those healing and longevity spells Jerboa was forced to make for her.

  I said no when it mattered, though, she reminds herself. I saved the SkyWings.

  And probably even more dragons than that. Queen Scorpion wouldn’t have stopped. She would always want more: more land, more power, more of Jerboa’s magic.

  It’s almost as if she was the one losing her soul, not me.

  Jerboa flexes her talons, trying to test herself. Do I feel like murdering anyone today? Not particularly. How about some senseless violence, is that on the agenda? Don’t think so. How do we feel about tiny dragonets? Still think they’re cute? No impulse to kill any of those, right?

  She sighs and rests her head on her claws. She’s always wanted a dragonet of her own, but Queen Scorpion kept her away from other dragons. And now that she’s a fugitive, that dream is even further away than ever.

  Unless I use my magic.

  She sits up, startled to full alert by the idea.