Talons of Power

by Tui T. Sutherland

  “Again?” Turtle’s ears twitched. “What? Again? Anemone, what do you mean?”

  “I’m the one who killed him the first time.” She gave him a scornful look. “Did you really think he ‘accidentally’ fell into that pool of eels? We figured out that he’d been trying to kill Tsunami. And then he realized how powerful I was and he was going to tell Mother and Blister.” She shrugged. “So I took care of him.”

  Three moons. Turtle had been worrying about Anemone all this time — worrying about what she might do, about how the magic he’d given her might affect her — and yet when she did do something big and terrible, he’d missed it completely.

  “Oh!” she said, spotting a gleam of metal in the sand underfoot. She pounced on it, digging furiously, and finally reared back with a triumphant “Aha!”

  In her talons was a dagger as long as her forearm, curved like a claw and gleaming wickedly sharp along every edge.

  “Three moons,” Turtle whispered. “Anemone.”

  “Whirlpool wanted to be king pretty badly,” she said, turning the dagger to catch the sunlight. “I think he was hoping to shape me into a darker dragon by making me cast all those ‘practice’ spells. He wanted me to go evil and try for the throne. He told me he’d hidden a perfect weapon here, ready for whenever I needed it — for whenever I wanted to challenge Mother.” She smiled at it. “I think it’ll work fine on little sisters, too, don’t you? And big ones, for that matter.”

  “But you can’t,” Turtle said, feeling sick all through his scales and bones and muscles.

  “Sure I can,” she said, widening her blue eyes at him. “I won’t make Orca’s mistakes. I’ll enchant this thing right now to be a perfect killing machine. It’ll never miss. It’ll go straight for Mother’s throat first. Then Auklet, Tsunami, you …” Her eyes narrowed. “Moon. Maybe Kinkajou, too. Why not? He did say anyone who gets in my way.”

  This was it; this was the breaking point. His speeches weren’t working. He had to do something. Even if it meant Darkstalker found out about him. He had to do something.

  His talons closed around the nearest seashell, fan-shaped, pale pink and white like Anemone’s scales. “I enchant you to break every spell Darkstalker has cast on Anemone the moment you touch her,” he said, and flung the seashell with all his might. It bounced off Anemone’s side and she jumped back, blinking and startled.

  “What the —” Anemone yelped. “Are you out of your mind?”

  “Necklace,” he said, reaching out one arm. “Come to me.” The silver collar around Anemone’s neck snapped off and flew into his talons. “I enchant you to be powerless from now on,” he said to it, and threw the necklace as far out to sea as he could.

  Anemone’s claws went to her throat. “But —” she said. “How —”

  “Dagger,” Turtle commanded. “Turn to sand forever.”

  The dagger collapsed in Anemone’s talons and scattered into the wind.

  Anemone stared at him.

  “I’m an animus, too,” said Turtle. “I’m sorry, I should have told you sooner.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Anemone cried. “You? You’re nobody! I’m the SeaWing animus!”

  “You are … but that’s because of me,” Turtle said. “I’m so sorry, Anemone. I’m the one who made you an animus. Right here, the day of the Talons of Power ceremony. I didn’t want anyone to find out about me, so … I distracted them with you. And everything that’s happened to you since then is all my fault.”

  “No!” Anemone screamed. “It’s my power! You can’t just take it; you can’t just say it’s yours! You did not create me!”

  She launched herself at Turtle and slammed him onto his back in the waves. Her claws slashed the side of his throat and pain blistered through his gills.

  “You didn’t make me and you can’t stop me! I can still kill her!” she yelled. “I can kill her with my bare claws! I can kill her with anything! I can make daggers out of seashells; I can poison the drops of water around her snout! I can enchant her pearls to choke her or her stupid narwhal horn to stab her in the heart!”

  In shock, Turtle fought back, throwing her off him. She skidded onto the beach and he leaped after her, pinning her down into the sand.

  This is what Moon saw, he realized. This fight.

  A jolt of relief made his heart pulse wildly. But I haven’t lost my soul. I still don’t want to hurt Anemone.

  Her scales were slippery under his claws and sand sprayed up into his eyes, stinging and blinding him. She sank her teeth into one of the webs on his front talons and he roared with pain.

  He’d thought breaking Darkstalker’s spells would change her. He’d thought he was setting her free. Why didn’t it work? Anemone thrashed and stabbed at his underbelly, sending more fiery bolts of agony along his scales.

  “Knock my brother off me!” Anemone shouted, flinging one talon out at something behind Turtle.

  He turned and saw a huge rock lever itself out of the sand. It shot toward him like an attacking SkyWing.

  Turtle ducked and rolled off Anemone, covering his head. “Disappear!” he shouted at the rock. With an odd thudding sound, the boulder vanished out of the air.

  Anemone leaped to her feet with her wings spread. “All the crabs on this beach!” she shouted. “Attack Turtle! Do it now!”

  The sand erupted as hundreds of crabs came swarming out of their burrows, from tiny hermit crabs up to massive talon-sized red monsters with snapping claws. Blue-gray pincers popped out of the sand right below him and clamped down sharply on one of his front talons. Turtle yowled and jumped back and felt more explosions of pain as claws dug in all along his tail.

  “Waves!” he called desperately. “Wash these crabs out to sea!”

  The sea pulled back, as if mildly offended by the order, then came rushing in all at once in a huge tidal wave. Turtle felt himself slammed to the sand and through the water he saw Anemone clawing to stay on the beach. All the crabs were caught up and tumbled about and carried away, sucked out into a hissing, foaming ocean.

  He didn’t have a moment to catch his breath before seashells began pelting him, each one aiming to stab between his scales. Death by a thousand cuts, he thought, trying to wipe away the blood running into his eyes.

  Turtle tried to duck away, scrabbling through the sand for something he could work with. Here — and here — two sand dollars washed up by the wave. “Protect me from the shells,” he said to them, and they shot into the air, warding off the attacking seashells like tiny flying shields.

  “Anemone, I don’t want to fight you!” he yelled.

  “Then you shouldn’t say stupid things that make me want to kill you!” she yelled back. “Swallow him up!” The sand suddenly collapsed under him, dropping him into a sinkhole, and then immediately began pouring back over his head. Turtle flailed around in a panic. He did not want to die by drowning in sand. He did not want to be buried and forgotten here on this beach. Leaving Auklet and Mother unprotected from Anemone. And the rest of my friends enchanted by Darkstalker. And Kinkajou under that awful spell forever.

  He reached out with his magic and wrenched an entire palm tree out of the ground. It came skidding across the sand toward him, nearly plowing through Anemone before she jumped out of the way, and stopped with its fronds hanging over the hole. Turtle sank his claws into the sharp-edged leaves and dragged himself out, talon over talon.

  The sand behind him made an ominous GLOORRRP sound and tried to suck him back down. “Let me go!” Turtle shouted at it. A flurry of sand exploded upward, then settled into a normal, noncarnivorous beach dune.

  Turtle clutched the trunk of the palm tree, panting heavily. This fight was uneven; she was willing to use lethal force, and he was not. He refused to kill his little sister.

  A faint whistling in the air warned him to look up.

  Something enormous was crashing down toward him — a piece of stone wall from the ruins of the Island Palace.

  “Crush him!” Anemo
ne screamed. “Don’t stop until you hit him!”

  “Stop!” Turtle shouted.

  The projectile wobbled for a moment, but it didn’t stop. It kept coming, faster and faster.

  “Shield me,” Turtle cried to the palm tree. He leaped off and covered his head.

  There was a muffled smashing, cracking sound, and when Turtle looked up, he saw pieces of tree raining down around him. The wall rebounded off the broken palm and leaped for him again.

  It won’t stop until it hits me. That’s the spell. Turtle grabbed the nearest thing he could reach — a shell that once housed a hermit crab — and whispered, “Make my scales as hard as diamonds. Make my bones unbreakable. Make me impossible to hurt, no matter how hard that thing lands on me.” He wrapped his claws around the shell and crouched with his eyes screwed shut.

  I’m going to die, I’m going to die, I’m going to die.

  The block of stone slammed into him with such force that it left an imprint in the sand. It felt like the entire Deep Palace landing on him. For a moment, he couldn’t breathe.

  But he felt no pain — and he was still alive.

  “Get … off … me,” he croaked at the stone block when he could form words again.

  Its original mission complete, the block obligingly lifted away and clunked down in the sand beside him.

  Seaweed, Turtle thought dizzily, wondering if he was about to lose consciousness, go wrap Anemone’s mouth shut so she cannot cast any more animus spells — neither by voice or thought, as long as you are touching her. But make sure she can still breathe.

  From the muffled shrieks he could hear, he guessed that his spell succeeded, but he couldn’t move yet. He had to lie there, waiting for everything in his body to realize that it still worked.

  A moment later, claws raked viciously across his nose and he jerked up to find Anemone standing over him. She had so much seaweed wrapped around her snout that she couldn’t see over it; she kept turning her head from side to side to glare at him with one eye and then the other. Only her nostrils were still visible, and they were flaring with fury. She clawed at him again and he stumbled back … before realizing that he’d barely felt them.

  He blinked down at his scales, which were a mess of blood from the seashell cuts.

  His sister leaped forward again and tried to slice her claws across his throat — but they ricocheted off as though … as though my scales are as hard as diamonds.

  Turtle’s talons were empty. Where was the shell he’d enchanted? Why was the spell still working on him if he wasn’t holding it?

  Because I wasn’t that specific, he realized. With most of his spells, he worded the enchantment to work as long as he was holding or touching or wearing the animus-touched object. But with this one, I just told it to make me impossible to hurt. It was like the healing spell on Kinkajou, or the feather that fixed Flame’s scar. The effects were permanent, no matter what happened to the object afterward.

  He’d never really thought about the difference before. His mind spun to the spells Darkstalker had cast on his NightWings. They were all object-dependent. If Darkstalker took away their objects, his subjects would lose those powers.

  He must know he could make them permanent, but he’s choosing not to.

  With a sickening lurch in his stomach, he tried to remember how Anemone had worded the spell on Kinkajou.

  Did she say “as long as she has this rock”? Or did she just say “make her love Turtle”?

  Was the enchantment permanent? Even if Kinkajou took off the skyfire?

  He couldn’t remember.

  I’m so sorry, Kinkajou, he thought with a wrench of agony.

  Turtle realized that Anemone was glowering at him. Her sides were heaving, slick with sweat and sand and seawater.

  “Anemone,” he said carefully. “Please listen to me.”

  She gestured to her snout like, Have you given me any choice?

  “I’m not going to kill you,” he said, “and I would really like you to not kill me. Can we talk without attacking each other?” He sidled a step toward her. “I’d like to think we can work this out with words instead of violence or magic.”

  She rolled her eyes at him. Which wasn’t a very reassuring yes.

  “All right,” he said, “let’s try this. Seaweed, I want you to wrap around Anemone’s arm instead — but still, as long as you’re touching her, she cannot use her magic in any way. And stay put until I remove you,” he added hurriedly.

  The long strands of dark wet seaweed began smoothly unrolling from his sister’s snout and transferring to one of her forearms instead. Anemone scowled down at the makeshift handcuff as though she was thinking about cutting off her arm to get her magic back.

  “You are so annoying,” she snapped at Turtle as soon as she could speak again.

  “And you’re very powerful,” he said. “But I can’t let you go kill Mother. Or Auklet, or Tsunami, or anyone else. I don’t believe you’re that kind of dragon.”

  Anemone threw her wings up in the air. “Of course I am! I have to be! It’s my stupid destiny to kill the queen. That’s what princesses do. And I’m even worse because I’m an animus so I’m going to turn evil anyway, no matter what I do! I should just do it and be evil and be done with it already.”

  “You don’t have to be evil!” Turtle cried, appalled. “Not every animus is evil. I’m not evil!”

  “But you will be,” Anemone said accusingly. “We both will be. That’s what happens to animus dragons. Unless you’re Darkstalker and you’re sooooooooooooo smart.”

  “Fathom wasn’t evil,” Turtle pointed out.

  “We don’t know that,” Anemone said. “First of all, what he did to Darkstalker wasn’t exactly the kindest thing in the world. And then he disappears from history — who knows what else he did with his power?”

  “There were lots of animus IceWings who didn’t go evil either,” Turtle said stubbornly. “And the SandWing from thousands of years ago who disappeared — Jerboa — as far as we know anyhow. And Stonemover.”

  “So my choices are evil, missing, or fossilized?” Anemone said. “That’s appealing.”

  “I think a spell to protect your soul could work,” Turtle said. “I just don’t trust Darkstalker to cast it for you.”

  “It won’t work. It’s already too late for me.” Anemone shook her head. “Ever since Whirlpool died, I see him all the time — in my dreams, in the faces of strange dragons, everywhere. I keep seeing those eels going after him. I see all the dragons I’ve hurt. Now Moon’s there, too, and I hate what I did to her but I also feel proud of it. Isn’t that twisted? Whatever soul I had, it’s long gone, so protecting it wouldn’t be much use.”

  “Maybe losing your soul isn’t the right way to describe it,” Turtle said. “Maybe it’s more like … the more you use your power for bad things, the more you feel like you’re entitled to use your power for anything. It makes it harder to go back — only forward into more bad things.” He hesitated. “But … I think you can go back. I think anyone can choose to do good, or be good, no matter what happened before. I think you just have to try really hard. And that means stopping yourself before you do even worse things.”

  She growled softly. “I suppose you mean like killing a bunch of family members.”

  “Well, yeah,” he said. “That’s one example.”

  She looked down at her talons. “So what do I do instead? What if I can’t stop myself and you’re not here next time to wrap me in enchanted seaweed?”

  He hesitated. “Do you want me to take it away again? Your power? I don’t know if it’ll work … but I could try. If you don’t want to be an animus anymore.”

  “But then what would I be?” She spread her wings and talons, leaving a trail of droplets from the dripping seaweed. “Animus dragons are rare and special. I like knowing that I’m powerful. I want to be that powerful. Who would give away their own magic like that? I’m just … scared of it, too.”

  “I know,”
he said. “I feel the same way.”

  “Really?” she said. “Because you don’t act like you want to be powerful.”

  Turtle opened his mouth to answer, then closed it again. She was right. He didn’t act that way. But he did want to be an animus. It was the one thing that made him special, even if only in secret. He’d never give it up either.

  “I’ve cast a spell to hide myself from Darkstalker,” he said. “I think we should do the same for you, in case he does try to enchant you to do something evil.”

  “Ohhhh,” she said. “That explains a lot. I mean, I was like, sure, Turtle is boring, but Darkstalker really acts like he doesn’t exist at all! So weird! Now I get it.”

  “Aren’t I less boring now that you know I’m an animus?” Turtle protested. He poked at his armband to pop out one of the last skyfire rocks. “You’ll need this, too, so he can’t read your mind.” She took the rock and held it up so the deep sparkles in it could catch the light.

  There was a strange twitch in the air, like someone pinching the world around them. Turtle glanced up at the sky nervously. “Maybe we should also enchant something to make Darkstalker forget about our explosion of animus spells. He must be wondering what’s going on.”

  “He — is that how he always catches me doing magic?” Anemone trailed off with a shiver.

  “He can sense animus spells being cast,” Turtle said, nodding.

  “Then let’s do that first,” Anemone said, alarmed. She grabbed a palm frond. “Hey, leaves, erase all the — yikes!” she shrieked as the entire beach shuddered violently underneath them. “Erase all our spells from Darkstalker’s memory!” she shouted as fast as she could.

  The air was suddenly pressing in on them, as though they were being squeezed into an invisible chest. Turtle’s ears popped painfully and he staggered toward Anemone.

  “Did it work?” she yelled, and Turtle realized there was a dark, high-pitched whistling sound drowning out all other noises.