“Why then?” Trey piped up. When Senia blinked at him, my friend swallowed and ducked behind me, as if I’d be able to protect him from the dragon.
“Why?” Senia repeated. “When the dragons first settled in the mountains, Meradell was barely a village. The dragons felt safe here; they outnumbered the humans two-to-one. But as time passed, the humans and Meradell grew, while the dragons did not.” Her golden eyes grew troubled and I knew why. Dragon offspring were rare to begin with, but things had gotten worse since the wars. Senia and Aster were the only ones to hatch since the dragons had settled here. Some dragons blamed it on the magic-less land, but none were brave enough to venture back to the west, not after the horrors they’d escaped. “For seven hundred years, the dragons watched the small village grow into a town and then a city and they knew they had to reveal themselves before the humans found them first.”
“Did they think the humans would have attacked them?” I asked, my voice hushed. The thought of harming one of these magnificent beasts was inconceivable.
“That is what they feared,” Senia confirmed. “They hoped by showing the humans that they meant no harm, they could coexist in peace.”
As bizarre as that sounded, that’s exactly what had happened. After recovering from their initial shock of seeing dragons in their city, the council members had met with the dragon leaders for a week, hammering out an agreement that was beneficial for both sides. Much to my disappointment, I discovered Senia had been too young to attend those meetings, but she said it was amicable and both sides fully supported the accords that were drawn up.
“But why?” Trey asked again.
I scowled at him, wondering if he knew any other words besides “why.” I was also cross because I’d been about to ask that too. Before Trey could continue, I quickly added, “How come the humans were fine with the dragons being here? Shouldn’t they have been scared?”
Senia laughed softly. “Oh, they were. A few of the fishermen went screaming for the beach, diving into their boats, ready to row themselves across the ocean if they had to. It took hours to coax them back here. The soldiers, while armed, were too shocked to attack. Luckily, your council leaders were wise enough to realize we posed no threat. They calmed the masses and agreed to meet with the dragons. Quickly they discovered we wanted the same thing the humans wanted: to live our lives in peace.” She flicked her tail against the sand. “Besides, we’d been living in the mountains for nine hundred years. We could have attacked and destroyed your village at any time, but we didn’t.”
“Thanks for that,” I said sarcastically. “And ‘we,’ Senia? We all know you weren’t around back then, you little baby—”
I suppose I did deserve that whack to the shoulder.
So that was Meradell. A beautiful city tucked inside a valley, occupied by both humans and dragons simply because two hundred years ago the dragons had asked for peace, and the humans had agreed to it. They were our secret and our pride, and you wouldn’t find a single Meradellan willing to sell out the dragons.
After a thousand years of war, the dragons had suffered enough.
Chapter Two
“You’re a thousand miles away,” Trey said, his voice jolting me back to the present. “Have you fallen asleep on me?”
“No, not yet.” I gave in to my desires and flopped down on the sand, slinging my arm over my eyes to block out the sun. “But if you keep talking, I probably will.”
He kicked me gently as he continued sharpening his blade. “You’re going to write your paper over again, right? I don’t need you falling behind; who am I going to copy off of next year if you’re not there?”
“Is that all I’m good for?” I asked. “Answers for a test?”
“Of course.”
I grabbed the conch shell I’d been eyeing earlier and chucked it at his head. Swearing, he ducked out of the way just in time. “Brat,” I said.
“Jerk,” he replied.
I crossed my eyes at him and Trey responded by sticking out his tongue. After a few seconds of this, we both cracked up. Sitting up, I scooted closer to him and leaned my head against his shoulder. Putting aside his knife and whetstone, Trey asked gently, “Maya still in the mountains with Aster?”
I should have known I couldn’t hide my grumpiness from my best friend forever. Others would accept my excuse of being tired after staying up all night, but not Trey. Not when he knew how surly I got when Maya disappeared for days on end to be with her dragon. It was stupid of me to be jealous, especially since Maya had an incredibly good reason for being away.
Maya was living in the mountains, waiting for Aster’s eggs to hatch. All of Meradell was buzzing with excitement. Every morning on my way to school, at least ten people asked me if the eggs had hatched yet.
Trey was still waiting for an answer so I sighed dramatically and said, “Yes. She’s still there. I swear those eggs are never going to hatch.”
“This stuff takes time.” Trey scrunched up his face. “I think?”
“Who knows? By the time they do hatch, Maya is going to forget what I look like.”
Slipping his arm around my shoulders, he gave me a squeeze. “You know that’s not true. Your sister is preoccupied now, but once those dragons hatch…”
“Once they hatch, we will never see her again.” I shook my head. “Besides, why spend time with me when she has Aster and Nic?” My mood soured further as I thought about Nicolas, Maya’s handsome blond-haired, blue-eyed boyfriend. Everyone—especially my parents—adored him, but there was something about him that just set me on edge. Look, I wasn’t a fool. I knew I was jealous. He, like Aster, took up so much of Maya’s time that I never saw my sister anymore. It didn’t hurt that Nicolas had bonded with Aristo, Aster’s mate. The four of them were so perfectly paired it almost made me sick. But did I want Maya to break up with Nicolas so she could be with me? No, I wasn’t that horrible. Maya and Nicolas were in love, and I wasn’t going to come between them, no matter how much I missed my sister. She had her own life to live, just like I had mine. But it seemed like while Maya was busy exploring the mountains and living with the dragons, I was stuck with my feet on the ground, still waiting for my life to even begin.
I was growing tired of waiting.
***
“So I have an idea,” I said carefully, about ten minutes later. We’d both fallen silent, Trey busy carving while I watched the waves pound against the surf.
Trey’s knife paused over his piece of driftwood. He was either making a horse or a tree, I couldn’t tell yet. “You’ve got that look on your face.”
“What look?”
Trey rolled his eyes. “You know what look. The one that means nothing but trouble for me.”
“Oh stop. The only reason we got in trouble last time was because we got caught. And that’s because you fell and twisted your ankle.” I poked him. “All. Your. Fault.”
“It was raining! We never should have tried to scale the roof of your house when it was raining! I wanted to wait until the next night, but you said no—”
“Because then we would have missed the meteor shower,” I interrupted.
“Which we couldn’t even see because it was raining,” Trey finished. “So there was no reason to go up there in the first place. You kept saying the storm would break, the clouds would clear away, we’d see the stars… I don’t know why I believed you!”
“Because I’m impossible to say no to?” I asked, giving him a big grin.
Shaking his head, Trey tossed the driftwood aside. “All right, let’s hear your genius idea. But just know that I reserve the right to say no this time.”
“You’re not going to say no.”
“I might.”
“You won’t.” Taking a deep breath, I blurted out, “Let’s go to the mountains and find Maya and the others.”
Trey was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “Well, it’s not your worst idea ever.”
“It’s a great idea!” I shoved him when he started laughing. “Stop
laughing! Come on! Why can’t we go? There’s no rule that says we’re not allowed in the mountains, is there?” Actually, I had no idea if there was one or not. Other dragons besides Senia and Aster sometimes paid us a visit in Meradell, but for the most part they kept to the mountains while we kept to the city, Maya and Nicolas being the exception.
Trey held up his hands. “Neri, hold on. I didn’t say no, did I?”
I broke out into a huge grin. “So we’re going?”
“We’re going,” he confirmed. When I jumped to my feet and gestured impatiently for him to follow, Trey’s eyes widened. “Wait, now?”
“Why not? Do you have any other plans?” I pointed to his discarded piece of driftwood. “Do you want to finish carving that first?”
“Do you want to finish your essay first?” Trey countered.
Instead of responding, I went to the water’s edge and threw the crumpled pieces of my essay into the ocean. “Who cares about school? We’re about to witness history, Trey. The first dragons born here in ages.”
Getting up, Trey brushed the sand from the seat of his pants before swinging an arm around my shoulders. “I bet if you wrote about that, you’d get a perfect score.”
“I know, right?”
We chatted excitedly as we headed back to the city, the Fale Mountains rising up to greet us. At the edge of the valley, the mountains were small boulders that were easy to climb, but they quickly grew until their peaks practically kissed the sky. Today they were shrouded in a dense fog and I stared at it, wondering where my sister was right now. Would she be happy when she saw us? Or would she try to send us straight back home like little children who’d been naughty?
No matter what she said or tried to do, I wasn’t leaving. I had as much right to be up there as she did. If Aster was her dragon, that made me like an aunt to the dragons about to hatch, didn’t it? This was my family we were talking about! Maya wouldn’t dare send away her own flesh and blood.
Maybe if I kept telling myself that, I might actually believe it.
No, I’d already made up my mind, and Trey hadn’t even put up a fight about this, which meant it wasn’t a bad idea. I usually didn’t have a hard time convincing him to go along, but I had to admit having him with me made me feel braver. If we were together, how hard could it be? We just had to scale the mountain, find the dragons, and convince everyone to let us stay there until the eggs hatched.
When I put it that way, it sounded positively simple.
In Meradell the houses were built incredibly close to one another; I was one of the lucky ones who had a front and back yard. We headed to my house first, Trey following me up the steep staircase to the second floor where my bedroom was. As I passed Maya’s bedroom, the door closed since she’d been gone, I paused for a moment.
“We’re doing the right thing,” Trey murmured, nudging me forward. I gave him a nod before continuing to my room, once again feeling a sense of relief that I had him for a best friend.
Trey was an only child, but not for lack of trying on his parents’ account. After his mom had lost two babies, they’d decided to give up, much to Trey’s disappointment. He’d always wanted a little brother or sister; I couldn’t even tell you the amount of times he’d called me lucky for having Maya. When we were younger, she used to play with us. We’d invent crazy scenarios where Maya and I were warrior princesses who had to rescue the hapless Prince Trey. Even though Trey almost always ended up being the one who had to be rescued, he never complained. As long as we included him, he was happy. That’s why when Maya left us—first for Aster, then later for Nicolas—it’d hurt him as much as it’d hurt me. Good thing the two of us knew how to get along without Maya. I didn’t want to imagine what we’d do without each other. Drift through school and our chores listlessly until we grew up? And then what?
I entered my bedroom and headed to the closet to hunt for my well-used pack. Once I located it, I stuffed some clothes inside.
Trey sat on my bed and picked up one of the shells I had on display on the small dresser I’d wedged under my window. Shells from the beach decorated every free surface of my room. I didn’t even remember when I’d started collecting them. It wasn’t like they were rare; a twenty-minute walk from my house got you to the beach, where you had an endless supply of shells waiting for you. But despite that, I’d begun picking them up and dusting off the sand before bringing them home. Some of the shells were from my family or Trey, some were from classmates who’d heard I collected them. Even Nicolas had given me a few, but I’d shoved them in my drawer so I didn’t have to look at them and admit he’d found some really nice ones.
“How long do you think we’re going to stay up there?” Trey asked, watching me as I packed.
“I don’t know. A week?” I peeked under my bed, trying to locate my boots. Only one was under there, along with dust, a sweater I didn’t even realize I’d been missing, and more shells.
He raised his eyebrows. “You’re being optimistic. I say we’re up there for three days before our parents finally manage to scale the mountain, ready to drag us home.”
“You’re on. Loser buys dinner at Len’s for a week.” I held out my hand and we shook on it. Len’s was the best place in all of Meradell. Their crab cakes were to die for.
My missing boot was in one of my dresser drawers; I had no idea how it got there. I slipped out of my sandals and pulled on my boots before reaching for my coat and adding it to my pack. It was the middle of summer, which meant it was blazing and humid on the beach, cooler in the valley, and probably freezing up in the mountains. The dragons lived in their caves, but I had no idea if they’d let Trey and me in there. Or if they’d even light a fire for us.
“How are your fire-starting skills?” I asked Trey as we left my house and headed toward his. Trey shot me a questioning look and shrugged. I shoved him. “No, seriously. Are we going to die up there?”
“You’re not getting cold feet, are you?” Trey grinned. “You can’t back out now, Neri, or else you’re going to owe me seven steak dinners at Len’s.”
“I’m not buying you steak for seven days!” Would it kill my friend to eat a salad occasionally?
“Then you’d better not back out,” he retorted. We turned the corner and his house came into view. It was one story and surrounded by taller houses on three sides, but I loved it as much as my own. Growing up, I probably spent half of my time at Trey’s house and his parents treated me like the daughter they’d never had. And did I mention his mom baked pies?
Her pies were to die for, just so you know. Blueberry, blackberry, cherry, apple. You name it, she baked it. And it was all delicious.
The wood creaked under our feet as we climbed the three stairs to Trey’s front door. He opened the door and called out to his mom. I tensed. If she was here, she’d see my pack and want to know where we were going, and I didn’t think I could lie to her.
Trey’s words were met with silence and we both visibly relaxed. He led me through the cramped house—his dad was a carver, a skill he’d passed on to his son, and he enjoyed gifting Trey’s mom with a new piece every holiday, so they had more tables and chairs crammed into every room than they could ever possibly need—to his bedroom, which looked like it always did: an utter disaster.
“Make yourself comfortable,” he said, disappearing down the hallway.
I glanced at his bed, which was covered with clothes, and at the floor, which besides clothes, was covered in crumpled up pieces of paper, books, and empty plates and mugs. “Where?” I asked, not too surprised when Trey didn’t answer me. Hoping the clothes on the bed were clean, I pushed them aside with the tips of my fingers and sat down, hugging my pack to my chest.
Trey returned a few minutes later with a pack even more ragged than mine, his eyes bright with excitement. He even started humming as he rummaged through his clothes, sniffing them before either shoving them in his pack or tossing them aside. I’d once asked him if all boys were this messy, and he’d told me most
boys were worse. I still didn’t know if that was a lie or not.
“You’re looking forward to this,” I observed.
“I gotta say, Neri, this might be your best idea yet,” Trey said. “And it’s perfect timing, too. I bet the moment we go up there, those eggs are going to hatch.”
“How could you possibly know that?” Even though my voice was skeptical, I couldn’t stop the ripple of excitement that tickled my stomach. “Remember what Senia said? It could take months for the eggs to hatch.”
Trey shook his head. “No. I have a good feeling about this. We’re going to see something amazing. Just you wait.”
Chapter Three
Leaving the city proved harder than we’d anticipated. While we’d both managed to successfully evade our parents, we kept bumping into people we knew—neighbors, store-owners, and classmates. I spent ten minutes standing in the road, sighing loudly as Trey talked with a bunch of boys from school. They kept trying to convince him to join them in an impromptu game of ball, laughing as Trey came up with fanciful excuse after excuse. Once it dawned on me that they weren’t going to take no for an answer, I stalked over, grabbed Trey by the sleeve, and pulled him away, my ears burning as the boys began hooting and hollering.
“Your friends are idiots,” I said.
“Don’t call yourself an idiot,” he responded, removing his sleeve from my iron grip so he could swing an arm around my shoulders. “And thanks for the rescue. I thought I’d never get rid of them.”
I fought back a grin, not wanting Trey to see how pleased that made me. But he probably knew anyway.
We reached the edge of the city without seeing anyone else we knew. Here the trees grew sparse at first, and then thicker until it became the forest that ringed the entire city. Trey and I had spent so many hours running through those trees, letting the silence engulf us as we pretended we’d been whisked away to another land. When I was in the densest part of the forest, with the trees so tall their limbs blocked out the sun’s rays, I tried to imagine the entire valley covered in trees, but I just couldn’t do it. To me, the city had always been here and the forest was just an afterthought.
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