Maybe she’s not as scared as I would be, he thought. Maybe for her, finding out new things is enough to drive out her fear. Maybe this feels like an adventure to her.
But that was hard for him to imagine, especially when he pictured the army of mind-controlled HiveWings far above them, combing the grasslands stalk by stalk. Who wouldn’t be afraid of that?
Maybe Swordtail. His best and bravest friend. He was a dragon who’d face that entire army to save Luna or Blue. His courage had always seemed foolish and dangerous and impulsive to Blue — but now he wished he had even a tenth of it himself.
He lay down with his chin on his front talons and thought about everyone who’d become entangled in this web. Io, who could be anywhere right now. Burnet and Silverspot, alone and worrying about their children. Katydid, wondering where her sister was. All the HiveWings who were being forced to hunt for him, whether they understood why or not.
And somewhere in the center of that web, Queen Wasp, stealing the flamesilks and using her subjects like puppets. Was she angry right now? Or coldly certain that she’d find him soon?
At least Luna was unaware of all of this. Somewhere deep in her cocoon, she was asleep, growing her wings in peace. She had no idea what kind of chaos her Metamorphosis had set off … or what strange new prison she was going to wake up in.
I’m coming, Luna, he thought fiercely. Swordtail and I will find you. You’re not going to wake up alone. I promise.
Blue stood at the bottom of the sinkhole, looking up. He could just barely see the glow of moonlight reflecting off some of the rocks far overhead. His tail flicked a damp patch of moss on one of the rocks and he shivered.
“Do you think it’s safe to go up?” Cricket asked.
“HiveWings prefer to hunt by day,” Swordtail pointed out. “Their night vision is poor and they’re lazy and arrogant, so I’m sure they’re at home asleep, confident they’ll catch us tomorrow.”
Cricket blinked at him, looking slightly hurt. “I’m not at home asleep,” she observed.
“Right,” Blue said. “That’s not fair, Swordtail. They’re not all lazy and arrogant. They’re dragons, just like you and me and everyone we know, some bad and some good.”
“Dragons who’ve stolen your sister and spent the last day hunting you so they can throw you in their secret prison, too,” Swordtail said sharply.
“That’s Queen Wasp making them do that,” Blue said. “They’re not all like her.”
“So what? They let her be like that and never complain or speak up, because it means they get to be comfortable,” Swordtail said. “Sorry, Blue, I’m not in the mood to feel sorry for the bad guys right now.” He spread his wings and launched himself up the shaft. “I’ll go check if the coast is clear.”
Blue sighed as Swordtail flew away. The strange frenetic energy of the stimulant had worn off, and after sleeping almost the entire day, Swordtail had woken up pretty much his normal self again. Which was great, except for how his normal self could sometimes be a big honking rhinoceros trampling over everyone else’s feelings.
“I’m sorry,” he said to Cricket.
“Don’t be,” she said. “He’s right. I never worried about how we treat SilkWings or what happens to flamesilks before.”
“Neither did I, really,” Blue admitted. “But you’re helping us now. You’re not like the others.”
“If Queen Wasp could control my mind, I probably would be,” she said. “It’s just luck or some kind of mystery science that it doesn’t work on me.”
Swordtail swooped back down toward them. “All quiet, as far as I can see and hear,” he said. “If we fly now, we should make it to Wasp Hive before morning.”
“And then what?” Cricket asked.
“Then we figure something else out,” he said.
That sounds like a Swordtail kind of plan, Blue thought, but he didn’t have anything better to offer, so he kept quiet.
Swordtail spun a harness around Blue again and braced his forearms around Blue’s chest. “All right!” he said. “Off we —” He vaulted into the air and immediately lost his balance, smacking into the side of the canyon and thudding to the ground again. Blue’s claws barked painfully against the stone and he yelped.
“Ooof,” Swordtail grunted. “Sorry. Let me just —” He braced his legs and shoved himself aloft again, clutching Blue even more tightly.
No luck. Blue could feel himself slipping, even with the harness, and Swordtail’s muscles were clearly straining to hold him. His wings beat as hard as he could, but a moment later he had to drop back down.
“Uh-oh,” Cricket said, hovering above them.
Blue glanced up at the far, far distant top of the hole again. Uh-oh was a bit of an understatement.
Swordtail sliced away the silk connecting them and crouched, gasping for breath.
“If you can’t carry him anymore,” Cricket said, “how are we going to get Blue out of this cave?”
“I don’t understand why I can’t!” Swordtail protested. “I carried him all DAY yesterday and it was no trouble at all!” He flexed his arms and winced. “I guess I do feel a little sore now … ”
“It was the stimulant,” Cricket said. “It made you stronger and gave you energy, but only until it wore off. That is so interesting. I wonder if anyone has any idea that it has that effect on dragons, or if other scientists have only ever used it on plants.” Her eyes went a little dreamy. “Maybe for the science fair next year … ”
“Do you have any more of it?” Swordtail asked, eyeing the pouch tied around her chest.
She shook her head. “No … and I wouldn’t suggest taking it from a normal state,” she said. “Not without some dilution experiments and animal studies first. I mean, you started off completely paralyzed, and look what it did to you.”
“What it — what did I say?” Swordtail asked. “Did I sound like a total idiot?”
“You were fine,” Blue assured him. “It was adorable.”
“Oh, good,” Swordtail grumbled. “Adorable is just the look I was going for on our heroic mission.”
“So what else can we do?” Cricket said, studying the rocks around them. “Blue, could you climb out?”
“Of course,” Swordtail answered for him. “SilkWings are all great climbers.”
“Well, maybe, but … all that way?” Blue said, his courage failing. “I mean, I don’t mind the climbing part, but the maybe-falling part and the very-long-way-to-fall and the certain-death-if-I-fall parts, those I’m kind of less excited about.”
“Plus there’s no way he’ll make it to the top before morning,” Swordtail said. “And then what do we do? Climb back down? Risk the open savanna again?”
“There might be another option — hang on,” Cricket said. She spread her wings and flew away, up and up till Blue could hardly see the shimmer of her sunlight-colored scales. He had a horrible moment of imagining that she might not come back … that she’d reach the top, realize she could just go home, and leave them and all their messy, troublesome danger behind.
“Blue,” Swordtail said in a low voice.
Blue glanced at him and saw pity in his friend’s dark blue eyes.
“Remember how you warned me once about falling in love with Luna?” Swordtail said, folding his wings back. “You said we might not be partnered together. You said it would be better for both of us if we could wait to fall in love until we knew who our partners would be.”
Blue looked down at his claws. That felt like a very foolish thing to say now. As though a dragon could inject a nerve toxin into his feelings and leave them paralyzed until they might be usable. But he’d imagined how Luna and Swordtail would feel if Queen Wasp separated them, and it had been so awful. He’d been trying to protect them from that.
“This is much worse, Blue,” Swordtail said. “She’s a HiveWing. You can never, never be with her. You should tell her to go home now, before it’s too hard to say good-bye.”
“I think it already is,�
�� Blue said softly. “At least, for me.”
Swordtail put one wing over Blue’s back and rested his head against Blue’s. “I was afraid of that,” he said.
Cricket came swooping back down in a flapping of wings and landed on an outcropping a little ways above them. “There’s a crevice near the top,” she said. “It’s not very big, but I think Blue could hide in it. If we can get him to it by morning, he could wait out the day there, and then we’d keep going to Wasp Hive tomorrow night.”
Blue felt the tension ripple through Swordtail’s body. He knew what he was feeling: another day’s delay; a whole night wasted on one wingless dragon climbing out of a hole. When Luna was out there and needed their help now.
“You can go on without me, if you’d rather,” he said to Swordtail.
He could see that Swordtail was tempted. After all, what use was Blue going to be in a rescue anyway? He couldn’t exactly fight. And if they had to escape in a hurry, he would massively slow them down.
“No, don’t do that,” Cricket said. “I was hoping you’d use your silk to help Blue climb out.” She pointed up. “To catch him if he falls.”
“Oh,” Swordtail said, light dawning in his eyes as he saw what she meant. “Of course. That’s a good idea.”
“Cricket is full of good ideas,” Blue said. She ducked her head and smiled at him, and he felt his heart explode.
Definitely too late. I can’t say good-bye to her. Even if it means it’ll hurt more later, I still want to be with her for as long as I can.
“All right, let’s try this,” Swordtail said, again shooting silk from his wrists, this time the thicker, stronger strands that were usually used for building web bridges. He wound it around Blue, leaving his limbs free to climb, then leaped up to the ledge above Cricket, still holding the other end of the silk. “Go ahead!” he called.
All right, this is happening, Blue thought. He sent up a silent prayer to Clearsight and started up the side of the rocky canyon.
In fact, it was easier to climb than he’d expected. There were a lot of little crevices and nooks for him to dig his talons into, and the stone overall felt much sturdier than the webs he’d grown up clambering around on. At least the rocks didn’t bounce and sway in the wind.
And when he did stumble, losing his footing for a moment, he felt the strength of the webbing catch him — the strength of Swordtail, just above him, braced to save him before he fell. And Cricket was beside him the whole way, suggesting the easiest paths, pointing out places for him to rest.
Not for the first time, Blue felt very, very grateful for his friends.
Even though the climbing went well, it still seemed to take forever — it was a really deep hole, after all. Blue’s whole body was aching before he was halfway up. He found himself daydreaming wistfully about honey drops and tiny sugar bees and silk hammocks.
And when at last Cricket said, “It’s here, it’s just above you,” he looked up and saw that the sky was already pale gray and most of the stars had disappeared. Cricket was right; they were near the top, and he’d be able to climb out early the next night. If he wasn’t caught by then.
With one last heave, he hauled himself onto the ledge next to Cricket, letting Swordtail help lift him with the webbing. He sprawled there, breathing hard and wondering if his legs would ever work again.
Swordtail poked his head over the rim of the sinkhole and squinted in the direction of Wasp Hive. “I don’t see anyone yet,” he said, flying back to them. “But you should still get hidden, to be safe.”
“Back here.” Cricket flicked her tail at the rippling stone of the rock wall. Blue crawled over and saw how the bend of the rock and the dangling plants hid a narrow crack, just big enough for him to squeeze through. He was amazed that Cricket had even found it in the first place.
She held the green leaves aside so he could wedge himself in, and he discovered that the crack extended into the rock, like a small cave, so he could go farther in, squishily turn around, and lie down.
Cricket poked her head in and watched him settle. “Do you want company, which would be kind of cramped, or do you want the whole space, but alone?”
“Company,” Blue said. “If — if you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind if you don’t mind my wings in your face,” she said. She wriggled back out to tell Swordtail, and Blue heard the whoosh of his friend’s wingbeats retreating back down to the safety of the lake cave.
Then Cricket was wedging herself in through the gap, making little squeaking noises as she tried to keep her wings clear of the rough stones. Blue pressed himself back as far as he could, and after a minute she managed to get all the way in and lie down facing him.
“Thank you for your delightful invitation,” she said in a pretend lordly voice, adjusting her glasses. “I adore what you’ve done with the place. I’ll be expecting tea and sliced avocados, of course.”
Blue put his chin on his talons and chuckled. “Don’t make me think about food.”
“I can’t STOP thinking about food,” she said. “I’m STARVING. Those fish I caught for breakfast were so small! And super weird; did you see that they didn’t have eyes? Oh, right, I showed you. Fish with no eyes! Do you think that’s because there’s no light down there? I guess I wouldn’t rather eat something with eyes. But you should have tried them anyway; I could have caught more.”
“That’s all right,” Blue said with a smile. “I can wait for something in the vegetable family.”
Cricket studied him. “What will you do with Luna?” she asked. “I mean, if you can set her free. Where will you go? Queen Wasp isn’t going to stop looking for you.”
“I have no idea,” Blue said slowly. Honestly he’d been imagining getting Luna and going home to their mothers. A part of him still felt as though this was a big misunderstanding, and if he could only convince Queen Wasp of how harmless they were, she’d let them go back to their normal lives.
I wish we could do that. Why can’t there be a way?
Although … would it ever feel the same, now that I know about the flamesilks and the mind control?
Would we ever feel safe again?
“Maybe you could go live in the caves with the reading monkeys,” Cricket said with a dreamy smile in her voice, as though she was making a joke, but actually thought that sounded amazing.
“That one we saw did look very welcoming.” Blue laughed. “In a stabby kind of way.”
“But … I’d go farther away, if I were you,” she said. “As far from Queen Wasp as you can.”
“Like one of the peninsulas?” he asked. “I thought they were too dangerous for dragons.”
“That’s what we’re told,” Cricket said, nodding. “But maybe it’s not true.”
Blue wasn’t so sure. He’d seen drawings of some of the plants in the Poison Jungle, and they certainly looked as if they’d be happy to eat a few dragons. Or impale some dragons. Or melt some dragons and convert their bone sludge into nutrients.
“You could go farther than that, though,” Cricket said hesitantly.
“I could?” he said. “How?”
“Maybe … across the ocean,” she said.
He stared at her with wide eyes. Her body blocked most of the dim light from outside, so he couldn’t really see the expression on her face. Was she joking?
“Are you joking?” he asked. “The Distant Kingdoms aren’t real.”
The tilt of her head said she was puzzled. “Of course they are. That’s where Clearsight came from.”
“Yes, but — but Clearsight was magic.” Blue had always imagined the night-black seer dragon as a mythological figure, like a star becoming a dragon and flying down to visit them. “We say she came from the Distant Kingdoms, but we might as well say she came from the moons or the sky.”
“The moons and the sky are real places, too,” Cricket pointed out.
“Not places we can go,” he protested.
“But we could go to the Distant Kingdoms,”
Cricket said. “I’m sure of it. It’s just another big island, somewhere out to the east, full of other dragons.”
He stared at her silhouette, thinking of how different their educations had been. At Silkworm Hall, he’d learned to revere Clearsight and accept the wisdom she’d passed down in the Book without question. He’d never been taught to think of her as a regular dragon like him, from a normal kingdom like his.
“Other dragons like Clearsight?” he asked. “Is it a whole continent full of dragons who can see the future?”
“I don’t know,” Cricket said. “Maybe! Wouldn’t it be so interesting to find out? Can you imagine being the first dragons to cross the ocean in thousands of years? I mean, what kinds of tribes live over there? Do they look like us? Do they have other powers? Do THEY have reading monkeys?”
“But if it is real and it’s that easy to get there,” Blue argued, “then Clearsight wouldn’t be the only one to have done it in all that time.” He shook his head. “I think it’s a myth.”
“I think it’s the perfect place to hide if Queen Wasp is looking for you,” Cricket said. “But you’re right that it wouldn’t be easy to get there. We’d have to find out how Clearsight did it.”
“Magic,” Blue said promptly.
Cricket leaned forward and bopped his nose with hers. “Magic is just science we don’t understand yet,” she said. “So maybe we can figure out her science.”
“How, exactly?” he asked.
“With BOOKS,” Cricket said, as though that was obvious. “There must be clues in a book somewhere!”
He unfurled his antennae, sensing danger, and put one of his talons over hers. “Shhhhhh.”
There were sounds coming from outside.
Blue and Cricket waited in tense silence.
Wingbeats. Voices. A whoosh and then a cracking sound, like an antelope’s neck being broken, and munching noises as it was devoured. Blue shivered.
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