Dragonslayer

by Tui T. Sutherland

As it came closer, Ivy started to feel a new shiver of exhilaration. She was pretty sure this was a kind of dragon she’d never seen before.

  It had scales as purely white as the snow on distant mountains, glimmering like cut glass. Its face was narrow, and the spikes along its back were long and sharp. More deadly-looking spikes bristled like needles from the end of its tail.

  “By the stars,” Ivy breathed, remembering the drawings in the guide. “I think that’s an ice dragon.”

  “It’s so shiny,” Daffodil whispered.

  “Why is it flying so weird?” Violet asked. “Is it coming to land?”

  The ice dragon shook itself again and then dove toward the forest, plummeting like a comet out of the sky. Daffodil clutched Ivy’s arm and Ivy held tight to the branch above her, trying to keep as still as she could. The Wingwatcher’s Guide said ice dragons had sharper eyesight than most other kinds. Even if this dragon was injured, it could probably still snatch them out of the tree and eat them if it saw them.

  The dragon crashed into the trees about half a mile away, smashing through the branches and disappearing from sight.

  “Oh my goodness,” Daffodil whispered.

  “Should we go see if it’s all right?” Violet asked.

  “Violet!” Ivy said. “Foxglove specifically said to stay right here. I’m pretty sure ‘don’t go charging up to a wounded dragon’ was implied!”

  “But think of how well you could draw it if you got really close to it,” Violet wheedled.

  “I’m with Violet,” Daffodil said. “Let’s go look at it.”

  “How is it that when you two finally agree on something, it’s the WORST thing?” Ivy demanded. “No. We promised Foxglove. I want to see it up close, too, but we can’t disobey her! They’ll make us stay inside for the next two years! Maybe longer!”

  She was saved from the rest of this argument by the sound of footsteps running through the trees. They all froze, listening, until they saw Squirrel appear below the tree.

  “Oh, good,” he said when he saw them. “We saw a dragon land nearby and Foxglove sent me to check on you.”

  “Check on us?” Violet asked. “Or make sure we stayed put?”

  “Both,” he said with a grin.

  “We weren’t going anywhere!” Daffodil said innocently.

  “We wouldn’t dream of it,” Violet agreed.

  “Ivy wanted to, but we told her no,” Daffodil added. Ivy swatted her, and she dissolved in giggles.

  “I’ll just stay here and keep you company,” Squirrel said. “Not because we don’t trust you, but because we remember being young Wingwatchers, too.”

  Violet sighed.

  “We think it might be wounded,” Ivy said to Squirrel. “It was flying all weird and landed in a really awkward way.”

  “Foxglove is going to — carefully — scout out the situation,” Squirrel said. “She’ll let us know what she finds.”

  “Wait. Do you hear that?” Violet asked, leaning forward on her branch.

  They all fell silent for a moment.

  Thrashing — and panting — coming from the direction where the dragon had landed. It wasn’t loud enough to be a dragon, surely. But something was heading in their direction.

  Squirrel silently reached up and swung himself into the tree. He crouched right below Ivy, and they all stared toward the sounds.

  Something shoved through the bushes, breaking a few branches and shaking the leaves. Something staggered into the clear space below them, breathing heavily. Something paused, maybe fell or collapsed, flattening the grass.

  But they couldn’t see it. They could see the vegetation moving around it; there was a clear outline of something heavy lying below them now. They could still hear it, gasping for breath. It sounded like a human.

  So why couldn’t they see it?

  Daffodil quietly worked a pine cone off the branch next to her. Before Ivy realized what she was up to, Daffodil leaned forward and dropped the pine cone squarely into the center of the flattened grass.

  The something let out a yelp — a very human yelp — and then there were some scrambling-around noises.

  “Oh, thank the moons,” said an extremely human voice. “Wingwatchers.” The shape seemed to collapse into the grass again.

  “Halt there,” Squirrel said sternly. “Who are you?”

  “Can’t you —” There was a pause. “Oh. Oh, right.”

  Ivy’s uncle Stone suddenly appeared below them. He looked bedraggled, windblown, bruised, and thinner than before, but it was unmistakably him.

  Daffodil let out a squeak of surprise.

  “Uncle Stone!” Ivy said. She scrambled down to the branch next to Squirrel. “Permission to get down, sir?”

  “I — I guess this is an unusual case,” Squirrel said. “Sure.”

  Ivy jumped down to the ground and smiled up at her uncle. Not as far up as the last time she’d seen him … was it nearly two years ago?

  He stared back at her as if she were a ghost.

  “Are you all right?” Ivy asked.

  He pressed his fingers into his eyes for a moment, as if rubbing out an old image, and then blinked at her again. “You’re my niece,” he said. “Ivy.” His voice was rusty, as though he hadn’t used it much in a while.

  “Of course I am,” she said. “Where have you been?”

  “And how did you do that?” Violet demanded from above. “Appear from thin air like that?”

  Stone squinted up. “How many Wingwatchers do you have in that tree?”

  “You should get up there, too,” Ivy said, reaching for his hand. “We just saw a dragon land not too far away.”

  “Oh, yes,” he said. “I was … well, riding it isn’t exactly the right description.”

  “What?” Daffodil shrieked.

  “Shhh!” Squirrel glared at her. “Keep it down!”

  “Riding a dragon?” Ivy echoed, awestruck.

  “I needed to get back here,” he said. “It seemed like the fastest way?” He gestured ruefully to his torn clothes and the trickles of blood coming from his knees, arms, and face. “Probably should have chosen a less spiky dragon.”

  “So … it was helping you?” Ivy asked.

  Uncle Stone frowned at her. “Of course not. It didn’t know I was on board — or rather, it knew that something was on top of it, but it didn’t know what.”

  “How is that possible?” Violet asked.

  “You could steer it, even though it didn’t know you were there?” Ivy asked.

  “Well,” he said. “Not very well. I think it was coming this way anyhow.”

  “Invisibility!” Violet shouted suddenly.

  “SHHHHHHH!” Squirrel tried again.

  “You can make yourself invisible! That’s it, isn’t it?” Violet said. She was leaning over so far she was nearly falling out of the tree.

  Stone sighed. “Don’t tell anyone, please.” He opened his fist to reveal a long, thin, coiled chain made of a silvery-black metal. “It was in the sand queen’s treasure. Heath let me have it because he didn’t know what it could do.” He shook it out and looped one end over his neck, vanishing the moment it touched him.

  “Oh my stars,” Daffodil breathed. “Actual. Magic.”

  Stone reappeared, lifting the chain off his neck. He collected the coils into a tangle in his fist, then stuffed it in one of his pockets. “That’s how I survived out there,” he said.

  “Where?” Violet demanded. “Where did you go, and why?”

  Stone looked down at Ivy with the sad eyes she remembered from every family dinner. “I had a dream that Rose was still alive, and so I went looking for her, but the desert nearly killed me, and then I ended up in a dragon city, which took me forever to escape, and the whole expedition was a disaster, and I don’t know what I was thinking. She’s been dead for almost twenty years. There’s no way she could have survived even a day out there among the dragons, on her own.”

  Ivy met Violet’s eyes, then Daffodil’s.
They all looked back at Stone.

  “Um,” said Ivy. “Who’s Rose?”

  Wren was fourteen and she did not have time for Undauntable’s nonsense.

  She probably should have guessed something was up when she found him examining a jewelry trader’s wares and he looked so very pleased to see her.

  “Wren!” he cried. She had finally told him her name on their third meeting, figuring there wasn’t anything too terrible he could do with it. “I have a great idea!”

  “Good for you,” Wren said. “I can’t stay long today.” She’d promised Sky she would be back before nightfall. He’d recently decided he could sing — which was slightly factually inaccurate — and wanted to make up a song for her. “Here’s another scale. I need —”

  “Stop stop stop,” Undauntable said. “Listen. I know you have a stash of these and you’re just bringing me one at a time. I also know you don’t have a family, because you never buy anything for anyone else, and you’re afraid to go into the city, which means you’re probably an orphan.”

  Wren put her hands on her hips and glared at him. “You seem to think you know a lot of things that aren’t your business.”

  “But you don’t have to worry anymore!” he said. “Because of my great idea. You should marry me.”

  Wren blinked at him, then looked over her shoulder to see if anyone was standing behind her. Undauntable’s porcupine bodyguard was there, a little closer than she would have liked. She guessed Undauntable wasn’t proposing to him.

  “No,” Wren said to Undauntable. “To be clear: never.”

  “What?” he said, his face clouding over.

  “I do have a family,” Wren said. My family happens to be a dragon; you don’t get to know that. “And I am not remotely interested in getting married or living in a city. For someone who wants to marry me, you don’t seem to know me very well.”

  Undauntable threw his hands in the air. “Because you always LEAVE,” he complained. “If I marry you, you’ll have to stay. I’ll buy you lots of things. You can bring your whole stash of dragon scales so we can be super rich together. And you’ll get to be princess of the city! It’s a dream come true!”

  “Undauntable, I’m only going to say this once, and I really mean this,” Wren said. “Yuck.”

  “But whyyyyyyyyyyy?” he demanded.

  “Because I don’t want lots of things, I hate cities and people, and I only want to be friends with you,” Wren said. Friends-ish, she amended in her head. The kind who have polite interactions once a year and that’s it.

  “My life is so unfair,” Undauntable said, sitting down on the ground. Cat curled up in his lap and stared balefully at Wren. “Everything is terrible.”

  “It is not actually my responsibility to fix your life by giving you everything you want,” Wren pointed out. “I’m not a rare dragon scale to add to your collection. I am a person. You are not entitled to have me along with everything else.”

  “Every time I see you, you make me mad,” he said. “But then I’m so bored until you come back.”

  “Undauntable!” Wren said. “That is definitely a problem you need to solve yourself!”

  “Ugh,” he grumbled, burying his face in Cat’s fur.

  “You should try reading,” Wren suggested. “It’s much more fun than getting married.”

  Undauntable looked up at her to see if she was teasing him, but she actually wasn’t. She thought it was a perfectly fine idea, and he must have access to loads of books.

  He narrowed his eyes and glanced at his bodyguard in a way that Wren didn’t like. Undauntable was spoiled and grumpy and demanding, and he always complained about her leaving, but he’d never done anything to stop her before.

  “Have you noticed any new books out here today?” she asked, trying to change the subject. It seemed like there were fewer encampments in the line than usual. She wondered where everyone was. Not in the city, she guessed.

  “What if you promise to marry me someday?” he asked.

  Wren tucked the scale back in her pocket. “Start with a dictionary,” she told him. “Look up the word never. And stop acting like people are just more things you can buy.”

  She marched away down the line of travelers toward the river, feeling very betrayed. Why did her one human friendish person have to turn out to be terrible, just like all the others?

  She’d gotten about ten steps away from Undauntable when someone in the line screamed and pointed at the sky.

  Wren whirled around and saw a dragon hurtling toward the unprotected people gathered at the base of the cliff. Everyone on the ground started screaming and running, while the ones already on the steps froze and cowered into the cliffside.

  It was a sand dragon, enormous and gleaming in the morning sun. Its teeth were bared in a delighted grin and its venomous tail was raised behind it like a promise of death to come.

  Above her, Wren saw something happening, up in the Indestructible City. There was movement along the top of the cliff, like weapons rolling out. She stepped back to see it better, and then Undauntable’s bodyguard slammed into her, knocking her to the ground.

  “Hey, ow!” she yelled, kicking him hard in the stomach. He grunted and rolled away, and she scrambled to her feet. Overhead, the dragon swooped by and circled to come from another direction.

  “Just trying to … get you to safety,” the bodyguard groaned, and Wren realized that this one was a woman. She hadn’t been able to tell with the helmet on. “Prince’s orders.”

  Wren looked around. She’d been so interested in the city’s defenses, she’d forgotten about Undauntable. “Where is he?” she asked. “Isn’t he the one you should keep safe?”

  The bodyguard pointed to a crevice in the side of the cliff, not far from the base of the stairs. Undauntable was standing just inside the narrow gap, beckoning to her. His face was scared, but not as frantic as some of the people around him. He lived in a city that fought back, while most of these people had probably lost friends and entire villages to dragons.

  Wren jumped up and ran toward him. He reached out his hand, but as she got close, she scooped up a toddler who was standing still in the chaos, sobbing. Undauntable looked extremely bewildered when she shoved the toddler into his arms.

  She turned around and grabbed another kid as he ran by. He looked younger than Wren had been when Talisman abandoned her. She pushed him into the crevice with Undauntable and the toddler.

  “Wait —” Undauntable said, but Wren had spotted another little girl, trapped by the fence at the bottom of the stairs. She was shaking the gate and crying. Wren ran to her, lifted her over the fence, and carried her to Undauntable’s hiding spot.

  “This is a lot of —” Undauntable protested. The crevice wasn’t very big, and he was now squashed into the back of it, with three crying children around him.

  “Room for one more, I think,” Wren said, and darted away.

  “Yes, YOU!” he shouted.

  She found one more kid who seemed to be by himself and brought him back. The dragon was flying back and forth over the city now, dodging whatever they were shooting at him and laughing.

  “This is too many sticky children!” Undauntable shouted as she squeezed the last one inside. “And not enough you!”

  “I’ll be fine,” Wren said. She tilted her head to look up at the sand dragon. “That dragon doesn’t even seem hungry. He’s acting like he’s here entirely to annoy your citizens.”

  He was, in fact, roaring something like, “HA HA, PUNY SCAVENGERS! YOU CAN NEVER HIT ME! I AM THE GREATEST WARRIOR IN THE ENTIRE ARMY OF SAND! HA HA HA!”

  “So weird,” Wren said, putting her hands on her hips. “Like, just a total lunatic.”

  “This is the fifth time that same dragon has come to attack the city in the last few months,” Undauntable said. He tried to squeeze past the children toward her, but they clung to him when he moved and he had to give up. “We thought we’d scared them all into leaving us mostly alone. But this one
comes back over and over. It might not be hungry now, although I can’t see how you could possibly know that, but it has grabbed at least three people from down here so far.”

  “HA HA HA!” the dragon bellowed again. “JUST YOU WAIT, YOU COCKROACHES! THE QUEEN KNOWS YOU MUST HAVE HER TREASURE! ONE DAY SOON I WILL RETURN WITH MY GLORIOUS ARMY AND DESTROY YOU!”

  Ah. So that wasn’t great.

  Maybe if it was Talisman, Wren would be fine with a dragon burning it down. If anyone asked, she’d usually pick dragons over humans any day. But this was a whole city, full of people who might be awful, but who hadn’t specifically left her to be eaten by dragons, plus also lots of children, and Wren had to admit she didn’t want the dragons to destroy it.

  The dragon wheeled away and flew off toward the desert, still HA-HA-HA-ing as he went.

  “He’s not attacking,” Wren said to Undauntable after the dragon was out of sight. “He’s scouting out your defenses, so a bigger group of them can attack later.” She gingerly patted one of the children on the head. “It’s safe to go outside again now.”

  “That can’t be right,” Undauntable said as the children scampered away. He emerged from the crevice, looking dusty and wrinkled and disgruntled. Two locks had escaped his slick hair and hung over his forehead. “Dragons can’t plan ahead. They’re driven by impulse and hunger. They don’t spend months preparing for an attack or work together.”

  “That is so ridiculous I can’t even look at you,” Wren said. “There are entire dragon armies! They’re all having a war with one another. Of course they plan and strategize and work together.”

  Undauntable brushed dirt off his robes, squinting at her. “How on earth could you know any of that?”

  She was definitely not going to tell him she spoke Dragon, or anything else that might lead back to Sky.

  “I pay attention,” she said. “Something the prince of a city should probably do. Just tell your dad he needs to prepare for a massive attack, probably soon.”

  She remembered she was mad at him and turned to go.

  “I’ll tell him,” Undauntable yelled after her. “Hey, Wren, I’m sorry! I really am! Will you come back soon?”