by Lisa McMann
Seth’s hands slipped loose. He screamed. His upper body flew wildly backward, and only his knees still pressed a fold of dragon skin between them. “Ahh!” he cried out as the cliffs danced and jiggled sickeningly around him. His fingers raked the air as Fifer shouted his name.
Legs outstretched and wings wild and out of control, Hux hit his giant pronged claws hard against the side of the cliff. The dragon scrabbled and scraped, trying to find something to hold on to, but he slid downward at a sickening pace, his claws screeching against the rock. Seth lost his grip and fell, screaming, until the vine rope reached its limit, jerking Thisbe backward.
Thisbe couldn’t hide her face now. With every bit of strength she could gather, she lunged upward to reach the top of Hux’s wing and managed to get her elbow hooked over it. Seth dangled in the air over the vast nothingness, screaming until his breath failed him. He fainted and was quiet as the whole party slid down the face of the wall.
Fifer shrieked and clung to the dragon, trying to throw her leg over its other wing. Finally Hux managed to sink his claws deep enough into the side of the black stone. There was an excruciating jolt as the falling dragon came to a sudden stop. Fifer lost her grip and flew off, and in an instant Thisbe was the sole anchor for the other two attached to her by tenuously tied vines. Fifer swung wildly at the end of hers and slammed into Seth. The last of the extra vines they’d brought along slid off the dragon and squirmed like worms in their infinite fall.
“Hux!” Thisbe screamed, hitching her elbow and holding on as tightly as she could, but she felt herself slipping. She dug into the dragon’s wing and wrenched herself up. Her arms trembled.
Then the awkwardly tied vine knots, which tugged painfully hard at Thisbe’s waist, began to slip.
The Black Cliffs of Grimere
Still heaving for breath, but with all four sets of claws firmly gripping the cliff side, Hux swiveled his head around and looked down. He opened his mouth and swiftly bit down on the vines that hung below Thisbe’s waist, careful not to sever them, and lifted up. With the weight of the other two off Thisbe, the girl shakily climbed up to a safer spot on Hux’s wing as he pulled the vine higher. His tail, which had ceased propelling, swept up from below them all and coiled to make a platform. He brought it up beneath Fifer. Fifer continued flailing until her feet sensed the dragon’s tail below her, and then she melted onto it, trembling but safe. For the moment at least.
Hux raised his coiled tail up, catching Seth on the way. Seth regained consciousness just as Thisbe scrambled up the dragon’s shoulder. She went around his neck to the other side so that if she or the others fell, the vine would catch around Hux’s neck.
Once they were all safe, they took a moment to catch their breath and tighten their vines, and then Thisbe fearfully looked upward. The vines had saved them from certain death. But the cliffs stretched to the sky. How were they going to get up there? It seemed impossible.
When Hux had rested for a moment and could speak, he instructed Fifer and Seth to climb to his wing and drape themselves over it as Thisbe now did on the other side. He needed his tail for the climb.
They obeyed—there was no other option. And in a most violent and jerking fashion, Hux loosened one clawed foot from the rock and found a new hold higher up. He did the same with each leg, using his tail for balance and to feel around for more footholds.
They made a bit of progress. The process was painstaking, and the dragon’s body shook with concentration and strain. Every now and then Hux made a lasso with his tail and threw it up into the sky, trying to catch on to any sort of rock jutting out to help ease the climb.
Inch by inch, foothold by foothold, the ice-blue dragon and his passengers scaled the side of the black cliff, until finally they were close enough for Hux’s tail to reach and encircle one of the smaller, narrower needlelike points. After a minute’s rest, Hux called out to the children.
“Hold on now like never before,” he said wearily. “I’ll fold my wings around you to help keep you close to my body. This is not going to be easy.”
The children did what Hux told them to do, and then the dragon tested his tail’s grip around the needle to make sure the rock was secure and wouldn’t break off. Next he began to wind his tail around the base of it. When it held fast, Hux scrabbled and jerked his way up the wall as fast as he could go, the kids flopping around and trying to hold on, screaming at every heart-stopping move. When they approached the top, Hux wound the slack of his tail around the needle, then let go and lunged to try to get a claw up and over the edge of the precipice. He slid back and his claws scraped along, not catching anything. They free-fell for an excruciating second until his tail caught, and they jerked to a stop upside down.
Thisbe shrieked and dug her fingernails into the dragon’s skin. Hux grunted and pulled himself up by the tail the rest of the way, until finally he could heave his body up between the crags to level ground.
With a giant shuddering exhale of relief, Hux loosened his wings around the children. They flopped limply onto the land, their bones and muscles feeling like rubber. They had never been more glad to touch land than they were at this moment. At last, they were safe.
“I thought we were going to die,” said Fifer, choking up now that the danger had passed. “The vines saved us.” She let out a sob.
Thisbe could only nod in response, trying not to imagine the outcome if they hadn’t been tied together—it was too overwhelming. She stared numbly at the sky and gripped the uneven ground. Her body wouldn’t stop shaking. She closed her eyes and a tear slipped out.
“We almost didn’t make it,” said Seth. His voice shook, but the realization of how close they’d come to falling forever into the abyss filled him with horror and wonder. He thought of his mother and how sad she’d be. How she’d search for him and wouldn’t be able to find him—not even a trace of him or a hint of what had taken place. “They would never know what happened to us,” he whispered. His face crumpled and tears poured from his eyes.
Fifer swallowed hard. Her throat was horribly parched and ragged from screaming, but she was alive. She’d never been this close to death before. Even in the jungle, the girls always knew in the back of their minds that Simber had to be somewhere nearby, ready to get them out of a scrape. But there had been no safety net like that here. She let her head fall listlessly to one side, feeling the precious ground rolling beneath it, and she reached for Thisbe’s hand and took it. She didn’t want to think about all the bad things that could have happened anymore.
Once the three friends had a chance to rest, stop shaking, and regain control of their senses, they sat up and untied the now worn-out vines from their waists. Throwing the remains aside, they looked around. They were perched on a black, rocky precipice. Far above them was the majestic fortress. Less than a mile down the hill below was a lush, green glen with a village. “Where are we?” Fifer asked, turning to Hux.
Hux was slumped on the ground, completely spent. His eyes were half-closed. Perhaps it was his complete exhaustion that led him to finally disclose some information. “The black cliffs of Grimere,” he said dully. “We’re headed up there.” He pointed his tail toward the highest, biggest cliff, where the fortress was planted just below a wispy cloud. The sand-colored stone structure was a stark contrast to the cliff on which it stood.
Thisbe spotted the river that ran near the castle and poured off the side of the cliff into the abyss, and was reminded of their severe lack of provisions. “Is there anything to drink around here?” She shivered, still wet from the journey. And though she had no appetite at the moment, she knew they’d be hungry soon.
Hux snorted fire. “In time.” He closed his eyes, pained. The journey had taken a terrible toll on him.
“We should have given him the wings before we left,” said Fifer in a low voice, looking guiltily at the others.
“We couldn’t,” said Thisbe. “Besides, we didn’t know how hard it would be. He said he could do it.”
“At least we made it,” said Seth. “I was afraid we weren’t going to.”
“You were afraid all right, I’ll give you that,” muttered Thisbe.
Seth frowned. “Be quiet. You were cowering quite a lot yourself.” He kicked a stone as Fifer looked at the other two, perplexed by their petty arguing. They were all exhausted from the ordeal.
Hux began to snore, making the three turn at once toward him.
“Oh great,” said Thisbe. Now that she was on solid ground, her fear dissipated and she realized just how thirsty she was. She eyed the village and could barely make out movement in the very center of it. “Do you think it’s safe to go down to that village? I want to find us something to eat and drink.”
“Why wouldn’t it be?” asked Fifer. “It looks like lots of other people are heading there. Let’s all go.”
“No,” said Thisbe. “Somebody has to stay with Hux so he doesn’t think we abandoned him.”
“Well, I’m going with you,” said Fifer. “Seth, you stay here.”
“Okay.” Seth didn’t think he could walk quite yet anyway, and he certainly didn’t mind having someone else do the scrounging around for food for him. He glanced at Hux, who had smoke drifting up from his nostrils. “Hurry up, though.”
The twins set off down the hillside. There wasn’t a path, so they picked their way over the moss and rocks and around the boulders as quickly as they could.
Seth watched them until they were out of sight, then got up and walked to the edge of the precipice, peering toward the seven islands. He could see a tiny glimpse of the big waterfall every so often when a bit of fog and mist cleared, but then it was hidden again. No wonder the people of Artimé hadn’t been able to find this world. While it really wasn’t all that far away, it was nearly impossible to see. This definitely explained the map with the extra piece of land on it that Lani had found years before, which was on display on one of the walls in the mansion outside her classroom. And now Seth and the twins were actually standing on that land. He couldn’t wait to tell Lani that it really was here after all—they just had to fly over the waterfall to get to it.
Hux snorted in his sleep, making Seth jump. Quickly he backed away from the edge of the cliff and turned to look up toward the various castles on the mountainside. Only a few high points remained bare. From this angle and distance, he could see that the strange, stalagmite-like perches were a bit larger than they’d appeared from Hux’s approach and weren’t nearly as needlelike as he’d first thought—they were simply narrow at the east end that faced the world of the seven islands.
Seth focused on the biggest castle. The cloud that had hung above it earlier had moved on, and now Seth could see the fortress’s majesty more clearly. It was enormous, with more than a dozen turrets of varying heights. The sand-colored stone seemed to sparkle in different places when the sun caught it, as if it had been coated in a light dusting of jewels.
Seth couldn’t quite see the grounds around the castle. But he imagined it was the kind of place that would surely have a moat and a drawbridge and creatures called horses, like in the plays he was studying in theater class and the stories his mother had read to him when he was a little boy—and which he still loved to read now. That sent a chill of excitement down his spine. But then, thinking of his mother, he cringed. He’d been gone so long already. She was going to be furious by the time they got home. But at least he was alive, and she wasn’t searching endlessly for him for the rest of her life—that would be a good selling point, he decided, when it came time to explain. The thought cheered him.
Seth directed his gaze to the various villages he could see around him. They were all quite similar, with a circular town center surrounded by pastel-colored houses with orange-tiled roofs. In the middle of each town was an open patch of land. People appeared to be traveling on foot between the villages. At the moment, most of the people were going toward one particular place—the village nearest him, where the girls had gone to get food and water.
Just then Seth heard a slow rumble in the distance. He looked up toward the castle, but the sound wasn’t coming from there. Much farther inland, beyond a great forest, a trail of black smoke rose up to form a cloud, then began drifting away. Seth puzzled over it, wondering what it was. But he soon forgot it when the dragon stirred and nearly rolled over him. He scooted out of the way.
Once fully awake, Hux looked around and realized the girls were gone. “Where did they go?” he demanded.
Seth shrank back. “To the village to find something to eat and drink,” he said. “They should be coming back soon.”
Alarmed, the dragon heaved himself to his feet and stretched out his neck, trying to spot them. “They must return immediately!”
“But we’re all really thirsty,” Seth said. “Humans have to eat and drink pretty often, you know.”
Hux swung his head down to look Seth in the eye, so close that Seth could feel the heat from his nostrils. The dragon snorted impatiently, spraying something hot and sticky onto Seth’s neck. Seth scooted back, grimacing and flinging his arm up to wipe it away.
The dragon didn’t seem to notice. “Better to be thirsty than for them to be seen out there in public. If anyone gets a good look at those girls, they’ll be captured and sold to the highest bidder. You must go and get them.”
Seth stared. He’d never heard anything so ridiculous in his life. “What are you talking about? They’re coming right back.” He peered down at his vest to make sure none of the hot dragon . . . whatever . . . had gotten on it.
Hux wasn’t interested in discussing it. “NOW!” he roared.
Before the sound of the dragon’s voice faded, Seth was on the run, heading down the mountain.
Glen Freer Market
Thisbe and Fifer peered over a boulder at the edge of the village and saw a sign a short distance away. “Glen Freer Market,” read Fifer.
“Sounds friendly,” said Thisbe. People scurried about through the narrow streets and alleyways. They went in and out of small, pretty houses, pushed carts down the road that ran along a short length of the cliff, and led young servants loaded with goods toward the center of the town square. Most of the servants wore plain, light-colored clothing and tall black boots, while the ones directing them were more colorfully dressed. The place seemed safe enough.
Stealthily the girls followed one overladen cart of fruits and vegetables, falling in step behind it and walking nonchalantly like the townspeople, trying not to stand out despite their different style of clothing. When the cart hit a bump in the road, a few pieces of fruit shook loose from a crate and fell to the road. The girls quickly picked them up and stuffed them inside their shirts, making their chests look suspiciously lumpier than usual, but no one really seemed to be paying attention. Or so they hoped.
They kept on after the cart, and soon they could hear the noises of the market. A little farther along, the narrow road opened up to a large square with vendors all around. Townspeople went from stall to stall, trading for goods or purchasing items using small gold rocks. Thisbe and Fifer, wide-eyed, took it all in.
“How do you know how many rocks to give?” whispered Fifer.
“No idea,” said Fifer.
The servant pulling the cart came up to an empty stall and stopped. The girls slipped away and snuck down an alley, then ducked into a doorway to figure out what they were going to do. They nodded at some men who walked by and pretended to be casual. One of the men frowned at Thisbe and narrowed his eyes. But they continued walking.
Fifer’s attention was focused elsewhere. “Do you hear that?” she whispered after the men passed.
Thisbe listened and heard the distinct sound of rushing water. Quickly the girls darted out and followed the noise to the end of the alley. There they reached a grassy bank and found a stream. A water mill stood in the middle of it, its moss-covered blades turning slowly, lifting the water up and around. The twins filled their canteens, taking plenty to drink, and then refilled the
m so they and Seth would have some once they returned.
“How are we going to get more food?” Fifer asked. “We don’t have any of those gold rocks.”
“We’ll have to steal it.” Thisbe twisted the cap tightly on her canteen and put it back in her rucksack. Then she fished the fruit out of her shirt and put that into her bag as well.
Fifer pulled her fruit out too, looked at it longingly, then placed it gently into the rucksack on top of Thisbe’s.
Suddenly there was a scurry of footsteps behind them. Before either one of the girls could turn, they heard a man’s voice. “There they are,” he said. “That one’s been caught before!”
As Thisbe whirled around in surprise, she felt a strong, calloused hand reaching over her mouth, then a scratchy cloth placed over her nose that had a sickly sweet smell. She tried to scream.
“Ah, see?” the man said triumphantly to his friend, who had snatched Fifer. “Both of them! Now that makes for a lucky day!”
“I’ll say,” said the friend gleefully.
Thisbe didn’t comprehend what the men were talking about. She reared back as hard as she could and tried kicking her captor, but try as she might, she couldn’t connect. She twisted and struggled, but she was stuck fast. She gasped for breath, the horrible sweetness from the cloth permeating her nose and throat, and traveling into her brain. She felt a strange fuzziness creep in and take over her, making the market sounds seem distant and growing ever fainter. Her sight blurred. She fought to keep her senses, fought to shout or at least think of some magical spell she could say to stop them, but she couldn’t speak. Her mouth couldn’t even form a single word. With one last, limp struggle, everything went black and she slumped forward, unconscious.
The Most Magical Ones
When Thisbe opened her eyes, her cheek was pressed against the cold, stone ground. Drool dripped from the corner of her lips. She wrinkled her nose, coughed, and sat up, wiping her mouth on her sleeve. She remembered her rucksack and looked frantically for it, and found it nearby—nothing had been stolen.