by Lisa McMann
She called out, “Carina! Carina!” but the words were lost in the din again.
“Wait a little,” said Maiven. “Trust me!”
Thisbe didn’t understand why, but she closed her mouth anyway. Soon the sound of jeers and yells faded, and the noise was overtaken by the sound of a squeaky, rattling cart coming down the hallway. The smell of rancid food filled Thisbe’s nostrils, and she gagged and nearly threw up. After several minutes, the cart reached their chamber. The boy pushing it brought two trays inside, setting one by Maiven and the other by Thisbe. Thisbe could just barely make out his features. It was Dev.
Thisbe sat up and whispered harshly, “Dev, wait! Why am I down here? Can’t you tell them I’m not a thief?”
The boy straightened quickly and took a step away. “I’m not Dev,” he said in a fake voice. He fled, pushing the cart to the next chamber where Carina was, leaving Thisbe completely puzzled.
Then, from next door, Carina spoke sharply. “Freeze.” Thisbe’s eyes widened in the darkness. Did Carina have components? Or was that a noncomponent spell? She’d have to try it sometime.
“What did you do that for?” Carina’s companion asked weakly. Thisbe’s heart soared again as she recognized his voice. Thatcher!
“Because I’m mad.”
“Well, that’s a good enough reason. Though he’s just a servant who didn’t do anything to us. And now some of the prisoners won’t get food.”
Thisbe sucked in a breath. She was surprised how well she could hear them now that everyone had settled down, for they were talking normally.
“Fine,” Carina muttered. “Release.”
The clatter of the cart resumed as Dev served their trays. Soon the squeaks and rattles faded when Dev moved down the hallway.
“I can’t believe we ended up in here,” Carina muttered. “What is this disgusting crud?”
Thisbe nearly laughed aloud. Carina didn’t talk like that whenever Seth and his siblings and the twins were around. She talked like a mom then. Now Thisbe wanted to be quiet so she could find out what else Carina might say.
“It’s better than having nothing, like the past thirty hours,” said Thatcher. He didn’t sound at all like himself, and Thisbe wondered if he was ill or injured.
“I suppose.”
Thisbe could hear their plates rattling, and Maiven’s as well.
“Eat quickly or they’ll take it away,” whispered Maiven. “Talk to your friends later. Trust me,” she said again. “I’ll let you know when it’s time.”
“Okay.” Thisbe attempted to eat her food. It was terrible, but Thisbe was hungry, so she ate almost all of it, and then drank the tall tumbler of water that accompanied it. It stopped her stomach from complaining—at least for a little while, until it realized what Thisbe had actually sent it.
While she waited for the signal, she wondered why Dev had pretended he was someone else. Thisbe knew it was him. She was certain. Why would he lie and avoid her? Something was definitely going on with him and his sneakiness, but she didn’t know what it might be.
A while later, when Dev came back in and picked up the trays, Thisbe held out her hand toward the chamber opening and whispered, “Glass.”
Dev moved to return to his cart and slammed into the glass wall face-first. The trays went flying and clattered on the floor. Dev fell backward, crying out in pain.
“Release,” whispered Thisbe, and the glass disappeared. As the boy got to his hands and knees, Thisbe said in a low voice, “Don’t mess with me, Dev. I’m warning you.” She’d never said such a thing to anyone before, and it felt terribly freeing.
Dev yelped and didn’t reply. Instead he crawled to the doorway and began feeling around for the glass, which was no longer there. Once he realized the space was clear, he dove for the hallway and took off with the cart to Carina and Thatcher’s chamber.
Thisbe lifted her chin and narrowed her eyes in satisfaction, and began to wonder if she was turning just a little bit bad.
A Familiar Voice
When all the food trays had been picked up and the dungeon had quieted, Thisbe waited for Maiven to give her some sort of signal that it was okay to talk to Carina. But it didn’t come. Had the old woman fallen asleep again?
The evening stretched onward. Maiven remained silent until a sharp snoring sound came from somewhere in the hallway nearby.
“Ahh, there it is,” said Maiven softly. “That is your cue, Miss Thisbe.”
“Is that the guard?” Thisbe whispered.
Maiven went on. “There are guards stationed throughout the hallways at night. The one assigned between our chamber and your friend’s is a loud snorer. Not so nice when you’re trying to sleep, but perfect when you want to talk. You should be able to converse for several hours if you keep yourself low to the ground and speak softly.”
“But how will my friend hear me?”
“Are you sitting in a stream of water?”
Thisbe frowned, confused. “Yes.”
“Near the floor at your back is a small opening in the wall, the size of a brick, that leads to your friend’s chamber. There is one in every wall. It’s how they clean—by spraying water at one end and letting it wash through all the chambers. Not very sanitary if you ask me, but then again, no one ever does.” Maiven paused, then continued. “Try to lower yourself as close as possible to that opening. Your voice will carry through. If the snoring stops, you stop talking.”
“Thank you.” Thisbe quickly slid her body to one side as far as the chains would allow, trying to feel for the opening. When she found it, she bent down and could hear the low rumble of Carina and Thatcher talking, though she couldn’t make out the words. “Carina!” she whispered. “Thatcher!”
Their conversation paused, and Thisbe whispered again. “Carina! Thatcher! It’s me, Thisbe. Down by the floor where the water goes through.”
She could hear a scuffle as one of the two shifted to align with the hole in the wall. And then a glorious moment later, she heard a familiar voice.
“Thisbe?” It was Thatcher, sounding incredulous.
“Yeah.” Thisbe started to cry. “Hi, Thatcher.” She tried to sound upbeat, but the words came out sounding miserable.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m . . . cold and wet and a little scared.” She hesitated. “But not much.”
Thatcher laughed softly. “You’re braver than me. How long have you been down here? Are Seth and Fifer there with you?”
“I’m alone.” Thisbe explained everything, from the children’s scary journey on Hux’s back to their horrifying adventures in the first village to their trek up the mountain with Dev. “And the soldiers here don’t like me because I’m demanding and I sent sparks flying at their faces, and they think I’m a thief because I have short hair, and now I’m stuck down here while Fifer and Seth try to fix all the dragon wings. I wish they’d hurry up, but to be honest I don’t know if they can do it without me.”
As Thisbe talked, Thatcher relayed to Carina the parts of the story she couldn’t hear. After she finished by telling Thatcher about Maiven’s kindness, she asked Thatcher to tell his story.
Thatcher told her about their journey, from deciding who would chase after the children to stopping at Warbler to see Sky, to Thatcher’s near drowning incident off the coast of the Island of Fire. “We lost all of our supplies except for what we had in our component vests,” Thatcher said, “but we decided to continue the journey even though we didn’t have food or water.”
“No water? That’s the worst part.”
“Tell me about it. I got pretty sick, and I totally blacked out by the time we were crossing over to the land of the dragons, so I didn’t even get to see what that big chasm or the cliffs looked like. But Carina said it was amazing.”
“Well, I guess it was,” said Thisbe. “We were just trying to hang on for dear life. And don’t feel bad about blacking out. Seth totally fainted when he was hanging by the vine over the chasm.”
“I think I’d better not mention that part to Carina,” said Thatcher with a soft laugh.
“What happened next? How did you get thrown in here? Didn’t Simber protect you? Where is Simber?”
“When Simber landed, he took us straight into the forest to the river so we could get some freshwater. That helped a lot, but I was still really weak and needed food and to recover a bit. So Simber weaved farther into the forest to try to find something for us to eat while Carina built a fire and caught a fish from the river. We were having a nice time of it, actually, when a bunch of soldiers in green coats surrounded us.”
“Those creeps are everywhere,” muttered Thisbe.
“They sure are. Anyway, they thought we were thieves too—now we know why. Carina and I fought them off with the components we had in our vests, but it’s really hard to fight in a forest. Even worse, I was weak. My aim was off and I hit more trees than humans, I think. I shackled one tree and made another do the fire step, and it totally uprooted itself and danced around for a few minutes there. Luckily, the roots took hold again when the spell wore off, or I’d have felt really bad.”
The image of that made Thisbe smile. “Then what?” she demanded.
“Then we tried to fight them with our fists, but there were too many of them. They surrounded us and wrapped us up in ropes to keep us from doing any more magic. As they were dragging us off, Simber came back toward the camp, but being huge like he is, he couldn’t weave through the trees or plow them down fast enough to get to us.”
“Oh, poor Simber,” said Thisbe.
“He knows where we are, though, and we heard the soldiers talking earlier about taking children as prisoners, and Hux’s return. So Carina and I had a pretty good feeling you’d be around somewhere. I’m sure Simber’s just sitting tight until we figure out how to get out of here.”
“Do you really think we’ll figure that out?” asked Thisbe.
“I’m sure of it,” said Thatcher.
But somehow his reassurance only made Thisbe worry more.
Figuring Things Out
By now Fifer and Seth had completed construction on all the wing extensions and were doing their best with the few supplies they had to attach them to each existing wing. It was a tricky process handling the dragons, trying to get them to keep their wings still while the two of them balanced precariously on stable walls and the creatures’ backs. And trying to find whatever they could that would help keep the extensions attached once they had them on.
They saved the hardest dragon for last. Drock the dark purple was the least helpful when it came to working with the children. He stomped his feet and banged against the sides of his stall, doing full-body shakes and making it difficult for Fifer and Seth to do much of anything with the tips of his wings.
With Fifer perched on Drock’s back and pitching side to side, and with Seth climbing onto the top of the stall’s wall and leaning in to grab the wing, the two tried to wrangle the dragon into obedience. But it was very late, and everyone was tired and hungry, and Drock wasn’t having any part of it.
Finally Fifer sighed and gave up. She reached her arms around Drock’s neck and hugged him. “I’m so sorry,” she said, her voice like a song. “You must feel absolutely terrible stuck in here all the time. You can’t even turn around.”
Drock continued pitching from side to side, but less violently. Seth sat up straight on top of the wall, hanging on to the post with one hand and balancing the wing extension with the other, and rested for a moment while he watched Fifer.
Fifer ran her hand along the dragon’s neck. “Your mother would think you are very brave,” she said. “We saw her just a few days ago. She wanted us to give you her love, but with all this crazy work to do, I forgot. I’m sorry.”
Drock shuddered and settled down a bit more. He seemed to like being petted, and he certainly liked the kindness in Fifer’s voice. Fifer began humming one of the many songs she’d made up over the years.
When Drock became fully calm, Fifer sat up and said very quietly to Seth, “I think there has to be a way to release these dragons from this awful prison once we have their wings working. We can do it, don’t you think so? This is a terrible life for them.”
Seth shrugged. He could see now why the dragons couldn’t just torch whoever was trying to control them, even if they were 100 percent bad. And he could imagine that if this Revinir dude could threaten Arabis’s life to get Hux to come back, he could certainly threaten the dragons daily with the same thing to keep them from trying to escape when they were out flying royalty around the various lands. “But how do we get them all out of here together at the same time?” asked Seth. “That’s the problem.”
Drock blinked rapidly and tried to nod.
“Good question. I’m not sure how we can do it without help. We can’t get these stable doors open without a key. But once we have that, and once we figure out how to release the muzzles, couldn’t all five of them storm up the ramp and just trample anybody in their way?”
Drock frowned.
Seth thought about that as a few of the dragons within earshot shook their heads. “No?” he guessed. “But why . . . ?” He scratched his head, and then guessed again. “Because not all of the soldiers are more evil than good. So they can’t harm the good ones.”
Now Hux and Drock nodded what little they could.
“That makes sense,” said Fifer, motioning to Seth to help her with the wing extension now that Drock was calm. “Maybe they can use their tails to snatch up the good ones as we go along and set them aside. Though that seems like it would be pretty difficult.”
“We need to create a distraction,” Seth said. “One that would get everyone out of our way.”
“And one that would get us the keys to open up these stables,” Fifer reminded him.
“Right.” Seth looked defeated. He had no idea how they’d manage that. “Plus,” he said, crestfallen, “we have to find Thisbe and get her out of here too.”
Just then, Dev came from the dungeon hallway with a cart of empty, dirty trays. The two Artiméans could hear some chanting happening in the human prisoner part of the dungeon.
“Hey! How did you get here?” Fifer demanded of him. “You didn’t come down this way.”
Dev’s nose was swollen, and he had dried blood caked around his nostrils. He looked at them, seeming a bit rattled, and muttered, “I started on the other side and worked my way to here.” He pushed on through the dragon area and went up the ramp past the guards.
Fifer and Seth exchanged a curious glance as if they’d just been given information inadvertently, though neither of them quite knew what good it would do them. Both of them sank into their own private thoughts as they used Seth’s remaining scatterclips to hook the last extension onto Drock’s second wing.
When they were finished, the two hopped down to appraise their work before attempting the harder, magical part of the job.
Fifer stood back so she could see the wings of all five dragons. Seth joined her. Each beautiful, sparkling, colorful beast wore gray burlap sacks dotted with a few flower petals on the end of their wings, like giant, ugly socks. The extensions sagged precariously, since they were a bit too heavy for a few paper clips and glue to secure them properly. Fifer hoped the magic would fix that.
“They look atrocious,” Seth remarked, trying out a new word he’d learned in Samheed’s theater class.
“Thank you,” said Fifer, who didn’t know what it meant. “I think it’s pretty good for someone like me. I’ve always been behind in Ms. Octavia’s art class, but I think she’d be quite proud, don’t you?”
“Mmm,” said Seth with a little cough. To be kind he added, “I would think so.”
Fifer smiled at the dragons, trying to look encouraging for their sake. Being stuck down here all day and evening had given her the slightest glimpse of what the dragons dealt with every day. “We’re going to find a way to get you all out of here,” she said to them just as Dev reappeared,
without the cart this time. “I promise.”
“Good luck with that,” said Dev wearily. He held two trays of food and set them roughly on the ground. “Late dinner, early breakfast, whatever you want to call it,” he said sarcastically. “Sorry it took me so long. I only had five hundred others to get to first.”
Fifer barely comprehended him. Instead she flashed Seth a wild look. She hadn’t meant for anyone to hear her. She went over to Dev and laid a hand on his shoulder, giving him an earnest look. “Please don’t say anything to anyone.”
Her musical voice must have contained some amount of magic on its own, for Dev softened a bit. But he wouldn’t commit to keeping her secret. “It’s just not possible,” he said quietly. “You’ll never be able to do it.” He dropped his gaze. “Especially with those black eyes. You’ll be locked up or sold off soon enough. Just like I was.”
He turned to go, but Fifer grabbed his arm. “Wait. What does that mean?”
Dev shook his head. “Haven’t you figured it out yet? You and Thisbe are valuable slaves. I brought you here to get a reward because I’m a crummy person. It’s not that complicated.”
Fifer shook her head, numb. She didn’t want to believe him, but it was starting to make sense with the way he had acted. “Why would you do that to us?”
Dev sighed, his exasperation masking his feelings of guilt. “Because I do what I have to do, okay? And so will you one day. They might let him go,” he said, pointing to Seth, “but neither you nor Thisbe will ever be free again. Just. Like. Me.” He yanked his arm away from Fifer and muttered, “And soon you’ll be crummy people too.”
One Thing after Another
Leaving Fifer and Seth speechless, Dev slipped away, out of sight. Fifer wasn’t quite sure how to feel. Dev had tricked them and profited from it. Could she trust that he was telling the truth about her and Thisbe? Could she trust him about anything after what he’d done? More confused than ever, and hungrier than ever, Fifer and Seth sat down next to the trays of food before attempting to make the dragon wings work.