Willow hesitated for a moment, as though she was thinking about pressing her point a bit more, but instead she nodded and headed into the trees, to Sundew’s relief. Sundew followed, with Cricket a half step behind her. The HiveWing was like a shadow, staying as close to Sundew as she could, although she kept twisting her head to stare at weird plants as they went by.
“I’m familiar with this area, too,” Nettle complained from the rear. “I’ve been scouting in SapWing territory since before Mandrake was born. I know every kind of tree around here.”
“Meh meh meh meh meh,” Bumblebee said in a hilariously similar tone of voice.
Sundew smothered a laugh and glanced over her shoulder for the joy of catching Nettle’s furious scowl.
“ExCUSE me,” Nettle demanded. “WHY are we taking a HATCHLING with us? A nasty HIVEWING hatchling, no less? Oh, is it because we’re hoping something will eat her? A snack for the dragon-traps, what a good idea.”
“Maybe you should shut your trap,” Sundew suggested.
“BurrMRRBRRGRR,” Bumblebee agreed. She seemed to be feeling saucier now that they were heading away from the villages full of staring dragons.
“Mandrake!” Nettle cried. “Are you going to let her talk like that? If you don’t stand up to her now, she’s going to walk all over you when you’re married!”
“Oh, I have no idea what that feels like,” he grumbled.
Willow turned to arch her eyebrows at Sundew.
Don’t panic, Sundew. Don’t blurt out something idiotic. This was not the end of the world. Willow knew about Mandrake. She knew Sundew was supposed to marry him in some distant future. She knew Sundew didn’t want to and didn’t plan to and wasn’t going to, and she knew that Sundew had been figuring out how to explain that to him for years.
Willow did think “years” was a bit of a long time for Sundew to hang on to that explanation.
But she also thought Sundew would eventually leave the offshoot tribe and come live with the SapWings. She’d always hoped that one day Sundew would magically stop feeling so angry, and that she’d give up the vengeful life of a “PoisonWing” on her own. Willow had expected that to be the inevitable end of any marriage plans with Mandrake.
Sundew had a different endgame in mind, however. In her plan, she’d fulfill her destiny, destroy the HiveWings, prove to her mother that she could do it herself, and return a hero. Then she’d be able to choose her own future. She’d be able to do anything she wanted, once that was done.
She hadn’t expected her destiny to be quite this awkward.
They walked and climbed and whacked their way through the undergrowth for a long time, mostly in silence, apart from Nettle complaining and Bumblebee chirping at things. Willow moved confidently, pointing out things to avoid, like snake nests and low-hanging strangler vines. Dense clouds of moss covered the tree roots all around them, dotted with sprouts of deadly mushrooms that looked like eyeballs growing out of the earth. Eat me, the mushrooms chortled. Just try. Ferns brushed their scales and whispered back along their stems, Strange strange why why beware beware creatures out of place, in their vague feathery fern way.
Nettle was on a rant about how she’d have found a better route by now, when they reached a slope that slanted sharply down ahead of them, riddled with lumpy roots and pricker bushes. A slick layer of rotting leaves made it tricky to stay upright. Sundew found a branch that wasn’t covered in thorns or toxic sap, held on to it with one talon, and reached out to support Cricket with the other.
“You know, you can go ahead and ask all the annoying questions buzzing around in your head,” she said as the HiveWing slipped and slid past her, clinging to her arm. Bumblebee leaned out of her sling to gawk at the fuzzy orange monkeys in the tree overhead. Sundew wasn’t sure how Cricket could balance at all, with the dragonet wriggling around like that. “I’d rather listen to you than Nettle.”
“Oh, REALLY,” Nettle spat. “Leave the jungle once and suddenly you’re a HiveWing-loving traitor to the tribe. I should have seen this coming. I always —”
Her diatribe turned into a shriek as she took a wrong step, lost her balance, and plummeted down the steep hill. Sundew yanked Cricket out of the way, and Nettle hurtled past, plowing a canyon through the wet leaves. Willow managed to leap into the air and hover before she got knocked over. She tried to catch Nettle, but the dragon was sliding too fast.
“Wait, come back and tell us again about how you’re the smartest dragon in the jungle!” Sundew called after her.
Nettle screamed back something about killing Sundew, and then her voice abruptly cut off as she vanished over the bottom edge of the hill.
“Uh-oh,” Mandrake said.
It was difficult to fly between the low, tangled branches, the hungry dragon-traps, and the surprise cobwebs full of poisonous spiders, but they finally managed to hop-hover-skip down the slope to a flat spot at the bottom, which turned out to overlook a large, brackish lake.
Cricket peered over the edge. “It’s not that far down,” she reported. “But I don’t see Nettle anywhere.”
“Wow,” said Sundew. “I was hoping we’d lose her, but I didn’t think it would happen quite that fast.” Mandrake gave her a look, and she rolled her eyes. “I’m kidding! I’m sure she’s fine. She can handle anything, remember?”
“What if she fell in the pond and drowned?” Willow asked anxiously.
“Get me out of here!” Nettle’s muffled voice screamed from somewhere below them.
“That doesn’t sound like drowning,” Sundew said. She found a spot where she could spread her wings to their full length and hopped over the edge, floating down to the muddy banks of the lake.
Her talons squelched into slimy black mud and nearly flattened a squashy-looking toad, who let out an alarmed blart and scooted away. Sharp hollow reeds poked out of the marsh all around her; some of them were broken near the bottom and nearly hidden by the mud, stabbing her feet as she picked her way closer to the water.
From down here, it was obvious what had happened to Nettle. A huge cluster of pitcher plants was gathered right below the hill, gaping maws ready to swallow any animal that tumbled down it. Each one looked like a long green sack, tipped with stripes of dark pink around the open mouth at the top.
Sundew had a collection of much smaller pitcher plants growing outside her nest to catch flies before they buzzed in and bothered her. She really didn’t like this big kind, though; it was super creepy to look at a giant pitcher plant and wonder whether there might be a dragon corpse decomposing inside it.
Or, in this case, a dragon that was still very much alive and spitting mad.
“GET ME OUT! GET ME OUT OF THIS THING!” Nettle shrieked. One of the plants wobbled as she slammed herself into the side.
“Whoa,” Cricket said, landing beside Sundew. “She’s … in there? Why doesn’t she just fly out?”
“Meeebomorp,” Bumblebee added, wide-eyed.
“The inside walls are covered in slime,” Willow answered as she and Mandrake joined them. “It coats the wings of its prey as it falls in, making it harder to fly and impossible to climb out. There are also sharp hairs lining the walls, pointing down so anything that tries to fly or climb up will get stabbed.”
“And if we don’t get her out soon,” Mandrake said, “she’ll either drown or get digested by the acid pool at the bottom of the pitcher. Which would be bad,” he added, almost as though reminding himself.
“I wish Blue were here,” Cricket said, pressing her talons to her forehead.
“I’m not sure setting it on fire would improve Nettle’s situation,” Sundew pointed out.
“Oh — I didn’t mean for his flamesilk,” Cricket said. “It would just … make me feel better.” She glanced down, looking embarrassed.
Sundew understood that. She had wished for Willow’s company a million times during her mission to the Hives. She stole a glance at Willow, caught her looking back, and had to smother a smile.
“We’ll have to cut her out,” Sundew said briskly. “Willow and I will start with our claws; Mandrake and Cricket, look for anything else around here that might be even sharper.”
They had to wade into the thicket of pitcher plants to get to Nettle’s, which was extra creepy because Sundew could sense them all thinking, in essence, Mmmm yummm come in yummm delicious want it mmmmmm mine, like a creepy background chorus of hungry ghosts. Their stems were cold and clammy, and the pitchers bumped against them, some of them skin-crawlingly heavier than others.
Don’t think about what might be in there. Do NOT think about it.
The plant Nettle was in had a particularly smug, plummy vibe to it, as though it wanted all its neighbors to notice that it had caught the best prey and no one else could have it. Hahahrmmm, look at my yums, all mine my yums, it smirked.
Well, it wasn’t going to be so pleased for much longer.
Willow stabbed her claws into its side, and Sundew felt the plant snarl with fury. Chilly vibrations echoed through the roots and leaves all around her, and she thought some of the plants were leaning closer. Mmmm yummm climb in here little yums dangerous delicious eat before it hurts us eat it now yummmmm.
She added her claws to the grooves Willow was making, dragging them up and down, digging deeper each time. They carved a square in the side of the pitcher, big enough (she hoped) for Nettle to crawl through. But the walls of the pitcher were thick and rubbery and oozed with slime that made their talons sting and stick together. It felt like their progress was too slow, as though they might look up any moment and find that night had fallen. Also, it was incredibly hard to focus with Nettle shrieking bloody murder the entire time.
Sundew took a step back and shook her aching talons. I can’t believe I’m doing this for Nettle, of all dragons!
“Here,” Cricket gasped behind them. She leaned between two pitchers and passed them a wickedly sharp thorn almost as tall as Willow.
“Ack, watch it!” Sundew cried. “You nearly stabbed Willow!”
“Not that nearly,” Willow said. “This is perfect, Cricket, thank you.” She wrapped her arms around the wider end and thrust the thorn at the plant like a spear.
To Sundew’s surprise, it pierced right through one of the lines they had carved.
Nettle’s shriek instantly went up an octave. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” she screeched. “ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL ME?”
“We’re getting you out!” Sundew yelled back. “Like you’ve been screaming about this whole time! Just get out of the way!”
“As if there’s anywhere to go!” Nettle bellowed. “It’s cramped and dark and things are stabbing me and this goo on my tail REALLY HURTS and …”
But while she was shouting, Willow had been dragging the thorn along the outline of the square, and suddenly a whole piece of the pitcher wall fell off and Nettle came tumbling out after it.
“EW,” Bumblebee declared, in perhaps her most accurate observation so far.
Nettle was dripping with pinkish-green slime from horns to tail, and the acidic, rotting smell coming from her and the sliced-up plant was nearly as bad as a corpse flower in full bloom.
“That took you long enough!” she yelped, struggling to her feet. Her wings were plastered to her side.
“You’re welcome!” Mandrake called from outside the pitcher plant cluster.
“I cannot BELIEVE this!” Nettle stamp-squelched past Sundew and Willow, shoving pitcher plants viciously as she went by, and marched over to the edge of the lake. The muddy water made the slime look even more dreadful, but as she scrubbed it all over herself, hints of her own green scales started to peek through again.
“Are you all right?” Cricket asked.
“As if YOU care!” Nettle spat. “Do NOT talk to me right now! I don’t want anybody talking to me!”
That sounded like an entirely fine plan to Sundew. She pulled out the map and held it up, squinting at the lines in the semidarkness. She knew the sun was high in the sky, but only a little of its light filtered down to them here at the bottom of the jungle.
“It looks like we need to cross this lake to avoid the manchineels,” Sundew said. “Nettle, while you’re there, could you poke your nose in the water and see if a bladderwort tries to eat you?”
“I’ll feed YOU and your stupid little STRIPED MONSTER to the bladderworts!” Nettle snarled.
“Ta-daaaaa!” Bumblebee declared, working two of her wings free and flinging them out to either side.
“Could you two please stop yelling at each other?” Willow asked. She was standing at the edge of the water, squinting at the cloudy surface that stretched ahead of them. “It’s only making this harder.”
Sundew blinked at her in surprise. It didn’t feel harder to her; in fact, yelling at Nettle gave her energy, and it stopped her from worrying about all the really big things she had to worry about.
Moreover, couldn’t Willow see the difference between Nettle’s yelling (unproductive, vicious, out of control) and Sundew’s (hilarious and morale-boosting)?
“Look,” Willow said. “There are plants floating right below the surface all the way across the pond. Bet you anything there are waterwheels everywhere.”
“Yeeeeesh,” Mandrake said with a shudder, and even Nettle took a step back.
“Waterwheels?” Cricket asked Willow.
“They’re like aquatic dragon-traps,” Willow said. “Same idea — touch one, and it closes around you, drags you under, drowns you, and digests you.”
“Ooooooooooo,” said Bumblebee.
“No, Bumblebee,” Cricket said sternly. “Not ‘ooooo.’ More like ‘ack yikes terrifying’! Although, speaking purely scientifically, that is pretty amazing. Plants that can drown you! Plants that slime you and eat you! I can’t believe they didn’t teach us any of this at Terrarium Academy. This is WAY more interesting than how to grow radishes!”
“I’m glad you’re so fascinated,” Nettle said in an icy voice. “Perhaps we could switch places, and your tribe could try growing up in a habitat where everything is trying to kill you.”
Can’t I yell at her when she’s being mean to Cricket? Sundew wondered, glancing at Willow again. She was studying the trees overhead now. Although … I guess I’ve said things almost exactly like that to Cricket, too.
She nudged Cricket, who was looking pretty deflated. “I bet you’re dying to ask about the manchineels,” she said.
The HiveWing wrinkled her snout. “I’ve been restraining myself!” she whispered.
“You can see them over there,” Sundew said, pointing to the grove of trees that crowded all the way up against the left bank of the lake. “The fruit looks edible but will make you insane and then kill you. Also the sap is poisonous. If you stand under one while it’s raining, poisonous sap will drip on you and you will die. Also they are covered in wicked thorns.”
“Like I said,” Willow chimed in, “scary death trees.” She pointed up. “I think we have enough room to fly over the lake, if we’re careful, go one at a time, and avoid the dragon-traps, trumpet flowers, and Roridulas.”
“Roridulas?” Cricket said alertly.
“Do you know anything?” Nettle demanded.
“Nettle, stop it,” Willow said in her most extremely Very Stern voice. “Roridulas are like … sticky death shrubs,” she said to Cricket. “If you brush up against one, you’ll be stuck there until assassin bugs come and eat you.”
“Urk,” Mandrake said faintly. “You know, I’m really not sure why Belladonna wanted me to be on this mission.”
“So you could keep an eye on Sundew, of course,” Nettle snapped.
Sundew bristled. “NOBODY needs to keep ANY EYES on me! Gross! How dare you!”
“Sundew, stop,” Willow said, resting her tail gently on Sundew’s shoulder. “Just let it go. We have more important things to worry about.”
Sundew scowled at Nettle. It was bad enough when Nettle was just irritating, but there would be justifiable murder involved if Nett
le kept making Willow talk to Sundew like that.
“I’ll fly across first,” Willow said, “to make sure there’s a safe path.”
“No, I’LL fly across first!” Nettle said. “I’m not scared, if that’s what you think!”
Willow held out her talons, palms up. “I do not think that. Of course you can go first, if you want to.”
“That’s right,” Nettle muttered, shaking the last bits of slime off her wings. There was mud caked between her scales and trails of dried slime along her neck and tail, but at least she was able to fly again. She stamped her feet a few times and then took off.
They all squinted after her, watching her path as she zigzagged and maneuvered around the obstacles that hung over the lake.
“It must be exhausting to be that angry all the time,” Willow commented.
“I’m not, though,” Sundew said. “You know that, right? That I’m not like that?”
“I know,” Willow said, but her smile seemed a little hesitant.
Sundew thought for a moment, and then said, carefully, “But it’s not bad to be angry. Sometimes there are things a dragon should be angry about.”
“I guess,” Willow said, looking down at her claws. “It’s just not usually my first reaction to anything. Like everything about the HiveWings and what they did … it makes me really, really sad. If I think about it too much, I want to curl up in a pile of leaves and cry. But what good would it do to be mad instead? I mean, whenever I do get mad, I usually end up feeling guilty or really tired, or both.”
“It’s not like that for me,” Sundew said. “Maybe the guilty part, sometimes. But being mad makes me want to get up and do something. It makes me want to fix the bad things. Isn’t that better than curling up under a pile of leaves and hoping the bad things go away?”
Willow looked into her eyes for a long moment, as if she was really thinking about Sundew’s point. “Yes,” she said finally. “That makes sense.”
“It does?” Sundew said, startled. In her tribe, arguments went all day and nobody ever admitted that the other dragon had said something sensible.
Willow glanced sideways at Cricket and Mandrake, but their gazes were riveted on Nettle as she negotiated a tricky spiral under a strangler vine.
The Poison Jungle Page 12