The Lost Continent Read online

  CONTENTS

  HALF-TITLE PAGE

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  MAP OF PANTALA

  A GUIDE TO THE DRAGONS OF PANTALA

  HIVEWINGS

  SILKWINGS

  LEAFWINGS

  THE LOST CONTINENT PROPHECY

  PROLOGUE

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  EPILOGUE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ALSO AVAILABLE

  COPYRIGHT

  Description: red, yellow, and/or orange, but always mixed with some black scales; four wings

  Abilities: vary from dragon to dragon; examples include deadly stingers that can extend from their wrists to stab their enemies; venom in their teeth or claws; a paralyzing toxin that can immobilize their prey; or boiling acid sprayed from a stinger on their tails

  Queen: Queen Wasp

  Description: SilkWing dragonets are born wingless, but go through a metamorphosis at age six, when they develop four huge wings and silk-spinning abilities; as beautiful and gentle as butterflies, with scales in any color under the sun, except black

  Abilities: can spin silk from glands on their wrists to create webs or other woven articles; can detect vibrations with their antennae to assess threats

  Queen: Queen Wasp (the last SilkWing queen, before the Tree Wars, was Queen Monarch)

  Description: wiped out during the Tree Wars with the HiveWings, but while they lived, this tribe had green and brown scales and wings shaped like leaves

  Abilities: could absorb energy from sunlight and were accomplished gardeners; some were rumored to have unusual control over plants

  Queen: last known queen of the LeafWings was Queen Sequoia, about fifty years ago, at the time of the Tree Wars

  Turn your eyes, your wings, your fire

  To the land across the sea

  Where dragons are poisoned and dragons are dying

  And no one can ever be free.

  A secret lurks inside their eggs.

  A secret hides within their book.

  A secret buried far below

  May save those brave enough to look.

  Open your hearts, your minds, your wings

  To the dragons who flee from the Hive.

  Face a great evil with talons united

  or none of the tribes will survive.

  About two thousand years ago …

  If you are flying directly into a hurricane, it is probably useful to be a dragon who can see the future.

  Then again, if you are a dragon who can see the future, you are most likely far too smart to fly directly into a hurricane.

  And yet, according to Clearsight’s visions, that was exactly what she needed to do.

  She shook out her black wings, which were already tired from how far she’d flown all morning and the day before. Her talons clung to the slippery wet rock below her. Her scales felt itchy with salt from the ocean spray. Above her, the sun peeked wearily through cracks in the dull gray clouds.

  She closed her eyes, tracing the future paths ahead of her.

  In one direction — south and a little east — there was a small island with a warm sandy beach. Two coconut palms nodded toward each other and there were lazy tiger sharks to eat. The hurricane would pass it by completely. If she went there, Clearsight could rest, eat, and sleep in safety. Then she could continue on in two days, after the storm was over.

  But in the other direction — a long flight west and slightly north — the lost continent was waiting for her.

  She knew it was real now. When she’d left Pyrrhia to find it, she’d half expected to fly all the way around the world and end up back on Pyrrhia’s other coast. No one was sure another continent even existed … and if it did, everyone knew it was too far away to fly to. Any dragon would tire, fall into the sea, and drown before reaching it.

  But Clearsight wasn’t any dragon. She had something no one else did: the ability to carefully trace the paths of multiple possible futures. Standing on the edge of Pyrrhia, she could see which direction would take her to an island where she could rest. And then the next day: to another island. Shifting her course slightly each day, guided by her visions, she had found a trail of small islands to take her safely across the ocean.

  A gust of wind roared over her, splattering a handful of raindrops onto her head.

  The hurricane was almost upon her. If she didn’t leave right now, dragons on the lost continent would die. Dragons who might one day be her friends, if she saved them. Dragons who had no idea what was bearing down on them, because there was no one there to warn them.

  Yet.

  Clearsight took a deep breath, vaulted into the sky, and pointed herself west.

  Her mind immediately started flashing through all the ways she could die in the next two days. This was why she hated flying in storms. They were too unpredictable; the smallest twitch of the wind in the wrong direction could send her plummeting to the rocks below, or drive a stray palm branch into her heart.

  Don’t think about that. Think about the dragons who need you.

  The other vision was fading; the one where she flew southeast and hid. In that one, she’d arrived on the lost continent in the hurricane’s aftermath. The images of the devastation and dead bodies would be hard to shake off, even if she prevented them in reality.

  Will they believe me? Will they listen to me?

  In some of her visions, they did; in some, they didn’t.

  All she could do was fly her hardest and hope.

  The hurricane fought her at every wingbeat, as if it knew she was trying to snatch victims from its claws. Rain battered her ferociously. She felt like she’d be driven into the endless sea at any moment. Or maybe she’d drown up here, in the waterlogged sky.

  But this was only the outer edge of the storm; there was far worse still to come. Clearsight was trying to reach land before the really terrible fury behind her did. She couldn’t stop, couldn’t slow down for a moment.

  At one point she glanced back and saw a spout of water sucked into the air. In the middle of it, an orca flailed desperately, before the storm flung it away.

  A while later, after the sun had apparently been swallowed for good, Clearsight saw an entire hut fly by her, then splinter apart. She had to duck quickly to a lower air current to avoid the debris. Where had it come from? Who had lived in it? She would never know, her visions told her.

  And then, when Clearsight was beginning to lose all feeling in her wings, she saw a shape loom out of the clouds ahead.

  A cliff. Land. A lot of land.

  A whole continent, in fact.

  She canted her wings and soared toward the top of it, where she could see a never-ending line of trees tossing violently in the wind. The hurricane made one more effort to throw her back into the sea, but she fought with her last reserves until she felt earth beneath her talons. She collapsed forward, clutching the wet soil for a moment, grateful to be alive.

  Keep going. They’re not safe yet.

  Clearsight pu
shed herself up and faced the trees. They were coming. The first two dragons she would meet in this strange new world.

  What would it be like to face unfamiliar tribes, completely different from the ones she knew? There wouldn’t be any NightWings like her here. No sand dragons, no sea dragons, no ice dragons.

  She’d glimpsed what these new dragons would look like, but she didn’t know anything yet about their tribes … or whether they would trust her.

  They stepped out of the trees, eyeing her with wary curiosity.

  Oh, they’re beautiful, she thought.

  One was dark forest green, the color of the trees all around them. His wings curved gracefully like long leaves on either side of him, and mahogany-brown underscales glinted from his chest.

  But it was the other who took Clearsight’s breath away. His scales were iridescent gold layered over metallic rose and blue, shimmering through the rain. He outshone even the RainWings she’d occasionally seen in the marketplace, and those were the most beautiful dragons in Pyrrhia.

  Not only that, but his wings were startlingly weird. There were four of them instead of two; a second pair at the back overlapped the front ones, tilting and dipping at slightly different angles from the first pair to give the dragon extra agility in the air.

  Like dragonflies, she realized, remembering the delicate insects darting across the ponds in the mountain meadows. Or butterflies, or beetles.

  She sat up and spread her front talons to show that she was harmless. “Hello,” she said in her very least threatening voice.

  The green one circled her slowly. The iridescent one sat down and gave her a small smile. She smiled back, although her heart was pounding. She knew she had to wait for them to make the first move.

  “Leefromichou?” said the green dragon finally, in a deep, calm voice. “Wayroot?”

  Take a breath. You knew it would be like this at first.

  “My name is Clearsight,” she said, touching her forehead. “I am from far over the sea.” She pointed at the churning ocean stretching way off to the east behind her. “Anyone speak Dragon?”

  The two strangers exchanged surprised glances.

  “The old language,” said the shimmering dragon, awkwardly and slowly, as if pulling the words from his memory bit by bit.

  “You do know it!” Clearsight said, hope darting through her veins.

  “Some little,” he said. “Much old.” He smiled again.

  The green dragon said something in their own language and nodded at the ocean. The other answered and they spoke for a few moments. If they had been a pair of NightWings, Clearsight would have guessed they were arguing, but their tone was so peaceful that she couldn’t really tell.

  “The old language” … I wonder if their continent and ours had more contact in the past. Maybe we will again in the future. I could teach them all Dragon, especially if some of them already know it. That way if any more Pyrrhians ever come this way, they could communicate.

  It was hard to imagine other dragons making the journey she’d just made, though. It was so far, and depended on finding those small islands in such a vast sea.

  But maybe she could help with that. Not soon, though. Not while I feel any temptation to wake Darkstalker. I can’t go back to Pyrrhia until I’ve forgotten him.

  So, probably never.

  “Whyer you here down?” the gold-pink dragon asked her.

  “There’s a really bad storm coming,” she said as clearly as she could. “Very bad.”

  He spread his wings and looked up, smiling into the raindrops. “See that,” he said with a shrug.

  “No.” She shook her head. “I see.” She pointed to her head. “I see the future. Tomorrow and tomorrow and the next day. I see all the days. This storm kills many dragons.” She waved her talons at the dripping forest around them. “Rips up many many trees.”

  Both dragons were frowning now.

  “Treeharm?” growled the green dragon. “Twigheartlots splinterfall?”

  “But you can save them,” Clearsight pressed on. The visions were crowding into her head; she was running out of time. She couldn’t be diplomatic and patient any longer. “We have to move everyone. All dragons, far far far inland, as far as they can fly, right now. And wait there until the storm is over.” She turned to the metallic dragon, her talons clasped together. “Please save them.”

  The moment teetered, two paths waveringly possible.

  Finally the shimmering dragon nodded. “Move all. We will do.” He said something in their language to the green dragon, who nodded as well.

  The relief hit Clearsight so hard, she nearly had to lie down again. But the dragons beckoned her to follow them, and they all took off, flying cautiously through the storm-tossed treetops.

  Dragons appeared between the leaves as she swept through the forest with her two companions, all of them watching her with startled curiosity. Most of them were dark green and brown with leaf-shaped wings. That’s their name in Dragon, she realized from a new cascade of visions. LeafWings.

  But about a quarter of them were the other tribe, the one Clearsight didn’t have a name for yet, and those glittered like jewels on the branches: gold and blue and purple and orange and every color of the rainbow.

  She saw a tiny lavender dragonet clinging to a branch, and for a moment Clearsight was alarmed to see that she didn’t have any wings. Then she spotted little wingbuds on the dragonet’s back and remembered—or foresaw, or remembered foreseeing—that the glittering tribe grew their wings a few years after hatching. Growing up wingless … that must be so strange.

  Clearsight’s mind flashed to that other vision, the horrible one, where this dragonet had been one of the many bodies left in the hurricane wreckage.

  But instead, tomorrow the little dragon would wake up and chase butterflies in the sunlight, complaining that she wanted blackberries for breakfast.

  I saved her. I did something right.

  The green dragon called out in a booming voice like a bell tolling. Whatever he said, the dragons around them repeated it, passing it along. Clearsight could hear the echoes of other dragon voices rolling through the forest. She felt the drumming wingbeats behind her as both tribes rose into the air and followed them to safety.

  “You save us,” said the shimmering dragon, looping around to fly beside Clearsight. He smiled at her again. “You safe now, too.”

  Maybe I am, she thought. I stopped Darkstalker. I saved Fathom, and the NightWings, and my parents. And now I’ve found a new home, with new dragons to save. I can help them with my visions. I can do everything right this time.

  New futures exploded in her mind. She might marry this kind, funny dragon, whose name would turn out to be Sunstreak. Or she could end up with a dragon she’d meet in three days, while helping to clean up the forest, whose gentle green eyes were nothing like Darkstalker’s. She could move in with an affable, very old LeafWing named Maple, who spoke the old language, or she could find her own tree hollow to live in, or she could explore the new continent first, then come back here to build a home.

  And there would be dragonets, if she wanted them. Clearsight felt a sudden, dizzying rush of love for dragons who weren’t even eggs yet: little Jewel, and whip-smart Tortoiseshell, and cuddly Orange (who names their dragonet Orange? Sunstreak, apparently. They might have to have some conversations about that plan), and Commodore, the king of giggles.

  She would always miss the dragonets she should have had with Darkstalker, but she would love the ones that were coming with all her heart. And nothing bad would ever ever happen to them. They would all live the longest, happiest lives, because she would be here, tracking their paths, keeping them safe.

  She would get it right this time.

  “Your rootplace,” Sunstreak said, gently interrupting her thoughts. “Where?”

  She pointed back out to sea. “Pyrrhia.” She waved her claws at the continent around them. “This? Where?” she asked.

  He smiled again. “Pant
ala,” he said slowly and clearly, and with evident pride.

  “Pantala,” she echoed back.

  The lost continent is real, and it has a name. And it’s my home now.

  Pantala, here I am.

  Two Thousand Years Later …

  Blue was a dragon who liked things the way they were.

  That is, if he didn’t exactly like everything about life as a SilkWing, he had to admit that at least he was safe, and, you know, things were fine, really. It wasn’t perfect, but at least his tribe and the HiveWings coexisted peacefully. The HiveWings protected them from outside threats. And everyone followed the rules and the Hives were beautiful and spotless and there were always enough yams and okra to eat, so wasn’t that the kind of world everyone wanted to live in?

  Blue wasn’t sure how everyone else felt, but he wondered about it all the time. He often tried to imagine himself as other dragons — were they all as content as he was, or was he luckier than most? Did they want the same things he did? What did they worry about; what did they hope for? If they seemed unhappy, why was that?

  His guesses were probably mostly wrong, he was sure, but Blue couldn’t stop thinking about it. It felt like a constant tugging on his imagination.

  What was the fidgety dragonet next to him in math class thinking while she drew hexagons in the margins of her test? What did their rose-pink neighbor worry about while he cleaned the dead bugs from his webs? What about the HiveWings — how were their lives and hopes and lunches and morning aches and nightmares different from his?

  The other lives drew him like a flame, or the scent of nectarines.

  He spent the night before his sister’s Metamorphosis as her, winding himself deep into the dream of being Luna.

  Perhaps her wingbuds had started to flutter open as she fell asleep. Perhaps she lay awake for a while, gazing up at the shrouded stars, thinking of the moment she could leap from the top of the Hive and race the skylarks to the sea. He thought she might also be looking forward to the moonsilk dark she would spin herself and the days of emerald-tinted sleep inside the Cocoon. No one could yell at her or assign her extra work while she was in there, growing her wings.