The Poison Jungle Read online

  “Hey!” Tsunami protested. “I’ve stopped PLENTY of evil! And so has Turtle!”

  Sundew gave him a skeptical look but decided to refrain from asking how that was possible. “Then stop this one!” she said to Tsunami. “The HiveWings are the worst and they deserve to be wiped out!”

  Tsunami’s face closed down suddenly, like a dragon-trap slamming shut.

  “We don’t wipe out entire tribes,” she said firmly. “And we will never help anyone who’d be willing to do that.”

  “But don’t you know what they did?” Sundew cried. She felt like all her hope was slipping away, like chocolate in a dream, melting through her claws before she could eat it.

  At that exact wrong moment, Hazel poked her head in the door.

  “Wow,” she said. “Can’t you all hear that?” She jerked one claw over her shoulder. In the pause that followed, Sundew heard the unmistakable roars of a horribly familiar voice, somewhere on the jungle floor outside.

  “Oh no,” she said, looking at Willow. She didn’t even realize she’d held out one of her talons until Willow took it and squeezed it reassuringly.

  “What is that?” Tsunami asked.

  Sundew sighed. “My mother is here.”

  Willow, Sundew, and Hazel reached Sequoia’s throne room first. The LeafWing queen was sitting on her throne with her eyes closed and her forehead furrowed, as though she had a massive headache. That’s only going to get worse, Sundew thought grimly.

  “Your Majesty —” Willow said.

  “We heard Belladonna outside,” Sundew finished for her. “I don’t know how she guessed I was here! I often leave the village at night or in the early morning to hunt. I didn’t think she’d come looking for me so quickly, or that she’d ever think to check among the SapWings.”

  “Ah,” Queen Sequoia said, opening her eyes. “She didn’t think of it. I summoned her.”

  “SUMMONED her?!” Sundew said, flabbergasted. Nobody summoned Belladonna. Also, how dare the queen! “Why didn’t you ask me? Or at least warn me? I don’t want to see her! I mean — here, now, like this.” She forced herself not to glance at Willow, not to give away too much with a look. She wasn’t ready to tell her mother everything yet. She didn’t want Belladonna to ruin this, the way she definitely would.

  Queen Sequoia looked faintly incredulous. “I don’t want to see her either, but we don’t have time for my peace of mind or your family drama. Wasp is about to throw her entire brute force at us, every claw and tooth and venomous stinger. We need a plan and we need all talons ready … all LeafWings, no matter what our differences have been in the past.”

  “Well, talking to her isn’t going to help,” Sundew grumbled.

  “I don’t exactly have a choice,” Sequoia said. “I need to know what else she’s done and what she’s going to do next. I told her to bring your captives, or else I wouldn’t release my hostage,” the queen added. “That’s you.” She let out a snort of laughter, as if she was picturing Belladonna’s reaction to that threat, and Sundew had to admit to herself that it was kind of hilarious to imagine.

  It was slightly less hilarious when Belladonna swooped in, though, in her towering cloud of rage. She came straight through one of the balconies and slammed her talons on the polished wood floor, scattering raindrops everywhere. She was only wearing a few of her pouches, as though she’d thrown them on in a hurry, but Sundew could hear ominous hissing and clicking coming from a couple of them. It sounded as though Belladonna had packed a few of her nastier insect weapons.

  “What are you doing here?” she roared at Sundew. “You know you’re not allowed to talk to SapWings! And you’re definitely not allowed in their village!”

  Sundew spread her wings and shrugged, hoping no one could hear her pounding heart. “What could I do? They caught me.”

  “CAUGHT you?” Belladonna snarled.

  “And, um, dragged me back here,” Sundew said. “Kicking and fighting the whole way!”

  “These dragons?” Belladonna scoffed disbelievingly. “SapWings did that?”

  “Yes, and then they forced me to tell them everything,” Sundew said. “It was barbaric, really. You should be mad at her.” She pointed at the queen, who rolled her eyes.

  “Something about this feels highly unlikely,” Belladonna growled.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Queen Sequoia said, standing up. “Belladonna, I should arrest you for treason. You did everything I told you not to do. You were seen by HiveWings. You stole their sacred property. And you set one of their Hives on fire!”

  Belladonna lifted her chin and narrowed her eyes. “I see you really did tell them everything,” she said to Sundew.

  “Did you bring her captives?” the queen asked. “The flamesilk and the others?”

  “I brought the others,” Belladonna said, flicking her tail at the window. Outside, Sundew caught a glimpse of Wolfsbane and Byblis hovering on either side of Cricket. No wonder the trees were starting to fill up with curious dragons, gathering to stare at the HiveWing in their midst.

  “But not the flamesilk. You cannot have my flamesilk,” Belladonna added.

  “Even in exchange for your daughter?” Sequoia asked lightly, almost as though she was just curious.

  “My daughter could escape and kill you all anytime she wanted to,” Belladonna said with a stern look at Sundew. “The only reason she hasn’t yet is she’s trying to infuriate me.”

  “That’s right, Mother,” Sundew said with a theatrical yawn. “It’s all about you. You’re the only reason I do anything. I think about you all day long.”

  “Stop it, you two,” the queen ordered. “Belladonna, bring the other captives inside. Hazel, please go retrieve our strange guests.”

  Hazel nodded and hurried out of the room.

  “What if I don’t —” Belladonna started.

  “I don’t care what you don’t want to do! I am not going to let your dragons die,” Queen Sequoia said fiercely. “You may have been apart from us for fifty years, but you’re still my tribe. If we don’t work together now, we don’t stand a chance.” She closed her eyes and muttered, “One … two … three …”

  Belladonna huffed her way over to the window and signaled to Wolfsbane.

  “Are you going to tell us the truth about that mind-control plant?” Sundew asked the queen.

  Sequoia opened her eyes, gave her a strange, clouded look, and hesitated, but only for a moment. “Yes,” she said. “I have to.”

  Sundew wanted to press her further, but just then Hazel came back in with Tsunami and the unfamiliar SilkWing behind her. The SilkWing was very tall, with huge indigo wings dotted here and there with iridescent green. She had an alert, defiant expression on her face, but she didn’t seem worried to be surrounded by so many LeafWings.

  “Oh, thank goodness,” Swordtail’s voice came loudly through the window. “I was wondering how long we’d have to wait out here in the rain! I am completely soggy! Ack!” he said as he landed on the balcony and squelched inside. “I’m so sorry about your floors! Aw, man, look at these footprints; I didn’t even know I had this much mud on me! I mean, how did that even happen, we were flying, right? And yet —”

  “Swordtail?!” the purple SilkWing gasped.

  He looked up, and his jaw dropped, and he stared at her for an astonished moment. “IO!” he finally shouted, bounding across the room toward her. All thoughts of his wetness seemed to fly out of his head, much like the shower of droplets that covered everyone in the room as he threw his wings around the other dragon.

  “Swordtail, by all the trees,” Sundew huffed, shaking herself off. She glanced at the balcony and saw Cricket coming in, carrying Bumblebee. Their eyes met, and Cricket gave her a tentative, worried smile.

  “This is my sister!” Swordtail crowed. “Sundew! Cricket! This is Io! My sister!”

  “How did you get here?” Io cried.

  “That’s the longest story ever. How did you get here?” he asked as Cricket sidled acro
ss the room to Sundew’s side. Sundew noticed that Bumblebee was asleep, and then noticed that she found that disappointing for some completely inexplicable reason.

  “Well, my plan was to hide with some friends in the Yellowjacket Hive Chrysalis,” Io said to Swordtail, “but when I got there, I was spotted by guards, who chased me pretty much all the way to the jungle. I flew inside to escape them and almost immediately got caught by this enormous horrifying insanely sticky plant. It was going to eat me, Swordtail! With, like, its goo or something! How wild is that? But these dragons rescued me, and they said I could lie low here for a while.”

  “That is bonkers,” Swordtail said. “I got eaten, too! By a giant mouth plant!”

  “Another Swordtail,” Sundew whispered to Cricket. “Just what we need.”

  Io seized Swordtail’s front talons. “Have you heard anything about Blue?” she asked. “Did the HiveWings catch him, or did he find the Chrysalis?”

  “Neither!” Swordtail said. “He found her.” He pointed at Cricket.

  Io saw the HiveWing for the first time, and her face underwent an extraordinary transformation from excitement to fury in seconds. She took a step forward, her ears flattened to her head, but Swordtail bundled himself into her path and shook her by the shoulders.

  “No, no, calm down. Cricket’s on our side,” he said. “She saved Blue. Like, more than once. He’s here, in fact, in the other LeafWing village right now.”

  “Oh,” Io said. “But … what about …” She flicked her tail at Cricket, pointed to her head, and rolled her eyes back until almost only the whites were showing.

  “Doesn’t work on her,” he said. “No evil queen in her head, not ever.”

  “Oh. Well … great.” Io waved politely at Cricket. “Nice to meet you. Thanks for saving Blue.”

  “Excuse me,” Tsunami interjected. “Did you say Blue? It’s just, we were told to find a —”

  “Oh my gosh,” Cricket gasped. She gripped Sundew’s arm and pointed at Tsunami. “Oh — oh my gosh. Do you see that? What is happening? Who is that? Why is she amazing and blue and look at her wings and are those webbed talons? Are they for swimming? Is she a water dragon? What is she and where did she come from and OH MY GOSH SHE’S FROM THE DISTANT KINGDOMS, ISN’T SHE?”

  “If you’re going to faint, hand me Bumblebee first so you don’t squash her by accident,” Sundew suggested.

  “I should visit new continents more often,” Tsunami said with a pleased expression. “I wish everyone was that excited to see me!”

  “Wait until you tell Swordtail that you met Luna,” Sundew said.

  Swordtail whirled toward Tsunami, his face incandescent with hope.

  “Yes, she’s all right,” Tsunami said. “She washed ashore on our continent. She’s the reason we’re here — she says you all need help. She asked us to look for Swordtail and Blue to tell them she’s OK.”

  Io put one wing around her brother as he buried his face in his talons and burst into tears. “Aw, Swordtail,” she said. “She’ll find a way back here. You’ll always find your way back to each other.”

  “Sappy,” Tsunami commented, “but that’s basically what Luna said, too.”

  “How does she speak our language?” Cricket breathed. “Is it magic that we understand her? Is she a magic superpowered dragon like Clearsight? Oh my gosh, can you see the future?”

  “I can see a future,” Tsunami answered. “One where it takes me the next three years to answer all your questions.”

  “REALLY?” Cricket gasped.

  “Calm down, Cricket,” Sundew said. “If this dragon could see the future, she wouldn’t have almost been eaten by an anaconda.”

  “True,” Tsunami said. “I also wouldn’t have eaten that thing this morning that looked like a slug and turned out to be a slug.”

  The queen clapped her talons together, and everyone fell silent, turning toward her.

  “Listen. There’s a lot to cover,” she said, “and we don’t have much time, so we must save the introductions, reunions, and questions until after our urgent business. As I understand it, two days ago, Belladonna and the PoisonWings committed an act of war by burning one of the HiveWings’ cities. During the course of that mission, LeafWings were seen, so there will be no doubt in Queen Wasp’s mind that our tribe is still alive, and that we are the ones who started the fire.”

  “Can’t we tell her it was them and not us?” Hazel asked, jabbing one of her claws at Belladonna.

  “Yeah, give that a try,” said Wolfsbane darkly. “I hear she’s quite reasonable.”

  “Sorry, Hazel,” said the queen. “She hates all LeafWings equally, and she’ll be even more furious when she discovers I’m not dead. There’s no chance she’d let half of us just carry on living quietly in the jungle.” She flared her wings and looked over at Wolfsbane and Belladonna. “There’s also no chance I’d let her kill the other half of our tribe, even if she did promise the rest of us our safety. Those are our dragons, too.”

  “We don’t bow to you!” Belladonna snapped. “We don’t have a queen!”

  Sequoia narrowed her eyes and took several long, deep breaths without saying anything. Finally she spat, “But you do have a problem. An incoming army problem, and you won’t be able to fight them with only half the tribe. Even a full LeafWing tribe wasn’t able to stand against them last time … and our numbers are much smaller now.”

  “How do you know we have an incoming army problem?” Belladonna scoffed. “Maybe we scared them! Maybe they’re licking their wounds and wondering if we’re vengeful ghosts.”

  The queen shook her head. “I know Wasp. She strikes back the moment she’s struck. I estimate we have a day, maybe two, while they put out the fire, tend to their wounded, and relocate their eggs and dragonets. Then perhaps a day to gather her horde and travel here — more likely less. If they’re not on the border of the Poison Jungle by tonight, they will be by tomorrow morning.”

  “Tonight!” Willow gasped.

  “That’s ridiculous,” Belladonna growled. “She can’t organize her army or get war-ready that quickly.”

  “Yes, she can,” Cricket said. “She doesn’t need to waste time sending messengers or waiting for dragons to say their good-byes or any of that. She’ll just slither into all their heads and make them come to her, whether they want to or not.”

  “I told you about the mind control,” Queen Sequoia said with a sigh, “but you never quite believed me.” She stood up, lifted the vine off the back of her throne, and held it out for everyone to see. “This is the other reason she won’t waste any time. She needs this plant to keep her hold on her tribe, but Sundew and her friends burned up her supply.”

  “Which was a good idea,” Swordtail objected. “Just so we’re clear. It was very heroic and a blow for justice and freedom and I was definitely involved.”

  “She might have more of the plant,” Cricket said. “We burned one greenhouse, but she could have a backup somewhere, couldn’t she?”

  “Maybe,” said the queen. “But she also knows where to find as much as she needs.” She pointed out the window. “Right here. In the Poison Jungle, where it came from.”

  “It came from here?” Sundew said. “Are you sure? I haven’t been able to sense it anywhere.”

  “That’s because it’s quarantined.” Queen Sequoia frowned at the vine, as though it didn’t deserve to live. “It only grows in one particular corner of the jungle, guarded by a dragon named Hawthorn who is forbidden to let it escape.”

  “Really?” Hazel breathed, her eyes wide. “You’ve never told me about this.”

  “I’ve never heard of it either,” growled Belladonna.

  “It’s not a secret we want anyone to know,” said the queen. “It’s the most dangerous plant in the whole Poison Jungle.” She plucked one of the wilting flowers off the vine and held it before her eyes. The pale white of the petals was starting to fade to brown, but at the heart of the wilting flower was a glistening dark re
d seed, so dark it was almost black.

  “Have any of you,” asked the queen, “heard of the Legend of the Hive?”

  “The what?” Belladonna barked. “Legend? Is it story hour now? I don’t care about an old legend!”

  “This is important,” said Queen Sequoia. She held out one talon to Hazel, who went forward to take it. “Do any of you know it?”

  Sundew glanced around, but all the other dragons in the room were shaking their heads, too.

  The queen sighed again. Sundew kind of wanted to poke her in the snout with her sharpest claw, once for every sigh. What did she have to be so tired about, after fifty years of cowering in the jungle and not fighting the bad guys?

  “It was a story from long before Clearsight’s time,” Queen Sequoia began, guiding Hazel to sit at her feet. The princess looked up at her great-grandmother with wide-eyed awe. Sundew wondered if Bumblebee would look like that when she could understand stories. Not that I care; I certainly won’t be the one telling them!

  “The legend begins with the earliest days of dragons arriving on this continent,” said the queen. “Back when the LeafWing tribe and the BeetleWing tribe were new, and they came to these shores to escape trouble in the Distant Kingdoms.”

  “The what?” Swordtail broke in. “What’s a BeetleWing?”

  “That’s what SilkWings and HiveWings used to be, before Clearsight came along and her ancestors split them into two tribes. The BeetleWings were more like SilkWings, according to the stories, except that some of them had deadly weapons like the ones you now find among the HiveWings … shooting deadly venom from their fangs, in particular, according to the old stories.”

  Tsunami gave a little jump, as if she’d been startled by something.

  “Whoa.” Swordtail looked at his claws as if he was hoping venomous stingers might suddenly pop out of them.

  “What was the trouble that they had to escape from?” Cricket asked.

  “Probably the same trouble there always is,” Io said. “Dragons being cruel to other dragons because they don’t look or act exactly like themselves.”