The Poison Jungle Page 4

  “Really? That was a pretty average conversation with Nettle,” Sundew said. She took a breath, searching the greenery with her mind. There — a bush covered in small pale globules. Her power slipped through the roots and stems to grow just one of the branches out until she could reach it. She took one of the sticky white berries and threw it at the panther.

  It snarled and snapped the berry out of the air. A moment later, the panther keeled over, dead.

  “Aw, cool,” Mandrake said with a flick of his wings, which were dark green with thin gold stripes on top and mahogany brown underneath. “But everyone can still eat the panther, right?”

  “Yeah. I use these on prey all the time,” she said, tossing one to him. “Harmless to dragons, deadly to mammals. No idea why.”

  “Really?” Cricket said. Mandrake handed her the berry, and she gave it a fascinated look.

  “EEEEEEEEEEEEE?” Bumblebee asked, leaning out of her sling hopefully.

  “Maybe not this,” Cricket said to her. “Just to be safe.”

  “Here, these are all right to eat,” Sundew said, unearthing a tuber from the dark earth and flinging it to Cricket.

  “Snudooooo,” Bumblebee cooed with a worshipful look.

  “Maybe she thinks ‘snudoo’ means ‘food,’ ” Sundew guessed.

  “Pretty sure she knows it’s you, the hero who provides all the best food,” Cricket said, tucking the root into Bumblebee’s tiny talons. The dragonet wrapped her little arms around the tuber and began gnawing on it with great determination.

  “Excuse me. Should we be running away?” Swordtail asked. “Maybe hiding? Boss? Don’t you think hiding us might be a good idea?”

  “No, you nitwit, we’re trying to get to the village, not hide from it. Getting there was the whole point. Nobody’s going to execute you,” Sundew said impatiently. “Not until I tell them to anyway. They need me.”

  “Because of your power?” Cricket guessed.

  “They need yours, too,” Sundew pointed out to Blue. “So tell them exactly what you want. Don’t let them walk all over you.”

  “Oh, but … all right, but loud dragons are hard to deal with,” he said. “Are all LeafWings that, um … shouty?”

  “Everyone but me,” Mandrake answered with a nervous laugh.

  That’s not true, Sundew thought, touching her jade frog lightly through the pouch. But he’s never met the others.

  “The one nice LeafWing,” Swordtail said. “Sounds like a good dragon to know.”

  “I’m Cricket, this is Bumblebee, that’s Blue, and that’s Swordtail,” Cricket said. She tilted her head at Mandrake. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Mandrake,” he said, smiling his nonthreatening crooked smile at all of them. “Sundew’s fiancé.”

  Cricket whirled to stare at Sundew.

  “Her what?” Swordtail echoed.

  “I thought we agreed not to use that word,” Sundew grumbled at Mandrake.

  “Well, ‘future husband’ sounds weird,” he pointed out.

  “So does ‘fiancé’! Super weird!” She snapped a dying branch off the nearest bush and broke it in her talons over and over until it was a pile of splinters.

  “But — you — this dragon?” Blue said, bewildered. “I just …”

  “Didn’t picture your one true love being someone like this,” Cricket finished for him.

  “Nobody said anything about true love!” Sundew yelped at the same time as Mandrake stammered, “No, no, that’s not at all, no, we are not that, no.”

  Cricket and Blue exchanged puzzled glances, which made Sundew want to poke them quite hard with her claws. Just because they were all melty and silly over each other didn’t mean everyone else in the world got to be that way.

  “But … I thought …” Cricket started, and Sundew suddenly had a horrible flash of memory.

  Oh no.

  She’d said something to the nosy HiveWing a few days ago, about how she understood Swordtail’s obsession with Luna because she had a “one true love,” too.

  A thing she hadn’t even thought about blurting out, because she’d never expected to see Cricket standing here, in the Poison Jungle, right in front of Mandrake, about to spill the biggest secret Sundew was keeping from her tribe.

  “NOPE,” she shouted before Cricket could finish her sentence. “Wrong! Bad! No thinking! Whatever you thought, stuff it back in there!” She bumped Mandrake’s side and did a weird hopping sidestep that was definitely not going to convince anyone of her sanity. “We’re just betrothed. It’s not weird! It’s normal fine!”

  “Oh my goodness,” Blue said, blinking.

  “What is happening right now?” Swordtail asked.

  “All right, I’m sorry,” Cricket said. She took a step back from Sundew, tilting her wings calmingly. “I totally misunderstood.”

  She hadn’t, and she didn’t, and she knew it. Sundew couldn’t read other dragons the way she could read plants, but Cricket was like a wide-open encyclopedia, and at the moment, her pages were turned to “Mystery I Am Biting My Tongue About for Now But Will Definitely Solve Eventually.” Which did not bode well for Sundew’s secret.

  “So. How can you have a fiancé?” Cricket asked. “Aren’t you the same age as I am?”

  “I’m six,” Sundew said, “but ever since we hatched, the plan has always been for us to get married eventually. We both have the strongest leafspeak in the tribe. Which means our dragonets should be even more powerful, and that’s what the tribe needs to defeat the HiveWings and restore the trees.”

  Unless I can do it all myself. Then I could be with a dragon I choose.

  Mandrake was nodding. “Sundew’s leafspeak is much stronger than mine, though,” he said. “The strongest our tribe has seen in centuries.”

  “That’s why Belladonna and Hemlock got together to have me,” Sundew said. “They had the strongest leafspeak in the last generation.”

  “The tribe has been working toward having a dragon like Sundew ever since the Tree Wars,” Mandrake added.

  “Ohhhh,” Cricket said, as though several answers were finally clicking together in her head.

  “When did my parents get back?” Sundew asked Mandrake. She wanted to know AND she also very much wanted to get off the subject of her future marriage.

  “Not long before you,” he said. “Maybe half a day? And only Belladonna and Odollam. Hemlock and the other two were going to ground near the, uh, the target.” He cast a nervous glance at the other dragons.

  “They know,” she said. “We saw the fire. From a distance, I mean.”

  His eyes lit up. “Oh wow! Was it amazing? Belladonna said they torched the whole thing. Flames brushing the clouds! HiveWings screaming with rage!”

  “We weren’t that close,” Sundew said. “We just saw the smoke. I don’t know if the whole Hive burned down.” And I wouldn’t trust Belladonna’s report. Her mother had a tendency to exaggerate, especially when it came to grand plans against Queen Wasp.

  “The whole Hive,” Blue echoed, gazing up into the trees. “And all the webs connected to it.”

  Mandrake had the grace to look a little abashed. “Was that your Hive?” he asked.

  “No,” Swordtail answered. “You guys burned down Bloodworm Hive, and good riddance. Good riddance to all of them.”

  Sundew saw Cricket flinch and Blue gently rest his tail on hers.

  “BLEH!” Bumblebee announced suddenly. She threw the tuber at Swordtail’s head, bonking him on the snout. “NOMOBLEH! GIMMEEGO! EEEEEMEGO!”

  “Hey, ouch, you violent little larva,” Swordtail yelped.

  “Bumblebee, calm down,” Cricket said, trying to wrestle the dragonet back into the sling. But the little HiveWing was too furious to be handled. She yowled and threw out her yellow-and-black-striped wings and flung herself around wailing until she managed to topple out of Cricket’s arms onto the leaf mulch.

  Immediately she popped up and sprinted over to Sundew, as well as she could sprint. It was more of
a waddle, if one were going to be strictly accurate. Bumblebee collapsed on top of Sundew’s foot and batted her woebegone amber eyes up in Sundew’s general direction.

  “Snudoo,” she sniffled. “Snoooooooobleemee.”

  “Whatever a snoobleemee is, it’s not my problem,” Sundew informed her.

  Bumblebee clutched her ankle as Sundew tried to pull away. “Hubblesnubbleooble,” she said piteously. “Eeeeeeeeeeeeeesnorf.”

  “How starving can you be?” Sundew demanded. “We’ll be in the village soon, and there’s plenty of food there.”

  Bumblebee’s pinprick claws dug into Sundew’s scales as she clambered up onto the LeafWing’s shoulder and snuggled into the curve between her wing and neck. “Pennyfoo,” she said confidently.

  Sundew had never held a dragonet, or carried a dragonet, or ever had anything climb on her (apart from unpleasant insects), as far as she could remember. Her mother had outlawed pets in the village, because they wasted resources and distracted dragons from their mission. Dragonets were strictly supervised and kept to their own area, for their safety — and also probably because Belladonna didn’t like them any more than Sundew did.

  All her front-of-brain thoughts told her to peel off the baby HiveWing and give it back to Cricket. She did not need to walk into her tribe with a tiny enemy plastered to her neck, burbling cheerfully. Also, she shouldn’t let Bumblebee get any more attached to her. Also also, what if Queen Wasp did jump into Bumblebee all of a sudden? Then the dragonet would be in the perfect position to strangle Sundew.

  I’m not scared of Wasp! she scolded herself. I can protect myself from a dragonet! And I don’t have to prove anything to anyone in my tribe! So what if they don’t like that I’ve got a HiveWing on my shoulder? I AM going to let her stay there, just to show them I DON’T care!

  “This is stupid. We don’t have to sit here and wait for Wolfsbane,” she said, resettling her wings to keep Bumblebee in place. “I don’t need permission to go into my own village! Come on.” She marched toward the trees.

  “But, Sundew,” Mandrake protested, “it’ll only be a moment. Don’t make them mad!”

  “They’re already mad!” she retorted. “They’re going to be mad no matter what we do! And it’s not like we’re going to spend the night in the jungle. We’re going in. Follow me, and don’t ask questions,” she said, giving Cricket a stern look.

  “Even — I mean, yes, Sundew,” Cricket said.

  “Bring the panther,” Sundew said to Mandrake. She sent a message to the thorn vines, and they relaxed, releasing the big cat’s body enough that Mandrake could haul it over one shoulder and stagger along behind them.

  The outer perimeter of the village was a short walk away. It looked like an upside-down nest, a huge emerald-and-chocolate-colored living dome made of interlocking vines and shrubs that soared up and up between the trees. The barrier enclosed the entire village, protecting the dragons inside from all the ways the jungle might try to sneak in to kill them. Hemlock, Belladonna, and Sundew’s grandmother had started it, with their limited leafspeak, but Sundew had perfected it.

  She tested it as they approached, sending her senses along the roots under her talons and out through the weaving branches to search for any holes or weaknesses. There was a patch where the leaves were thin; after a moment of pressing the edges with her mind, she found an infestation of caterpillars that were nibbling their way through the roof.

  Oh, no you don’t. Nobody eats my work! You will die for this, caterpillars!

  She summoned another vine to coil across the thin spot, blending in with the other leaves. Except this one was full of toxic sap; when the caterpillars tried to eat it, they would be poisoned. Or they would see their friends dying, wise up, and go find a different plant to infest.

  It was very satisfying. If only all Sundew’s problems could be solved that easily.

  “Wow,” Cricket said as the whole barrier came into view, rising far over their heads. “How did you — er — I mean, I really wonder how dragons could build something like this, and how long it would take, and which plants were used, and how it survives, but notice how I am totally not asking, although I am definitely listening, should anyone around here maybe feel like talking about it.”

  “I’ll give you a tour later,” Sundew said, hiding her amusement.

  Of course, Sundew could go in and out of the barrier anywhere she wished, just by communicating with the plants. But for the sake of appearances, when anyone was watching, she went through the main gate. Unless it was super annoying, and that depended on who the guard on duty was.

  A long, elegant dragon sat in coiled stillness by the entrance, as poised as a carnivorous plant, waiting for her prey to pass by. Sundew squinted at her and saw streaks of pinkish red along her horns and the veins of her summer-green wings. She exhaled with relief. They were in luck; it was Cobra Lily, one of Sundew’s favorite dragons.

  Cobra Lily was the opposite of Nettle. She was never annoying or judgmental, and she rarely shouted. When Cobra Lily got angry, it was a deep, cold, icy anger that she held on to for the rest of her life, and only friends like Sundew knew it was there. Sundew had once seen her slip a deadly manchineel fruit into another dragon’s lunch as payback for insulting her sister two years earlier. He’d survived, but only barely.

  Cobra Lily was kind of awesome.

  “Hello, beautiful,” Cobra Lily said languidly as they came up. “You’ve got a little monster on your neck.”

  “You have no idea,” Sundew agreed. “How’s the village? Did I miss anything?”

  “Boring without you.” Cobra Lily leaned down to nudge Sundew with her snout. “You were gone forever. I nearly murdered Nettle just to make something interesting happen.”

  “I can’t imagine anyone objecting to that. Anyway, I know, but wait till you see what I brought back.” Sundew moved Bumblebee to her back so she could sort through her pouches.

  “Spies and slugs, by the look of it,” Cobra Lily guessed, eyeing the other dragons over Sundew’s shoulder.

  “The Book of Clearsight,” Sundew said as she hauled it out and put it in Cobra Lily’s talons. “And the secret of Wasp’s mind control. We think.” She brought out the length of vine she’d cut off the plant in Wasp’s greenhouse. “Any idea what this is?”

  Cobra Lily studied it for a moment before turning her eyes back to the book. “Never seen it before,” she said.

  That was disappointing. Cobra Lily was always top of the class; Sundew had hoped she’d be able to solve the mystery quickly. But there were other LeafWings Sundew could ask.

  Thump went the little jade frog over her heart as she tucked the vine away again.

  “Belladonna said this was useless.” Cobra Lily flipped through the pages of the Book, scanning Clearsight’s prophecies.

  “It’s not! No way!” Cricket burst out. “Because now we know the truth! Did she tell you what’s in there? And how it changes everything?”

  Cobra Lily leveled her cool gaze on Cricket. “Why is your prisoner talking to me?” she asked Sundew.

  “She’s not my prisoner; she’s … I don’t know, an ally, I guess. And she’s right. I mean, we nearly got killed stealing it, so it better not be useless! I can’t believe Belladonna said that.” Sundew growled softly. Was Belladonna trying to downplay Sundew’s successful mission?

  Cobra Lily handed back the book. “Cool. Good luck explaining them to everyone else.”

  A moment later they were inside, or at least, into the detoxification chamber. Cricket looked around in puzzlement at the tightly woven branches that surrounded them. The space where they stood was barely big enough to fit four dragons (and one tiny dragonet) squeezed in together. It was meant for three, but of course Swordtail squashed himself in as well. Mandrake, on the other talon, was politely waiting outside for his turn.

  “Get off my tail,” Sundew said, shoving Swordtail away. “Bumblebee, close your eyes.” The dragonet tilted her head quizzically, and Sundew r
eached up to cover the little HiveWing’s face with one of her talons.

  “Why are we all — AAAAAAAABGLBGLBE!” Blue shrieked as a cascade of water poured over them. Cricket threw her wings over her head, and Swordtail blundered back onto Sundew’s tail, so she had to push him off again.

  As quickly as it had come, the water was gone, sluicing away through a channel that led outside the barrier.

  “That’s to wash away any seeds that might have been trying to sneak in,” Sundew explained. She pointed at the clusters of thorn balls and tiny winged seed pods that were spinning away on the surface of the dirty water. “The Poison Jungle is always trying to get through, and it has many tricks. But so do we! Bet you feel stupid now, seeds!” she shouted at them.

  “The … seeds feel stupid?” Blue asked, blinking.

  “Well, they SHOULD,” Sundew said. “I’ve told them a MILLION times to stay out of here, but it’s the one order they can’t seem to get through their thick heads. Pods? Bark? Argh, there isn’t a dragonspeak word for it.”

  “Maybe the instinct to spread is too strong,” Cricket said thoughtfully. “It’s survival to them, sticking to whatever will carry them the farthest, trying to plant themselves wherever they can. I mean, is it disobedience if they can’t help it? How would a plant teach its seeds to fall off our feet before we enter the village? That would be so amazing if it could, though. Some kind of warning system, maybe? But it would have to know that going inside the village would kill it, somehow …”

  She trailed off as Sundew pushed open the chamber door and they all stepped through into the murky green light under the dome.

  This was the village. Sundew’s home. The safest space in the Poison Jungle: a circle cleared of all the deadliest plants so that LeafWing dragonets had half a chance of surviving to adulthood. Instead of menacing strangler vines, dragon-traps, or deadly sandbox trees looming overhead, there was open air all the way to the roof of the dome, as high above them as the tree canopy. It was high enough for dragons to fly — and for dragonets to learn to fly — without the danger of anything snaring their wings or dripping poison on their scales.