The Lost Continent (Wings of Fire, Book 11) Page 6

  Io slowed to a stop in front of him, spreading her wings slightly to keep him back. Her gaze nervously darted around at the silent dragons. Blue realized that the other SilkWings in the park were looking around, too, many of them just as bewildered.

  And then the HiveWings lifted their heads, all of them at once, and tilted their chins toward the east.

  Blue felt a scream building in his throat.

  All of their eyes had gone pure white.

  “Find the flamesilk dragonet,” the HiveWings said in unison. “Capture him. And bring him to me.”

  A shriek of terror ripped through the heavy air, but it wasn’t coming from Blue.

  It came from near the pool, from a young SilkWing with pale blue-and-pink wings holding a baby HiveWing in his arms. The tiny dragonet glared up at him with its fathomless eyes.

  “Aphid,” the SilkWing cried. “What’s wrong with you? Aphid, can you hear me?”

  Aphid bared small teeth and twisted his body fiercely, struggling to get free.

  “Let him go,” said an older SilkWing softly, touching the younger one’s shoulder. “They’re not themselves right now.”

  The dragonet snapped at his caretaker’s talons as the SilkWing set him gently on the ground.

  “Where is the flamesilk?” Aphid said in spine-chilling unison with the other HiveWings. “Who can see him?”

  The HiveWings all slowly, eerily, began swiveling their heads, staring in turn at each SilkWing in their line of sight, like snakes studying a herd for the weakest prey.

  “Io?” Blue whispered as softly as he could.

  “I think … run,” she whispered back.

  They bolted for the exit, Blue’s legs screaming in protest.

  Every head snapped toward them. A black-spotted scarlet dragonet, no taller than Blue’s wingbuds, threw herself off a slide at them, hissing. She landed on Io’s back and sank in her claws, but Io dove into a roll and knocked her off.

  Blue felt pinpricks of pain stab into his ankle. He glanced back as he ran and found an orange dragonet with his teeth embedded in Blue’s back leg, too small to do much damage, but hanging on grimly.

  How do I shake him off without hurting him? Blue thought frantically.

  There was no more time to think. Two much larger HiveWings blocked their path, wings spread and claws gleaming.

  “Give up, wingless,” they said. “You cannot escape me.”

  Blue skidded to a stop and the dragonet tumbled off his ankle. There were HiveWings in every direction, all focused on him. The voice was right; there was no —

  Io barreled into the two dragons in front of them. Her wings flapped huge and purple in their faces, driving them back for a moment, clearing a path.

  And there was the sky …

  Blue darted through the opening and ran pell-mell toward the ledge. It was close now. He could see two of the three moons rising. He could see small twisted trees and a distant giraffe and the long yellow grass waving far below.

  Too far below.

  He reached the edge and froze.

  The wall of the Hive plunged down before him, impossibly steep, impossibly terrifying. This level was far below the webs, but still a long way from the ground. Blue couldn’t possibly jump from here; he would break his neck and die.

  If only I had my wings!

  He turned and saw Io fighting off three full-grown HiveWings. Their talons slashed at her side, and one had his tail raised to stab her with the stinger at the end.

  “Io!” Blue cried.

  “Go, Blue!” she shrieked. “Get out of here!”

  “I can’t!” He felt tears finally start to flood his eyes. “I can’t go without you!”

  In a way he meant, “I can’t fly from here; I need your wings,” but in another, deeper way, he really meant that he couldn’t leave her at the mercy of these zombie dragons. He couldn’t keep running, alone, knowing she would be caught and punished, and punished worse if he did escape.

  “You have to!” she shouted. But she must have realized he couldn’t take that leap. As he took an indecisive step back toward her, she kicked a HiveWing in the face and broke free for a moment, just long enough for her to grab a twisted ladder structure and knock it over between her and her attackers. In the breath that gave her, she shot a twist of silk from her wrists up at the ceiling and another that coiled around Blue’s ankle. A heartbeat later, he was hurled toward the roof.

  His claws caught the webs that Io was shooting across the top of the cavern. Instinctively he swung to the next one and then the next. He jumped swiftly, like they’d learned to do in school during emergency drills: What if the web is falling, what if you have to get to a Hive quickly for safety, what if you only have a few strands of silk to escape along.

  But those drills had been about the threat of LeafWings attacking the webs. They were practiced so that little wingless dragonets would be ready to flee to a place where HiveWings could protect them. Never once, despite his overactive imagination, had Blue ever imagined using these skills to run away from HiveWings.

  He shot over the heads of the families on the playground, so fast that they lost track of him for a moment. As they whipped their heads around, buzzing and hissing, he reached the end of Io’s silk, shielded by a tall slide near the walls of the school, and looked back.

  Io was almost at the ledge … and with the HiveWings distracted, looking for him, she might be able to get out and fly away.

  But not with him. She’d only be able to escape without him.

  He gouged a chunk of treestuff out of the ceiling above him and threw it as far and hard as he could. It landed with a scattering thud halfway across the playground, and all the HiveWings spun toward the sound.

  Blue let go of Io’s silk and dropped to the top of the school wall, then over it and down into the small courtyard beyond. Triangles of lime-colored chalk marked out the games young HiveWings played here during recess. For a moment, Blue thought about grabbing one of the pale blue metal practice spears that leaned against the wall, but the truth was that he’d be more likely to hurt himself than anyone else with one of those — and he couldn’t even begin to imagine stabbing another dragon on purpose.

  Where do I go? He glanced around the courtyard, trying to catch his breath. It was surrounded on all sides by the school, except for the wall behind him, which had the neighborhood park and a horde of white-eyed zombie dragons on the other side. They’ll follow the trail of Io’s silk and figure out where I went in a moment.

  Even if I can get out of this school somehow, where would I go after that? I can’t go back to Mother. I’m sure Swordtail will be on Misbehaver’s Way by morning, if he’s still alive. And I have no idea what they’ve done with Luna.

  He pressed his talons to his mouth. He didn’t have time to cry. He didn’t have time to be sucked into imagining how Luna and Swordtail and Burnet and Io must be feeling right now.

  He started across the courtyard toward one of the school doors, although at this time of day he was afraid they’d all be locked.

  “Pssst! Over here!”

  Blue whirled around. A small equipment shed was built along the side of one of the school walls; the door was open a crack, and a pair of golden-yellow talons was reaching out of it, beckoning to him.

  He could hear the HiveWing voices issuing commands on the other side of the wall. There wasn’t time to be worried and indecisive. He bolted toward the shed and let the strange talons yank him inside.

  The door snicked shut behind him, leaving them in pitch-darkness. Blue tripped over a ball under his claws and the other dragon caught him, strong arms holding him up. He felt the brush of wings against his side. This was a SilkWing who had already gone through Metamorphosis, then — but it must have been recently; this dragon was smaller than he was.

  “Who —” he whispered.

  “Shhhhh,” she said. She wrapped her front claws softly around his snout.

  The shed was small and packed with paraphernalia
; there was barely room for Blue and the other dragon to stand. His claws felt clumsily entangled with hers; his neck kept bumping against cool scales, and her tail lightly rested over his. But she was so perfectly still that he couldn’t pull away — or at least, he feared that if he did, he might knock over a wall of armor or something.

  He wondered if she could feel his heart slamming around his chest. Did she work at the school? Cleaning HiveWing classrooms or preparing their snacks? Had she ever seen the HiveWings act like this before, as though their minds had all melded into one? Did she know what was happening, and how dangerous it was to protect him?

  “Don’t move,” she whispered, apple-scented breath in his ear. She let go of his face and in the dark he felt her crouch beside him, reaching for the inner wall. Her wings were like a cloud of butterflies against his scales, touching down and taking off in a thousand little brushes.

  Maybe she was scared, too. Or had she rescued other SilkWings like this before? He tried to imagine being that brave — brave enough to see a dragon in trouble and an entire tribe turned terrifying and still reach out to help.

  Maybe if he imagined it hard enough, he could make himself a little braver, too.

  She took one of his front talons and touched it to the wall, or rather, to a spot where the wall disappeared: an opening, a trapdoor into a tunnel.

  “Stay close to me,” she whispered. “The tunnels can be confusing.”

  “Are you with the Chrysalis?” he whispered back, his nose bumping hers as he turned toward her.

  She touched his mouth again, a “hush” gesture, before ducking into the tunnel. He followed as close as he dared, trying not to step on her tail.

  It was like crawling through an ant farm, following the tunnels in a winding maze through the walls of the school. Here and there chinks of light shone through the cracks and Blue caught glimpses of the buttercup yellow scales of the dragon in the dark. Through the cracks he could also see fragments of the school: even rows of tables, a blackboard covered with neat columns of numbers, an easel divided into narrow lines of blue and black paint.

  At last she stopped and peeked through a small hole just at eye level. After a moment, she unlatched a trapdoor, pushed it open, and climbed out, beckoning for him to follow.

  He had to duck his head as he came through, since the trapdoor opened out of the wall under a long table. Blue’s eyes were dazzled for a moment as he crawled out, although the room they were in was not particularly bright. It had no outer windows and was lit only by a few small lamps.

  The first thing he saw as his eyes adjusted were the books — shelves and shelves of books reaching floor to ceiling, all around the room. He stretched his aching legs and turned in a slow, wondering circle, thinking of the students who were lucky enough to attend a school with so many books. Had anyone read all of them? Did the librarian love handing them out, or did she wish she could keep all of them safely within the circle of her wings?

  “This is our library,” said his rescuer, hopping up onto the table and curling her tail around her back claws. “I know, it’s pretty small. But it’s closed most of the time — we share our librarian with a bigger school uplevel — so it’s a good place to hide when the rest of the tribe goes all creepy-eyes.”

  Blue turned slowly toward her, his heart thumping like mad.

  Her claws were small and sharp, like a leopard’s, and her four wings swooped down from her back in beautiful smooth folds. She had an open, curious face, gold-rimmed spectacles, and warm, dark brown eyes that made him think of owls and tree hollows. In the glow of the lamplight, her scales were gold and tangerine, but speckled here and there with black scales that looked like tiny inkblots.

  Black scales. The unmistakable sign of a dragon descended from Clearsight.

  SilkWings never had black scales.

  His rescuer was a HiveWing.

  Blue inhaled sharply.

  “I — I thought —” he stammered.

  “Wow, you’re beautiful,” she said wonderingly. “I’ve never seen a SilkWing in those shades of blue and purple before. Is that what your parents look like, too?”

  “Um,” he said, looking down at his azure talons. “Not exactly. Or, I mean, I’m not sure. I’ve never met my father. Shouldn’t you —”

  “Really?” she said. She tipped her head at him, catching sparkles from the lamps in her glasses. “Why don’t you know your father? Is that normal for SilkWings? Don’t you live with your parents? Or, I’m sorry, is that a question I’m not supposed to ask? I ask a lot of questions I’m not supposed to ask, apparently, according to most of my teachers — also my parents — actually, according to pretty much every grown-up HiveWing. Too many questions, Cricket! Don’t you know what happens to nosy little HiveWings? They lose those noses! Which is silly; I’ve never seen a dragonet without a nose and I’m sure I can’t be the first one with this many questions. What’s your name? Oh, that’s another question. Sorry. I’m Cricket.”

  “Blue,” he said. “I’m Blue.”

  “You sure are,” she said, and giggled. “Oh dear, I’m sorry, I bet you’ve heard that one before.”

  He took a step closer to her, trying to rearrange his understanding of what kind of dragon she was. A HiveWing who helped SilkWings — that wasn’t a thing. “Um — shouldn’t you —”

  “Be all mind-controlled, too?” she finished for him, and hesitated. “Yes, I should be. Every other HiveWing is. I have no idea why I’m not.” She flicked her wings and settled them again with a little laugh. “I can’t believe I’ve kept that secret for six years and the first dragon I’m telling is a strange SilkWing. Katydid is going to be so mad.”

  “Is that what happened to everyone? Mind control?”

  “You didn’t know about that?” she said. “I mean, I suppose I didn’t either, until I saw it happen the first time. She doesn’t do it very often, but Queen Wasp can control every HiveWing in the tribe — one at a time, or just one Hive, or everyone at once if she wants to.”

  “Whoa,” Blue said, reeling a little.

  “I know,” she said.

  “Except you?” he said.

  “Except me. Isn’t that fascinating?” Her face lit up like all three moons rising at once. “I can’t figure it out! There’s nothing in any of these books about how she does it. Is it genetic? Am I some kind of mutation? Or could it be something we eat? But I eat everything, and, like, a lot of everything; I’m always hungry. It’s so mysterious. There’s seriously nothing about me that’s different from all the other HiveWings.”

  Blue thought there was. He’d never met another HiveWing like her — first of all, willing to talk to a SilkWing as though they could be friends. Second of all, looking at him as if he was a real dragon, not a wingless curiosity or nuisance to be stepped over.

  “That must be such a weird feeling,” he said, “having someone take over your body like that. Making you say things and do things you wouldn’t say or do yourself. Do you think they remember it afterward? Are they in there, feeling trapped, while it’s happening?”

  “They do remember it,” she said. “They remember pretty much everything. My sister, Katydid, says it’s not a trapped feeling, though … it’s more like, suddenly you really want to do exactly what everyone else is doing. There’s no struggle. She says it’s kind of peaceful, having someone else make all the decisions for you for a bit.”

  “Maybe.” Blue thought of the tiny dragonets attacking him and shivered. “Except then later you’d feel like everything you did was still your choice, and you’d probably feel guilty about it, even though it wasn’t really you at all.”

  She looked surprised, and then her gaze drifted up the shelves of books as she thought about what he’d said. “That’s true,” she said after a moment. “I don’t actually know if it ever bothers them. I wonder how I can find out.” She flicked her tail thoughtfully. “You know, without getting my nose cut off. I think ‘do you ever feel bad about what Queen Wasp makes you do?’
is definitely one of those questions I’m not supposed to ask.”

  “Especially if you don’t want anyone to know that the mind control doesn’t work on you,” he said.

  “Right.” Cricket fiddled with the earpiece of her glasses. “Katydid is the only one who knows. I’m worried Queen Wasp might be angry if she found out. So I hide whenever it happens and hope no one notices.”

  “I won’t tell anyone,” Blue promised.

  She gave him a sweet, slightly sad smile, and it occurred to him that he might never have a chance to tell anyone anyway. He felt a sharp prickle of pain under his wristband.

  “So what did you do?” she asked. “Why is the whole Hive looking for you? What kind of criminal enterprise have I gotten myself involved in?”

  She kept smiling, but Blue noticed a shiver tremble across her wings. He guessed there was a part of her that had suddenly realized she was alone with a dragon who might be dangerous. Him, of all dragons, scaring a HiveWing!

  “Nothing!” he said quickly. He looked up at her and put one talon on the table, palm open. “I promise. I’m totally harmless. The most harmless. Thoroughly utterly completely incapable of harm doing.”

  “Oh,” she said. She thought for a second. “That is reassuring. Thoroughly utterly completely reassuring, except for how it’s exactly what a dangerous criminal would say.”

  “Is it really?” he asked, wide-eyed.

  Cricket laughed. “I don’t know. I guess I’ll have to ask all my dangerous criminal friends.”

  He liked the way her laugh made sun-colored scales ripple all down her long neck. His head was starting to feel strangely woozy. “What would the least dangerous dragon in the world say?” he asked.

  “Why would the least dangerous dragon in the world be running away from HiveWing guards?” she countered. “What could he possibly have done that’s so terrible, it made Queen Wasp bust out her mind-control powers?”

  The question hit Blue like an entire Hive collapsing on his chest.

  What did I do? I’ve always been a good dragon. Why is this happening to me?