The Poison Jungle Page 7

  Met with their leader — there was only one dragon that could be.

  Belladonna. Sundew’s mother. Sundew wondered which “hunting expedition” or “council meeting” had been the lie Belladonna had tossed her way to hide her secret meeting with the LeafWing queen. The queen who was still alive, even though Sundew and the other dragonets had been taught that she died during the Tree Wars.

  Willow was still talking. “I mean, can you imagine how dumb it would be to go poke one of the Hives? As long as they think we’re extinct, we’re safe. But if we let them know we’re still out here?” She shuddered.

  “Excuse me,” Sundew said, bristling. “So your suggestion is we let them win? We let them steal our continent and revel in our extermination? We just accept living here?” She waved her wings at the Venus dragon-traps overhead, which had been slowly leaning down toward them, closer and closer as the conversation went on. Sundew dug a rock out of the mud and threw it at the nearest plant. It snapped shut and drew back, and the others around it bristled.

  “It’s not that bad here,” Willow said. “Right? I mean … I think it’s better with, um … interesting company.” She gave Sundew that crinkle-sparkle smile face that made all the words in Sundew’s head run around bumping into one another like disoriented moths.

  Do NOT smile back at her, Sundew. She is fundamentally wrong about your entire life purpose! WHAT IS YOUR FACE DOING, SUNDEW?

  “We deserve to be out there,” Sundew said, trying to focus on everything she’d been taught. Belladonna had trained her to summon her anger at a moment’s notice; that was a safe place to go when Sundew’s other emotions got too complicated. “Wasp could live for another hundred years, or she could be replaced by someone equally bad. We can’t just sit around and wait for history to sort itself out. We have to fight! We have to make things better with our own claws!”

  Willow blinked at the fist Sundew was making, and then she reached out and took it between her own front talons. She smoothed out the tension and laid one palm over Sundew’s, her scales warm and light as a fern frond. Sundew could feel Willow’s heartbeat, going only about half as fast as Sundew’s.

  “Shhhh,” Willow said softly. “You don’t have to do anything right this second. Just be here. Breathe.”

  No one had ever told Sundew to “breathe” before. Her first instinct was to scoff that she already WAS breathing and she did it rather often and was quite good at it, thanks very much. But there was something in Willow’s face, in her eyes as she gazed down at Sundew’s talons, that made her impossible to scoff at.

  They stood like that for a moment. One of Willow’s graceful wings was a breath away from brushing Sundew’s, like a butterfly hovering just over a leaf. Sundew wondered if the butterfly was as aware of it as the leaf was. She wasn’t sure if her heartbeat was slowing down or Willow’s was speeding up, but at some point, she realized they had synced.

  “Don’t you think thump is a terrible word?” Willow said thoughtfully. “I mean, that’s what most dragons would say our hearts are doing, but it doesn’t feel thumpy to me. Pulse doesn’t seem right either. Beat sounds too violent. It’s not quite tapping. There should be a better word for this.”

  “For two heartbeats finding each other?” Sundew said, as quietly as she could, trying not to break the spell.

  Willow gave her a shy sideways smile. “I hope so.”

  Sundew didn’t know what to say. Belladonna would have told her to push the other LeafWing into the pond and yell at her about the Tree Wars and how important it was to go kill Wasp. She would have pointed out that Sundew had a duty to marry Mandrake and raise superpowered danger-babies to destroy their enemies. Belladonna would have said there was nothing more important than their vengeance, and that Willow was not worth talking to.

  But Belladonna was a liar, and Willow was the only dragon who’d ever given Sundew this all-over-inside-sparkles feeling.

  She let her wing brush Willow’s lightly. “Guess what, I’ve made a decision.”

  “You have?”

  “Yes.” Sundew cleared her throat and made a portentous face. “I have decided to spare that odious frog’s life in your honor.”

  “Oh!” Willow laughed. “That’s too bad. I had just decided to camp out by this pond until it emerges so I could murder it for you.”

  “What?!” Sundew couldn’t stop herself from laughing, too. “No one has ever offered to murder a frog for me before!”

  “Well, no one has ever offered to not murder a frog for me before,” Willow said. “It’s very magnanimous of you.”

  “That’s me,” said Sundew. “Ever so magnaganimous.”

  “Can you come live with us?” Willow burst out. “Come be a LeafWing and meet Queen Sequoia and forget about fighting and see me every day?”

  That was the first time she’d asked, but it wasn’t the last. Nearly every time they met, Willow offered again to bring Sundew into the other village, to give her a home and teach her how to be a peace-loving SapWing (a name Willow never used and quite disliked).

  But every time, Sundew had had to say no.

  No. I have a purpose.

  No, my tribe needs me. Your tribe needs me to do this, too, even if none of you realize it.

  No. I have to save the world first.

  “I’m sorry,” she’d said that first time. “I can’t.”

  Willow had looked away, wings sliding slowly down, but Sundew had caught her talons before she could pull away entirely.

  “But can I see you again?” she’d asked. “Tomorrow night? And the night after that? Maybe also the one after that and the one after that and the one after that? I can sneak out; it’s easy.”

  Willow had laughed again, and the next night she’d given Sundew the jade frog. Our signal, she’d said. So I know if you’re there. Leave it on the rock, and I’ll come find you.

  In the ensuing four years, Sundew had convinced her mother that even the youngest dragonets needed to know about the SapWings, instead of only learning about them when they turned four. But Belladonna never took her to her meetings with Queen Sequoia, nor did she ever tell the council what they talked about. She’d forbidden Sundew to go to their village or try talking to any of them. She seemed to find Sundew’s interest in them suspicious, and she hated hearing about them in any case.

  So Sundew kept Willow a secret. Her secret.

  This was the longest they’d gone without seeing each other. She’d told Willow it might be a while, but she’d been gone even longer than she expected. And she hadn’t told Willow why, or where she was going.

  A light rain started to fall, misting through the leaves above Sundew. She wasn’t sure how much time had passed. Only one of the moons was visible through the canopy now.

  Will she still come? What if she’s given up watching for the frog?

  But at last the shadows around the pond rippled and one glided up to the boulder and then down to the moonlight in front of her, becoming the silhouette of the only dragon Sundew ever looked forward to seeing.

  Sundew leaped out of the tree and bounded over the grass into Willow’s wings.

  “You were gone forever!” Willow said, clasping Sundew’s front talons in hers. “I have so much to tell you! I’ve been waiting and waiting and checking the boulder every night and it was dreadful and I didn’t like it and let’s never do that again! I was half afraid Belladonna must have found out about us. I started to wonder whether I needed to mount a daring rescue operation — blast through the barrier! Knock the other PoisonWings aside! Tear down your prison and sweep you away to safety! Wouldn’t that have been so heroic?”

  Sundew twined her tail around Willow’s. “The most heroic, romantic thing ever, but totally unnecessary. You know Belladonna couldn’t keep me locked up, even if she wanted to.”

  She reached her leafspeak into the earth, sending her power along the roots until she found what she wanted, and summoned a spray of violets from the ground. They sprang up, small and beautiful a
nd purple, right beside Willow’s claws.

  “Show-off,” Willow said affectionately. This particular clearing was probably the most colorful spot in the jungle, thanks to the clusters of flowers scattered all over it, which Sundew had grown for Willow in the last three years. “So what have you really been so busy with? I had this awful nightmare that you left the Poison Jungle and ran into Wasp. It felt so real, I almost told Queen Sequoia about it, but she’s always reassuring us that Belladonna wouldn’t endanger the rest of us by … that she’d at least tell … Sundew?” she said, her voice faltering at the expression on Sundew’s face. “What is it?” She let go of Sundew’s talons and covered her mouth. “Oh no …”

  “I did leave the jungle,” Sundew said. “Don’t freak out.”

  “But you weren’t seen,” Willow said. “Nobody saw you, because you were careful, right?”

  “We were careful,” Sundew said slowly. “I mean … we were careful …”

  “Who’s we?” Willow asked. “What does that mean?”

  “Belladonna, Hemlock, and I made it to Wasp Hive without any trouble,” Sundew said. “But we couldn’t get inside at first. And then we ran into these … other dragons.”

  “Oh no, oh no,” Willow whispered.

  “But it was all right!” Sundew said quickly. “Two of them were SilkWings, and the other is a HiveWing who can’t be mind-controlled and she’s on our side. Now, I mean. We kind of dragged her onto our side, but I think she was heading that way anyhow. Technically she’s really on this one particular SilkWing’s side, but he might be with us, unless Belladonna has ruined it, but the point is, they were fine and wanted to help. Well, agreed to help. In a couldn’t-say-no but basically agreeable-ish sort of way.”

  “I’m going to have a heart attack,” Willow said. “So you met some allies and came straight home? Safely? Without being seen?”

  “Well … no,” Sundew admitted. “We … kind of stole the Book of Clearsight.”

  “WHAT?” Willow shrieked, sending an explosion of sleeping birds catapulting into the night sky.

  “Shhhhhhhhhhhhhh,” Sundew said, reaching to cover Willow’s snout. “We had to have it! We needed to take away Wasp’s secret knowledge of the future. Or at least, we needed to know what it says, too. Right? Isn’t that one of Sequoia’s eternal arguments, that we can’t do anything against Wasp because she has this all-knowing book to warn her of our every move?”

  “Yes, but that’s insane,” Willow said. “That book must have been the most heavily guarded object in the most heavily guarded Hive in Pantala.”

  “It was,” Sundew said. “But not anymore! Ha ha! Now it is MINE!”

  “No way,” Willow said. “You really did it? Did you read it? Are you now the most all-knowing dragon in all the land? The future spread out before you! All the secrets of what’s to come!”

  “So,” said Sundew, “no.”

  “No?”

  “Turns out, the whole Book mystique was an enormous lie. Clearsight did leave a few prophecies, but they petered out over a thousand years ago. Nothing Wasp told us was true.”

  Willow stared at her in the moonlight. “Wow,” she said softly. “Didn’t you once guess that? A couple years ago? You said, ‘What if none of it is real? What if there never was a Clearsight and everything we’ve been told about the Book was made up by a sinister HiveWing somewhere along the way?’ ”

  “Did I say that?” Sundew flicked her wings, pleased with herself. “Well, I was half right. It looks like Clearsight was real, but so were the lies and the sinister HiveWings all over the last thousand years.”

  Willow took a deep breath. “OK,” she said. “So that’s amazing. You snuck into the Hive, into the Temple, stole the Book, got back out again, and came straight home without being seen. Right?”

  “Um,” said Sundew. “No.”

  “No?! Sundew!”

  “Not exactly. I mean … we did sneak into the Hive without being seen. And the Temple. The actual stealing and running away went … less well.”

  “By all the trees,” Willow said. “You were seen? Sundew, tell me you weren’t seen!” Her wings were shaking. Sundew grabbed her front talons again.

  “It’s all right! I’m here, aren’t I? I made it back safely. I even brought our new allies with us. One of them can shoot fire! A fire-blasting dragon and the Book of Clearsight — that’s a pretty successful mission, don’t you think?”

  “But HiveWings saw you. So they know we’re not extinct. Oh, maybe no one will believe them!” Willow said. “It’ll be like seeing ghosts or scavengers — a dramatic story to tell at parties, but no one takes it seriously. Right? Maybe the others will think they were hallucinating. Having wild visions! Imagination run amok! And everyone will laugh at them and say, ‘Ha ha, LeafWings, they’re all dead! You goof! We scoff at your hilarious story and definitely are not even remotely considering going out with an army to hunt down and kill the rest of the tribe. Because there aren’t any left! LeafWings, how amusing.’ This could happen. That’s probably how it will be. I mean, how many HiveWings saw you, after all? One? Two?”

  Sundew scrunched up her face.

  “Three?” Willow said nervously.

  “More like … all of them?” Sundew admitted.

  “ALL OF THEM?”

  “You have got to stop shouting,” Sundew said. “Your village isn’t that far away. And I’m not up to dealing with any dragons who aren’t you tonight.”

  “You can’t possibly mean all of them,” Willow said.

  “Well,” Sundew said, “in the sense that Queen Wasp possessed the entire population of Wasp Hive, summoned them to the Temple, had them all attack us, and then watched me escape, I think technically, yes, all of them is pretty accurate. Oh wait! Actually, only all of the ones in Wasp Hive. Not the other Hives. So that’s only one out of nine Hives, like, so, really only one-ninth of the HiveWing population. See? You were right. Not all of them, after all.”

  “All the dragons in Wasp Hive,” Willow said faintly, “with the queen in their heads, attacked you and saw you and watched you escape with the Book of Clearsight.”

  “Yes,” Sundew said. “Now you’ve got it. It was a very impressive escape, if I do say so myself.”

  “So,” Willow said, “basically we’re all going to die.”

  “No!” Sundew cried. She reached up and brushed her claws gently along Willow’s face. “No, we’re not, Willow. We’re going to win this time.”

  “How can you possibly think that? Even if we could win eventually, war means dead LeafWings, especially war against Queen Wasp. And we can’t win, because nothing is different from last time except there are fewer LeafWings to start with!”

  “That’s not true,” Sundew said. “Things are completely different.” She started counting off on her talons. “We have a flamesilk. We have the Book of Clearsight and know the truth about it. Our half of the tribe has been preparing for war for fifty years and have lots of new weapons. The SilkWings are restless and oppressed and unhappy — I mean, not all of them, I think, but enough to have formed an underground anti-HiveWing movement, so they won’t just blindly go along with Wasp this time. Also, the HiveWings will be too scared to come fight us in the Poison Jungle. And we know the secret of Queen Wasp’s mind control.” She let go of Willow and tugged the vine out of its pouch. “It’s a plant. This plant. She must eat it or something, and she injects it into HiveWing eggs to put the dragons inside under her power.”

  She held it out, and Willow sniffed the leaves, then ran one claw lightly along the prickled stem.

  “I don’t know it,” she said. “If it grew here, surely you’d be able to sense it, wouldn’t you?”

  “I tried.” Sundew had been trying, from the moment they stepped into the jungle. She’d been sending her leafspeak out into the jungle, tracing along root pathways and tangles of underground mycelia as far as she could go. “A couple of the oldest trees did that ‘hmm’ thing they do when something seems familia
r, and once I thought I heard a relative of this plant echo back from somewhere far away. But I lost it, and none of the trees could tell me where it might be.”

  “There are dragons we could ask in my village,” Willow said. She hesitated, then touched her forehead to Sundew’s for the length of five heartbeats. “I think you need to come to my village, Sundew. I think it’s time.”

  Time to meet the SapWings. To see how the other tribe lives. What it’s like to be a village of cowardly dragons instead of warriors for justice.

  Time to finally see Willow’s home.

  “I can’t.” Sundew let go and stepped back. “I’d be betraying my tribe. Belladonna would be furious … and wouldn’t you get in trouble?”

  “Not as much as you will,” Willow said. “I mean, a lot of dragons will be mad. But we have to tell Queen Sequoia about all this, don’t you see? She needs to know about the Book, and the flamesilk …”

  Sundew started to interrupt, then stopped herself, but Willow knew her too well to miss that.

  “What? Is there something else?” she asked.

  “Maybe … one more thing,” Sundew said. “She’ll probably want to know about the Hive we burned down.”

  Willow opened her mouth, then closed it again, then opened it again, like a really adorable but totally flabbergasted dragon-trap in the rain.

  “Sorry, I didn’t get to that part,” Sundew said. “Hemlock took a few other dragons to burn down one of the Hives. I only saw it from a distance, but there was a lot of smoke, so I think it must have worked.”

  She decided not to mention burning Wasp’s greenhouse as well. She’d let that come up later, at a more natural and hopefully less tense point in the conversation.

  “Then we don’t have any time,” Willow said, taking a step back toward her village. “I thought we’d have a moment to plan, but that’s an act of war, Sundew. Wasp is probably on her way here right now with the whole brainwashed HiveWing army behind her.”

  “Doubtful,” Sundew scoffed. “And I still can’t —”

  “I agree with Willow,” interjected a new voice. An enormous, long-necked LeafWing emerged from the trees behind Willow, ducking her head to avoid the lower branches and dangling dragon-traps. Her tail was scarred with claw marks and dragged in the pond as she came toward them. Sundew saw, with horrified fascination, that she was missing an ear and half of one of her horns. This was a dragon who had been in battle and fought hard. This was also a dragon who had been alive for a very long time — a dragon who could still remember the ancient forests before the Tree Wars.