The Dragonet Prophecy (29 page)

“All right,” Tsunami said. “It’s our best shot. Let’s do it, then, and quickly.” She slid into the lake with Glory.

Clay turned to Peril. “Are you sure?” he asked. “What if Burn takes her anger out on you?”

“How, exactly?” Peril asked. “There’s only one good thing about me, and it’s that no dragon can hurt me. Except you, I guess.” Her wings wavered.

Clay took her talons in his, feeling the heat draw into his scales. “That’s not the only good thing about you, Peril.” He twined his tail around hers and wrapped his wings around her.

She leaned into his shoulder. “You make me hope that’s true,” she said.

“Clay,” Tsunami called. “We have to go.”

Clay pulled away, and Peril stepped back, rubbing her talons where they had touched him. “Be careful, all right?” he said.

She nodded. “When you end the war, come back and visit me.”

Sunny lay down in the mud, letting Clay cover her scales. Her golden glow disappeared under the thick layer of brown. He made sure to submerge her tail and pack mud into the gaps between the spines along her back. When he was done, she didn’t exactly look like a MudWing, but she certainly didn’t look like Sunny anymore.

“I feel all heavy and goopy,” she said. But her weight was barely more than a cow’s as she climbed onto Clay’s back and clutched the spiny ridges. He lifted her easily and slid toward the lake.

The other two were already floating in the water, waiting. It was eerie, seeing only the blurry outline of his friends. With her wings spread, Glory hid most of Tsunami’s shape, although bits of blue wings and tail stuck out here and there. Clay hoped it wouldn’t be enough to spot from the sky.

Sunny wriggled to look over her shoulder at Peril. “Thank you for helping us,” she said.

“After betraying us first,” Tsunami muttered. Glory shoved her head back under the water.

“Good luck,” Peril said.

“You too,” Clay said. “Bye, Peril.”

As Clay slid into the lake, he felt her eyes staring after him. He hoped she would be all right.

They paddled along the lakeshore cautiously, trying not to send out too many ripples. The still, clear water flowed around Clay’s talons, icy cold. He felt the stirring of a current as they reached the mouth of the river, and then they were swimming downstream, following the Diamond Spray River away from the mountains.

Clay felt like his scales were being washed clean of the dust and pain of the arena. His wings stretched free and his friends were close again. Maybe they weren’t safe yet, but at least now he had a chance of protecting them.

The Sky Kingdom was behind them.

Ahead of him were the Mud Kingdom swamps and the Diamond Spray Delta, and his parents, and home, at last.

The dragonets swam and drifted, drifted and swam, all the rest of that day and into the night. When it was fully dark and they hadn’t seen any blasts of fire overhead for some time, they crawled out onto a mud bank to eat and rest.

It turned out hunting was a lot harder in wide-open grassland than it was in an enclosed cave. Clay cursed the guardians several times as two rabbits and a coyote slipped through his talons. But he finally caught and killed some kind of large, warty pig with leathery skin, which he dragged back to share with the others.

Sunny came bounding out to help him lift the carcass. “Tsunami caught some fish, too,” she said. “And I dug up these awesome wild carrots but nobody else wants to eat them.”

“Carrots?” Clay said, wrinkling his snout. “Who would eat those on purpose?”

“I
like
them,” Sunny said. “And these are all earthy and crunchy. I bet you’d like them if you tried them.”

“Nope,” Clay said. “We’re free now. I’m only going to eat what I want to eat from now on.”
As long as it’s slow enough for me to catch it
, he thought ruefully.

It was too dark to see much of the landscape around them other than the twisted shadows of trees here and there, but the light of the moons outlined the jagged mountains looming against the sky. Dark shapes wheeled over the peaks like bats. Burn had not given up searching for them, and probably wouldn’t anytime soon, Tsunami pointed out.

“Why does she want to kill us?” Sunny asked. “We haven’t done anything to her.”

“She doesn’t trust prophecies,” Tsunami said. “Especially ours. It says two of the sisters will die — of those ‘who blister and blaze and burn’ — but it doesn’t say who. She’d only like it if it said really specifically that Burn was going to have a great victory. Right now it’s too vague and cryptic for her. She’d rather get us out of the way and fight the war on her own terms.”

“So when we pick who wins, it definitely won’t be her,” Sunny said with a shiver.

“Maybe Blaze,” Tsunami said, gnawing a piece of meat. “Starflight says she’s dumb, but at least the SandWings like her.”

“I like the sound of Blister,” Glory said. “There’s nothing wrong with a smart queen. Not that I get a say or anything.”

Clay glanced at her, surprised, but Tsunami answered before he could ask what that meant.

“Blister isn’t just smart, though,” Tsunami said. She rested her head on her front talons. “If we can believe the scrolls and everything the guardians told us, she’s cunning and manipulative and doesn’t care what she has to do to become queen. Even if it means destroying the other tribes and the rest of the world along the way.”

The dragonets fell silent. The enormity of the sky above them made Clay feel very small. It seemed crazy to think they’d get to choose the next SandWing queen, let alone end the war. Who would listen to them? Certainly not the rival queens themselves. How could five dragonets make anything happen?

Sunny stared up at the moons hopefully. Clay knew how she felt — he wanted Starflight to suddenly drop out of the stars and land beside them again, too. He hadn’t thought he’d miss his know-it-all friend so much, but it felt wrong not to have him there.

Especially when he probably could have answered some of their questions, like where Glory’s venom had suddenly come from. “Do you think all RainWings can do that?” Clay asked after Tsunami and Sunny fell asleep, curled up together. Glory was lying apart from the others with her tail curled over her nose, staring fixedly at the mountains.

“How should I know?” Glory demanded. “Has anyone ever told me anything about RainWings — except that they’re lazy and, by the way, in case we haven’t mentioned it a thousand times, not part of the prophecy?”

“Are you mad at me?” Clay asked. It seemed like she’d barely spoken to him since their escape.

Glory closed her eyes and didn’t answer. Which seemed kind of like a yes to Clay.

He didn’t let himself sleep for long, although he was exhausted. They all wanted to keep going while it was still dark. When he forced his eyes open, two of the moons were dipping behind the mountains while the third was glowing high in the sky. The river lapped and gurgled softly nearby, and the mud was warm under his scales.

Then he noticed that Glory was gone.

His heart plunged. He thought,
No, I’m not losing anyone else.

Clay shook the others awake. “Where’s Glory?” he whispered.

“I knew it,” Tsunami growled, leaping to her feet. “I knew she was angry about something.”

“About what?” Sunny asked with a bewildered look at the darkness. “Isn’t she glad we escaped?”

“Maybe she didn’t feel welcome,” Tsunami said, “thanks to this clodhopper.” There was a pause, and then she flicked Clay with her tail. “That’s you, dopey.”

“Oh.” Clay had been trying to figure out what a clodhopper was. “What did I do now?”

“Gee, let’s think,” Tsunami said. “Oh, oh, wouldn’t it be amazing if psychotic Peril was our ‘wings of sky.’ Maybe she’s the fifth dragonet we’ve been waiting for our whole lives. Let’s just toss aside Glory, like Morrowseer wanted us to, and replace her with the first SkyWing who comes along.”

“I didn’t want to replace Glory,” Clay said, appalled. “I just — I thought Peril might fit in with us — but
all
of us! I never wanted Glory to leave! Besides, wait.” He clutched his head. “It was Glory’s idea.
She
said Peril might be our SkyWing.”

“Yeah, well, you weren’t supposed to get so excited about it,” Tsunami said.

“What?” Clay sputtered. “That’s not fair. It’s like I’m in trouble for failing some kind of secret test only girl dragons know about.”

“
I
didn’t know about it,” Sunny objected.

“No, you’re in trouble for choosing that vicious SkyWing over Glory,” Tsunami snapped back.

“I never did!” Clay nearly yelled. “I wouldn’t do that. Nobody told me it was one or the other.”

“That’s true,” Sunny interjected. “I never thought anyone meant we’d have Peril instead of Glory. I thought we’d all go fulfill the prophecy together.”

“Of course you did,” Tsunami said to her. “We always know what you’re thinking.”

Sunny’s back spines flared up. “Do we?” she said in a voice as close to a growl as Clay had ever heard from her.

Tsunami had already turned back to Clay. “Glory’s probably on her way to the rain forest right now. I bet she figures we’re better off without her.”

“But that’s not true,” Clay protested. “She’s one of us. The prophecy doesn’t say we can’t care about anyone else. She’s the reason we did all this, why we escaped in the first place — doesn’t she know that?”

“Good grief,” Tsunami said. “Is that supposed to make her feel better? All of this is her fault?”

“No, not like that,” Clay said. “I mean, I’d do it again. I’d do all of it again, and more, and anything, to make sure she was all right. I’d do the same for any of you.” He looked down at the mud squishing through his talons. “We have to follow her. Forget the delta and my family and all that. We’ll go to the rain forest and find her, right now.”

Frogs chirruped in the darkness around them. Sunny looked from Tsunami to Clay and back.

“Told you so,” said Tsunami.

“Yeah, OK,” said Glory’s voice. “You were right. For once.” Clay felt her wing tips brush against his, and her scales slowly shimmered back into sight in the moonlight. “Thanks, Clay. That was sweet.”

“You were there the whole time?” he said, jumping back.

“I was trying to decide if I should leave,” Glory said. “I thought you wanted me to, but Tsunami said you didn’t. I’m sorry, I was just — really mad.”

“Well, now
I’m
really mad,” Clay huffed. “That was a mean trick.”

“It was Tsunami’s idea!” Glory said. “Be mad at her.”

“Oh, thanks,” Tsunami said.

“I’m mad at both of you!” Clay stomped over to the river. “Come on, Sunny, let’s go plan a clever, rotten trick of our own.”

“Clay,” Glory called after him, but she didn’t sound terribly worried.
She knows I’ll always forgive her
, Clay grumbled to himself.
They know I can’t help it.

“We should keep swimming anyway,” he heard Tsunami say to her.

Sunny caught up to him at the edge of the river.

“That
was
mean,” she said. “I don’t think we should trick each other like that.”

“Next time we stop, we should shake mud all over her,” Clay suggested.

Sunny wrinkled her snout at him. “I’m serious! You’ve always said we have to stick together. You always stop the others from fighting. You should tell them that means we have to trust each other, too. And you should tell them to be better listeners. You know, to everyone.”

“I think they know that,” Clay said, adding another layer of mud to her scales. He was also pretty sure Glory and Tsunami would laugh at him if he started lecturing them on how to be better friends.

Sunny sighed and climbed onto his back. They slipped into the water again, and he felt the ripples of Glory and Tsunami doing the same close behind them.

The river seemed to get warmer as they swam south and east, toward the sea. After a while, the sun peeked over the horizon ahead of them, and they saw the glitter of vast ocean in the distance. The land rolled down like unfurling dragon wings, through scrub-covered hills of pale brown and dark green.

Clay forgot to worry about hostile dragons in the sky; he forgot to worry about where Starflight was; he forgot to be angry at Glory. His wings beat to the rhythm of his heart, faster and faster, pushing him through the water. The Mud Kingdom was so close. His own dragons, the world he’d always imagined.