The Dragonet Prophecy (31 page)

He twisted to look around the village and finally met a pair of eyes — the only ones looking his way. They were a shade of pale amber, and they belonged to a small MudWing with a healing mud patch stuck across his nose. His horns were not yet full grown, but he wasn’t a very young dragonet either. He was staring at Clay curiously, boldly. Clay smiled and waved a wing at him.

The little MudWing blinked and darted back into his mound.

The path led under one of the trees heavy with snakes and away from the center of the village, toward an area of the swamp where there were fewer, more isolated mounds. After a short walk, the path ended at a lake filled with swaying reeds. Next to the lake was a lopsided mound with a crumbling hole toward the top, as if a dragon had punched through the mud in a rage at some point.

Clay found himself holding his breath as they got closer. Was this where he should have hatched? It was much warmer and wetter than the cold, bare cave under the mountain. But there was a heavy smell of rotting vegetation and no sign of life from the last mound. They paused outside of it, glancing at the stagnant reed-choked water in the lake.

“This must be what that dragon called a sleephouse,” Glory said. “So I guess your mother’s in there?”

“Cattail,” Clay said quietly, trying out the word.

They sat on the path for a moment. “Aren’t you going to go in?” Glory asked.

Clay didn’t really love the idea of sticking his head into a dark mud tower full of strange dragons. “I’m sure someone will come out soon —” he started, and just then a wide, flat snout poked out of the doorway. A pair of yellow eyes glared at him.

“It’s a pair of dragonets,” growled the MudWing. “Chattering like crows while we’re trying to sleep.”

“Well, get rid of them!” roared a voice from inside the mound.

“I’m sorry,” Clay stammered. “We didn’t mean to be loud. We’re looking for Cattail.” He hoped fervently that this wasn’t his father.

The dragon squinted at him, then withdrew into the mound. They heard grumbling and grunts and wings flapping, as if the MudWings inside were scrunching around to let one of them climb over the others.

At last a thin brown dragon scrambled out into the open. She shook out her wings, which had dappled patterns of paler brown scales, and frowned down at Clay and Glory.

“Yes?” she said. “What do you want?”

Clay’s talons felt rooted to the ground. He couldn’t believe it. After all of his imagining and wondering and hoping, here he was — finally face-to-face with his own mother.

Clay could only open and close his mouth silently. Glory rolled her eyes and jumped in.

“Are you Cattail?” she asked. “Asha’s sister?”

The dappled dragon gave a little hiss and ducked her head. “Yes,” she said. “Who are you?”

Glory poked Clay hard with one of her talons. He blurted, “I’m Clay. I think I’m your son.”

Cattail stared at him. Her eyes were brown like his, but with a ring of yellow around the black slit of a pupil. He waited, his heart pounding. He’d imagined this moment a thousand times. In
The Missing Princess
, this was when the joy and feasting began.

“So?” Cattail said.

Clay guessed she hadn’t heard him right. “I think you’re my mother,” he said.

“Those would seem connected,” said Cattail. “And?”

“You don’t understand,” Glory said. “This is the dragonet you lost six years ago.”

Cattail’s claws slowly stirred the mud underneath her. “I haven’t lost any dragonets.” She didn’t look confused or worried or pleased. Mostly she looked like she was putting up with this conversation until they let her go back to sleep.

Clay had no idea what to say.

“Listen,” Glory said. “Maybe we got this wrong. Clay hatched from a blood-red egg that was taken from somewhere around here six years ago by a dragon named Asha. He’s come back looking for —”

“Oh, that egg,” Cattail said with a yawn. “Asha got all excited about that. Don’t know why; the village has a red egg every few years or so. But I didn’t lose it.”

“What happened to it?” Clay managed to ask.

“We sold it to the Talons of Peace,” Cattail said. She gave them a look that was suddenly sharp and furtive. “Does this mean they want the cows back? Because they can’t have them. I know we were supposed to breed them, but we ate them, so too bad.”

“You
sold
me?” Clay cried. He felt like long claws were slashing through his chest.

“Why not?” Cattail asked. “There were six other eggs in the hatching. They didn’t need you.” She pulled a stray duck feather out from between her talons. “Asha didn’t tell you any of this?”

“Asha’s dead,” Glory said. “She died trying to keep Clay’s egg safe.”

“Dead?” Now Cattail finally looked upset. “I
told
her not to leave us! Our bigwings will be furious.” She flicked her tongue out and in with a growl. “I guess it serves her right, choosing the Talons over us.”

“She was trying to help fulfill the prophecy,” Glory snapped. “At least the Talons care about something besides themselves.” Clay would have laughed if he hadn’t felt so crushed. That was the nicest thing Glory had ever said about the Talons of Peace.

“That’s Asha, all right,” Cattail said. “She was always softhearted and mushy about crazy things. She loved mooning around little dragonets, telling the story of that prophecy. She left a lot of blithering, obsessed dreamy-eyed dragons behind in this village, let me tell you; they still won’t shut up about destiny and peace and all that.”

Dragons did not cry easily, and Clay had never shed tears in his whole life, no matter how much Kestrel had hurt him with words or claws. But now, suddenly, he had a glimpse of what their life could have been like if Asha had lived. She would have been one more dragon under the mountain to take care of them — but this one kind and affectionate, idealistic and hopeful. A guardian who would have given them faith in the prophecy and themselves. A counterbalance for Kestrel’s harshness.

He had never spent much time thinking about Asha, the dragon who brought in his egg, but now his chest ached with sadness that she was dead and he had never known her. He realized that he was dangerously close to tears, and he could just imagine how his mother would react to that.

“What about my father?” Clay asked, steeling his voice. “Didn’t he try to stop you from selling me?”

Cattail threw her head back and laughed, a high croaking sound like a thousand bullfrogs yelling at once. “You really don’t know anything about MudWings, do you?” she said when she could catch her breath again. “I don’t even know who your father was. And he certainly doesn’t care. We have breeding night once a month and then everyone goes back to their own sleephouses. No, dear, there’s no father here for you.”

“And no mother either, apparently,” Glory said coldly.

But Cattail just nodded, untroubled. “That’s right,” she said. “I wish you luck, but there’s no room in our troop for clingy little dragonets.”

Her voice was matter-of-fact. Clay could see that she wasn’t trying to be mean, but it still hurt worse than anything he’d ever felt — more than Kestrel’s taunts and attacks, more than the IceWing’s claws in his back, more than seeing Sunny in a cage or knowing Peril had betrayed them. He felt all his dreams thudding like stones inside his stomach.

He’d always believed there was someone out in the world waiting for him. He’d imagined finding his mother and father and how it would be just like the story. None of the scrolls they’d studied had talked about MudWing families, but he knew NightWings and SeaWings had mothers and fathers, so he’d always assumed all the dragon tribes were the same way.

It had never occurred to him that no one would even know who his father was. And he certainly hadn’t expected his own mother to care so little, or to send him away as soon as she met him.

Another thing Asha could have warned me about
, he thought bitterly. If she’d lived, she could have told him how things were in the Mud Kingdom and saved him a lot of useless dreaming.

“Come on, Clay,” Glory said, tugging on his wing. She steered him back toward the mud village. Clay’s scales felt as heavy as boulders. His tail dragged slowly behind him.

“You tell the Talons,” Cattail called after them, “that we made a deal! No matter what happened, they can’t have those cows back!”

“Do you want to try talking to anyone else?” Glory asked as they reached the village. “Maybe she’s wrong, and your father would want to know you.”

Clay shook his head. “There’s no point,” he said. “I don’t have a place here.”

Suddenly Glory stopped with a hiss. She pointed to the clearing ahead and darted under the nearest low-hanging vines. Clay hurried after her.

A burly SandWing was stamping his feet in the center of the mud village, trying to shake off the wet mud that clung to his claws. He was missing an ear and a couple of teeth, and he grimaced at the two MudWings in front of him.

“What?” he bellowed. “Speak up!”

One of the MudWings raised his voice. “I said we haven’t seen anyone like that.”

“You sure?” said the SandWing. “There’ll be four of them. A MudWing, a RainWing, a SeaWing, and a kind of SandWing-looking thing.”

The MudWing wrinkled his snout. “No,” he said. “I assure you we would have noticed a SeaWing, a RainWing, or a … ‘SandWing-looking thing’ strolling through our sleephouses.”

The SandWing snorted, as if he doubted that was true. “Well,” he said, “if you do spot them, let Queen Burn know right away.”

Both of the MudWings bowed their heads politely. “Of course.”

Glory and Clay ducked farther under the tree as the SandWing took to the sky. “We’ve got to get out of here,” Glory whispered.

“I forgot the MudWings are on Burn’s side,” said Clay. “We’re lucky Cattail didn’t know Burn was looking for us. She would have turned me over in a heartbeat.” He didn’t feel lucky, though. He felt perfectly miserable.

“Let’s go around the village,” Glory said, slithering back toward the waving reeds. Almost at once, she sank in a pool of mud up to her belly. “Oh,
urrrrrgh
,” she groaned.

Clay saw a snout poke out of the swamp a short distance away. The dragon gave them a suspicious look.

“Remember to act like a MudWing,” he whispered, sliding into the mud beside Glory. “Mmmmmm, mud!”

“Yaaay,” Glory said unenthusiastically. She floundered a few more steps into the reeds, spattering mud all across her wings.

This was going to be a long walk at that pace. Clay checked the sky. “All right, he’s out of sight. We can fly back to the others.”

He wriggled out of the mud onto a dry island and hauled Glory up beside him. They both shook their wings to get the biggest clumps off, and then they leaped, quickly clearing the trees. Clay spotted the river winding toward the cliff to their left and banked in that direction. He was ready to leave the Mud Kingdom behind him forever.

“Hey!” a voice shouted behind them. “You, dragonets! Stop!”

Panic shot through Clay and he sped up, flapping his wings frantically. Glory soared up beside him.

“Stop!” she whispered. “If we run, they’ll know there’s something wrong.”

Clay knew she was right, but it was almost impossibly hard to swing around and fly back toward the MudWing village and the voice that had called after them.

Five dragons were hovering in the sky, watching them intently. As they drew close to each other, Clay realized that they were dragonets, not yet full-grown. The biggest one was a bit smaller than Clay, with warm golden-amber eyes and a recent claw-mark wound on his tail. The smallest was the dragon with the patch on his nose who had stared at Clay in the village.

“Hey,” Clay said to them. He hoped he sounded casual and nonthreatening. “We were just leaving.”

The MudWing dragonets glanced at each other. The biggest one said, “We heard you were asking about a blood egg from one of Cattail’s hatchings.”

“That’s right,” Glory said.

“Do you know what happened to it?” the smallest MudWing blurted. “Did it hatch? Who came out? Where’s the dragonet?”

Glory poked Clay with her tail before he could respond. “Who’s asking?” she said.