Escaping Peril

by Tui T. Sutherland

  There was no sign of Scarlet anywhere, though. Once they saw another wing of dragons who were probably from the Talons of Peace, given the different colors of their scales, but it was far off in the distance. Perhaps they’d heard about the encounter by the river, because they didn’t come over to investigate Peril.

  Peril also spotted several SkyWings spiraling around the mountain peaks. She wondered if Ruby had sent out more soldiers to search for Queen Scarlet. Ruby’s throne was in danger now that everyone knew the former queen was definitely alive and out for vengeance. Until someone killed her, Scarlet would always have supporters in the Sky Kingdom. What if one of them decided to kill Ruby on her behalf?

  I bet she wishes she’d been nicer to me now. Who’d be a better guard than me? Yes, I’m dangerous; that’s exactly what’s awesome about me. That’s why she needs me. I should be right next to the queen, not banished from the whole smoldering kingdom.

  But then, if she’d stayed with Ruby, she couldn’t be wherever Clay was.

  So I’ll do this one thing for Ruby. I’ll find Queen Scarlet, turn her into a pile of ashes, get all redeemed and pardoned and welcomed back everywhere, and then return to Clay as a beloved SkyWing who can go anywhere I want … and be with anyone I want, because I’ll be a hero, too.

  Peril did three backward loops in the sky, waiting for Turtle to catch up. She could see the rosy, fuzzy glow around the ridiculous fantasy she was building in her head, but she couldn’t help it: she still kind of believed it could come true.

  Turtle flapped up, panting a little. “I think,” he wheezed, “someone might be … following us.”

  “Really?” Peril scanned the horizon behind them. They were out of the mountains now, flying over the rocky sloping hills that led to the river plain and then north to Possibility. The smudge of the town was visible in the distance — they could probably reach it by nightfall. Well, she could, if she were flying alone. With a gasping SeaWing on her tail, they’d probably have to sleep on it and get there in the morning.

  In any case, the landscape below and behind them was relatively flat compared to the Claws of the Clouds Mountains, so it would be harder for a dragon following them to hide.

  “I don’t see anything,” she said.

  “That grove of trees back there.” Turtle pointed. “I thought I saw a dragon dive into them when I turned around.”

  Peril squinted, trying to figure out if she could see wings moving in the scraggly clump of wishful forest. One way to find out, of course, would be to go set the trees on fire. It didn’t seem worth the effort, though.

  “Was it an orange dragon?” she asked.

  “Noooo,” Turtle said. “Black, I think.”

  Peril shrugged. “All right. Whatever.” She lifted herself to another current so she could spin around at a safe distance from Turtle and began flying north again.

  “Really?” Turtle said, beating his wings to keep up. “We’re not worried about that?”

  “Why would we be?” Peril asked, amused. “As long as it’s not Scarlet, who cares? It’s not like anyone can hurt us. Well, me. No one can hurt me. I guess you are welcome to worry.”

  “Oh, thanks very much,” Turtle said. “And that’s not true — I’m sure dragons can hurt you.”

  “How?” Peril demanded. “No, they can’t! I’m fine as long as I don’t listen to them! They’re all stupid anyway! Who cares what a bunch of Ruby-butt-noses say; NOT ME, that’s for sure. I mean, come over here and say that with my talons up your snout! Ha!”

  He gave her an odd look. “Actually, I meant with a spear or frostbreath or something.”

  “Oh,” Peril said. “I guess, maybe. The dragons in the arena never had spears.”

  “And their wings were bound, so they couldn’t fly, right?” Turtle asked.

  Peril frowned at him. “I didn’t fly while we were fighting either,” she said. “That wasn’t to make them easier to kill. That was so they wouldn’t be boring and run away.”

  “You mean, be sensible and run away,” Turtle said. He twisted around to look behind them again. “Nothing. Whoever it is is still hiding.”

  “Or you hallucinated it,” Peril said grumpily. “Frostbreath doesn’t do anything to my scales, by the way. And I bet a spear would burn up before it could stab me.”

  “Not if someone threw it at you really hard,” Turtle mused. “Then it would be like, bam, spear through the heart, and even if it did then burst into flames, well, too late.”

  “This conversation is fun,” Peril said. “Next let’s talk about all the ways you could possibly die. I have a few ideas.”

  “Or if Scarlet has an animus, she could enchant something to kill you,” Turtle pointed out. “Then there’s nothing you could do about it.”

  “But if she could do that, Glory really would be dead already,” Peril argued. “And Ruby. Those are the two she would start with. I’m only, like, seventh or eighth on her list, probably. So I’m not going to worry about imaginary animus dragons until those guys start turning up dead.”

  She fell silent abruptly, realizing that Clay was probably in Scarlet’s top five on her to-be-murdered list. Maybe I shouldn’t have left him alone. Maybe he’s the one I should be guarding all the time … day and night … never leaving his side …

  She let herself imagine that for a while before coming back to reality with a sigh. No, the best way to protect Clay was exactly what she was doing: going after Scarlet.

  “How are you going to find your friends in Possibility?” she asked Turtle. “It’s a big city. Full of dragons who have irrationally negative feelings about me. And too many wooden buildings too close together. I don’t like it. For the record, it’s a stupid place.”

  “You’ve mentioned that,” Turtle said, glancing over his shoulder again. “Can we rest for the night and figure it out in the morning when we get there? My wings are so sore, I swear they’re about to fall off. They’ve never been in this much pain ever.”

  Peril traced the river below them with her eyes, up to the town in the near distance. It was so close.

  Then again, why was she hurrying to get somewhere she didn’t even want to be at all?

  “All right,” Peril agreed. “Let’s find a spot with fewer trees and more rocks.”

  The sun was sinking way out beyond the desert when they came down to land near the river, in a spot where giant boulders overlapped one another halfway into the water and small rapids bustled noisily around them.

  Peril tried to be careful, but there were too many patches of moss, and she felt a twinge of familiar guilt as some of them curled into blackened ash below her claws. Also, as she settled on a boulder, her tail slipped into a little pool nearby, and immediately boiled the two fish swimming there. They floated to the surface, white bellies turned up to the purpling sky.

  “Shoot,” Peril said. “I mean … hey, look, dinner.”

  Turtle splashed over through the river, speared one of the fish with a claw, and winced. “Yowch. I don’t think I could ever get used to eating hot prey. It’s such a weird feeling in my mouth.”

  “I’ve never eaten prey any other way,” Peril pointed out. “It’s always black and crunchy.” A little like the black rocks Queen Scarlet tricked me into eating when I was younger. The queen had convinced Peril that because of her firescales condition, she needed to eat a certain kind of black rock every day. It could only be found in the mountains, and Scarlet took charge of Peril’s supply. “I’m the one keeping you alive.” That’s what she always said.

  But it was a lie … a trick to keep Peril confined to the Sky Palace and dependent on Queen Scarlet. Even though Peril had always obeyed the queen’s every order, Scarlet still never trusted her.

  What did she think I would do? Run away? Try to steal the throne? Join the Talons of Peace?

  Think for myself?

  Peril shook off that thought with a growl.

  It wasn’t personal, though, she had to remind herself. Queen Scarlet man
ipulated everyone she came into contact with, not only Peril.

  “Well, that’s just sad,” Turtle said, and after a minute Peril realized he was still talking about how she only ate burnt prey. He rolled his shoulders back and forth, stretching his neck and making agonized faces at his sore muscles. “You should try it the normal way. Here, open your mouth and I’ll throw some in.” He snared another fish from the river beside his boulder.

  “That sounds insane,” Peril observed. “What are you talking about?”

  “Keep your mouth open and the fish won’t touch your scales,” he said, placidly ripping the fish into small pieces. “That way it won’t get burned, and you can see what it tastes like to most dragons.”

  Dubiously, Peril stretched her jaws wide open.

  A fish head smacked her in the eye.

  “YUCK!” she roared, surging up with her wings flared. “Try that again, SeaWing!”

  “I’m sorry!” he yelped. “Sorry, sorry, sorry! I missed. Here, let me try again.”

  She eyed him suspiciously. He looked not so much “deeply repentant,” as “trying to hide his giggles.”

  “Did you do that on purpose?” she demanded.

  “No, I swear,” he said. “But I don’t have very good aim. Not a lot of practice. Give me another chance?”

  Growling softly, Peril opened her mouth again.

  The next two pieces sailed straight past her head, but the third finally splatted between her teeth, and she snapped her jaws shut around it. It felt like a cold slimy frog had just leaped into her mouth. She chewed for a moment, as long as she could bear it, and then swallowed fast.

  “No,” she said. “Definitely no. Horrifying amounts of no. That was one hundred percent disgusting.”

  Turtle laughed. “You’re so wrong,” he said. “It’s awesome. That’s how fish should be eaten.”

  “Blergh,” Peril said strongly. She hopped to the next boulder, heading for the shore. “I’m going to find something that is the opposite of fish, scorch it, and then coat my tongue with char to get that taste out of my mouth. YUUUCK. You are the worst. I would be so justified in setting you on fire while you’re asleep tonight.”

  “Duly noted,” Turtle said serenely. “Did I mention I’ll be sleeping at the bottom of the river? You know, if you’re looking for me.” He grinned at her.

  Peril paused on the riverbank, squinting at him. She had been joking, of course. There were a number of excellent reasons not to set Turtle on fire, which outweighed any potential benefits to doing so. But it unsettled her for a moment to realize that by sleeping in the river — even by standing in the river right now — he could foil any plan she did make, if she ever needed to burn him up.

  Not that I would. Probably. I most likely would never need to. And I wouldn’t want to, of course, that, too.

  But she’d never run into a situation where someone could stop her like that, apart from Clay.

  Maybe I did have an unfair advantage fighting SeaWings in the arena. If I were fighting them in their own part of the world — somewhere they could go underwater to escape, or even drag me underwater with them …

  She didn’t like that train of thought. She didn’t like ONE SINGLE THING about it.

  “I’ll be back in a minute,” she snapped.

  “I’ll be here, apologizing to my woebegone wings,” he said.

  She stomped off, ignoring the trail of scorched grass she left in her wake as she searched the shoreline for prey. After a few minutes, a hare bolted out of a burrow in front of her, and she was able to catch it and wolf it down.

  On her way back, she caught sight of Turtle lying on one of the boulders. The sun was halfway down, casting warm orange light across his dark green scales. And the SeaWing was doing something odd. She paused to stare at him for a moment. It looked as if he was rolling a small river stone across his shoulders.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, coming up behind him.

  He jumped, looking fascinatingly guilty. There was definitely something not right about this.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Just trying to work out the kinks in my back. I’ve never flown this much before.”

  “So you’ve mentioned a few hundred times,” Peril said. “Can I see the rock you’re using?”

  “Oh, this?” he said. “Just a rock I picked up from the river.” He held it out casually, the smooth gray-white stone looking like a hawk’s egg in his webbed talons.

  “Does it really help?” she asked.

  “Uh,” he said. “A little.” He rolled his shoulders again. “Anyway. Woo, I’m tired. I’ll see you in the morning!”

  He dove into the water and vanished below the surface, taking the rock with him.

  Peril sat down on her boulder and flipped her tail over her talons. It was hard to tell in the growing dusk, but she was pretty sure the blurry shape of Turtle was still applying the rock to his scales underwater.

  That was weird, she mused. He could have stayed up here and talked to me for a little bit longer. Did he think I was going to steal his rock? Is it some kind of SeaWing secret I shouldn’t know — river rocks can heal them or something?

  That sounded pretty implausible, even to someone who had been raised not to know much about other tribes.

  Maybe he was simply trying to get away from her. Maybe he’d finally realized, like every other dragon in the world, that she was a terrible dragon to be friends with.

  But he’d been laughing with her only a few minutes earlier …

  Doesn’t matter, she thought fiercely. Whatever it is, that’s just fine. He can keep his secrets or stop being friends with me or whatever he wants.

  I can always go back to Clay. My real friend.

  You’re not that important to me either, SeaWing.

  Hmph.

  She lay down and closed her eyes, but sleep was a long time coming.

  The next morning, Turtle was mostly normal. A little jittery, but it could have been excitement about being so close to finding his winglet again.

  His friends — and then he’ll probably ditch me, Peril realized. She guessed the others wouldn’t be too thrilled about her coming along. Especially that IceWing, if he was still alive and around anywhere.

  Well, if she had to find Scarlet on her own, that was probably better anyway.

  She sat on the boulder where she’d slept, watching Turtle splash around after his breakfast. He had a small waterproof pouch around his neck, which looked heavier than usual this morning. From the way it thumped against his chest, Peril guessed that he’d put one of the river rocks in there.

  His only other accessory was a gold armband with three sparkly black rocks set in it, plus three holes where it seemed as though other rocks should have been. Peril had noticed that he fiddled with it when he was nervous, sticking his claws into the holes and tugging the armband up and down.

  “Why are you glaring at me?” Turtle asked.

  “I’m not GLARING,” Peril snapped. “This is my FACE.”

  “Your face kind of looks like it hates me today,” Turtle observed. “Can you remind it that I’m really quite nice?”

  Peril concentrated on her expression for a moment, but she could feel her frown only getting deeper. “All right, now I’m glaring at you,” she said. “Can we get on with this annoying day already?”

  “Are you nervous about going to Possibility?” Turtle said shrewdly. “We won’t have to be there long. Maybe no one will even notice you.”

  “You really have no idea what it’s like to be me,” Peril said, arching her neck and flaring her wings. The rising sun slammed into her scales, scattering into bright orange reflections in the water below her. “I’ve never NOT been noticed. That’s not an option for me. Imagine my life as the literal opposite of yours.”

  He didn’t answer. Peril squinted at him and realized he was peering at a spot along the muddy shore of the river.

  “What?” she demanded. “What’s so fascinating?”

  “I’m
guessing these talonprints aren’t yours,” he said.

  Peril hopped into the river and splashed over to him, sending up clouds of steam all around her. Turtle didn’t flail away in a panic like most dragons would. He moved over quietly so she could see the mud, where a set of prints were clearly embedded, along with the sweep of a tail around them.

  Someone had been standing here, then sitting here, very recently. Someone bigger than Peril, facing the river … facing the boulder where she’d been sleeping.

  “HELLO?” Peril yelled, making Turtle jump. “If you’re spying on us, just come out already!”

  Turtle rubbed his ears. “So stealth isn’t your strong suit either, I see.”

  “Sorry,” Peril said unrepentantly. “I know it’s your only suit. WHOEVER YOU ARE, JUST COME OUT AND SAY WHATEVER YOU HAVE TO SAY!”

  There was no response. The leaves on the trees whispered quietly, as if gossiping about the crazy copper dragon shouting at nothingness.

  Peril shrugged. “I guess they left. Maybe they just wanted to catch a glimpse of a fire monster. Or maybe they thought I was Scarlet and then realized who I am and fled in terror! That could be it.”

  “Hmmm,” Turtle said, with just a shade too much skepticism in his voice. He twisted around, scanning the trees and sky and river, but there was no sign of anybody.

  “I have a plan for Possibility,” Peril said. “Let’s go.” She spread her wings and launched herself into the sky like a burst of flames. The sun had crept over the mountaintops, spilling in golden stripes down the canyons and across the hills. To the west, Peril saw a line of camels plodding across the desert with smaller shapes on their backs and around their heels — scavengers, perhaps.

  Turtle flapped wetly up beside her, splattering her with spray from his tail and wings. In the sunlight, his jewel-toned scales looked more like emeralds than ever. “A plan would be good,” he said. “Tell me your plan.”

  “Easy. We’ll just dive right into the middle of the market, and then all those dragons will start stampeding around yelling about what a menace I am, and then you shout, ‘Moon and Qibli, meet us outside town!’ and then we fly away again.” Peril nodded with satisfaction. “I think that would work.”