Talons of Power

by Tui T. Sutherland

  Oh no. That glance had a meaning, a message. Qibli was expecting Turtle to do something, and Turtle had a bad feeling that “something” wasn’t “Turtle flying all the way back to the Kingdom of the Sea, finding a deep trench, and staying there forever.” A queasy, tense feeling started bubbling through Turtle’s stomach.

  “Good idea,” said Winter.

  Moon nodded, and then she gave Turtle a meaningful look, too.

  By all the moons, what did they think he was going to do? Attack Darkstalker, like Peril had? Obviously that wouldn’t work. If Peril couldn’t hurt him, Turtle certainly wouldn’t be able to.

  Did they want him to hide them as well? He winced. He should have thought of that sooner. A good friend, a better dragon — a hero — would have thought to protect everyone instead of just hiding himself. But they all wanted to talk to Darkstalker, didn’t they? I just wanted to hide. That’s what I always do.

  As the dragons flew away, veering southwest, Qibli twisted in a spiral, looked at Turtle again, and flicked his tail in the direction of Jade Mountain.

  Oh, Turtle realized. They want me to go warn the school.

  I can probably do that without messing it up.

  I think.

  For a moment, Peril hovered mutinously in the sky behind them, and then she swooped down to Turtle.

  “Aren’t you coming, too?” she asked. “Don’t we all have to follow his grand mighty lordship SinisterFace?”

  Turtle shook his head and held out the stick. “He can’t see me,” he whispered. “I hid myself from him.”

  Peril’s face lit up. “Of course!” she said. “That’s awesome! You have animus magic! You can kill him!”

  “Oh,” said Turtle, flustered. “No, I — I don’t really — kill anyone.” A brief flash of scales and blood darted through his mind, and when he looked down, he saw his claws curling dangerously. He jumped and shook them out until they looked like his own talons again. “That’s not my thing,” he said, tamping down a wave of panic.

  “I know, I know, it’s my thing,” Peril said, “but I can’t kill him, because of his stupid magic, GROWL. So you have to. Don’t worry, it’s not that hard, and it would be such a relief — for me, I mean — because I’m having this feeling — I don’t know what to call it, but it’s kind of big and heavy and annoying? And it’s filling me all up inside like everything is awful and it’s all my fault? Like maybe all the bad things in the world are my fault? I really don’t like it, so if you can make it stop, that would be the greatest.”

  “I think what you’re describing is what we call guilt,” said Turtle, “but it’s not your fault he tricked us. I still think you did the right thing, burning the scroll.”

  “Well, thanks, but the universe disagrees with you,” Peril said, jerking her head at the enormous crack in the side of the mountain.

  “Peril!” called one of the dragons in the distance.

  “Good luck,” Peril whispered. “Make it something really cool, like his insides exploding. Or his face falling off. I’m kidding! I’m a little bit kidding. I mean, insides exploding would be pretty cool, right? Never mind, it’s up to you! Destroy him and save the world! Three moons, I wish I could do it!” She took off and flashed away, fast as a firework.

  Turtle shivered.

  Save the world?

  That’s not my thing either. I would definitely mess it up. That’s way, way too much pressure.

  I’m clearly not a hero.

  He raised his eyes to the shadowy peaks of Jade Mountain.

  But I know where I can find some.

  The sun was starting to sneak over the mountains, nervously spilling little beams around the peaks as if it were making sure Darkstalker was gone. Clouds were visible in the north, with the gray haze of distant rain below them, but Jade Mountain was still dry and clear and sunlit.

  Turtle tucked the broken stick — knobbly and half-stripped of its bark, the most ordinary, insignificant-looking thing in the world — carefully into the pouch around his neck. He tied the pouch shut twice as tightly as usual and put his front claws over it as it rested on his chest. Anxiety twisted inside him.

  I’d better not lose this.

  He’d lost other animus-touched objects before. It was a little embarrassing, actually. When he was three, his (many, many) older brothers used to make fun of him for being the slowest SeaWing prince in the ocean. “Guess somebody gave you the right name, ha ha!” “Careful, or a clownfish will catch you!” “You swim like a sea cucumber!”

  So Turtle had enchanted a strand of purple kelp, wound three times around his upper arm, to make him just a bit faster than some of his brothers. He couldn’t make himself the fastest — that would attract attention. Attention was the last thing he wanted. But he could be faster than the other two from his hatching, Octopus and Cerulean. He could be a tiny bit faster than a couple of the four-year-olds, and that’s where he’d stop. Then he’d be nothing remarkable, and his brothers would move on to teasing someone else.

  It worked — they got bored and left him alone after a couple more races. But he still wished he hadn’t lost the kelp a few weeks later; it drifted off in his sleep one night, and he often wondered if there was a startled sea horse tangled up in it somewhere out there, speeding along the ocean floor.

  He knew he should be smarter about what he enchanted — he should pick things he couldn’t lose, things that would last a while. But usually he didn’t spend enough time thinking about his spells beforehand to plan them that carefully. His spells were all so little, just small magic to make his life easier, and he generally used whatever he could grab with his claws when he needed one.

  Like the very ordinary-looking river stone in his pouch, bumping along with the stick. It could heal surface wounds and aches and pains, and he’d enchanted it to make himself feel better after a long day of flying. But it was a silly thing to enchant; Peril was right about that. If he ever lost it, he’d never find it again. Same with this stick … so he had to be careful.

  He flew toward the main entrance of Jade Mountain, where he had landed on his first day as a new student. He remembered how excited he had been. A new school! Nobody knew him here. It was the perfect place to be a background character in other dragons’ stories. No one would expect anything of him. He’d be far away from Octopus and Cerulean, who knew about his biggest failure and surely must think about it all the time, even if they never mentioned it.

  Here he could blend in, be ordinary … and keep an eye on his little sister Anemone, who had been acting strangely ever since the attack on the Summer Palace.

  None of that had quite worked out the way he’d planned. It was his own fault. If he hadn’t chased after the other dragons in his winglet, he could be sound asleep with the rest of the SeaWing students right now.

  A splash and a peal of laughter caught his attention, and he soared over Jade Mountain, following the sound to an opening in the roof of a cave.

  Down there was the underground lake — and there were dragons swimming in it even now, at the crack of dawn. Turtle never woke up early if he could help it. But Anemone was often up at sunrise, which meant one of those swimming dragons might be her.

  I should warn her — her more than anyone.

  He tucked his wings into a dive and arrowed through the hole, but he somewhat misjudged his speed, and ended up smacking into the cold lake like a hippo dropped from a great height.

  “Yow!” he yelped, surfacing and rubbing his eyes, his scales stinging from the shock.

  “Turtle?” said a voice nearby. “Turtle! You’re back!” Wet wings were flung around his shoulders, dunking him underwater in a cascade of bubbles. Anemone’s glow-in-the-dark scales flashed happily at him in Aquatic as she dragged him up into the air again.

  “Hi,” he sputtered at his sister.

  “Hey! You nearly landed on the princess!” Pike shouted in his ear. The skinny gray-blue SeaWing had always been a little louder and more aggressive than Turtle thought
was strictly necessary. But he’d been much worse since they’d arrived at Jade Mountain Academy, thanks to some secret instructions from Queen Coral. Turtle knew from eavesdropping that Pike was here specifically to be a covert bodyguard for Princess Anemone.

  Anemone, of course, had no idea. She never seemed surprised that Pike was so easy to boss around. In her mind, that was how all SeaWings were supposed to behave around her.

  “Oh, shush, I’m fine.” Anemone splashed water up Pike’s snout and he backed off, shaking his head irritably. “Turtle, where have you been? I had the weirdest nightmare just before I woke up — I thought there was an earthquake, but nobody else felt it. Did you find your winglet? Are they here, too?”

  Turtle seized her front claws in his. “Anemone, I need to talk to you.”

  “You are talking to me, fishface,” she said. “Did you find the RainWing you were moping about?”

  “You mean Kinkajou?” A little RainWing was sitting in the shallows of the lake, tilting her ears toward them. Her scales were spiraling pale peach and citrus green, except where they were covered by swathes of bandages and streaks of black scorch marks. A poultice of damp leaves was tied over her eyes. “Is Kinkajou all right?”

  “I’m sure she’s absolutely fine, Tamarin,” Pike said kindly. He jabbed Turtle in the shoulder with one claw, much less kindly, and jerked his head toward Tamarin, scowling.

  Turtle hesitated. The last time he’d seen Kinkajou, she was lying in a hospital bed in the town of Possibility, unconscious. Her usually bright, shifting rainbow scales had turned white and still. She had hardly looked like Kinkajou at all.

  But how could he say that to her best friend — to Tamarin, who was suffering from her own injuries after the explosion that rocked Jade Mountain Academy?

  “She was alive when I saw her a few days ago,” he hedged. “I’m sure she’ll come back to Jade Mountain just as soon as she can.”

  If it’s still here when she wakes up.

  “Oh,” Tamarin said softly. “Good.”

  “Anemone,” Turtle said. “Come flying with me?”

  “You are being such a jellyfish right now,” Anemone sighed. “I don’t want to fly; I want to swim. Can’t you just say whatever it is right here? Pike and Tamarin won’t care.”

  Oh, they might, thought Turtle. But he could see that Anemone wasn’t moving. This was Anemone’s new stubborn, petulant personality, the princess who’d risen to the surface after she was cut free from Mother’s harness. This Anemone made him feel nervous.

  This Anemone made him feel guilty.

  “All right, fine,” he said. “You’re in danger, and you need to leave Jade Mountain right now.”

  “What danger?” Pike barked, swiveling his head to glare around the dark cave.

  “And go where?” Anemone demanded. “Home? Back to harnesses and boredom and Mother staring at me all the time? No, thank you, I’m staying here.” She scrambled up on one of the boulders that jutted out of the water and coiled her tail around her talons.

  “But there’s a big, scary dragon coming,” Turtle protested.

  Anemone looked archly down her snout at Turtle. “Who are you talking about?” she asked. “I thought our illustrious teachers defeated all the bad dragons.”

  “This is a new one.” Turtle glanced anxiously up at the sky above them, which was shifting closer and closer to full daylight. “His name is Darkstalker and he’s been trapped underground for two thousand years and he just escaped — I don’t really understand the whole story, but I know he’s a mind reader and an animus and he seems nice on the surface but —”

  “An animus!” Anemone cried, interrupting him. She stood up, flaring her wings. “Really? A real animus?”

  “Yes,” Turtle said cautiously. “But a bad one, like Albatross.”

  “Oh, how would you know?” Anemone scoffed. “I’ve been dying to meet another animus! I visited the old fossil living in this mountain and he was useless. His great helpful advice was that an animus dragon should never use her power. I mean, come on! He was all, ‘but look what happened to meeeeeee,’ wheeze moan glug, and I wanted to be like, ‘didn’t you put this dopey stone-scales spell on yourself? What use is your perfect soul if you can’t move a muscle?’ So pathetic. If there’s a real animus coming here, I want to meet him!”

  “No!” Turtle protested. “He’ll probably kill you! He’s really smart! He’ll see another animus dragon as a threat!”

  “If he’s really smart, he’ll see that I’m awesome and want to get to know me,” Anemone said, tossing her head.

  “Princess, I think your brother is right,” Pike interjected. “This sounds like a dangerous situation. You should hide while I assess this stranger.”

  “What?!” Anemone threw her wings up in disbelief. “I’m not going to hide like some kind of nervous shrimp! Three moons. Turtle, did you actually see him kill anyone?”

  “No, but according to history he killed his dad and —”

  “‘According to history,’” she said dismissively. “Has he hurt anyone since he ‘escaped’?”

  “No — but he probably will — he doesn’t like IceWings and he doesn’t like me.”

  “Well, I’m not an IceWing, and I’m not the most boring prince on the planet,” she said, “so I think he’ll like me just fine. Pike, shut up.” Pike closed his mouth and ducked his head. Anemone clapped her front talons together. “This is so exciting! Another animus to talk to!”

  Guilt wormed through Turtle’s heart again. He had thought about telling his sister his secret a hundred times. If he had ever admitted that he was a fellow animus … would she be more willing to listen to him?

  Should he tell her now? Would that stop her from wanting to meet Darkstalker?

  Probably not.

  And to tell her in front of Pike and Tamarin … it just didn’t seem like a good idea. Pike was one of Queen Coral’s most loyal followers; he’d definitely report back to her the first chance he got. Even Anemone … would she keep his secret?

  He wasn’t ready. Better to stay hidden and keep quiet. Safer that way.

  Anemone dove off her rock and paddled to the tunnel that led back to the school. “Last one to the main hall is a rotten oyster!” she called, galloping away into the dark.

  Pike hissed softly, twisting between the disappearing princess and the injured RainWing by the lake.

  “It’s all right, Pike,” Tamarin said. She waded out of the water, limping, and rested one talon lightly on the wall. “I can find my way back to the infirmary on my own.”

  “Can you go with her?” Pike asked Turtle. He was halfway to the tunnel already. “Make sure she gets safely to the infirmary?”

  “I can take care of myself,” Tamarin said through gritted teeth, limping another few steps.

  Turtle nodded, and Pike leaped out of the lake to run after Anemone.

  “I know you two were making secret faces at each other,” Tamarin said as Turtle climbed out of the lake beside her. “I don’t like it when dragons do that around me.”

  “Sorry,” Turtle said. “I was only responding to his secret faces.”

  “So is Kinkajou really all right, or were his faces making you lie to me?” she asked. She set off toward the tunnel, stepping cautiously but confidently along the rocky lakeshore.

  Turtle winced. “She did get hurt,” he admitted, following her. “Pretty badly — she’s still unconscious, as far as I know. But the doctors in Possibility thought she’d be all right, if she wakes up soon.”

  “Oh, poor Kinkajou!” Tamarin cried. She stopped and pressed her talons to her face. “I knew it was too dangerous for her out there. She’s always running straight at the bad things instead of hiding, or at least thinking first.”

  That’s true, Turtle realized. That was one of the things he liked about Kinkajou … that she was nothing like him.

  “Queen Glory sent RainWing healers to watch over her,” he said. “She’s not alone.”

  “I w
ish I could go to her,” Tamarin said with a sigh. She set off along the main passageway. After a moment, she said quietly, “I didn’t know Anemone was an animus.”

  Turtle felt like an idiot. He’d been so worried about hiding his own powers, he’d forgotten that Anemone’s were supposed to be kept secret, too. “The other tribes aren’t supposed to know,” he said. “Tsunami’s friends do, but they swore not to tell anyone.”

  “I won’t say anything,” Tamarin promised. “That must be hard on Anemone, keeping a secret like that.”

  “I guess,” Turtle said uncomfortably. He’d been keeping the same secret his whole life, but from everyone. Was it hard? Maybe sometimes — like whenever something happened that he knew his magic could fix, but he had to go ahead and leave it broken.

  Like Tamarin’s eyes. I could fix them. I could do it right now … I could enchant that bandage so when she takes it off, she could see for the first time in her life. That was the kind of thing he wished he was free to do, and it felt awful to have to stop himself.

  But he still figured it was a lot easier to be a secret animus than an animus everyone knew about.

  “I wouldn’t want to be an animus,” Tamarin said. She paused at a spot where the tunnel branched into three directions. “I don’t know how anyone could stay a good dragon with all that power.”

  “What if they only used it for good things?” Turtle asked, a little stung.

  “But who gets to decide what’s a good thing?” Tamarin asked. “Dragons would always be asking for spells, or telling you your choices are wrong. And I think sometimes it’s hard to tell what’s good and what’s just easy.”

  Turtle gave her a puzzled look. “Aren’t those the same? What’s wrong with trying to make life easier?”

  “It depends,” Tamarin said. “For instance, an animus dragon might think, I’ll make all our medicinal herbs appear magically in the healers’ treehouse, so we never have to go looking for them again. That seems obviously good, right? But then we’d stop learning how to look for them, and we’d stop experimenting with new ones to see how those might help dragons in different ways. We’d stop thinking about it at all, because everything would be too easy. Don’t we lose something when everything is done for us?”