The Lost Continent

by Tui T. Sutherland

  “Father,” Blue said softly, “we have a way out of here. But we have to go right now.”

  “Go?” Admiral echoed. “What do you mean?”

  “We’re going to escape,” Luna said. “All three of us. Come on, quick, while the guards are looking sleepy.”

  “But I’m in the middle of my spinning rotation,” Admiral said. “And I haven’t made nearly enough for the quota. You’re going to have to make it up with all your bright lovely silk. They’ll probably give you a turn in the morning, once you’ve rested a bit.”

  “No,” Luna said firmly. “I’m not giving anyone my ‘bright lovely silk.’ It’s mine. And I’m escaping with Blue right now.”

  Admiral twitched, as though the word escape was finally crawling into his ears. “No, no,” he said. “The Hives need our silk. We’re providing a great service. We’re very important — you’re very important. You can’t … you can’t leave. What are you even talking about? We’re not allowed to leave. That rule is pretty clear.”

  “Come with us, please,” Blue begged. “This is no way to live, Father. We could be together and free, out there.”

  “Out where?” Admiral scoffed. “There’s nowhere the queen doesn’t control. No, no, we mustn’t anger her with ungrateful stunts like escape attempts. Oh dear, oh dear. You’ll get us all in trouble. It’ll make everything worse!”

  “How could it be worse than this?” Luna asked.

  “In the beginning there were chains!” Admiral said. “On our ankles! I was the one who got rid of those! It only took me about four years and two hundred or so letters, but I finally convinced her we could be trusted without them. And now you want to break that trust!”

  “This is not a mutual relationship,” Luna said. “The queen is using you. She’s giving you next to nothing, and you’re letting her walk all over you instead of fighting back. We’re not going to be part of that.” She turned to Blue. “I don’t think this is going to work. We have to go without him.”

  “Oh, no,” Admiral cried. “You can’t! You’ll undo all the progress I’ve made with the queen! We have rules for a reason, you know. And she’ll be so disappointed.”

  “So escape with us!” Blue couldn’t give up. He couldn’t just leave his father here. “Father, you don’t have to follow rules that are unjust, and you don’t have to do everything the queen says. Don’t you feel like there are rules in your heart that are more important? About helping other dragons, and standing up for anyone who’s being treated badly, and loving whoever you want, and choosing to live your life in your own kind, peaceful way?”

  He glanced over and saw Luna staring at him in surprise. She reached out with one wing and pulled him into a hug.

  “Wow,” she said. “It really was a long five days, wasn’t it?”

  “Well … I just understood it finally,” he said. “That there are dragons who aren’t safe, and dragons I could help, and being a good little SilkWing who follows the rules was making my life easy, but also helping to keep a bad system in place. I didn’t know before how bad it was for so many dragons. Like you, Father. Like all the flamesilks in here. This isn’t right.”

  “And you shouldn’t want it for your children,” Luna said. “If you want to stay, that’s fine. But we’re going.” She turned Blue toward the center of the cave.

  “No,” Admiral said. “No, no! It’s wrong. I can’t let you do this. GUARDS!”

  Blue inhaled sharply. The HiveWings by the staircase whipped their heads toward them.

  His father was sabotaging their escape — turning them in to keep them trapped here!

  They had to run … but their escape route looked a whole continent away, and it wasn’t even open yet.

  “GUARDS!” Admiral bellowed. “Listen!”

  “Stop annoying the guards!” Danaid shouted at Admiral, interrupting him. “They don’t want to hear your thoughts on potassium at this hour! Or ever!”

  “It’s not that!” Admiral yelled back. “Although my thoughts on potassium are very well researched and relevant! But hey, guards! Guards! My dragonets —”

  “Your brains are a pile of bananas!” Fritillary hollered from his perch, never one to miss out on a fight. “Your dragonets are boring!”

  “They are NOT!” Danaid and Admiral roared in unison.

  “I think they’re charming!” Danaid yelled.

  “You don’t even know them!” Admiral shouted. “They’re MY dragonets and they’re FASCINATING! But they’re —”

  “Well, then they’re the opposite of YOU!” Danaid bellowed.

  “What is happening?” Luna said to Blue, covering her ears.

  There was something about the sparkle in Danaid’s eyes … Blue wasn’t sure if it was her usual spirited fury, or if maybe …

  “I think Danaid might be trying to help us,” he said quietly. He glanced up at the guards. They were sitting down again, rolling their eyes at one another as though they’d heard fights like this a million times. “Follow me. Walk, don’t run. Act casual.”

  He climbed down through the stalagmites, trying to quiet his thudding heart.

  “GUAAAAAAARDS!” Admiral yelled again. But as Blue had hoped, Admiral didn’t jump up and chase them. He would have to stop his silk spinning to do so, and that was yet another rule he’d never break.

  “Shut UP!” Pierid whined, sitting up and rubbing his eyes. “Why are you making SO MUCH NOISE? It’s the middle of the night!”

  “Yeah, some of us were SLEEEEEEEPING!” Whitespeck shouted.

  “You’re not helping matters with YOUR bellowing!” Heliconian chimed in from the nest closest to him.

  Now all ten of them were awake and shouting. It was perfect cover. The HiveWing guards looked like the last thing they wanted to do was come down and get involved in this. And no matter how much Admiral roared, they couldn’t hear his accusations over the noise of everyone else.

  Blue paused at Danaid’s nest. “Thank you,” he said, holding one talon up to her.

  She took it and squeezed it with a wink. “Whatever I’m doing, it’s great fun.”

  “This is Luna,” he said. “Luna, this is Danaid. Who is definitely a dragon worth knowing.”

  Danaid beamed over the edge of her nest at Luna. “Nice to meet you,” she said. “Now scoot! I can see something exciting is about to happen!” She nodded over at the wall, and Blue realized that the crack looked wider than before … and something seemed to be coming through it.

  “You could come with us,” he said.

  “I’m not sure my old heart could stand running for my life,” she said. “But if you find a more sedate way to get us out of here, come back for me.”

  He nodded. “I will try. I promise.”

  She went back to shouting at the other flamesilks as he and Luna moved away. It was funny to think of Danaid wanting anything sedate, when she seemed so delighted in the middle of chaos.

  The stone gave a low crack as they crouched beside it, and Blue realized that it was being pushed out of the wall. By … were those roots? He gingerly touched one of the thick brown fingers that were shoving their way through the crack. It felt like branches, woody and knobbly under his claws.

  Sundew was growing something, somehow, faster than anything should be able to grow. And it was shoving the rocks apart, breaking through the crack.

  Creating an opening.

  He dug his talons in around the boulder and yanked. Luna did the same, and with a lot of grunting and muscle-pulling, they felt it slowly give way, until it tumbled out at their feet.

  The hole in the wall yawned at them, and on the other side, beyond the roots, he saw three faces crowding in to peer through.

  Swordtail reached toward Luna. “You’re safe!” he whispered.

  “And I have wings!” she answered giddily. She shoved Blue in front of her. “Go on, quick!”

  Suddenly there was a furious pounding overhead, SMASH, SMASH, SMASH against the glass. They’d been spotted. That meant the gua
rds were coming — all the guards.

  Blue dove into the hole and wiggled through into the dark, navigating a small thicket of leafy branches. He felt the warmth of Cricket’s talons lifting him up and saw light glinting off her glasses.

  “I’m so glad you’re alive,” he said breathlessly. “I had a feeling you’d rescue me. Except I thought maybe I had to come rescue you. But I didn’t know how.”

  “You did rescue me, just by being you,” she said. “Oh, gosh, that wasn’t corny at all.”

  Luna popped through and Swordtail swept his wings around her. “My love!” he cried.

  “By the forest, all of you stop being sickening and run!” Sundew cried. She took off in a whirl of green scales, disappearing rapidly into the dark.

  Luna produced a small wisp of flame that lit up the tunnel just enough for them to see, and they ran.

  But before she did, for that moment in the dark, Blue had glanced down at his wrists.

  And saw tiny globes of fire under his scales.

  They ran and climbed and ducked and slid down loose pebbly dirt slopes, following the flicker of Luna’s silk and the flash of Sundew’s tail up ahead. Their escape route smelled like earthworms and cut grass. Twice they had to squeeze through gaps so narrow, Blue was worried Swordtail wouldn’t fit. Most of the time the ceiling was low enough to scrape their heads, and sometimes the dirt turned to damp mud, clogging up their talons.

  But after a while they slowed down to listen, and they couldn’t hear anyone behind them.

  “Maybe they couldn’t get through the hole from the cavern,” Blue said. Maybe Sundew’s fast-growing roots had blocked the way.

  “Or they got stuck at the bottleneck gaps,” Swordtail said, rubbing his shoulder.

  “They’ll be out searching for the other end of the tunnel,” Sundew said. “Good thing it’s quite a long way from the Hive.”

  She turned to keep going and they followed, moving at a steadier pace now.

  Soon the dirt tunnel shifted up and released them into a stone cave, similar in size to the flamesilk cavern, but cold and dark and empty. From there on, they climbed through natural passages in the rocks. At one point, they hopped up the side of a trickling waterfall that sprayed their scales with mist. Blue thought he heard a river rushing somewhere close by.

  He also heard odd whispering, chittering sounds inside the echoes, as though the caves were haunted by musical squirrels.

  Or reading monkeys, he realized. These caves could be connected to the ones where he and Cricket had seen the little monkey creature. Maybe there were lots of them living down here, like Cricket’s science-project dream come true.

  And then, a long while later, he heard a sound like distant roaring.

  “What’s that?” he whispered to Cricket.

  “I’m not sure,” she answered. “The smell is different, too, did you notice? Doesn’t it smell like salt and … fish, maybe? Oh! Oh! I know what it is! Sundew, are we going to the ocean?”

  Just then they rounded a corner of the tunnel — and there it was.

  The ocean!

  They were standing in an enormous cave that looked out onto the beach. It was early morning. Rivulets of water ran and branched and reconvened all through the sandy floor of the cave. Sea birds dove and wheeled in and out, visiting their nests near the rocky ceiling.

  Cricket ran forward, her talons splashing in the wet sand, to the mouth of the cave. She opened her wings to the wind so they billowed out like pages flung into the sky. The waves roared cheerfully at her.

  “Oh wow,” Luna said, wading up beside her. She spread her wings, too, and they sat side by side for a moment, gold-orange-black and pale green, HiveWing and SilkWing, gazing out at the sea.

  Blue sidled up beside them and looked out at the beach. It stretched away beyond sight in each direction, with tall cliffs overlooking the beach as far as he could see. Up at the top of the cliffs, long grass tossed and waved in the wind.

  The ocean was so big. He’d never quite imagined how big it could be, or how noisy, or how active. It never stopped moving — charging up the beach, sprinting away, rolling and churning blue-green-gray with sprays of white.

  “Have you ever been here before?” Cricket asked him. “I haven’t, but I’ve always wanted to visit the sea. Doesn’t it feel like a promise? Like the night before an exciting journey? The Distant Kingdoms are out there, Blue. I know it.” She squinted at the tossing waves, as though she might be able to glimpse the far-off continent on the other side of the world. “Clearsight’s home. We could learn so much if we could just figure out how to get there.”

  Luna gave a rueful laugh. “I’m afraid we have enough to deal with on this continent,” she said. “I’m all for exploring new worlds, but I think we have to save this one first.”

  “Or we could just leave,” Cricket said in a quieter voice. “If it’s too dangerous here — maybe we’d be safer over there.”

  “Yes, we might be,” Luna said. “But the dragons we left behind would still be in danger.” She turned as Swordtail and Sundew came up to join them.

  Blue realized it was raining. A quiet drizzle plip-plopped across the sand, turning the air misty in the pale dawn light. He held out his burning wrists so the raindrops could cool them down.

  “Thank you for getting us out of there,” he said to Sundew. “Where are your parents?”

  “Sulking,” she said. “They didn’t want me to reveal the existence of the tunnel to the HiveWings, even though we’d already decided we can’t use it. Also they’re mad that I haven’t given them this yet.” She tapped one of her larger pouches and it made a thunking sound. “But they’re not the boss of me, and I told them they could have it once you were free. I’ll meet up with them tonight.”

  “And then what will you do?” Swordtail asked.

  “Go back to the other LeafWings,” she said. “Figure out our next plan. Since this one didn’t go exactly the way we expected.”

  “Is that …” Luna started, pointing to the pouch. “Do you really have … ?”

  Sundew reached in and drew out the Book of Clearsight. It looked even smaller and less mystical in the daylight. It just looked like a very old book that someone had sewn together a little crookedly.

  But it holds the secrets of our future, Blue thought with a shiver of awe. And we could read it … we could read it right now and know everything that’s going to happen!

  “Can I show them?” Cricket asked Sundew. The LeafWing nodded, passing the book to her. Cricket found a flat, dry boulder and swept off all the sand on it with her tail. Blue sat down beside her, and Cricket scooted closer to him so Luna could sit on her other side.

  “It’s not what we thought it was,” Cricket said. “It’s … well, it’s something else completely.”

  She opened the book to the first page.

  Dear grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren, and all the many great-grandchildren to come,

  How funny it feels to know you so well, when there are so many of you I’m never going to meet. I see you all the time, especially when I’m just on the edge of falling asleep. The future is so clear, suddenly, now that I won’t be able to change anything. My time is almost up, and yours is just beginning.

  I won’t be able to control anything after this. I won’t be able to use my visions to protect you, to keep you all safe.

  But then, one thing I’ve learned over my long, strange, lovely life is that I never could actually control the future as much as I thought I could.

  I should have learned that lesson with my first love, back home in Pyrrhia. But I kept trying anyway. And I did manage to keep you all alive. I battled the future for that much, and I won.

  But the future will always win in the end, because it continues on forever, to where I cannot go.

  So this is my last battle. The last thing I can do to try and keep my claws on the balance of the future — to keep you safe as long as I can.

  In t
his book are my visions of what is yet to come. Some of it seems small, but I have included everything, even if I can’t tell yet why it’s important. I leave you this in the hope that it will make life better for both our tribes. I hope you will use it to protect the dragons around you, especially the ones who are the most threatened, regardless of who they are and how you think you feel about them.

  There are some hard times ahead, as there always are, everywhere and for everyone. I’m sorry I won’t be here to help you rebuild after the earthquake. I hope I’ve written down enough advice to get you through the famine.

  But most of what I see is joy. Your futures are full of joy. What a miracle it is to be a dragon, alive right now and part of this wonderful world. Do you ever stop to think about that? About what an odd and lucky thing it is to be this soul inside this body. To live in a world with so many marvels in it. I am so grateful to have known and loved you all.

  All the hurricanes and earthquakes and fires and storms cannot break you, if you remember a few things.

  We are here to love with our whole hearts.

  Lean into your kindness and empathy in the face of evil — but do not let evil win.

  You are the only dragon who can decide who you want to be. Don’t let yourself get stuck on someone else’s path. Search for what’s true, and think for yourself.

  Over a hundred years ago, I thought my life was finished and there was nothing left to live for. I was so, so wrong. Keep going. The list of things to live for is limitless and it is possible to be happy again.

  And — this one is going to sound ridiculous coming from me — don’t worry about the future so much. Or else you might miss out on the extraordinary present.

  Be happy, dragons of the future. You can change the world with your joy and your hope.

  All my love,

  Clearsight

  Blue glanced up and saw Luna wiping away tears.

  “This is exactly how I imagined Clearsight,” he said.

  “Of course you did,” Luna said with a catch in her voice. “You have faith in other dragons. Whereas I thought she was a conniving manipulator who deliberately set up her descendants to be the most powerful tribe in Pantala.” She shook her head.