“Doesn’t everyone have dragonmancers?” Leaf asked, and at the same time Rowan snorted, “You came looking for dragonmancers?”
“Most places don’t,” Grove answered Leaf. “My village didn’t; the Indestructible City doesn’t. Talisman is special. Apparently.”
“I’d choose a stone city with dragon-fighting catapults over a mountain scrap heap guarded by three old lunatics any day,” Rowan scoffed.
“Not this stone city,” Grove said. “You wouldn’t like it there either.” He tipped up her chin. “We’ll make our own. We’ll steal a castle from the dragons and live there.”
“Ooooo,” Leaf breathed.
“I wanna castle,” Butterfly mumbled sleepily.
“A dragon-sized castle would be extremely stupid for us,” Rowan said with a laugh. “At least until we learn how to fly or quadruple our height.”
“I’ll help you steal it!” Leaf said. “Any day! I’ll be ready to fight dragons soon, right, Rowan?”
“Maybe if you spend more time practicing and less time making up songs for grubby children,” Rowan said, gingerly lifting Butterfly’s feet off her lap.
Grove laughed, and Rowan stood up to continue their swordfighting lesson in the flickering candlelight.
They might have been joking, but Leaf wasn’t.
One day, kids like Butterfly wouldn’t have to be terrified all the time. One day, Leaf wouldn’t be hiding in a musty shelter while the dragons soared overhead.
One day, the dragons would be hiding from him.
Ivy heard her mother coming and slid her papers under the book she was pretending to read. She didn’t think she would get in trouble, exactly, for drawing dragons all the time, but she knew her parents didn’t love it. “Why can’t you spend your time on something more useful?” and “What a waste of paper” were two of the comments she’d gotten so far when she’d tried to share her drawings with them.
Mother poked her head around the door. “Those girls are here again,” she said disapprovingly. “But I can tell them you’re studying.”
“No, no! I’m all done with my homework,” Ivy said truthfully. “Please let them stay.”
Her mother sighed and went back out to their front room, where Ivy could now hear Violet and Daffodil arguing with each other. The Truth Seekers club had lasted, against all the odds, over a year now. Despite all their fighting, Violet and Daffodil were fiercely loyal — to each other, to the idea of their secret club, and, it turned out, to Ivy as well.
Daffodil tumbled into the room first, flinging herself into Ivy’s hammock so it swung back and forth. Her yellow ribbons were crooked, and she looked like she’d just been running from one end of Valor to the other, although she kind of always looked like that.
“Oh my stars, hi,” Daffodil burst out. “I have been so busy today, you can’t even imagine. The Wingwatchers are having a big meeting tonight and I was trying to figure out how to sneak in but it’s almost impossible except I think maybe I found a secret tunnel into the cavern that I might be able to fit through if I cover myself in butter and hold my breath and don’t eat anything for the rest of the day.”
“Do you have any snacks?” Violet asked innocently, coming through the doorway.
“I have carrot slices and nectarines,” Ivy said. She slid the bowl over as Violet folded herself neatly onto the floor beside her.
“Aaaargh, you’re both so mean!” Daffodil said, lunging out of the hammock to grab a piece of nectarine.
“You can’t sneak into that meeting anyway,” Violet pointed out. “That tunnel is way too small, and even if you fit through it, they’ll definitely notice you huffing and puffing and smelling like butter. Plus the meeting is after bedtime, and your parents are way strict about bedtime.”
“And Daisy would probably tell on me if I snuck out,” Daffodil grumbled, narrowing her eyes.
“Besides,” Ivy added, “if you spy on a Wingwatchers meeting, they might not let you become a Wingwatcher one day, and that would be super sad.”
Violet raised her eyebrows. “Wait. Do you want to be a Wingwatcher?”
Ivy glanced down at the curling tail on the drawing poking out from under her book. “Maybe,” she said. “I mean … they know so much about dragons.”
Violet leaned over and slid the drawing out so she could look at it. “Whoa, cool,” she said. She held it up for Daffodil to see.
“You’re getting so good at those!” Daffodil cried. “Which kind is that?”
“The sea dragon,” Ivy said. “I think the face looks a bit too horsey. The wings are always fun to draw, but the legs are SO hard.”
Violet picked up the book to squint at the real drawing, then back at Ivy’s. “Well,” she said loyally, “maybe yours is what they really look like. It’s not like anyone around here has ever studied one up close, so how would we know? I like yours better.”
“Me too!” Daffodil said quickly.
“You didn’t even look at the book drawing,” Violet pointed out. “You’re just saying that because I said that.”
“No!” Daffodil objected. “I’m saying that because I like Ivy and I know everything she does is the most awesome, so there!”
Violet rolled her eyes. “Well, I’m saying it because I mean it.”
“Hopefully I’ll see one someday,” Ivy interjected hurriedly. “And then I’ll know what they really look like and be able to draw them even better.”
“You are literally the only person I know who wants to see a dragon,” Violet said.
“That’s not true!” Daffodil said. “I want to see a dragon!”
“But, like, you only want to see one so that you can tell everyone you saw it. You’re looking for another crazy Daffodil adventure story. Ivy wants to see one because she’s actually really interested in them.”
“It doesn’t matter, though,” Ivy said. “We can’t start Wingwatcher training until we’re twelve at the earliest.” Four more years until she’d be allowed to train, then another year after that before her first possible mission outside. She had to wait five years to see a dragon, even though she lived in a world full of them.
“Well,” Violet said, glancing at Daffodil. “How about a Truth Seeker mission instead?”
Daffodil flailed her way out of the hammock and peeked out the door. “Coast is clear,” she whispered, staying where she was to keep watch for eavesdroppers — or, more specifically, Ivy’s mom.
Violet tugged a scroll out of her satchel and unrolled a drawing that turned out to be a scribbly map. Ivy lay down on her stomach next to her and studied it. She’d seen maps kind of like this in the Wingwatcher’s Guide, but this one had a few details she didn’t remember seeing before.
“Did you take this from school?” Ivy asked, tracing one of the rivers with her finger. Their year didn’t study geography yet, but the older kids did.
“I snuck in and copied it from the teacher’s scroll,” Violet said. “That’s why it’s a little wobbly. So how long do you think it would take to get from here to here?” She jabbed her finger at one section of the mountains and then another section farther north.
“Um,” Ivy said, scrunching up her forehead. “All morning?”
“Ivy!” Violet said, giggling. “Way longer than that! Days and days and days!”
“Oh,” Ivy said with a shrug. “What’s that little drawing up there near the top of the mountains?”
“That’s the mountain dragons’ palace,” Violet said. “I mean, that’s what this mapmaker thinks it looks like anyway.”
Ivy’s heart went thump and skip and started fluttering weirdly in her chest. “They have a palace?” she said. “In the mountains?”
“Of course they do,” Violet said. “Like the one the sand dragons have in the desert that your dad snuck into.”
Ivy couldn’t quite explain the feeling she was having, of wanting to see something so badly and knowing she’d never ever be allowed to. What did a dragon palace look like? Was it beautiful? Did it
have rooms for different things — an eating hall, a throne room, a library? How could dragons be vicious wild animals, the way her dad described them, but also have castles where they lived together and queens who ruled over them? How did a wild animal obey a queen or build a castle?
She wished she could ask her father about the palace in the desert, but his dragonslaying story was always the same: lots of gory killing, very vague on the details around it. He never talked about sneaking inside or how he carried out the treasure or what any of the dragon stuff looked like.
Maybe Uncle Stone would tell me … if I could get him to talk about that night at all.
Ivy’s uncle had never married, and although he was supposedly as rich as the Dragonslayer, he was never seen spending his treasure. He lived alone in the smallest cave in the underground city. Sometimes he came over for dinner and spent the entire evening staring glumly into his soup. Ivy found him a little unsettling and way too quiet, except every once in a while when he yelled at her dad and was way too loud.
“So … you know how your dad was away for a few days?” Violet asked, studying Ivy’s face.
Ivy nodded. Her mother had fluttered around the caves in a state of nervous disarray the entire time he was gone. It had been rather exhausting. “He took my favorite horse,” she said. “I was worried he wouldn’t bring her back.”
“Do you know where he went?” Daffodil asked from the door.
Ivy thought for a moment, but she couldn’t remember being told. “I thought it was a regular gathering expedition,” she said. Although, come to think of it, there had been a lot of noise around him coming back this time. A few more men shouting “Heath the Hero!” or “Hurrah for the Dragonslayer!” —their voices echoing through the tunnels and filling up the great hall.
“He says he went to this palace,” Violet said, tapping the little drawing of a castle way up north in the mountains. “He was gone for three days, and when he came back, he told everyone he rode up to the gates of the mountain dragons’ palace and shouted at them to come out and fight, but none of them would because they’re scared of him.”
“Why would he do that?” Ivy said incredulously. “Last time he only fought one dragon — what if a whole bunch had come out to fight him? He would have been eaten up SO FAST.”
“I want to know how the dragons knew who he was,” Daffodil demanded. “I mean, did all those dragons actually think, ‘Oh no! It’s the Dragonslayer! Everybody hide!’? Seriously? Because how? Did the sand dragons describe him to the mountain dragons? Or draw them a picture? Aren’t we totally miniature to them? Can they even tell us apart?”
“Those are great questions,” Ivy said. Her dad had always acted as if, of course, everyone in the universe knew who he was, so she’d kind of assumed that included all the dragons. But really, did the dragons have any idea what he looked like?
Did they ever think about “the Dragonslayer” at all?
“Thank you,” Daffodil said, looking delighted.
“No, they’re not,” Violet said. “Those questions are missing the whole point.”
“Oh yeah, well, YOU’RE MISSING A WHOLE BRAIN,” Daffodil shouted.
“Why, Violet? What’s the real question?” Ivy asked quickly.
“Just look at this map!” Violet said. “He was gone three days. How could he possibly have gone all the way to this palace and back in just three days?”
Ivy stared at the map. She only sort of understood it — she knew the little triangles were mountains and the wiggly lines were rivers. She didn’t quite know how far it really was to the top of the map; she only sort of knew where Valor was on it: somewhere in the wooded foothills at the southern part of the mountain range.
But she heard the urgency in Violet’s voice and she felt a weird shivering in the universe. Was this another Dragonslayer lie? If it was such a big, obvious one, wouldn’t lots of people have noticed it? Or if they had noticed it, why didn’t they care?
“Is there any way?” she asked, putting her little finger on the palace and stretching her thumb toward Valor. “Maybe there was something magic in the treasure that makes him go really fast?”
Daffodil laughed. “Your dad never goes fast.”
That was true. The Dragonslayer tended to dawdle, to stop and chat to anyone he saw, to sit down and eat whatever extra food was lying around.
“But maybe he did it somehow,” Ivy said. “Or else where did he go for all that time?”
“THAT is an ACTUAL great question,” Violet pounced. “We should find that out!”
“We totally should!” Daffodil agreed.
“Wait —” Ivy started.
“But how can we figure it out?” Daffodil asked, looking at Violet. “What do we do?”
“We follow him!” Violet said, her voice dropping to a thrilling whisper.
“Yessssss!” Daffodil agreed in a matching whisper.
“Oh, dear, oh no,” Ivy said. “Following my dad? Outside? We definitely aren’t allowed to do that.”
“We aren’t allowed to read my dads’ law scrolls or steal books from the library either,” Violet said, glancing pointedly at the Wingwatcher’s Guide on Ivy’s floor. “But we’ve done those things anyway. For truth! For justice!”
“So we can know more stuff than other people!” Daffodil cried, raising one of her fists in the air.
“No,” Violet said, frowning. “This is not about beating other people at knowing stuff, Daffodil.”
“Um, it totally is,” Daffodil said. “You love being the person who knows the most things. I saw your face when you won the spelling contest!”
“I didn’t steal that book,” Ivy interjected, “by the way. I’ll give it back. I’m just not … finished with it yet.”
“Anyway, I have a plan, so everyone shush,” Violet said.
And that was how, ten days later, Ivy found herself sneaking behind her father as he left the caves again.
She was technically supposed to tell Violet and Daffodil; her instructions were to run and get them so they could all follow him together. But there wasn’t time for that. He left the cave so suddenly, and Ivy was pretty sure the important part was following him. More important than getting the others. She thought. She hoped they wouldn’t be mad about this. She’d have to remember every detail to tell them, to make up for going without them.
Heath sauntered through the tunnels, whistling. He didn’t head toward their small stable of horses, so he couldn’t be planning a long trip — and he hadn’t made a glorious announcement to a gathered throng of worshippers before leaving either, so this wasn’t one of his Dragonslayer Quests. He’d told Mother he was “going outside,” and she’d simply told him to be careful — but he’d also taken a shoulder bag hidden under his shirt, and he avoided walking past Uncle Stone’s door, so he was definitely Up To Something.
Ivy was good at not being noticed, and her father was exceptionally good at not noticing things, especially things he thought were unimportant, like little girls. She stayed several paces behind him, pressing herself against the wall whenever he stopped to chat with one of his followers.
She ran into a problem at the tunnel exit, though. Her father chose one of the exits with a ladder up to the sky, where a Wingwatcher stood guard at the bottom.
Ivy crouched behind a bench carved out of the rock. Her heart was pounding. She’d never been this close to this exit before — certainly never without permission. It smelled different here. She didn’t think she was imagining that.
“Hello, Holly!” Heath boomed cheerfully as he approached the bottom of the ladder.
“It’s Foxglove, sir,” the Wingwatcher said. Ivy didn’t know her very well, although Foxglove had left school only a couple of years ago to train with the Wingwatchers. Her hair was shaved into a close dark fuzz over her head and her forest-green uniform was neat and unwrinkled.
Most interestingly, Foxglove’s expression was hard to read. It wasn’t the usual adoring gaze Ivy’s father got all ov
er Valor. She looked calm, focused … unimpressed. Ivy smushed her face around, trying to imitate her. Violet and Daffodil would be so startled if Ivy could make a cool “I don’t care” expression like that.
“Any dragon sightings today?” Heath asked, ignoring the name correction.
“No, sir.”
“Too bad, too bad.” He cracked his knuckles. “Can’t wait to meet another dragon with the pointy end of this guy.” He patted the sword at his waist with a grin.
Foxglove raised her eyebrows but said nothing.
“Well, I’ll be back soon,” Heath said. He put one hand on the ladder.
“Sir,” Foxglove said. “I am required to ask what your purpose on the outside is. By your own decree, sir.”
Heath frowned at her. “You are required to ask other people. I am THE DRAGONSLAYER and the lord of all of Valor.”
“It was my understanding that the laws apply to everyone, sir,” Foxglove said evenly.
Ivy held her breath. She knew that expression on her father’s face; this moment on the edge right before he exploded with anger.
But instead he shifted from a glare to a smug grin as oily as Ivy’s hands after the olive harvest came in.
“Very good, Holly,” he said, wagging one finger at her. “I like to see my people following my laws. Where would we be without them, am I right?”
“It’s Foxglove, sir,” she said again.
“I am going outside to assess the status of the orchards,” he said grandly. “Check up on the fruit harvesters. Lord business. Don’t you worry about it.”
Foxglove gave another slight nod, stepping back so he could climb up the ladder. He went without saying a word of farewell.
Ivy rubbed her temples, thinking. How could she get past Foxglove? No self-respecting Wingwatcher would ever let an eight-year-old climb outside on her own. Unless maybe she asked really nicely? Ivy was a big fan of asking nicely; she found that this nearly always worked, at least with grown-ups.
Foxglove was a teenager, though. That was a mysterious in-between kind of person who might do absolutely anything. They were inexplicable, Violet would often say wisely.
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