by Lisa McMann
By the exterior wall near Arabis, Seth spotted a stack of swollen burlap sacks marked DRAGON FODDER. Next to the filled sacks was a small pile of empty ones. “Can we use these sacks for the cloth part of the wings?”
Fifer went over to examine them. “They’re better than nothing. I think they’ll work. But I’m still not sure what we’re going to do without more branches.” She looked up at Arabis the orange, whose neck curved uncomfortably in the too-small stall and whose pained eyes watched Seth and Fifer from above the muzzle.
Fifer spied a few widely spaced, rusty iron rungs built into the wall between the stalls. She used them like a ladder and climbed up to stroke the dragon’s neck. “I wish you could tell me why they keep you locked up like this. And what happened to make you captives in your own land. It doesn’t make any sense.”
Arabis blinked.
Fifer wished she’d asked Hux more questions when he’d had his muzzle off. But she doubted Hux would have answered—he’d already seemed uncomfortable with the amount of information he’d given them. Dragons had so many secrets.
Almost as if Arabis could hear Fifer’s thoughts, the dragon snorted. Fifer gasped in surprise. Medium-size dragons were pretty intimidating, even if they were friends of Artimé.
When Arabis had settled again, Fifer climbed up higher and slid along the top of the thick stall door so she could examine the placement of the dragon’s existing wings. She remembered that Alex and the others had done some sort of mathematical equation to determine what size the new wings needed to be, but Fifer and Seth didn’t have a clue what the formula was. She tried to remember how big the new wings were compared to the long tables they sat on in Ms. Octavia’s room. They’d stuck out over the edge in both directions, she recalled, but that was about as much as she knew. They were huge. And Fifer’s materials were limited. It seemed impossible. Plus, how were they going to get the old wings off? She hopped back down and went over to where Seth sat, counting the sticks.
“There’s absolutely no way we can do this,” Fifer lamented. “We need ten giant wings. That’s practically a whole forest full of branches.”
Seth frowned as he studied their meager supplies. He looked up at Fifer, and then he glanced at Ivis the green, who was the dragon nearest him. “What if . . . ,” he began, then stopped.
“What?” asked Fifer.
Seth shook his head as if he were embarrassed to say it. But then he thought some more and said, “Why do we have to make entire new wings? Why can’t we just, you know, add on to the existing ones?” He cringed, expecting Fifer to laugh at the idea, for he wasn’t normally the one of the three to come up with a smart solution to a problem. Not that Seth didn’t have ideas, of course. He just didn’t often have a chance to share them, what with the twins always scheming a step ahead of him. And under normal circumstances he was perfectly happy to let them do the plotting and take the lead. But Thisbe was half of Fifer’s masterful brain, and with her gone, Seth felt a little bolder about making a suggestion.
Fifer tapped her lips thoughtfully. It was such a simple plan that she was surprised she hadn’t thought of it. But would it work? She scrunched up her nose as she pictured the results. “The wings will be pretty ugly.”
“Right.” Seth hastily looked down so Fifer wouldn’t see his disappointment. But then he thought some more and looked up again. “But as long as they can fly, the dragons won’t care, will they?” Seth turned to Ivis. “Will you?”
Ivis shook her head as much as the muzzle chains would allow. The dragons needed wings that worked in order to stay alive. They didn’t care how ugly they were.
“Okay, well, I think we’ve got a plan, then,” said Fifer, relieved. “And maybe if we’re really lucky, the wings will work without me having to make them come alive.”
Seth laughed. “Don’t count on that. They’ll just be extra deadweight, and they won’t meld properly to the existing wings without magic. But we’ll worry about that later. Let’s get started.” He tried not to grin too much, for there was still a lot at stake, and Thisbe to worry about, and besides that, no one knew if the plan would work. But it had been his idea, and he was pretty proud of that. He cleared his throat authoritatively. “We have twenty-two sapling branches that are all taller than me. So we can use two of them per wing to extend each by at least five feet, and we’ll have two branches left over in case we need them. Do you think that’ll be enough?”
Fifer sucked in a breath and let it out slowly, contemplating the impossible task. She shook her head, wishing hard for Thisbe’s input. She’d know best what to do. But Fifer knew that Thisbe would be counting on her to pull this off, and then rescue her. There was nothing else they could do but try. They’d come this far, and they had to do it for the sake of the dragons—and themselves. “I sure hope it’s enough,” she said, resigned, and picked up two sticks. “It’ll have to be.”
A Stranger in the Dark
The soldiers dragged Thisbe, yelling and kicking, up to the grand entrance of the castle. They crossed to a wing on the opposite side, beyond the tigers, then went into a hallway. They pulled Thisbe down a long, uneven flight of stairs to a dungeon that felt even colder, darker, and more damp than the one the dragons were in. The floor was wet and the walls were slimy, and there were only a few torches here and there to light the way.
They weaved through narrow hallways, past other chained prisoners, who called out in anguish as the soldiers and Thisbe passed by. The soldiers shouted back at them to be quiet and threatened them with punishments. Thisbe held her breath, feeling more and more scared the deeper they went and the more turns they made.
Thisbe soon lost all sense of direction. She tried desperately to remember the turns they took, but there were so many that the journey became a blur, and she had no idea which way was out. Finally they came to a stop in front of a few small, open chambers that were unlit and seemingly empty. The soldiers pushed Thisbe inside and slapped iron cuffs around her wrists and ankles. Within moments they were gone, their footsteps just an echo in the stone hallways.
Thisbe soon discovered by feel and sound that the cuffs were attached to chains, and the chains were attached to the wall. She tugged at them, hard, but they didn’t budge. “Release,” she whispered, but she wasn’t surprised when they didn’t release her, since they hadn’t been attached magically. It was strange—nobody seemed to do magic in Grimere.
She knew shouting for help would do no good but get her more punishments, so Thisbe sat down. The cold water seeped into her clothes. “Yuck,” she muttered, feeling miserable and helpless. “This place is so disgusting.” She choked back a sob, knowing that if she started crying now, she might not stop, and then she’d have a cry headache on top of it all.
She couldn’t help but think of home and how it seemed more and more likely that they’d never make it back there again. Why had they come here? They’d been so foolish to attempt such a huge, dangerous task. Her brother was right. She deserved to be locked up, and now she was. “I’m so sorry, Alex,” she whispered. “Please come and find us. Please. I’ll never do anything like this again, I promise. Just . . . just please don’t hate me. That would be the worst thing that could happen.”
After a minute, the silence was broken by a new voice. It was thick and raspy and that of an old woman. “You must love Alex very much for that to be the worst thing.”
Thisbe froze. She looked all around in the darkness but couldn’t see anyone. “Who said that?” she asked. “Who are you?” She stretched out her hands and tried to put her feet up to help protect herself, but she couldn’t lift them very far before the chain grew taut.
But the voice didn’t come any closer. A chain rattled, and it wasn’t one attached to Thisbe. “I am Maiven Taveer. And you?”
“Thisbe. Um, Thisbe Stowe.”
“You speak the language of the dragons quite beautifully.”
Thisbe didn’t know what to think about that. “It’s the only language I know besides Warbl
er sign language. Why do you call it the language of the dragons?”
“It has always been called so,” said Maiven Taveer.
Thisbe thought about that. “But all the dragons I know can speak another secret language. I’ve heard Pan use it. I thought that was their language.”
“I have not heard of Pan. Is he a dragon?”
“She is, yes. She’s the ruler of the sea.”
“The sea? There’s no sea here, only a crater lake many miles away, beyond Dragonsmarche. What world does she rule?”
“The world of . . . Artimé, and the Island of Dragons and . . . well, five other islands. You don’t need me to name them all. I guess people here call my world the Seven Islands.”
“Ah,” said Maiven Taveer. “I know of it, but have never been there.”
“It’s kind of hard to get there from here.”
“So I’ve heard. Unless you’re a pirate.”
“A pirate?”
Maiven was quiet for a moment, and then said, “This is probably not accurate anymore. But once upon a time, pirates could travel between the worlds. They sold sea creatures in the marketplace. Quite rare here, as you can imagine. Since there’s no sea, I mean.”
“Oh.” Thisbe didn’t really feel like talking about pirates. The two chamber mates lapsed into silence, and Thisbe’s thoughts turned to her miserable predicament and how uncomfortable she felt sitting in a quarter inch of cold running water. At least she hoped it was water. She shivered and hugged her knees, letting her forehead rest on them.
After a few minutes, Maiven Taveer spoke again. “Tell me about it.”
Thisbe lifted her head and blinked in the darkness. “What?”
“The Seven Islands. Is it beautiful there?” Maiven’s voice carried a strong melody of wistfulness that, for a moment, made Thisbe feel sorrier for her than she felt for herself.
“Most of it is beautiful. I live in the center island of the seven, on Quill and Artimé. Artimé is the magical side, you see. And Quill . . . well, the people there are not so bad now, but they used to call creative children Unwanteds and send them to their deaths.” She laughed a little. “Now they just send them to us in Artimé and we take them in. We teach them how to use their creativity to do magic.” She trailed off, thinking of Henry and Thatcher, and a spear of longing went through her. She missed them. She missed everything about home. “It’s much better for the Unwanteds to be in Artimé.”
“Hmm.” The old woman was silent for a time, and then said, “Everything gets worse or better as time passes. It rarely stays the same.”
Thisbe frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Lands, people, situations,” Maiven said, passionately enough to send her into a coughing fit. When she could speak again, she continued. “Everything. It either gets better or it gets worse. Think about Quill—you said it was getting better. What about Artimé? Is it getting better there, or worse? Consider people you know—they are always changing one way or another. Think about yourself, Thisbe. Are you getting better? Or worse?”
The questions made Thisbe uncomfortable. She stayed quiet, pondering them. Thinking about her destructive magic and how she still couldn’t stop it. And then she thought of what Hux had said about Dev, and about how he was exactly 50 percent good and 50 percent evil. And that time would tell which direction he moved in.
“I don’t know,” Thisbe said in a small voice.
Maiven paused. “I’m sorry—I’ve just realized you are a child, aren’t you? You sounded much older before.”
“I’m not a child,” said Thisbe. “I’m twelve.”
“I see,” said Maiven solemnly. After a while she asked, “Will you tell me more about your world so I can see it in my mind forever? It will help me pass the days.”
“How many days have you been in here?”
Maiven hesitated. “I don’t want to tell you.”
“Why not?”
There was a long moment of silence before Maiven broke it once more. “Because I don’t want you to be afraid.”
Thisbe Gets a Shock
While Seth and Fifer constructed the first set of wing extensions, using Seth’s dwindling supply of scatterclips to wire them together and his remaining preserve components as glue to connect them to Arabis’s existing wings, Thisbe told Maiven Taveer all about Artimé.
She described the lush lawn, the colorful trees and flowers, the fountains, the mansion, the magical creatures, and the jungle, which could be a dangerous place. She went on to describe Warbler’s underground tunnels and outdoor shipyard, and Karkinos the crab island with a forest growing on his shell and sand around the edges, and his coral-reef claws, and the grandfathers’ gardens on the Island of Shipwrecks. And before she knew it, hours had passed without her feeling especially terrible about having to be in the cold, damp dungeon of an ancient castle at the peak of the cliffs of Grimere, with no way to get home.
When they came to a natural lull in the conversation, Thisbe ventured to ask the old woman a few questions too. “Are you from Grimere or somewhere else? How did you come to be put in this dungeon? And do they bring any food and water around? I’m getting pretty hungry. We haven’t eaten anything since the middle of the night.”
But the old woman was silent, and soon Thisbe could hear a soft snoring sound coming from her direction. Thisbe realized she was weary too, but even though things were quiet in her area of the dungeon, she was too afraid to sleep. Instead she tipped her head back against the wall and stared into the darkness, thinking and worrying about . . . well, about everything.
After several minutes, Thisbe began to ponder her magic. And how being one of the most magical people in Artimé didn’t mean much at all when she didn’t know how to use it or control it. Her attempts at controlling it on this journey had failed miserably, but she’d tried—she’d tried very hard, in fact. Maybe Fifer was right, and the way to fix that problem was to go through Magical Warrior Training.
But of course Alex wouldn’t allow it. Thisbe began to feel renewed anger building up inside as she thought about how Alex shielded her and Fifer from learning more, and how he’d forced everyone else to keep magic from them. He didn’t demand that for any other children in Artimé. He barely ever let the twins see anything in action. For years he required them to stay in the mansion during the times Florence was leading Magical Warrior Training on the lawn. And then, when the girls had attempted to learn things by watching through their window, he’d moved the whole operation to Karkinos, out of sight.
And Alex had kept the components locked away. It was all very frustrating, because Fifer and Thisbe were really good at the magic they’d learned on the sly. If only Alex had taught them the right way to do things once they were old enough to understand the dangers, instead of hiding everything from them, she and Fifer might not be in this predicament right now. Maybe the good things that Thisbe could do with those kinds of spells would balance out all the bad things she did with her internal magic now.
Having so much time to stew about it only caused her anger to grow, until she was mad enough to rip the chains right out of the walls.
She frowned. And then she grabbed one of the ankle chains with both hands. She concentrated on what she wanted to happen and then tugged at the chain, trying to pull it apart. “Break!”
Nothing happened.
“Splinter!” she cried.
From a distance away, the sound of tinkling glass could be heard. “Not you, you lousy window,” she muttered impatiently, but that was a spell she hadn’t done before, so she took a mental note of it before trying something else. “Chains, rip apart! Uncouple! Fracture!” She yanked them, but they held fast. “Divide!” she tried. She was running out of synonyms, and wished she could look in the Giant Thesaurus that sat in the midst of a mess of books in the Museum of Large. Instead, she thought some more. “Snap! Crunch! Explode!”
It was no use. Either she didn’t have the right verbal component, or she was doing something else wrong.
She sat back, defeated. After a while her anger faded and turned to sadness. Finally her eyelids drooped.
As she began to drift off to sleep, she heard a ruckus in the dungeon and snapped awake, her stomach roiling in fear. Had they figured out that she’d broken the window? Were they coming to do something awful to her?
Or perhaps it was someone coming with food. But the commotion sounded a little too crazy for that to be the case.
The noises grew louder, and the dungeon walls echoed with shouts. The voices were familiar, almost. Was it Seth and Fifer? Or Dev? No, it wasn’t any of them. She sat up a bit higher and strained her ears, trying to understand what the people were saying, but there was so much yelling and noise and echoing that Thisbe couldn’t make out any of it.
Soon the noisy group approached the chamber that Thisbe and Maiven occupied. In the dim hallway light, Thisbe could tell there were two prisoners, completely immobilized and being carried by a ridiculous number of guards. They turned sharply into the open chamber next door, and Thisbe could hear the rattle of chains and the threats from the soldiers as they shackled the two.
Finally the guards exited the chamber. Some of them were swearing, others limping. But Thisbe soon forgot them because a voice rose above their noise. The voice was loud and clear and passionate, and it came from one of the new prisoners next door. “GIVE . . . ME . . . MY . . . SON!”
Hiding Something
Thisbe gasped, and the dungeon exploded into noise. Prisoners from the various chambers around them began hollering and bellowing, either mocking Carina or supporting her—Thisbe wasn’t quite sure which. But the fact that Carina was here, just on the other side of the wall, made Thisbe’s heart surge. “Carina!” she yelled, but she could hardly hear herself. She didn’t expect Carina could hear her either.
She strained to listen, trying to figure out who the other prisoner might be, and her mind was filled with questions. How did Carina get here? How did she know where to find them?
