The Poison Jungle

by Tui T. Sutherland

  “We’ll help you practice with it,” Sundew said, wondering if she could really offer something like that. There wasn’t a LeafWing alive who knew anything about managing flamesilk. “But for now, promise me you won’t use it in the jungle unless I tell you to.”

  “I promise,” he said. “I really promise. Can you help me get Swordtail out? He must be so scared.”

  “NO! NOT SCARED!” Swordtail half yelled, half sputtered through the crack in the plant’s jaws. “This plant is in big trouble! I’m going to slice it up from the inside! I’m going to give it such a stomachache! It’ll seriously regret trying to eat ME!”

  “You deserved it!” Sundew barked at him. It was a relief to have someone she could be mad at without feeling bad. She hooked her claws around the top edge of the plant’s mouth and motioned for Blue to take the bottom edge. “You basically fed yourself to it!”

  “I did not — that is — it — I was just smelling it!” Swordtail growled.

  Sundew flapped her wings, pushing herself backward as hard as she could. “The smell is designed to attract dragons,” she conceded. “But only dragons with no brains in their heads! Who like constantly causing trouble for their traveling companions! I said you would get eaten right away and I was right!”

  With a ripping, crackling sound, the jaws finally parted. Swordtail hauled himself out and back onto the first branch, coughing and blinking rapidly. The others let go of the dragon-trap, and the head broke off from the blackened stem, tumbling away to the forest floor.

  Sundew could sense the hunger of the surrounding dragon-traps. As the smoke faded into the air, they were getting bolder, rustling closer in their stealthy way.

  She shoved Cricket and Bumblebee back onto the branch, and Blue clambered after them.

  “I’ve never seen such a pileup of idiocy,” she said. “Now really stay close to me and really don’t touch anything!”

  “I feel like we could have gotten a bit more of a warning,” Swordtail objected with a cough as they started walking again. “Like, it’d be pretty helpful if you’d point out: that’s a carnivorous plant and that one is super flammable and that one can kill you.”

  “All right,” Sundew said, waving at the entire jungle around them. “These are dangerous plants and most of them are carnivorous and all of them can kill you. Do not sniff, touch, eat, poke, lick, or set fire to any of them, or you will probably die, and next time I will let you.”

  “She doesn’t mean that,” Cricket whispered to Bumblebee, who chirped sleepily back at her.

  “It must have been pretty awful when your tribe first got here,” Blue said.

  Sundew did not dignify that with an answer, since she was pretty sure it would involve more yelling at him, and apparently she didn’t really enjoy yelling at Blue. (Yelling at Swordtail, on the other hand, was always satisfying.)

  They climbed in silence for a little while, hopping from branch to branch as they descended through the jungle. It was a prickly silence, though; Blue had an aura of guilt around him, Swordtail kept muttering under his breath, and Sundew could feel Cricket’s eyes on her. She knew her well enough by now to guess that Cricket was trying really hard to hold back a question, and that pretty soon she would fail.

  “Sundew,” Cricket burst out as they passed a cluster of glowering giant hogweeds.

  “Arrgh, what?” Sundew said, casting a glance over her shoulder at the HiveWing. Cricket’s glasses were fogged up from the humidity, and she kept swiping at them with Bumblebee’s sling.

  “It’s just …” Cricket hesitated, and Sundew realized what she was going to ask. Even in the midst of fighting the fire with bromeliad pools, of course Cricket would notice what every dragon around her was doing. Especially if it was something weird and unscientific.

  Cricket tilted her head at Sundew. “Did you … make a tree grow?”

  Sundew winced.

  Her gift was no secret inside the tribe, but Belladonna had been very clear that she wasn’t supposed to let any HiveWings or SilkWings find out about it. Sundew had already risked exposing it twice — once when she grew the vines that helped Blue and Luna escape the flamesilk cavern, once when she used seaweed to help her transport an unconscious Swordtail across Dragonfly Bay. She’d gotten away with it both times; she’d even managed to avoid Cricket’s questions.

  But there was no way to get around the Poison Jungle without using her power. She couldn’t even walk through the LeafWing village without dragons asking her for help with their plants. Cricket and the others would know everything soon anyway.

  “Yeah,” she said to Cricket. “I do that sometimes.”

  “Grow trees?” Cricket asked. “Like … really tall trees out of nowhere before anyone can blink?”

  “Not out of nowhere,” Sundew said. “I can only help along whatever plant is already there. I can’t make plants or seeds appear. If I could, I’d have been throwing down oak trees and beech groves and pine forests all over Pantala by now.”

  “But that’s amazing,” Blue said. “Why didn’t you tell us? Because you didn’t know if you could trust us,” he answered himself immediately. “Because you wouldn’t want Queen Wasp to find out.”

  “As if we would ever tell Queen Wasp!” Swordtail objected.

  “Oh!” Blue said. “I remember reading something about this! LeafWings who could control plants — I remember thinking that sounded like magic and wondering what I would grow with it if I could.”

  “Can all LeafWings do this?” Cricket asked.

  Sundew shook her head, but she was rescued from any further questions by an eruption of roars from the jungle below.

  The others jumped, and Bumblebee woke up and poked her head out of the sling. “RAWR?” she inquired. “Bammo slammo eeeeeeenow?”

  “Everyone shush,” Sundew said, crouching low to the branch. “Especially you,” she whispered to Bumblebee.

  “YOUUUSHH HA HAA SO SHH,” Bumblebee declared proudly. Cricket produced a berry from somewhere and the little dragonet seized it and stuffed it whole into her mouth, which would keep her quiet for at most ten seconds.

  Thick leaves hid them from what was happening below, but Sundew could clearly hear at least three dragons bellowing and a fourth roar that didn’t sound like a dragon to her. She rested her ear against the bark of the tree and tried to get the tree’s sense of what was going on. But whatever it was, the tree was apparently not threatened and therefore not interested.

  “Come ON, Mandrake!” one of the dragons bellowed. “Strangle it or something!”

  “It’s moving too fast!” Mandrake’s voice shouted back. “If it would just — can we back it over to — or next to that —”

  “Can’t I please just kill it?” yelled the third dragon. “We could be home and cooking it by now! This panther will die of old age before Mandrake finds the perfect vine in the perfect place and figures out what to do with it!”

  Oh, poor Mandrake. Sundew could guess exactly what was happening now. She’d seen enough of the hunts this hapless dragon had been dragged into by his father and sister.

  “Stay here,” she whispered to the others. Sundew swung lightly down through the branches, slipping carefully through the leaves and avoiding the spiderwebs as well as she could. In a moment, she found a spot near the trunk with a view of the jungle floor, where, if she kept still, the clusters of giant rattling seed pods should keep her hidden.

  Now she could see Mandrake darting helplessly around the clearing, grabbing at plants but letting them go without using them. His father and sister watched from the low branches of the nearest trees, with matching critical expressions on their faces. The panther slunk after him, snarling, its teeth bigger than Mandrake’s claws. Its black fur rippled over huge muscles. Only the biggest, strongest, scariest mammals could survive in the Poison Jungle, so all their panthers were unnecessarily gigantic and terrifying.

  Terrifying to dragons like Mandrake, that is. Not at all terrifying to Sundew, who was in charge
of hunting their prey for every big tribe feast. How dare they have Mandrake do it instead, she thought with a flare of anger. Are they having a feast without ME? Don’t they care where I am? Aren’t I their precious savior of the world or something?

  Then again, her last fight with Belladonna had been quite dramatic. It would be just like her mother to spite her by burning down a Hive and celebrating with an all-tribe panther feast while pretending she didn’t care whether Sundew was there or not. She knew Sundew would have to come back eventually. Sundew had nowhere else to go.

  But if I did … if I could just fly away … would I?

  Sundew’s talons went to the pouch with the little jade frog in it.

  I could have left. Belladonna doesn’t even know I could have left them. But I didn’t, because I have a purpose, and that purpose is vengeance. I hatched for one reason: to destroy our enemies.

  That’s why I will always come back. Not for Belladonna or Hemlock. I come back so that one day I can be the one who wipes out the HiveWings forever.

  A tiny face clamoring “SNUDOO!” poked its way into her thoughts, and she scowled.

  Or … all the HiveWings except two, I guess.

  Below her, the panther pounced experimentally toward Mandrake. Mandrake shrieked and threw a seed pod at it before running off to the other side of the clearing. Nettle sighed loudly and rolled her eyes.

  “He has to learn how to do this,” Wolfsbane said to her.

  “Why?” she complained. “I could do it so much faster without any magical powers. And if we need the magic, we have Sundew.”

  “We don’t have Sundew right now,” her father pointed out. “She might have to go on another mission like this one, and what if we’re attacked and Mandrake has to step up?”

  “Then we’re all going to die,” Nettle said flatly.

  “I can hear you,” Mandrake protested, “and it is not helping.” He dug his talons into the leaf mulch underneath him and closed his eyes.

  By all the trees, Sundew thought. Don’t close your eyes, Mandrake! Not when there’s a panther stalking you! This was why Mandrake was never assigned to offensive plant magic. He always had to FOCUS and BREATHE, even in the middle of an actual emergency.

  Well, Sundew couldn’t let him get mauled by a panther, even if that might make her life a little easier. She sent her magic down through the trunk and into the ground and through the roots and the mosses and ferns to the thicket of thorn tangles behind the panther. As it crouched, growling, ready to spring at Mandrake, she felt into the root system that extended below the panther’s paws. Just before the giant cat leaped, a new thorn bush burst out of the ground and slammed into the panther’s underbelly. Thorns stabbed and tangled the panther’s fur as they sprouted, trapping the animal in place. With a furious yowl, it tried to struggle, but its movements only ensnared it further.

  Across the clearing, Wolfsbane and Nettle goggled at the panther in bewilderment. Sundew had to cover her snout to keep from laughing.

  Mandrake cracked one eyelid, then opened them both, looking startled and pleased.

  “Whoa. Did I do that?” he asked.

  “Son!” Wolfsbane crowed. “Look at you! That was incredible!”

  “Uh-uh,” Nettle said, resettling her face into its usual sneer. “No way. Sundew! Sundew, you can’t fool me. I know you’re here somewhere!”

  Sundew held her breath, wondering if she could brazen it out. Wolfsbane and Mandrake squinted up into the trees, and of course, right into that moment of silence, a very loud, high-pitched voice howled, “SNUUUUUUUUUUUUUUDOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

  “What was that?” Mandrake asked, looking spooked.

  “Sounded like a dragonet,” said his father.

  “Sounded like proof that I’m right,” Nettle barked. “Come on out, Sundew!”

  Sundew sighed. There was no hiding the wrestling and shushing noises coming from above, or the “EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE NOOOOOOOWWW” wail that followed. DRAGONETS. ONE HUNDRED PERCENT THE WORST.

  She swung down from the tree and thumped to the ground in a cloud of damp leaf fragments.

  “Hey, Mandrake,” she said with a nod.

  “Oh,” he said, his wings drooping. “It was you.”

  “Pardon me for making sure you didn’t become her feast instead of the other way around!” Sundew growled, flicking her tail at the panther.

  “I knew it,” Nettle said.

  “Sorry — I mean — thank you,” said Mandrake. “I was just excited for a moment.”

  “I know,” Sundew said, “but you have to learn to feel the plants with your eyes open.” She glared at Wolfsbane. “Especially if your irresponsible family is going to keep trying to get you killed.”

  “I was watching him,” Wolfsbane said dismissively. “Sundew, what is that cacophony up there?” He pointed up with his eyebrows raised, as though there was anything unfamiliar about the sound of a hungry dragonet throwing a temper tantrum.

  “You can come down!” Sundew shouted to her friends. “Go to the trunk and work your way down slowly — don’t touch anything but the tree!”

  Nettle’s mouth dropped open again. “Who is that?” she demanded. “Someone who doesn’t know our jungle? Did you bring STRANGERS into our trees?”

  “Don’t be a drama queen,” Sundew said sharply. “They can help us.”

  “Do your parents know about this?” Wolfsbane asked, which was only the most irritating question in the universe, and one Sundew was very sick of hearing. Belladonna and Hemlock had gone ahead and burned down a Hive without asking her first, so it served them right for her to bring HiveWings and SilkWings into the jungle without their permission.

  Swordtail hit the ground first, his talons sinking into the layers of moss and dead leaves with a squelch. He looked a little the worse for wear after his tussle with the dragon-trap, but still very clearly a SilkWing.

  Nettle was about to snap something furious, when Blue climbed down behind Swordtail, and she lost her powers of speech. There was nothing that color blue in the Poison Jungle. He was a kind of shiny that Sundew’s tribe wasn’t used to.

  But even Blue’s beautiful wings couldn’t distract the LeafWings from the appearance of Cricket, cradling Bumblebee.

  Nettle flared her wings with a violent hiss. Wolfsbane whipped a long thorny vine off his tail and held it ready to fight. Even Mandrake growled softly under his breath.

  “It’s all right, calm down!” Sundew said. “They’re with me.”

  “That doesn’t make it all right!” Nettle cried. “HiveWings in here?! What is wrong with you? Queen Wasp will be right behind them!”

  “No, she won’t!” Sundew snapped. “She can’t mind-control these two. She doesn’t know where they are, or where we are. Nothing has changed! Except now we have a flamesilk.”

  Wolfsbane let out a little huff of surprise and pointed at Blue. “That one?”

  Sundew hesitated and was furious at herself for hesitating. Why did she feel weird about this? “Yes,” she said. She felt a twinge of that weird feeling at the nervous look on Blue’s face. But he doesn’t have anything to worry about, she told herself. He can be useful to us, and we’ll protect him from Wasp. Win-win.

  “I wouldn’t say you ‘have’ a flamesilk,” Swordtail said pointedly. “I mean, he is a flamesilk and he’s here, but he has himself. No one else has him, I mean. He is not for having. He’s his own dragon!”

  “Hmmm,” Wolfsbane said, ignoring him and studying Blue with fathomless brown eyes. “So why not kill the others and just keep this one, Sundew?”

  “Because they’re all useful,” Sundew said quickly. She tried to make her voice sound as aggressive and no-nonsense as she could. “Especially the HiveWing. She’s immune to the mind control, and we think she’s figured out how Wasp does it.”

  “What about him?” Nettle asked, pointing at Swordtail. “He looks unnecessary.”

  “All right, maybe useful is the wrong word,” Sundew amended, earning an offended loo
k from the blue-orange-white dragon. “But we can’t kill him without upsetting the flamesilk. Not worth it.”

  Blue blinked and sidled a step closer to Swordtail. His antennae had unfurled into thin trembling stems over his head, like tentacles of ivy looking for a place to land safely.

  “I am useful,” Swordtail protested. “I have many uses. I am smart and I know things and I can fight HiveWings and I am in the Chrysalis, hello, which everyone seems to forget, secret revolutionary over here, and I am also, by the way, extremely good company.”

  “And the dragonet?” Wolfsbane asked Sundew.

  “An experiment,” she said. “We think she’s immune to the mind control, too.”

  “You think?” Nettle demanded. “That’s quite a risky experiment, you idiots.”

  “It’s going great so far!” Sundew flared.

  “You get away with everything because you’re Belladonna’s daughter and you’re soooo special!” Nettle shouted. “But you’ve gone too far this time, Sundew! No one will stand for this!”

  “Let’s go ask Belladonna what to do,” Wolfsbane said, resting one talon on Nettle’s shoulder.

  “Fine.” Nettle shook him off. “But I know what she’ll say. We’ll be back soon to execute your new pets!” She folded her wings and hissed at Sundew one more time before turning and marching away.

  “Wait for us here,” Wolfsbane said.

  “I’ll stay with them,” Mandrake offered. Wolfsbane gave a faint shrug and followed Nettle into the undergrowth.

  Sundew sat down with a snort of disgust. This wasn’t how she’d planned to arrive. She was supposed to be the one who explained all this to Belladonna. Not that she wanted to. But she didn’t want stupid Wolfsbane to do it! He’d get it all wrong! But it didn’t matter. Belladonna wasn’t the boss of Sundew. Except in the literal, she-ran-the-whole-tribe sense. But Sundew was going to save the world and wreak furious vengeance on those who deserved it, so there wasn’t anything Belladonna could do to her or her friends. Not if she wanted a part in the vengeance! Just try me, Mother.

  “Uh,” Blue said. “That … didn’t sound like it went very well.”