The Poison Jungle

by Tui T. Sutherland

  And from the way she walked, and the way she tilted her head to look down at them, and the way she held her wings like majestic jewels, this was a royal dragon.

  The royal dragon.

  “Hello, Belladonna’s daughter,” said Queen Sequoia. “Willow is correct that I need to know everything. I think it is high time you joined the real LeafWings.”

  “Your Majesty!” Willow gasped.

  Sundew found herself bowing her head instinctively, and she quickly jerked it back up again. She was a true LeafWing — or a PoisonWing, as the SapWings called them — and more important, she was Sundew and she bowed to nobody.

  Queen Sequoia smiled faintly. “You have exactly your grandmother’s stubborn expression. I saw it many times during the Tree Wars.”

  “My grandmother?” Sundew echoed, surprised. She’d heard of her, of course, all the time, but she’d died before Sundew hatched.

  “She was my best general.” Sequoia sighed. “And my most loyal, until I finally gave her an order she couldn’t follow: give up and run away. That’s when she left me and started your group instead.” She turned, offhandedly sweeping a noisy toad into the pond with one talon, where it sank with a startled glorp. “Come. We will be safer in the village.”

  I shouldn’t. I should turn and run home. Belladonna will LOSE HER MIND if she discovers I’ve run to the SapWings to tell tales on her.

  She wasn’t sure whether it was the idea of Belladonna’s apoplectic face or the air of authority around Queen Sequoia, but she found herself following the queen with Willow by her side.

  “Did you tell her about me?” Sundew hissed at Willow. “Did you bring her here?”

  “Sundew,” Willow said patiently, in the tone of a teacher reminding her students that three plus three always equals six. “I wouldn’t do that, and you know it.”

  She did sort of know it, but there was a part of her that was still mad that she’d been caught like this, and she wanted someone to blame. Sundew scowled. I can blame Queen Sequoia. What was she doing spying on us? How dare she! I will definitely tell her how I feel about that in as mad a voice as I like. I don’t have to treat her like a queen! I can yell at her if I want to! Maybe not right this second. Maybe later. When I FEEL LIKE IT.

  “Don’t be scared,” Willow whispered.

  “I’m not scared!” Sundew snapped, loud enough for the queen to glance over her shoulder at them. She lowered her voice. “When am I ever scared? What do I have to be scared of? She’s just a big dragon. She doesn’t even have an army. I’m not scared.”

  Willow stopped and took one of Sundew’s talons. In the dark, Sundew felt the smooth familiar weight of the jade frog come to rest in her palm. She tucked it back into her pouch, brushed her wing along Willow’s, and felt her heart rate start to calm down.

  “I’m sorry she followed me, but I’m not sorry you’re coming to the village,” Willow said, starting to walk again. “There’s something I can’t wait to show you.”

  “You did say you had something to tell me,” Sundew remembered sheepishly. “What is it?”

  “I mean, I think it’s exciting,” Willow said. “Maybe not as much to you, after all your almost dying and war starting. But guess what? There are strangers in our village! Three of them! And you’ll never believe where two of them come from! It’s amazing. Wait until you see them.”

  “Is one of them a SilkWing?” Sundew asked. “One of the SilkWings I brought to the rainforest is looking for his sister.” She stopped herself just in time from adding, And our spies thought you might have her. She was quite sure that Queen Sequoia was listening to them, even though she was several steps ahead.

  “Actually, yes, the third one is a SilkWing,” Willow said. “Aww, I hope we can reunite them.”

  Sundew flicked her wings, surprised and pleased. What were the chances that Luna would have blown ashore here? And survived and been rescued by the SapWings before Sundew’s tribemates or the dragon-traps or the cobra lilies or the snakes got her?

  That would solve a few problems, if we could give Luna to Belladonna instead of Blue. A willing flamesilk ally would be a much better bargain than hostages who have to be coerced into helping us. Then Blue and Cricket could do whatever they want to do next, and if they don’t want to be my friends anymore, that’s just fine.

  But first Sequoia would have to agree to give up Luna. What if she has her own plans for using flamesilk?

  “And the other two?” she asked.

  “You’ll see.” Willow flashed her an unmistakable grin, sparkling even in the darkness under the trees. Sundew felt a funny shiver in her chest, as though her heart had shaken raindrops off its wings.

  Even after everything I just told her, even though she thinks I’ve endangered her tribe and restarted a war she doesn’t want … she still loves me.

  In Sundew’s life, love mostly came in the form of yelling and criticism and judgment. Her parents “loved” her, and showed it by telling her everything she did wrong, correcting her mistakes, and starting shouting matches whenever they were the slightest bit aggravated.

  It still confused her sometimes when Willow did none of that. It was confusing her right now. Wasn’t Willow angry at her?

  She’d never seen Willow get angry.

  It was kind of unsettling, honestly. Sundew had thought about it for years and eventually came to the conclusion that Willow must just hide her anger really well. But did that mean it would erupt one day, all of a sudden, and burn down their relationship? These were the things Sundew worried about at night.

  She’d expected to find a wall or barrier or fence like the one she’d built around her own village, but instead the SapWing village crept up around them, like termites. The first sign was that all the dragon-traps disappeared. Sundew had never walked through a stretch of jungle with no dragon-traps in it — nor, she realized, were there any sundews, or pitcher plants, or anything else that ate dragons.

  Sundew was looking so carefully for carnivorous plants that she missed the first few leaf houses, but then, they were overhead, and it was dark.

  Suddenly she noticed a cluster of phosphorescent moss in a tree up ahead, and as they approached, she realized it lit up the interior of a kind of leaf globe tree house, perched in the higher branches.

  “Whoa,” she said, stopping without realizing it. Willow nudged her forward again, and then Sundew spotted more and more of them. The trees were full of the leaf houses — not so different from the nests in her village, except that they were in the sky, covered in leaves, and much bigger than her own. She guessed each would fit at least six dragons comfortably, at least of the ones she saw.

  Now she heard voices, too: here and there the murmur of dragons talking, and not far away, someone singing a lullaby. She heard a dragonet chirping and his parents sending him back to bed. She heard the soft rustle of dragons leaping from tree to tree, possibly tracking the queen’s movements — and mine, she guessed, her claws curling into the dirt.

  Willow and Sequoia spread their wings at the same time, and Sundew followed suit. They leaped into the air and led her to the largest tree house of all, a structure that spiraled all the way around an enormous baobab, with several levels, balconies, and rooms built out along the massive branches. Sundew couldn’t see all of it in the dark, but from the night blooms that were lit up in a few rooms, she was able to see dark-purple-and-white clematis vines twining all around the columns and bright red trumpet creepers dangling from the ceilings.

  They landed in a room on the top level with a smooth polished wood floor that must have taken a lot of work to make so slippery and shiny.

  A young LeafWing was waiting for them, curled on a mahogany throne, sewing sheets of speckled paper together to make a book. She looked a little older than Sundew, with large brown eyes and deft dark green claws.

  “Hazel,” Queen Sequoia said reprovingly as the dragon looked up. “What have I told you about bookmaking at night?”

  “It’s … an ef
ficient use of my time?” Hazel guessed with a mischievous grin.

  “You will ruin your eyes.” The queen tugged the pages out of her talons as Hazel protested. “And then we’ll either have to steal glasses from the HiveWings or have a blind queen, and I don’t like either of those plans.”

  Sundew gave Willow a startled look.

  “That’s the queen’s great-granddaughter,” Willow whispered. “Princess Hazel, next in line for the throne.”

  Oh, right — Willow had mentioned Hazel a few times. Mostly in the context of why Queen Sequoia refused to restart the Tree Wars. Something about not wanting to lose any more dragons.

  “I think glasses are cute,” Hazel said breezily. “And we won’t have to steal them if the scouts are right about the PoisonWings capturing a real flamesilk today!”

  “Hazel,” the queen said in a warning tone. “This is Sundew. Belladonna’s daughter.”

  Hazel’s jaw dropped. She stared at Sundew for a long, awestruck moment.

  “That’s how you were supposed to react when you met me,” Sundew whispered to Willow.

  “The Sundew?” Willow gasped, widening her eyes theatrically. “The one and only Sundew? The one who almost slew the great and terrible grasshopper-stealing frog menace of the jungle?”

  Sundew bopped her on the nose with her tail, and Willow dissolved in giggles.

  “Am I allowed to say hi?” Hazel asked her great-grandmother.

  “Yes, of course,” Queen Sequoia said, a little impatiently. “Especially if it gets you off my throne, go on. Chairs are for old dragon bones, not bendy little saplings like you.”

  Hazel bounded off the throne and skidded across the floor to Sundew’s feet. “Hello! I’m Hazel — sorry, you know that. I hear about you all the time! Belladonna thinks you should be queen instead of me; do you think so, too? She’s so scary! Sorry, I know she’s your mom. Ack, I’m saying all the wrong things.” She drew herself up and did a rather impressive imitation of Queen Sequoia’s regal expression. Even her voice went hilariously fancy. “Welcome to the LeafWing village. We are delighted you could join us. Tea?”

  “Oh, you don’t have to be queen-face Hazel for Sundew,” Willow said.

  “Yes, she does,” Queen Sequoia called just as Hazel was starting to relax her wings. She snapped them back into elegant arches immediately. “It’s good practice, and none of us know Belladonna’s daughter as well as you apparently do, Willow.”

  “Oh … I … we met … um,” Willow stammered.

  “By accident,” Sundew said. “It was my fault. Not that we have anything to apologize for! Whoever said we couldn’t know each other? I mean, that would be a stupid rule.”

  “I believe that is Belladonna’s rule,” Sequoia said, rubbing her forehead. “Isn’t it? No fraternizing between PoisonWings and LeafWings?”

  “We’re not PoisonWings,” Sundew snapped. “And even if it is her rule, it’s still stupid and she didn’t even make it until after I met Willow and she can’t tell me what to do or who to like anyway, it’s none of her business.”

  “It’s a little bit her business,” Sequoia pointed out. “As both your mother and your commander. But I’m not actually remotely interested in you and Willow or how you met or why she’s been sneaking out and staring wistfully at an empty pond for the last several nights.” She pointed one long claw at Sundew. “I heard you say something about a book, a flamesilk, and a burned Hive. The full story. Now.”

  Sundew didn’t have to tell her; technically this wasn’t her queen, if the tribe had officially split in two. But then again, if she had to choose between obeying this queen or following her mother’s orders, she kind of liked the idea of choosing this one. And she did need help identifying the vine, if she was still following Cricket’s daft plan of trying to un-brainwash the HiveWings.

  Plus, it would make Belladonna so mad, and she fully deserved it.

  So Sundew told the queen everything — the whole story about leaving the jungle, hiding in the greenhouse, meeting Blue and Cricket, stealing the Book, rescuing Blue, sneaking into Jewel Hive, finding the Chrysalis, spreading the truth about the mind control and the Book, Cricket kidnapping an egg for some reason, escaping, figuring out that the mind control was connected to a plant, watching Bloodworm Hive burn from a distance, and then taking advantage of the tribe’s distraction to burn down Wasp’s greenhouse of mind-control plants.

  “And then we came home,” she finished. “And nobody followed us and everything is fine. Mission accomplished. All good. Vengeance on track.”

  The queen leaned back into her throne with a weary expression. Sundew wondered how old she was. As old as she looked? The Tree Wars were only fifty years ago, and she’d been a young queen when Wasp tried to steal her power and usurp her tribe, if Sundew remembered her history correctly.

  “I can’t believe Belladonna did it,” Queen Sequoia said in a thin voice. “After all our conversations! After everything I’ve said to her! Her mother was so loyal, but that viper —” She snapped her jaw shut suddenly and took a deep breath through her nostrils.

  “Great-grandmother?” Hazel said.

  “DO NOT TALK TO ME I AM CALMING DOWN,” Sequoia barked.

  The three younger LeafWings looked at one another, then back to the queen. Sequoia was staring so hard at a knot on the end of her throne that Sundew thought it might burst into flames. She kept breathing in and out, extremely loudly, through her nose.

  “Are you —” Hazel started.

  “NO I AM NOT,” Sequoia growled. “SHUSH.”

  Hazel sighed. “This could take a minute,” she whispered to Sundew.

  “Does this happen a lot?” Sundew whispered back.

  “Only when she’s really mad. Usually she can squash it pretty well without this whole theatrical interlude.”

  “I can STILL HEAR YOU.” Sequoia thumped the side of her throne with her tail. “I am TRYING to COUNT until I FEEL CALMER and less like MURDERING EVERYONE.”

  Sundew tilted her head at the queen. “Count?” she echoed, glancing at Willow.

  “That’s why all her meetings with Belladonna take so long,” Hazel joked. “Because she has to take deep breaths and count to calm herself down after everything your mom says, or else she might end up strangling her.”

  “She should try!” Sundew said. “Why doesn’t she just yell at her? Or us?”

  Willow gave her an alarmed look. “I don’t want her to yell at us!”

  “But then maybe she’ll feel better,” Sundew pointed out.

  “Well, I wouldn’t!” Willow said. “I’d feel awful! And I bet she would, too. Does yelling make you feel better? It’s only ever made me feel worse.”

  “Oh my goodness,” Sundew said. “I must hear every story about you yelling at someone right this minute.”

  Willow scrunched her nose at her. “I was very little, it was only once, and I still feel guilty about it.”

  “Well, I’m sure they deserved it,” Sundew said loyally.

  “Great-grandmother tries very hard not to yell at her subjects,” Hazel said in her queen-face voice. “She was a more impulsive, angry dragon back during the Tree Wars, and she has come to believe it got several of her subjects killed. She has made an effort to become a wiser, calmer ruler, thanks in large part to the implementation of this counting-to-ten strategy.”

  “She must be past ten by now,” Sundew said. “I could have counted to nine hundred in this time.”

  “Not with a trio of aggravating twigs chattering like magpies in the background,” Queen Sequoia interjected sternly. She took another deep breath. “I am calm. Everything is fine.”

  “I just want to say,” Sundew blurted, “that I for one am very glad you were an angry dragon when the Tree Wars started, because it meant you fought back against Wasp’s power grab and didn’t just roll over for her like Monarch did. I’m glad you fought for our tribe and protected us from her. I would hate for the LeafWings to be stuck where the spineless SilkWings are rig
ht now. So thank you for being a mad dragon and I say keep it up and let’s go fight some more!”

  The queen gazed down at her for a long moment, and then a flicker of a smile crossed her face.

  “I think Belladonna made a mistake leaving you out of our meetings for all this time,” she said. “You’re considerably more persuasive than she is.”

  Sundew fluffed up the frill along her spine and beamed. Take that, Belladonna! I knew I should have been invited! Just like I’ve been saying!

  “But no,” said Queen Sequoia. Sundew deflated as she went on. “My LeafWings are not getting involved in another war.”

  “Do we have a choice?” Willow asked. “Won’t Wasp come after all of us now, after what happened to Bloodworm Hive?”

  “I suspect she’ll be even angrier about her greenhouse than the Hive,” Sequoia said thoughtfully. “Especially if that was her only supply of this mystery plant, and she needs it to control her tribe. Let me see that vine.”

  Sundew pulled out the cutting, which was looking a little the worse for wear after going in and out of her pouch several times. She stepped forward and draped it over Sequoia’s outstretched talons.

  Something happened to the queen’s face. It was fast and hard to catch in the dim phosphorescent light, but Sundew thought she saw recognition and horror flash through the queen’s eyes. Her claws closed around the vine compulsively, crushing it slightly, and then she released it again and took another deep breath.

  “You know it!” Sundew said. “You’ve seen this vine before!”

  “I’m … not sure,” Sequoia said. She rose abruptly to her feet. “I need to consult my books. Go away and come back after dawn. All three of you,” she added with a stern look at Hazel.