The Poison Jungle

by Tui T. Sutherland

  “The rest of the tribe?” Cricket guessed. “It would take longer for the dragons from Mantis Hive and Cicada Hive to get here. Maybe she wants them all in place before attacking.”

  “Did you see Queen Sequoia?” Hazel asked softly.

  “Is Blue with her?” Cricket chimed in.

  “Yes,” said Nettle. “She has the flamesilk and the other massively annoying SilkWing. They’re working on —”

  Hazel cut her off by putting her talon around Nettle’s snout. She indicated the HiveWing; even with his ears covered, they couldn’t risk Wasp overhearing Queen Sequoia’s plans. Nettle scowled down at him and nodded.

  “Let’s do this quickly,” Sundew said. She held out one talon for the heart of salvation root. Hazel used her claws to slice off a piece about as big as an eyeball (which was an image Sundew immediately regretted conjuring) and passed it to her.

  Nettle lifted the prisoner’s snout and pried his jaw open. He tried to bite her, but her grip was strong. Sundew stuffed the root into his mouth, and Nettle slammed it closed, holding it shut until he swallowed. Finally she let go and stepped back.

  “That little worm Cricket is here, isn’t she?” the dragon spat immediately. “The one who thinks she’s so very clever, with her pamphlets and graffiti and rumors. Guess what, Cricket? I figured it out. I know who your father is. And he’s mine, all mine, and I could kill him in a heartbeat if I wanted to. Or I could let you meet him. Would you like that? Wouldn’t you like to come back to Wasp Hive so I … can …”

  The HiveWing trailed off. His whole body went limp, and his head lolled back onto the grass.

  Sundew reached out and took one of Willow’s talons between hers. She could feel Willow’s heartbeat in her palm. For once, it was as fast as Sundew’s.

  Hazel turned to Hawthorn. “Does that mean it worked?” she asked.

  “I think … maybe?” he said.

  The HiveWing jerked once, twice, like a fish pulled up on land. He rolled on his side and gasped several times, as if there wasn’t enough air in the world to breathe.

  “What is happening?” he croaked finally. “Where am I? Why does everything smell wet?”

  Cricket motioned the others back, crouched beside him, and removed his blindfold. From the shadows behind him, Sundew couldn’t see his face, but she could hear the hitch in his voice.

  “What’s your name?” Cricket asked him.

  “Inchworm,” he answered. “From Vinegaroon Hive. Who are you?”

  “Cricket,” she said. “Cicada Hive. How do you feel?”

  He hesitated for a moment. “Weird. Empty? And I seem to be all tied up.”

  “Do you know why you’re here?”

  “No!” he blurted. “I don’t even know where here is!”

  “Try to think back,” Cricket said. “You were going about your day in your Hive, when suddenly the queen was in your head. What did she make you do?”

  “Ohhhh,” he said. “Right. The summons. I was getting Glowworm ready for school — Glowworm!” He tried to surge upright but fell back, straining against the vines.

  “Is that your dragonet?” Cricket said, touching his shoulder with her wing. “We’ll make sure she’s safe, don’t worry.”

  “She was summoned, too,” he said, his voice racked with worry. “Everyone was. I think Wasp called the whole tribe. Are we going to war? My dragonet is out there … she doesn’t know how to fight! I have to find her.” He began struggling again.

  “We’re not going to war,” Cricket said. “We’re going to stop it. If I untie you, will you help us stop it?”

  “Us?” he said warily.

  “Me and the LeafWings,” she said. “You’d have to promise you wouldn’t hurt any LeafWings.”

  “I promise,” he said. “I promise! I don’t want to fight anyone! I just want to get Glowworm and go home!”

  “That’s what we want, too,” Cricket said.

  Sundew felt a jolt of familiar anger. Is that what we want? All the HiveWings get to go home and keep living their happy lives as though they didn’t nearly destroy us? Where’s the punishment? The justice?

  She knew what Blue would say: These HiveWings are not the enemy. Queen Wasp is the enemy. Focus on her.

  But the HiveWings had benefited from everything Wasp did, and they never lifted a claw to stop her. They were part of the problem, too. They needed to learn a lesson and atone, not carry on as though nothing had happened.

  She didn’t have a chance to say anything — not that she had any idea what she would say — before Cricket was standing in front of Hazel, spreading her wings.

  “I think it worked!” she whispered, pushing up her glasses. “Wasp is gone! Hawthorn, you did it! He’s free!”

  “Unless he’s faking it,” Nettle growled.

  “I don’t think he could,” Willow said.

  “And Wasp wouldn’t miss a chance to be scary to my face,” Cricket agreed. “If she was in there, she’d show herself. Can we untie him?”

  “Let’s get the antidote on its way first,” Hazel said in her queenly voice. “Nettle, I assume you want to go back to the front lines?”

  “Yesssss,” Nettle hissed with glee.

  “I’ll go, too,” Sundew said. She wanted to see for herself what they were facing. And if they were able to use the antidote, she wanted to see it work. She wanted to see Queen Wasp’s reaction when all her power evaporated.

  “Can I come?” Cricket asked. “To check on Blue?”

  “Very well,” said Hazel. “Willow and Hawthorn, you can help me figure out how to get this HiveWing back to his dragonet. The three of you, go collect the antidote and fly it to the queen. As fast as you can — we have no idea when Wasp will decide it’s time to attack.”

  Sundew found herself starting to bow and felt ridiculous; she had barely known Sequoia and Hazel for a day and yet she kept instinctively treating them like real queens. But then, out of the corner of her eye, she caught Nettle doing the same thing. Nettle! Of all dragons! So maybe Sundew wasn’t that ridiculous, after all.

  Willow grabbed one of her talons as Sundew took a step back. “Please be careful,” she said. “Remember you promised me you’d never die.” She choked out a half sob, half laugh.

  “You be careful, too,” Sundew said, wrapping her wings around Willow and pulling her close. “I’ll see you really soon. Like, immediately after we save the world.”

  Willow laughed again, and then they let go of each other, and Sundew lifted into the air to follow Nettle and Cricket.

  The war was waiting for them. And one small plant might be the only thing that could stop it.

  “I know something,” Cricket sang, nudging Sundew’s wing as they flew through the village.

  “You know entirely too many things,” Sundew observed. “But you are very welcome to keep them all to yourself.”

  “I know who your one true love is,” Cricket whispered. “It’s not Mandrake. I knew it wasn’t!”

  “Yes, because I told you that,” Sundew snapped. “You’re very clever.”

  “Well, I just wanted to say I like her, and I like the look on your face when she talks to you.”

  “I AM NOT EVEN REMOTELY INTERESTED IN WHAT YOU LIKE,” Sundew barked, landing on a branch behind Nettle. Cricket thumped down behind them, and they all hurried along in silence for a moment. “But thank you,” Sundew finally grumbled.

  “I figured it out, too,” Nettle said suddenly from the lead. She swung her head around to glare at Sundew and Cricket before moving on. “I don’t understand falling for a SapWing at all or when that could have possibly happened, but I also don’t care, and as far as I’m concerned, not having you for a sister-in-law would be a stellar development.”

  “Well, not being related to you is one of my favorite things about her!” Sundew growled back.

  Nettle harrumphed and hopped to the next tree. A dewy pine leaned hopefully toward her, and she hissed fiercely at it.

  “Sorry,” Cricket whi
spered to Sundew. “I didn’t think she’d hear me!”

  “I have very sharp ears,” Nettle declared.

  “This conversation can be over now,” Sundew suggested. She saw the tree palace up ahead and darted out in front, swinging out of the tree and flying down to it. Inside, Tsunami had been joined by the other SeaWing, Turtle, who looked much less queasy than he had before. They both had their phosphorescent scales lit up and were leaning over the Book of Clearsight, studying each page.

  Mandrake came hurrying over as Sundew landed. “Did it work?” he asked.

  “As far as we can tell,” she said. She stepped into the loops of vines that Nettle had abandoned next to the chest and started tightening them around herself. “We’re taking this to Queen Sequoia now.”

  “We should leave a few here,” Cricket said, opening the chest and scooping out a talonful of roots. She glanced around for a moment, then went over to pile them on top of the throne.

  “What about you?” Sundew asked Tsunami as Nettle tied the other side of the looped vines around her shoulders. “Any luck?”

  The blue dragon shook her head. “Nothing much about Pyrrhia so far. But Moon said a secret hides within their book …”

  “She did?” Cricket asked. “Was that part of the prophecy?”

  “Part of the gibberish,” Tsunami muttered.

  “The big secret in there is that the HiveWings have been lying about it for hundreds of years,” Sundew pointed out. “That’s got to be what that means. That all the ‘prophecies’ about uniting under Queen Wasp were fake.”

  “Yeah, probably,” Tsunami said with a sigh.

  “Let’s go,” Nettle said, hopping from foot to foot. “Mandrake, you too. Not that you’ll be useful, but you can at least try to look like it.”

  “Tsunami,” Cricket said hesitantly. “This is a lot to ask, but … could I leave Bumblebee here with you?”

  “EKNO!” Bumblebee objected, throwing her arms around Cricket’s neck. “NOBYNOBYNOBE!”

  “That does look like fun,” Tsunami said wryly.

  “Bumblebee, be reasonable!” Cricket yelled over her wails. “There might be a war where I’m going! Dragons all stabbing each other! Very bad things! I don’t want you near that. I want you here and safe!”

  “STABEEBAD,” Bumblebee argued. “YUUUUsafe.”

  “I will be careful and I’ll come back soon. I promise.” She disentangled Bumblebee and the sling and handed them over to an extremely skeptical-looking Tsunami.

  “GROWLFACE!” the dragonet shouted. “ARGNORAW RGRUMPHLE!”

  “I’m actually very cool,” Tsunami pointed out to her. “I run a school for dragonets on my continent. Bigger, less noisy ones, though.”

  Bumblebee glowered at her as though she did not find this information endearing whatsoever.

  “Bye, little bug,” Sundew called as they lifted off. “Be good!”

  “HAAAA!” Bumblebee shouted after her, which boded ill for the rest of Tsunami’s night.

  It turned out to be extremely annoying and unwieldy and exhausting and aggravating to carry the antidote chest with Nettle on the other side of it. Every time Sundew tried to go down, she went up; every time Sundew tried to hop over a stream, Nettle would hop the other way at the exact same time and they’d both end up in the water. It was lucky that the chest was so sturdy and thick, or it would have been covered in dents and scratches in no time, or possibly collapsed. But it was also unlucky, because its sturdiness made it REALLY STUPIDLY HEAVY.

  But finally, sometime close to midnight, Sundew guessed, they reached the border of the jungle and Queen Sequoia’s makeshift camp, which took them a little while to find. Sundew had to use her leafspeak to track down the area where the plants were complaining the most about activity and disruption.

  A platform had been hastily set up high in the canopy, balanced between a few trees and lashed to their branches. It was close enough to the thin uppermost branches that the three moons could shine through, illuminating most of the encampment. Sequoia stood in the middle of it with Belladonna, issuing orders and consulting with a flow of incoming and outgoing dragons. As Sundew and Nettle struggled toward them, Sundew saw a few warriors she knew receive an order from Sequoia. They looked at one another as though they might not obey, but then Belladonna barked something furiously, and they backed away, nodding.

  She also noticed the activity in the trees around them and sensed it down on the jungle floor as well. Her leafspeak told her that several dragons were gathering plants that could be used as offensive weapons — blister bush seeds and sandbox tree fruit in particular. She could hear dragons sending whispered messages through the trees.

  They lowered the chest to the platform and landed beside it. Sundew realized that Blue and Swordtail were there, too, huddled in a corner that was nearly hidden by leaves, arguing in hushed voices.

  I’m not sure I’ve ever seen Blue argue before, Sundew thought. She wondered if he felt betrayed by her. Would he still help them fight the HiveWings? They’d need his help to burn the antidote … Sundew realized that she’d been taking his flamesilk for granted as a weapon they could use. But it’s not our flamesilk. It’s his.

  As she watched, Cricket landed and ran over to him, and his face lit with joy at the sight of her.

  “What is this?” Belladonna demanded, stalking up to the chest.

  Sundew waited until Queen Sequoia had dismissed the dragon she was speaking to. The queen turned toward her with a slightly anxious, slightly disbelieving look on her face.

  “This,” Sundew said, “is the antidote to the breath of evil.” She rested one talon on the lid. “Hawthorn was still alive. He told us a very interesting version of the events that led up to the Tree Wars, Your Majesty.”

  Queen Sequoia flicked her tail from side to side, studying Sundew’s face. “He really found an antidote?” she said quietly.

  “We think so,” Sundew said at the same time as Cricket blurted, “Yes!”

  “It’s called heart of salvation,” Mandrake added.

  The queen let out a long breath. “Then we can finally atone for what we did,” she said.

  Sundew heard the echo of her own thoughts like a stab in the heart. She’d wanted the HiveWings to atone … she still wanted them to. They were much worse than the LeafWings.

  But Hawthorn and Sequoia did terrible things, too. The HiveWings would be right to want them to be punished … but they would be wrong to want the same for the whole LeafWing tribe.

  So maybe …

  Maybe I need to think about that, too.

  Hawthorn, Sequoia, and Wasp. I should be angry at them — I can be furious at them. I can fight Wasp without hating the entire HiveWing tribe.

  I can free the HiveWings and spare their lives without betraying my quest. Because Wasp is the real enemy: Wasp and her mind control.

  She dragged the vines off her wings and off the chest so she could throw it open. “Here’s what we need to do,” she said. “We take these roots down to the Snarling River and build a bonfire with them, as close to the HiveWing army as we can safely get. Then we set it on fire, they breathe in the smoke, and we cross all our claws that this works.” She hesitated, then turned to Blue, who had stepped forward to listen.

  “Which means we need flamesilk,” she said, “if Blue is willing to give us some.”

  “If he’s willing!” Belladonna spat. “Who’s giving him a choice?!”

  “I am,” Sundew said, frowning at her. “It’s his choice. He doesn’t belong to us, any more than all the other flamesilks belong to Queen Wasp. If we force him to do what we want, we’ll be just like her.” She turned back to Blue. “But I’m hoping you’ll choose to help us,” she said. “This isn’t like burning a Hive. This should free the HiveWings, like we hoped.”

  Cricket leaned into his shoulder and twined her tail around his. “Please?” she whispered.

  “Of course I will,” Blue said. “I’ll fly down there and light it myself.” He
looked up at Queen Sequoia. “But I want you to promise me you won’t take any part of my fire to hurt any dragons. I don’t want to find out in three days that some piece of my flamesilk was saved and then used to burn any more Hives.”

  Belladonna hissed and lashed her tail, which Sundew guessed meant that she’d been planning on doing that exact thing.

  “I promise,” said Queen Sequoia. “Belladonna?” The way she looked at Belladonna made it clear that wasn’t actually a question.

  “I promise, too,” Belladonna said sulkily.

  “Then let’s get to work,” said the queen. “I’ll have my soldiers build the pyre tonight, under cover of darkness, while the HiveWings are still frozen out there. As soon as the sun rises, Blue, I want you to fly down to set it aflame.”

  “Why not right now?” Nettle asked. “Why wait for the sun?”

  “Because I want to see their eyes,” Sequoia said. “I want to be sure it works. With luck, the queen will wait to make her move until morning as well, although we should be prepared to fire it at once if she starts to do anything tonight.”

  Blue nodded, looking terrified.

  “I’ll help build the bonfire,” Sundew offered.

  “No.” The queen reached one of her wings out to Sundew’s shoulder. “I want you to rest.”

  “Rest!” Sundew protested. “The night before a war?! Or a not-war, whatever happens,” she amended, glancing at Cricket’s face.

  “Yes, absolutely,” said the queen. “You’ve been traveling all day and for many days before this one. You need to sleep, because first thing in the morning, I want you to take some of these roots and grow more heart of salvation. We need as much as we can get. There are thousands of HiveWings out there.”

  Sundew hesitated, tempted to argue … but exhaustion was beginning to set in as though her eyelids were stuck together with sundew goop. It had been a long day, a long several days.