Darkstalker, Page 28

  I’ve never been powerless, he thought. Nobody threatens me. “Everything I did was for a good reason,” he said. “To protect you, or Whiteout, or our future dragonets. Why can’t you trust me?”

  She took a deep breath and looked back into his eyes. “Or maybe it’s just part of you, something you hatched with. Maybe that’s what you really got from your father, along with your magic. Maybe you were always going to turn out this way, no matter how I tried to save you.”

  He lunged toward her, fury flooding through his veins, and seized her wrist, twisting it painfully. “I’m nothing like my father,” he snarled. “I don’t need saving. I can choose my own future, and I like the one I see, and you’re going to learn to like it, too. Where is my scroll?”

  Something slid coolly along his scales and he glanced down. Clearsight had slipped the moonstone bracelet off her own arm and onto his.

  For a brief flash of a moment her mind was open to him again, unguarded for the first time in years, and he saw with perfect clarity how she loved him, how she feared him, how many terrible futures lay before them, and how she was betraying him to save everyone else.

  Good-bye, my dearest love, her thoughts whispered.

  And then … blackness rushed up toward him, enfolding him in its wings, and he was gone.

  Clearsight would never forget the look on Darkstalker’s face as he realized what she’d done. It was only there for a moment — the utter shock, the disbelief, the bewilderment and betrayal — and then his eyes closed and he collapsed to the ground with a heavy thud.

  She knelt beside him, resting her talons lightly on his neck. His chest rose and fell steadily. He was still alive, still breathing, but he would never wake up again, not as long as the bracelet was on him.

  Darkstalker had made himself immortal and invulnerable to any kind of attack, but a simple sleeping spell had taken him down. Fathom had done his part well.

  Clearsight dragged Darkstalker far back into the cave, letting her tears fall but not stopping to give in to her grief. The cave ended in a small chamber, solid granite on all sides. She rolled him against the back wall and checked the bracelet to make sure it was securely fastened around Darkstalker’s arm.

  Then she filled in the cave with boulders from the hillside, piling them up to hide the sleeping dragon inside. He could never be found, never be set free, or else Pyrrhia would be in danger all over again.

  When that was done, she found another mountain where she could watch and wait for the earthquake to come. Once Agate Mountain had collapsed, burying Darkstalker deep in the earth, she’d know it was safe to leave him there.

  The sun spread across her wings as she sat on the ridge, breathing in the light of the new dawn.

  It worked.

  I did this.

  All those futures I saw, all the plans I made to take us along the right paths … that’s all gone now. We never got married. We never took the throne or stopped the war. We never had our dragonets.

  She closed her eyes, trying not to think about that. How could she mourn dragons who’d never existed in the first place? They were no more real than anything else about the timelines she’d shattered.

  But she could still see their faces in her mind, and she knew she would always miss them.

  What am I going to do now?

  She took a deep breath and let the new futures roll out before her.

  There was nothing for her back in the tribe. The other NightWings would never trust her again after seeing her on that stage with Darkstalker, even if she told them what she’d done to him — and she couldn’t tell anyone that. No one could ever know where he was or how easy it would be to wake him up.

  Rejoining the tribe led to some more dangerous paths, too — the ones where she felt so alone, and missed him so much, that the temptation to return and release him became too great. Even knowing the Very Bad Things that would follow, she could see how she might fall.

  I could stay with him. I could lie down in the path of the avalanche and wait to die.

  Right now she was sad enough to think for a moment that maybe that was the best choice.

  But she was also a seer. She could feel her overpowering grief right now, and at the same time she could look into the future and see a time when she would not be this sad.

  There were futures where she was happy.

  There were futures where she didn’t have to be afraid all the time about everything going horribly wrong.

  As hard as it was for her to believe right now, there were even futures with another love and other dragonets.

  She raised her wings and lifted her head to the blue-and-gold-streaked sky.

  She was sad and alone … but she was also free. Her life had been tangled up with Darkstalker’s for so long — forever, from the moment she had her first vision of him — that she’d never before seen any glimpse of what it might look like without him.

  Clearsight remembered a long-ago dream that came from a scroll she used to love to read. It told stories of the lost continent and the secret tribes of dragons that lived there.

  In that dream, she was an explorer. She went out and found new worlds, places no NightWing had ever been or even imagined.

  Now she could see it — that dream could be real. Visions of a strange land were already unrolling behind her eyes, of unusual trees and odd animals and unfamiliar dragons that didn’t match any tribes she knew. She knew where to go. She knew how to get there.

  The future was in her talons now, and she could do anything she wanted to do.

  Sun showers sprinkled the beach with little bursts of rain, sparkling in the cheerful sunlight. A coconut thumped softly onto the sand and rolled toward Indigo’s talons. She picked it up, remembering the day of the animus test. She’d been so relieved to find she was normal, that she didn’t have some kind of spooky magic lurking in her claws. And that was before she knew anything about animus power.

  It was nothing, though, compared to the relief she felt once they were sure none of their dragonets had it.

  “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHH,” Clearpool screamed. The little green dragonet stomped her feet furiously in the waves. “I can’t GET IT! I’LL NEVER GET IT! ALL THE FISHES ARE STUPID!”

  “Remember the song about being patient?” Indigo said, patting her gently on the head. “You have to wait and wait and wait and then pounce.”

  “I DIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIID!” she yelled. “I waited and waited and THEN POUNCEDED and it GOT AWAAAAAAAY.”

  “Ah, well, there’s your mistake,” said Indigo. “You forgot one of the waits.”

  Clearpool’s wails cut off abruptly. The dragonet tipped her head, thinking. “Oh,” she said. “Yeah, I did. OK, fish! I’ma get you now!”

  She splashed away, leaping over crabs and kicking sand in the hole her brothers were digging.

  “Roar!” Cowrie yelled at her. “Get your big galumphing talons out of here!”

  “I was NOT galumphing!” Clearpool yelled back. “THIS is GALUMPHING!” She slammed her feet into the sand like a woozy elephant and the whole side of Cowrie’s hole collapsed.

  Over the ensuing shrieks of fury, Indigo felt Fathom come wading up behind her. She spread her wings and they leaned into each other, and she felt, like she always did, that she could grow roots right here and be happy entwined with him forever.

  “I think,” she said, “that we may have named the wrong dragonet after Clearsight.”

  “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!” Clearpool howled again, flinging herself into the shallow water and rolling around in a fit of temper. “THIS BROTHER IS A KELP-FACE!” Indigo buried her face in Fathom’s neck, hiding her giggles.

  “Maybe she’ll grow into her quiet wisdom,” Fathom said. “Like you did.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Indigo said. “ME? I have ALWAYS been quiet and wise.”

  “I seem to recall just a few shrieking fits when you were that age,” he said, starting to laugh. “Remember the time I ate
the last salmon at breakfast?”

  “You didn’t just eat it!” she cried. “You were smug about it! You totally deserved to be dumped in the koi pond!”

  Cowrie and Clearpool were wrestling now, getting absolutely covered in wet sand. Next to them, Ripple popped his head out of his own hole, realized that someone else was getting more attention than he was, and promptly scrambled over to flop on top of his brother and sister.

  “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” Clearpool shouted at him. “GET OFF!”

  “I looooooooooooooove youuuuuuu,” Ripple said, poking his snout in their faces. Blob clambered out of the hole behind him and lolloped over to join the pile.

  “Arrgh! Yuck!” Cowrie flailed his wings as he tried to get free. “Ripple! You’re squashing me! DAAAAD! MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!”

  “Everyone stop squashing one another,” Fathom called without moving.

  “RIPPLE IS THE SQUASHER!” Clearpool bellowed.

  “Quit mashing one another into the sand and I’ll tell you a story,” Indigo said.

  The three dragonets instantly jumped away from one another and came scampering over, plunking themselves into an attentive semicircle around their parents’ talons, with Blob perched happily on Ripple’s head.

  “Tell us about the Kingdom of the Sea again!” Clearpool demanded. “And all the palaces!”

  “It looks a lot like this,” Fathom said, flicking his tail at the island around them. “Maybe we’ll take you there one day, when you’re all grown up.”

  When there’s a new queen, who doesn’t know about Fathom’s promise to Pearl, Indigo thought. Their island was off the southern coast of Pyrrhia, within sight of the rainforest, and they kept up with tribe news by visiting and trading with RainWings every couple of months or so. That’s how they knew that the NightWings had vanished, and nobody knew where they’d gone. There had been stories of Darkstalker sightings everywhere for a while, and then gradually fewer and fewer until they dwindled away. Clearsight must have succeeded, but Indigo wished sometimes that she knew exactly what had happened, and where Clearsight was now.

  As for their own tribe, surely Wharf and Lionfish must have returned home after they lost Fathom, still believing Indigo had left him. Queen Pearl probably thought Fathom and Indigo were both dead, or that Fathom had fled with the NightWings. She never needed to find out that they were alive, and together, and happy.

  It had taken Indigo such a long time to convince Fathom that it was all right for him to be happy. That he wasn’t a secret monster waiting to be unleashed. That he wasn’t the one who did all those terrible things, and they weren’t his fault, and he didn’t have to punish himself forever.

  “I want to hear about you and Mommy,” Ripple said. Blob snuggled around his neck, flipping his tentacles contentedly. “About stuff you did when you were little like us.”

  “Oh, we were very good,” Fathom said solemnly. “We were never, ever naughty.”

  “FIBS!” Clearpool cried, splashing him with her tail. “You were, too!”

  “Well,” Fathom said, “all right, I suppose Mommy was, sometimes.” Indigo whacked him with her tail and he grinned at her.

  “Mommy,” said Cowrie, “do you know any stories about bad guys?”

  Indigo and Fathom exchanged a glance and Indigo felt a weird shiver, like someone was swimming over her grave.

  “What do you want to know about bad guys?” Fathom asked.

  “Like, how do they get that way,” Cowrie said, poking a piece of driftwood. “And why do they do bad stuff.”

  “Well,” Fathom said slowly, “there are lots of ways, and lots of reasons. Sometimes it’s because they’re sad or angry. Some dragons become bad when they have too much power.”

  “And some don’t,” Indigo said, twining her tail around Fathom’s. If there was one thing she believed with her entire soul, it was that Fathom had too much goodness in him to ever turn out like Albatross or Darkstalker. He was kind and good all the way through.

  “Sometimes … sometimes they don’t know they’re bad guys,” Fathom went on. “They think what they’re doing is the right thing.”

  “Oh,” said Cowrie. “So who decides if it’s the right thing or not?”

  Fathom hesitated, looking lost.

  “ME!” Clearpool suggested.

  “How would I know if I was a bad guy?” Cowrie added with a worried wrinkle between his eyes.

  “I would tell you,” Indigo said, “and then you’d go back to being good.”

  “Or me! I’d tell you and whack you and smush you!” Clearpool offered with great enthusiasm.

  “You do that even when I’m being super good,” Cowrie pointed out.

  “You know, there’s really no such thing as bad guys,” Fathom said unexpectedly, and Indigo gave him a quizzical look. They had plenty of evidence that that wasn’t true.

  “There isn’t?” Ripple echoed.

  “I mean … there are dragons who do bad things,” Fathom said. “But maybe that doesn’t make them all bad. Maybe they can also do good things. Maybe some of those bad things are just mistakes.”

  “No,” Indigo said firmly. “Some dragons are definitely bad and have to be stopped.”

  “I don’t know,” Fathom said. “I don’t think any dragons are all bad.”

  “Then you have a selective memory, my love,” said Indigo. “We knew a bad guy once,” she said to the dragonets.

  They all gasped with delighted horror.

  “A dragon who did bad things,” Fathom amended. “But also some good things, and he cared a lot about his friends.” He saw the look on Indigo’s face and added quickly, “Mostly bad things, though. Anyway, he’s gone now.”

  “That’s right,” Indigo agreed. “He’s gone, and he’s never coming back.”

  “Will you tell us about him?” Cowrie asked, his blue eyes round and dazzled.

  “And how you WHACKED him and SMUSHED him?” Clearpool cried.

  “Maybe when you’re older,” Indigo said. Maybe when Fathom has stopped having nightmares about him. She smiled down at her squirming, beautiful, hilarious dragonets. “Race you to the seal rocks!”

  They pelted off down the beach, shrieking with laughter, and Indigo nudged Fathom with her wing.

  “It’s true. He’s really never coming back,” she said. “You did the right thing, Fathom. You saved Pyrrhia from him forever. It’s safe to be happy.”

  “I know,” he said. He unfurled his wings, shaking off the memories, and gave her the smile she’d fallen in love with back when they were tiny dragonets. “I am.”

  Centuries later, as the dragon planet spun through space, a comet passed by, close enough to shine like a fourth moon in Pyrrhia’s sky.

  Close enough to change the tides and shake the continents.

  As earthquakes rumbled through the ground, long-buried rocks shifted that had been in place for thousands of years.

  Deep underground, in the darkness, copper wires snapped.

  And a dragon awoke …

  TUI T. SUTHERLAND is the author of the New York Times and USA Today bestselling Wings of Fire series, the Menagerie trilogy, and the Pet Trouble series, as well as a contributing author to the bestselling Spirit Animals and Seekers series (as part of the Erin Hunter team). In 2009, she was a two-day champion on Jeopardy! She lives in Massachusetts with her wonderful husband, two adorable sons, and one very patient dog. To learn more about Tui’s books, visit her online at www.tuibooks.com.

  Text copyright © 2016 by Tui T. Sutherland

  Map and border design © 2016 by Mike Schley

  Dragon illustrations © 2016 by Joy Ang

  All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, SCHOLASTIC PRESS, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

&n
bsp; This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

  First edition, July 2016

  Cover art © 2016 by Joy Ang

  Cover design by Phil Falco

  e-ISBN 978-1-338-05364-7

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