Moon Rising (6 page)

Suddenly she remembered Starflight finding her with a scroll one day. He’d quizzed her on what she liked to read.
If he chose these for me … he must have really been listening.

She noticed that there weren’t any of the recent scrolls about the dragonets of the prophecy and their “Epic Quest to End the War of SandWing Succession.” She guessed with a smile that whoever had selected these (Starflight? Sunny? Glory?) found those particular scrolls rather embarrassing.

She also found one early-reader scroll that must have been written for tiny dragonets, with giant letters and a guide to the alphabet. This seemed so out of place that she sat and puzzled over it for a minute.

Is this for one of my clawmates? Am I going to be living with a one-year-old?
Her mother had mentioned that the academy would take dragonets of various ages, so maybe it was possible, although it seemed weird.

Out of nowhere, Moon felt a sudden burst of angry energy like a spear driving through her skull. She crumpled forward, clutching her head, as shouts and roars echoed in the hall.

“Get your fish-smelling tail away from me —”
I’ve faced bigger SeaWings than him in battle if he’s trying to start something!

“Don’t you dare blow smoke in my face —”
She could be one of the SkyWings who destroyed our Summer Palace!

“Ow,” Moon whispered. “Ow. Ow. Ow.” The headache was so blistering, she considered running into the rock wall to knock herself out.

And then, very softly, under all the yelling, she heard …
Aha. There you are.

Moon’s head snapped up, and she winced as another bolt of pain crackled through it. This voice — it was unlike anything she’d ever heard before. It sounded crisp and clear and right in her ear, as if it was talking
to
her.

I
am
talking to you.

Instinctive fear whipped through Moon’s veins, paralyzing her. All of her mother’s nightmare scenarios started playing again in her head:
Don’t trust anyone new, don’t trust anything unusual, don’t let anyone know what you can do, stay secret, stay hidden, stay safe.

Three moons,
said the voice.
Aren’t you a jumpy one.

“Who are you?” Moon whispered.

Who are you?
it answered back, and then, as if the speaker had plucked the answer from her thoughts,
Hello, Moonwatcher.

Another telepath — how was that possible? Moon tried to push back. She imagined reaching out with her talons, trying to grab on to the voice and open up what was happening in the mind behind it.

It’s as if you’ve had no training at all.
The voice chuckled.
How old are you?
Again, the pause, and this time Moon thought furiously of as many different numbers as she could:
95! 76! 12!

Four already and that’s all you can do?

“Who are you?” Moon demanded. “How are you doing that?”

You really have no idea,
the voice mused with a hint of puzzlement.
Hmmm. Fascinating. Let me think about that.

She listened, pressing her temples to hold the headache at bay, but the voice didn’t come back.

“Are you still there?” she whispered.

No response.

Did I imagine it? Maybe I imagined it. Maybe the headache and all the noise out there just confused me. Or maybe mind reading is finally driving me crazy.
She shook her head and blinked.
But if it was a real mind reader, maybe they could teach me how to use my powers.

Or expose me to everyone, now that they know who I am, while I have no idea who they are.

Moon drew her wings around her with an anxious shiver.

“Hey now, hey there. Stop, stop, stop,” a real voice called in the hallway, interrupting the squabble.

Clay!
clamored several voices at once in Moon’s head.
It’s him, it’s really him! Oooo, he’s even cuter in real life. Oooo, look at his heroic limp. Oooo, I think he looked at me!

Moon poked her head out of her cave and saw the large sloping back of the prophecy MudWing. Clay was gently holding apart a writhing SeaWing and a hissing SkyWing.

“It’s only the first day, folks,” he said genially. “Nothing to be so grumpy about already. You’re probably both just hungry. Carnelian, take a deep breath and see me later. Pike, walk with me.” He spread his wing over the SeaWing’s shoulder and firmly guided him away down the tunnel.

The SkyWing watched them go with narrow eyes, growling to herself. Then, to Moon’s alarm, she swung around and marched right into Moon’s cave. Without saying a word, she threw herself onto the rock-ledge bed, folded her large scarlet wings forward over her eyes, and proceeded to stew in sullen silence.

One of my clawmates,
Moon realized.
Yay.

She blinked at the SkyWing for a moment, wondering if she should say something. Her heart was beating fast and the headache was still there, receding slowly toward the back of her skull. She cleared her throat, swallowed, opened her mouth … and then gave up and turned back to the scrolls.

Several minutes later, a whirlwind burst into the cave, nearly trampling Moon with bright yellow talons.

“Oh my gosh, sorry!” it yelped. “I didn’t even see you there! I guess that’s a NightWing skill, hiding in shadows, right, ha ha!”
They put me in with a NIGHTWING?
hollered her brain.
Hello, isn’t anyone worried about my potential post-traumatic stress?
But the little RainWing didn’t drop her enormous smile for a moment. Her scales, too, didn’t shift: They stayed a blindingly bright banana yellow dotted with splotches of alarming raspberry pink.

She seized Moon’s front talons and pumped them cheerfully up and down.

“Isn’t this exciting? I’m so excited I can hardly STAND IT. That’s why I’m this color, by the way. I have been trying all morning to turn myself something more dignified and I can’t
do
it; my scales are all like, YAY WE’RE REALLY HERE! and will not listen to me.”

Moon noticed that there was one spot on the RainWing that wasn’t eye-meltingly colorful: a triangle of three small black smudges on her wing that looked like tiny splashes of ink.

“I’m Kinkajou,” the RainWing added, beaming.

“You’re noisy,” the SkyWing observed from under her wings.

“I love this place,” Kinkajou said. She let go of Moon and bounced over to the hammock, while her thoughts went, essentially:
Library! Art! Friends!
“Have you explored at all yet? There’s the most amazing library — not that I can read yet, but oh my gosh, I’m working on it really hard. And an art cave! It’s full of all these colors of paint, like, like, like a couple of RainWings just EMOTED all over it! You guys, we should make amazing paintings and then decorate our cave with them. WOULDN’T THAT BE AMAZING?”

“I might literally die of joy,” said the SkyWing flatly.

“You look way healthier than most of the other NightWings,” Kinkajou said to Moon, evidently deciding to ignore the SkyWing for the moment. “Your scales are so
shiny.
I’d almost guess you were a RainWing in disguise, but you’re not, are you?”

“I didn’t grow up on the volcano,” Moon said softly. “My mother hid my egg in the rainforest.”

“Oh!” Kinkajou said, and her brain went
Aha!
“I’ve heard of you. Wow, that’s a relief. That means you weren’t anywhere near the NightWings who locked me up. I mean, I’m all for amnesty and making friends across tribes and forgiving each other and everything, but
seriously,
it was
scary
there, like I thought I might actually die, and so I figured maybe I’d start by making friends with some
other
tribes first and gradually work my way back around to the NightWings, but you’re hardly a NightWing at all, so that’s OK, then.”

Moon winced. “Hardly a NightWing at all” was essentially what she’d been hearing in the NightWings’ thoughts about her for months. It was a little brutal to hear someone just say it out loud.

“So what’s your name?” Kinkajou asked.

“Moon. I mean, Moonwatcher, but … just Moon, really.”

“Sure, Moon. And who are you?” Kinkajou asked the SkyWing.

I’m a warrior,
the scarlet dragon thought bitterly, keeping her face hidden.
A loyal soldier in Ruby’s army, who never did anything to deserve this … this punishment of schooling and being forced to live with Ditzy and Mumbles over there.

Moon hunched her shoulders and looked down at her claws. That wasn’t fair. She did
not
mumble.

Kinkajou turned back to Moon, her eyes sparkling. “Ooo, it’s a mystery!” she said. “We have to
guess
our third clawmate’s name! I’ll go first. I bet it’s … Squelch! What do you think, Squelch is a cute name, right?”

Moon didn’t think she ought to smile, given the wave of outrage coming off the SkyWing. “Squelch is a MudWing name, isn’t it?” she pointed out.

“True,” said Kinkajou. “Maybe her name is Friendly. That would suit her so well.”

“That’s not a SkyWing name either,” Moon said. The red dragon’s tail was twitching dangerously.

“Think outside the box, Moon. Look at her! I’m sure she’d
love
to be called Friendly. Let’s do that until we find out her real name,” Kinkajou said, and then broke down in helpless giggles.

The SkyWing unfolded herself majestically and glared at Kinkajou with her wings spread wide.

“I have fought in
fourteen
battles!” the SkyWing thundered. “No one
giggles
at me! Least of all a RainWing who can’t even read and knows nothing about war!” She jumped off her ledge and swept furiously out the door.

There was a pause while Kinkajou got her giggles under control. “Ouch,” she said. “But mostly fair. Although I think being imprisoned and experimented on by NightWings and then injured during a royal challenge should give me
some
battle credit, don’t you?”

“I — I think Clay said her name is Carnelian, maybe?” Moon offered.

“Oh, that’s pretty,” Kinkajou said. “Do you mind if I take the hammock, by the way?”

Moon shook her head. “The moss bed is all right with me.”

“That’s what you slept on while you were growing up on the rainforest floor, right?” Kinkajou guessed, nodding. “This will be so great! We can bond over how much we miss papayas and adorable sloths! But I don’t miss anything yet; it’s too fabulous here. Come see the library!”

“Oh,” Moon said nervously, “I — I think I’ll stay here for a bit longer — I need to just, um, um —”

“Nonsense,” Kinkajou said. She poked one of Moon’s wings with her own. “We’re in a new place! This is really exciting! I want to show you everything!”

Oh, I hope she’s not boring,
Kinkajou’s mind whispered.
I don’t mind shy; I can handle shy, but please don’t be boring.

Moon straightened her shoulders and folded her wings back. It meant trampling down her terror, but she absolutely did not want to seem
boring
to her first possible chance at a friend here.

“All right, let’s go,” she said, taking a deep breath.

“Yay!” Kinkajou cried. She bounded out the door and Moon followed.

As she stepped into the hallway, she heard it again … that bell of a voice in her mind.

Oh, Moonwatcher, my new favorite dragon. This dragonet with her brain full of bubbles is not your only possibility. I believe you and I are destined for a great friendship.

Moon shivered. Was it real?

Was there a dragon somewhere reaching out to her? If so, how? And who was it? Another student? Was it a fellow NightWing, mysteriously hatched with the tribe’s long-lost powers, just like her?

How could she hide from someone who knew exactly what she was?

I can help you,
the voice whispered.
And better yet … you can help me.

Moon couldn’t handle a mystery mind-voice and a new school full of noisy dragons all at the same time. She shoved her worries about the voice to the back of her head and tried instead to wrestle with the exhausting energy radiating off Kinkajou.

“Where are we going?” Moon asked the RainWing as they headed along the tunnel, past all the sleeping caves, away from the Great Hall. She wondered if she should have brought her school map.

“Today is an exploring day,” Kinkajou said with authority. “They want every day to be kind of an exploring day. That’s the idea of the school — find out what you’re interested in and explore it.”

I’m interested in going back to my mother,
Moon thought.
Can I explore that?

“They?” she echoed instead.

“The dragonets of destiny,” Kinkajou said. “Although they don’t want anyone to call them that anymore, but what are we supposed to call them? The ‘founders of the school’ makes sense, too, I guess, but that makes them sound like they’re perfectly ancient, like old slabs of rock way under the mountain. I’m really good friends with them,” she confided as streaks of dark purple shot through her scales. “Especially Queen Glory, we’re practically best friends. They knew I wouldn’t be able to read the announcements everywhere — I mean, not yet! — so Sunny and Clay explained their whole plan to me ahead of time.”

Announcements? Moon paused to look around and saw a small rectangular board made of dark rock hanging under one of the torches. A note was written on it in chalk:

“What’s a small group-discussion class?” Moon wondered.

“It’s exactly what it sounds like,” Kinkajou said. “Come on, come on!” She tugged on Moon’s wing impatiently, and the physical contact flooded Moon with Kinkajou’s radiant excitement.

Kinkajou bounded up a side corridor lined with hanging scrolls; as she followed, Moon saw that each scroll had a quote on it. She didn’t have time to read them all, but she saw “Knowledge is a flame in the darkness” and “The claws of war are no match for the wings of wisdom.” At the end they turned into a space full of iridescent green sunlight.

It was like stepping into a dream. Scrolls were everywhere, simply everywhere, in cubbyholes along all the walls and more racks and cylinders around the cave. Every corner had a spot to curl up and read in: sometimes a rock ledge, sometimes a pile of moss or an arrangement of carpets. Only one reader was in there: a quiet-looking MudWing with a scroll curled on some reeds. She didn’t look up as they came in; the only image Moon got from her mind was something like ripples on a mud puddle.

Sunbeams filtered down through skylights in the roof and windows along one wall. Each of the holes was covered with something thin enough to let the light through but strong enough to keep the wind and weather out. Moon tilted her head back and studied the closest one: emerald green, with traces of veins branching through it.

“Leaves,” she whispered.

“Sunny and Glory got them in the rainforest,” Kinkajou said proudly. “We use them sometimes as roofs for our RainWing houses. Aren’t they perfect for library windows? Hi, Starflight!” She bounded over to a circular wooden desk in the center that was labeled librarian. A dark head popped up from behind the desk.

“Hey, Kinkajou.” The blind NightWing leaned forward with a smile as Kinkajou brushed his claws with hers. “Is that Moon with you?”

“Hi,” Moon said shyly. There was nothing ever hurtful in Starflight’s thoughts. His brain was always busy, busy, busy, but he never thought of her as “not a real NightWing” or “dangerous and untrustworthy.” He was like her, an outsider in his own tribe. And he liked scrolls, too. She could hear the back of his mind ticking through all the things he still needed to do to get the library completely ready.

But he smiled in the direction of her voice. “Here’s your library stamp,” he said, sliding something out from under the desk. “I thought you might come by today.”

“Library stamp?” Moon echoed curiously, taking it from him. It was a small rectangle of wood, as long as two claws, with her name carved backward in raised letters on one side.

“We’re testing out a system,” he said. “I’ll show you.” He brushed his talons over a row of scrolls lined up under the desk. Moon spotted a name carved at the wooden end of each one, arranged alphabetically. Starflight touched them lightly until he felt hers, which he pulled out and partially unrolled. The scroll was completely blank.

“When you want to borrow a scroll,” he said, “you bring it up to me here. Each one has a unique carved stamp on the end, like these do. I’ll stamp your name scroll with that end to show that you checked it out, and then when you bring it back, we stamp your card over the first image to show that it’s been returned. Does that make sense?”

“I think so,” Moon said. She turned the stamp over in her claws. She’d never had anything that was really her own before.

“Can she have a pouch to keep it in?” Kinkajou asked.

“Of course.” Starflight fumbled under the desk again for a few minutes, then pulled out a soft black leather pouch on a silver chain. Moon slipped the stamp inside the pouch and put the chain over her neck. It felt like her very first treasure.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Let me know if I can help you find anything,” he said. She heard a flurry of worried
what-if
s start up in his mind, circling a well-worn track of anxiety about how to be a blind librarian. She also heard him firmly beat those worries back. He smiled in her direction again. “I’ve been practicing to get the whole space memorized.”

Moon wondered how she could ask for what she really needed.
Do you have any scrolls about ominous voices in your head?

“Sora, are you still here?” Starflight asked, raising his voice a little.

The MudWing by the windows lifted her head and nodded.

“He can’t see you,” Kinkajou reminded her in a loud whisper. “Yes, she’s still here.”

“Sorry,” the brown dragon said softly.

“It’s all right,” Starflight said. The twinge of sadness in his thoughts didn’t spill into his voice. “Sora, this is Kinkajou and Moon. Sora is one of Clay’s sisters.”

“Ooooo,” Kinkajou said. “How does it feel to be related to someone famous? Probably a bit like being best friends with a queen,” she answered herself, grinning ridiculously. “Which I am, just incidentally, so, I mean, I totally get it.”

Sora’s smile was shy, and now Moon could sense tremors of anxiety in her that felt an awful lot like Moon’s own fears. Clay’s sister was as nervous about being here as Moon was.

It was sort of reassuring, actually, to find someone as scared as she was.

“Nice to meet you,” Moon said.
Maybe she could be my friend, too. Maybe Mother was right … Maybe I will meet dragons I like here.

“You too,” Sora nearly whispered, rolling her scroll between her talons.

“Let’s go to the music wing next,” Kinkajou said. “Or, oooooo, I heard there’s an old GHOST living somewhere in Jade Mountain! Maybe we can find him!”

Moon’s ears twitched. A ghost? Was she hearing the voice of a ghost? That would be … unsettling.

“You’re talking about Stonemover,” Starflight said, “and he’s not a ghost. He’s Sunny’s father, and he’s a perfectly nice old NightWing who’s lived here for ages. He sleeps a lot and doesn’t need little dragonets sneaking up on him or pouncing on his tail to find out if he’s real. He does like company, though, so if you’re interested in a polite conversation with him, I can tell you how to find him.”

“Polite conversation, YAWN,” Kinkajou said with a shrug of her wings. “You should tell everyone he’s a ghost. That would be much more exciting!”

Not a ghost, but a real NightWing,
Moon thought.
Maybe he’s the one who can talk in my head.
She’d have to ask Starflight for directions later, if she could work up the courage.

“Are you hungry, Moon?” Kinkajou barreled on. “I might be hungry. We could find the prey center. I haven’t done that yet. Which way to the prey center, Starflight?”

He touched his desk lightly, as if orienting himself, and then pointed at one of the three corridors that led away from the library.

“Sora, you want to come?” Kinkajou asked before Moon could think to invite the dragonet herself.

The MudWing shook her head quickly and buried her nose in her scroll again.

“All right. See you soon!” Kinkajou called over her shoulder as they left.

This passageway slanted back down and, Moon thought, out toward the open air. They passed a couple of branches, but Kinkajou barely glanced down them before continuing straight. After a few minutes, Moon caught the scent of living prey up ahead — and the jumble of several voices, both real-world and inside her head.
Uh-oh.

It was even worse than it sounded. The prey center was total chaos, the opposite of the serene, well-ordered library. It was a mammoth cave open to the air on one side, looking out over a mossy, boulder-strewn slope, towering cliffs, and faraway peaks. There was a low wall of rocks built across the bottom of the opening — useless against dragons, of course, but perfect for keeping prey trapped inside. A fast-flowing river swept along the wall opposite the opening, disappearing through an archway into the next cave.

And there was prey
all over the place.
Shaggy, bleating sheep blundered helplessly under the dragons’ talons, yelling in panic. Several speckled-brown chickens, quail, and pheasants were racing around the floor, periodically bursting skyward in an explosion of feathers and squawks. In one corner, a fat black bear was squaring off with a dragonet twice its size, growling.

Worse still, the cave was filled with shouting dragons. Most of them were MudWing, SandWing, and SkyWing dragonets who were gleefully trying to corner the rampaging chickens. They bellowed instructions at one another, yowled when the pheasants dodged them, and shrieked hilariously whenever birds nearly flew up their snouts. At the same time, their minds were all shouting, worrying, planning, reacting, and it felt to Moon like a hundred dragons talking at once.

Clay, meanwhile, was standing on a tall boulder in the middle of the cave, trying to shout over all the noise.

“Everyone stop moving!” he bellowed. “Especially you, chickens! CHICKENS, GIVE UP! WE’RE GOING TO EAT YOU! THERE’S NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT! STOP RUNNING AWAY RIGHT NOW!”

“SQUAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWK!” the chickens shrilled back.

Kinkajou spotted a small mountain of fruit piled near the river and darted over to it. Another RainWing dragonet was there, picking through the options, and Kinkajou shouted something cheerful at him.

Moon hesitated, wishing she could sink right into the mountain and disappear. She was hungry, but it was so loud and horribly overwhelming in here. Maybe she could sneak back to her cave and wait to eat until the middle of the night. Surely it would be quieter then.

But Kinkajou spotted her as she tried to sidle away. The RainWing flapped her wings wildly, beckoning, and finally Moon had to duck her head and sprint over, hoping not to get hit by any chicken parts on her way.

“Moon, this is my friend Coconut,” Kinkajou said.
Thought he was my friend
shimmered through her mind, and Moon had a moment to wonder if Kinkajou did have a dark, bitter side after all, before Kinkajou added blithely, “At least, I
thought
he was my friend until I got abducted by bad guys for three weeks and he didn’t even
notice
I was gone.” She poked him pointedly with her tail.

“Hmmm? Didn’t I say I was sorry about that?” Coconut mumbled around a mouthful of papaya. His scales were a kind of quiet lavender blue and his eyes were sleepy. “Or did I? Something like that.”

“Mostly you say, ‘Hm, what?’ every time I bring it up,” Kinkajou said. She turned to Moon. “I’m going to learn to read
eons
before he does.”

“Why is that?” Coconut asked mildly.

“Because I’m smart and you’re not,” Kinkajou pointed out. “That was
implied
, Coconut. It was subtext.”

“Right,” he said, not in the least offended, perhaps because he only seemed to be partially following the conversation. “The mangoes are pretty good,” he said to Moon. “I was told to eat them first because they’re all ripe. I like bananas better but mangoes are fine. I don’t particularly like coconut, though.”

“Ironically,” Kinkajou said.

“What?” he said.

“See?” she said to Moon, grinning.

Moon nodded, unable to speak through the cacophony inside and outside her ears. At least Coconut’s thoughts were slow and meaningless, although she thought she might go mad if she had to listen to them all day long. He passed her three mangoes, and she sliced them open with her claws, the way she’d taught herself to do when she was alone in the rainforest during one of her mother’s longer absences.