Page 25

Fox lostall track of time as he walked through the darkness, only aware of the ground beneath his feet and the cold air in his lungs. His eyes never adjusted to the pitch black, and even with the cloak, he started to shiver as the temperature dropped with each hour. He wondered if it was possible the tunnel led all the way to the northern mountains.

The icy peaks were near mythical despite being just over a week’s journey from the city. When the Dereyans had supposedly defeated the dragons and won the tribal war, the king had wanted to expand Suvi’s control farther into the Wueco forest and the mountains. Most of the Dragonborn tribes, too superstitious for their own good, had never ventured past the foothills. King Regold sent a handful of units to the mountains over the cycles, but no one ever came back. After a while, he gave up and focused back on protecting his city against the closer threat: rebel factions and tribes vying for power. As far as Fox knew, no one had been to the mountains in at least four generations. He didn’t believe the Dragonborn stories that the mountains were haunted and humans couldn’t cross into the snowy domain, but he still didn’t want to be the first Dereyan to stumble into them unprepared.

Then again, if he was still stuck in this tunnel in a few days, he’d have bigger problems to worry about than mythical mountains—like water. His thirst gnawed at him. He could almost hear the sound of water rushing, like the ocean on a windy day. The fresh smell of icy air made his breath deepen and he almost smiled.

It took Fox several seconds to realize he wasn’t going crazy or daydreaming. The air in the cramped tunnel had changed and he could almost smell the foliage of the rainforest. His footsteps picked up pace. He kept walking just long enough that he began to question his own instinct.

Then his hand hit something solid and cold in front of him. The tunnel had come to an end.

The stone felt as solid as the walls, but he refused to give up. He could smell fresh air, and no one digs a tunnel to nowhere, no matter how ignorant and blasphemous they were. Using all the strength he had left in him he pressed his weight against the stone and pushed.

Something shifted and scraped in the darkness. Giving himself only a short moment to breathe, he pushed again and the massive boulder that was set across the tunnel opening moved. A sliver of light scattered the darkness around him. He never thought he’d be so happy to see the wild rainforest. It took another dozen shoves before the opening was wide enough to allow him to squeeze through, stone cold against his shoulders as he finally fell from the underground tunnel.

The dirt was hard where he landed, without underbrush to break his fall. He couldn’t stop himself from groaning as every bone in his body shuddered with the impact. He didn’t move for a moment. He lay on his back, looking up at the swaying canopy of trees above him. They were taller than he’d ever seen before, and he had the same feeling of vertigo looking up as he’d had staring down from the eastern city wall for the first time as a boy. Looking back, he could barely see the tunnel he’d just come from, only a sliver of shadow in an outcrop of rocks from this side. If he hadn’t just slipped through the crack, he’d assume it was simply a shadow, not an entrance.

After a few more breaths, he shifted carefully, taking in the aches across his body as he pushed himself up. He was bruised and weak and exhausted, but nothing was broken, and the cuts he’d received sometime last night were already clotted over and beginning to tighten into scabs. It was this thought that had his eyes searching the canopy, trying to read the sky beyond. It was daylight out, but as he took in the shadows around him, he realized it was likely almost sunset. He’d walked through the night and most of the next day. His absence would have been noticed by now.

And he had no idea where he was.

He definitely hadn’t walked into the mountains, although the trees around him were unfamiliar and the ground here wilder than that around the city.

The shadows were lengthening with every second he spent standing still and he didn’t know how far of a head start he had on any pursuers. But before he left, he had one more thing to do.

It took him a few minutes of searching before he found what he needed. One of the nearby trees had a single vine of black flowers twisting around it. The petals of each were furled tightly closed, only those closest to the forest floor beginning to loosen and open as night approached. He plucked one of these and peeled back the petals as he returned to the cave entrance. He smeared the flower’s pistil across the gray stone in the symbol any king’s man would recognize, happy to see the faintest glow as a shadow passed over it. The flower’s job done, he discarded it before doing his best to push the boulder back over the entrance. He wasn’t going to make it easy for anyone coming after him.

He also took a mental picture of the forest around him, trying to memorize the shape of the trees and the position of the stones. The flower’s pollen would do the job of marking the opening, but he’d still need to find his way back to the spot if he intended to show his superiors. Something good would come of all of this. Perhaps his father would overlook his being captured if he brought them to the resistance’s base.

Then again, his mind was getting away from him and his thoughts weren’t focusing on the important pieces right now. Like the fact that he had no idea where he was, the sun had just about set, and he was still likely being chased. He needed to leave and find somewhere safe to get through the night. At least it would be harder for the others to find him in the dark.

He was grateful for the dry and hard-packed dirt on the forest floor, leaving behind little evidence of his footsteps as he moved. He didn’t pay attention to what direction he was walking, not that he could have told without a view of the sun to lead him. Instead, he moved away from the tunnel, looking for a tree to climb. He doubted he’d be able to sleep perched on a branch, but he’d feel safer away from the ground and with the advantage over anything coming toward him.

But so far, the tall, towering trees with their wide trunks looked nearly impossible to climb. He kept an eye out for other rocky outcrops or low-lying plants that could hide him, desperate for anywhere he could find to stop moving. The forest was coming alive rapidly with the dusk, the black flowers glowing a dark purple as they bloomed and luminous green and red mushrooms peeking out from under dead underbrush.

It gave him light to walk by, but it also did nothing to help him feel hidden or safe. If anything, the subtle glow of the rainforest around him only made it possible to see all the slinking animals skittering around the ground. So far they’d kept their distance, but he didn’t know how long that would last.

He was trying to push this thought from his mind when he heard a branch snap from the shadows to his left. His muscles froze, as if he might melt into the shadows himself if he were still enough. But then there was another snap, closer this time. He knew there was no hope in being invisible.

Someone—or something—had found him.

SOFIA

AGES 8 TO 10

The three types of dragons, while all born of the great mother Quelia, varied based on the areas in the realm they lived. The dragons of the sea were known for their bright white scales and pale blue feathers, which blended in with the ocean surf. The cenote dragons were a pale silver along their scales with deep blue feathers lining their spines and necks. Lastly, the mountain dragons, needing to navigate the rocky peaks were a dark silver and black in their scales with pale silver feathers. While every dragon was unique in their exact powers and strengths, the great mother blessed the dragons with the ability to manipulate the waters of Wueco, from the sea and rivers to the water in the very air. There were even accounts of dragons able to pull the energy from the moon and stars themselves, creating fire in the sky and bringing it crashing down onto the earth.

-In Praise of Dragons and Monsters by Maria Nunes

The day after Sofia was whipped for her fight defending Mina, Ms. Garcia pulled her off latrine duty completely. She was shown around the second floor of the manor and handed a bucket of caustic liquid and strips of fabric made of a nicer material than the dress she wore. Ms. Garcia decided that hiding her away alone in empty rooms was a safer option than trying to get her to cooperate with the other staff members. Sofia learned to scrub, shine, and polish, and new muscles were left aching at night as her shoulders and forearms continued to grow and strengthen.

Her duties left her with an independence that she savored and a silence she thrived in. There was no partner to watch her, no Liza to tell her she was doing it wrong, and no Mina to worry over. As long as her rooms along the second floor were scrubbed clean by the end of the day, Sofia was given her coins and left to run home. And it was this independence that led Sofia to a new type of freedom within her small world.

The library was on the second floor, a large room tucked behind two heavy mahogany doors with intricate carvings of beasts that were only whispered about at night.Dragons. But it was the wonders behind these doors that truly stole Sofia’s attention. She’d seen a few books scattered throughout the house or glimpsed in the doors of Dereyan homes, but behind those heavy doors was a world worth of books.

They lined every wall. Shelves stretched across the room holding even more books, creating secret nooks and shadowy corners. The shelves seemed to tower over her, mythical creatures in and of themselves that might swoop down and eat her. The first few days of cleaning in the room, she tiptoed cautiously around, ready to flee if need be, but over time she became more comfortable with the feel of the rag sliding across the wood shelves, and she’d take a moment to run her fingers along the leather and paper of the books. Some spines were drawn with gold and others worn down to nothing but a bit of torn parchment. Some had symbols that she only vaguely recognized from the few times she’d seen the king’s tongue written down. Others were written in symbols she recognized with a thrill from a single time when she was five cycles old.

She’d found an old children’s book tucked at the bottom of her mother’s trunk, nearly falling apart with age. She had begged her mother to read it to her, but her mother had only gone pale and given her an hour lecture about privacy and responsibility. She’d burned the book in their hearth in front of Sofia that night, face pale and eyes watery, but lips pressed in a firm line.

It had been written in dragon-tongue. The king had never been able to eradicate the language completely, too many Dragonborn unable to pick up the smooth consonants of the king’s tongue. He’d ordered all writings in the original language turned over to the crown and destroyed. Perhaps it hadn’t been purposeful; it made it all the more easy to ban Dragonborn’s reading and writing a few cycles later. And over the cycles, generation by generation, even the spoken language was dying—fewer and fewer Dragonborn parents teaching it to their children, preferring they learn the king’s tongue to better blend into society.