Agitated, Silver gripped Nebekker’s pendant, wishing it held the information she sought.
Hiyyan seemed to understand, and she felt warm waves coursing through his body in response.
Silver sat up in excitement. This was new and unexpected. Was his temperature linked to his emotions? She wanted to test it out.
“Do you like the river fish?” Silver asked him. In response, he sent a different kind of signal to her. The waves were shorter and quicker. His body temperature was still warm. “Hmm. That feels like a dance! How about … Do you want to fly?”
The waves intensified. And they seemed rounded, the best word Silver could think of to describe them. Like the waves were music, twirling at the very end. Hiyyan’s body grew so warm that steam rose off his skin.
“Do you like Brajon?” Silver asked with a giggle.
The waves slowed a bit, and Hiyyan’s hot skin cooled back into a mild warmth. Silver laughed.
“Okay, so you’re mostly neutral on Brajon. I don’t think his feelings would be hurt, since he feels the same about you. He thinks you’re just an oversized lizard.”
The Aquinder swooped his head around to look Silver square in the face with a grimace. Silver laughed again. Then she narrowed her eyes.
“What do you think about Sagittaria Wonder?”
At her name, Hiyyan’s skin turned ice-cold. His waves were erratic, with no discernible pattern. Even his breathing was short and stuttering.
“Okay,” Silver said. She rubbed his scales. “It’s okay. Me too, Hiyyan.”
So heat was good; cold was bad. Long, rolling waves were good; short, erratic ones were bad. But what about …
“Show me,” Silver whispered, “something in your heart.”
Silver closed her eyes and waited. Hiyyan had done it before. He’d planted images in her mind earlier—she knew he had.
There was only darkness behind her lids for a long time. But just as Silver was about to give up, light flickered in the corners of her eyes. The cavern back at the oasis. Hiyyan, the smallest he’d ever been, and Kirja. Her big body was curled around the baby Aquinder, and they both sighed contentedly.
Another figure entered the scene. Nebekker, Silver thought, but no. It was a girl.
It was her.
Silver grinned and rested her head against the curve of Hiyyan’s neck.
This time, Silver tried to send a vision of her own. One of a hoped-for future. Her mother, her father, Brajon, and all their family surrounding Silver and Hiyyan. She pictured herself climbing on Hiyyan’s back and the Aquinder racing across the Jaspaton cliffs, unfurling his wings and taking flight just as they reached the edge of the city. Silver gasped with delight, then she and Hiyyan bubbled over with giggles. The feeling of soaring filled their hearts near to bursting. To the side, Nebekker rode Kirja. They were free, and they were safe.
Silver smiled and opened her eyes. Hiyyan tucked his head under her arm, and he sent the softest, soothing waves of warmth to her. He’d seen the vision. Silver pressed her palm to her chest. She had never felt so connected to Hiyyan before, and she didn’t want it to end.
“I promise I’m going to do everything I can to get your mother back. And then we’re going to make my vision come true. Freedom and racing and—”
“Silver!” The sound of Brajon’s voice broke the spell.
“I’m here,” Silver yelled back. “Come on,” she said to Hiyyan. “Let’s go. We shouldn’t leave Brajon alone for too long.”
As they neared Brajon, Silver sniffed the air. It was richer than before, full of not just the scents of the cave but also the scents of food and homes and bodies and travelers from far foreign shores. It was increasingly metallic and animal, layered with perfumes and spices.
Calidia. That must mean they were close!
Silver took another deep breath through her nose, but the scents were gone. She realized she wasn’t detecting the smells through her nose but through her mind.
“You can smell the city, can’t you?” she said to Hiyyan. “And through you, I can sense them, too. Just like earlier, when I heard the desert foxes rattling in the caves. Does that mean we’re getting close to Calidia?”
She was filled with Hiyyan’s waves of warmth. Silver felt newly energized knowing they were closing in on Calidia. And newly nervous.
NINETEEN
Silver left Hiyyan there to fish the river while she went back to join Brajon and share the good news that they were getting close.
She paced impatiently as she drank her stew, lost in thought. The river roared a few feet away. As they traveled, the river would get wider, then narrower, then wider again. Here, the river was fat and rushing, as though knowing the seas—its final home—were close. Silver thought about the northern mountains where the water originated. Back in Jaspaton, the mountains were just a blur of gray on the far horizon, but the tops were covered in snow all year long and the lower valleys, she was told, were bursting with life. Someday, Silver and Hiyyan would fly to them. Silver would see snow for the first time in her life.
A strange sound reached Silver’s ears.
Silver held herself as still and tall as the cliffs of Jaspaton.
Rattle, rattle.
Brajon looked up from his stew, his eyes wary. He had heard it, too.
“The foxes,” Silver breathed. But if it was them, why were her hands trembling?
Rattle, rattle.
She tossed the remainder of her stew in the river and tucked her cup in her bag. “Brajon, we have to go. Now.”
For once, Brajon didn’t question her. Silver swung her pack over her shoulder and felt for the weight of her purse at her hip, as she always did. Still full of jewels. The stolen jewels, Silver thought with a pang of guilt.
The cousins began to walk, Silver’s neck hairs on end. From Brajon’s rushed walking, she could tell he was unsettled, too.
“Hold on. I’m going to call Hiyyan,” Silver whispered.
Silver closed her eyes, attempting to send an image to Hiyyan, but she stumbled on a rock and fell to her knees.
Rattle, rattle.
Rattle, rattle.
As Brajon helped her up, the sound came faster.
“Let’s run.”
“Run? All the way to Calidia?” Brajon got a good look at Silver’s face and bit off his words. “Okay, let’s go.”
As the cousins broke into a jog, Silver sent Hiyyan a feeling of fear and an image of all three of them running.
Hiyyan popped into the main cave, slurped down the fish half dangling from his mouth, and burped. He knelt down without needing further instruction.
“Brajon … get on,” Silver panted as she scrambled onto her water dragon’s back. “Hiyyan, get us to Calidia!”
With a roar, the water dragon ran.
BY THE TIME Silver stopped feeling like something terrible was after them, her hair was plastered to her forehead and the caverns had narrowed again.