The red dragon pounced. That was what it looked like. It leaped up in the air, gaining extra altitude, somehow flying even higher than it had, as if launching from a solid base. Then it fell over the apex of its arc. But it didn’t spread its wings, it didn’t try to halt its descent, it didn’t catch its fall. At the last moment, when it was right on top of the aircraft, it reached out with its hind legs and landed hard, claws digging into steel, scrabbling for purchase around wings, engines, canopy, rivets, and seams, whatever it could catch.
The jet fell. The dragon’s weight slammed into it, and the pilot lost control. The plane flipped sideways and plummeted. Engines flamed to life as the pilot tried to regain control. Kay tried to imagine what he was saying over the radio. She wondered if it was Captain Conner.
Spinning now, the two tangled together, the dragon’s tail coiled around the craft’s body like a snake, his fanged jaws closed over the canopy. The jet straightened, wobbled—then the dragon lurched, stuck out a wing, tipping the plane off balance again, and they went back to tumbling.
If he had let go, if he had let the aircraft escape, they both could have survived. Maybe he couldn’t let go. Maybe he was locked in, stuck, trapped—too dizzy to think. Or maybe he just wouldn’t.
Artegal screamed his own fierce jet-engine roar and plunged after them, wings flapping, reaching toward speed. But it was too late; he was too far behind. And he couldn’t have done anything. Jet and dragon together plunged into the treetops of the forest, and a moment later a fireball exploded, rolling, cutting a path of flames through the trees. The sound was a different kind of roar, a rush of fire. A moment after that, a wave of heat passed over them. A thick, black tower of smoke, like the one they’d followed to Captain Conner’s crash, rose high over the forest.
Kay was crying. Her nose was running. She couldn’t think. She would never get that image out of her mind.
The other jet climbed, circled, then sped south, back toward its base.
Artegal lurched forward, flying fast, but without purpose or destination. He dipped, swooped, and finally fell into a pattern that made a wide circle around the place where the jet and dragon had crashed. She didn’t look down toward the fire burning below. She didn’t want to see what was there.
The other two dragons, the green ones who were left, circled with Artegal. They called to one another across the distance with roars and whistles. Kay wished she knew what they were saying. It may as well have been Latin. Were they older dragons? Could they remember a time when people and dragons worked together? If so, would they understand, or would seeing Artegal and Kay together only make them angry?
She almost thought she could understand them—the roars became deeper, the whistles more insistent, angrier, maybe. The green dragons loomed above Artegal. She could imagine them plunging down on her in the same way the red one had landed on the plane.
Artegal stretched his wings and wheeled away. South, back toward the border. He flapped his wings and stretched out, the way he flew when he wanted speed. Kay looked over her shoulder—the other dragons didn’t follow. They looped, soared, dived, and watched them fly away, but continued marking the spot where the red dragon had fallen.
When they came within sight of the river, Artegal didn’t dive, but slowly descended until he skimmed the treetops, the tips of the pines brushing and waving at his passage. Sailing on outstretched wings, he landed, touching his feet to the ground, leaning forward on his wings, and settling his body to earth.
They stayed there, still, a long time. Artegal rested, catching his breath, head hung low on a curved neck. She lay flat, trying to understand what had happened, trying to think of what to do next. It was easier simply to lie here.
Finally, because it probably annoyed Artegal having her hanging off him, she braced her weight to put slack in the harness and unclipped herself. She slid down Artegal’s shoulder to the ground.
He turned slightly, only changing the angle of his head, to look at her. His eyes were shining. His mouth was long, frowning. They gazed at each other for a long time. Kay didn’t know what to say. She was still crying, softly this time, tears falling, freezing on her cheek.
“Now I’ve lost someone, too,” Artegal said.
“Who—who was he?” she managed to stammer.
“Brother’s mentor.”
It wasn’t quite an uncle. She wondered what the relationship meant to a dragon, how important someone like that would be. She didn’t understand. How could she grieve with him if she didn’t understand? How could they even talk?
“I’m sorry,” she said.
With a sigh, he tipped his nose to the ground. He’d never done that before. He’d brought his head low; he’d looked her in the eye at her level. But she’d never seen him rest his head, as if it were too heavy to hold up.
She wondered if dragons cried.
Hesitating, she touched his face, the narrow ridge of his snout that ran between his eyes. He blinked, left his eyes half closed, and nudged himself closer. Then she was hugging him, wrapping her arms around the narrow part of his neck, behind his head.
“Was this our fault?” she said. “Did they fight because of us?”
His breaths were sighs, like he was tired. “Would have happened. If not now, then later.”
“What are we going to do?”
He shuddered slightly—a shrug, almost. She stepped away so he could look at her more easily. “If we can, we should make something of this. Already too many sacrifices. This will make it worse. Before, it was two warriors shaking their claws at each other. Now, there will be armies. Not skirmishes, but battles.”
She could see it, because the Dracopolis book had pictures of it: a swarm of dragons filling the sky, a tapestry of wings. Below them, a sea of human beings with siege engines. Now, when the humans had jets and bombs, how much worse would it be?
How did you stop such a thing? Too many sacrifices, he’d said.
Artegal looked up, studied the sky, as if he had heard something that she had not. “We should go. Quickly. They’ll find us. Catch us. Can’t let that happen.”
It seemed inevitable at this point. Why fight it? She wanted to throw a tantrum. Stand up and just scream for them to stop it—why couldn’t they all just stop it?
Maybe she ought to try it. What was there to lose? Herself and her mother. A friendship. She undid his harness, helped him pull it off his back, and began coiling it. She had a weird idea.
“Artegal?”
He’d been studying the sky again, but snorted and looked at her. They’d discussed the book. She’d brought translations to share, and he’d told her what he’d been able to translate. They’d studied the extra sheet of paper tucked in the back and tried to understand what it meant—a treasure map, Kay thought; a lost cave of dragons still in hiding, Artegal thought. In Greenland? she wondered. But they hadn’t talked about everything in the book, and so she asked.
“The Dracopolis book talks about virgin sacrifices. About how, in the old days, villages would give virgins to the dragons to make them stop attacking. Did that actually work?”
He tilted his head—a sign of curiosity. “I think it did. It was a sign of what people were willing to give for peace.”
She swallowed a lump in her throat. “Did the dragons actually eat the girls who were sacrificed?”
“I think it depended on the dragon. Some were kept, like pets. At least that’s what our stories say.”
This was grim. She could understand the knights coming after the dragons, willing to fight to stop such a thing. But she could also understand being desperate enough to sacrifice one person to save everyone, to stop a war.
One last question, one that should have occurred to Kay a long time ago. It was the big overriding question of her life, at least according to Tam.