“My brothers and sisters will come,” Clay said. “I think. If they know I’m here. Umber was telling me he hardly knows any history, and his reading’s not so great. He’d love to learn more.”
“We should ask Webs to be one of the teachers,” Sunny said. “Now that he’s all recovered — I mean, whatever else you guys think of him, you have to admit he was a good history teacher. And he can’t go home to the Kingdom of the Sea. Coral’s never going to forgive him, even if she lets all the other Talons come back one day.”
“I vote yes. I’d be happy to finally get him out of my rainforest,” Glory said. “Much as he would clearly prefer to stay in bed eating fruit forever.” She flicked her tail, turning orange around her ears. “Kinkajou and Tamarin will want to come, for sure. They need real teachers, not the scraps of time I have for them. I’ll send some others, as long as you promise they’ll still get their afternoon sun time.”
“Don’t forget Mightyclaws,” Deathbringer suggested. “And that little NightWing whose mother hid her egg in the rainforest.”
“Moonwatcher,” Glory said, nodding. “Poor little nervous dragonet.”
“And my sisters!” Tsunami said. “I bet I could get Mother to send Anemone and Auklet — although then we might have to let Queen Coral visit, like, pretty much every day.”
“Wow,” Sunny said. “They all survived. All these dragons we care about. Isn’t that amazing? I mean, except Dune and Kestrel.” She looked down at her talons.
“And Viper,” Fatespeaker added.
“And my father,” Tsunami said quietly. Sunny reached over and twined her tail around Tsunami’s.
“The other great thing about this school idea,” Sunny said after a moment, “is that this way we can all stay together. I mean … if you want to. If you want to go back to your families, you can, but we’ll always have a place where we can be together.”
“I’d rather be with you all than in the Mud Kingdom,” Clay said readily, “especially if I can get Umber and the others here.”
“Same,” Tsunami said. “I’m afraid if I go home, Mother will somehow get a harness on me, or at least want to watch me every moment of the day. And it’ll be easier to learn Aquatic here than in the Deep Palace, where there would be a million eyes on me all the time and hardly any chances to come up to the surface to talk.” She shuddered. “Worse, no one could understand me. How would I boss anyone around?”
Sunny giggled and Tsunami shot her a grin.
“I have to stay in the rainforest,” Glory said. “But it’s not far. I could visit all the time.”
Starflight didn’t say anything, but they all knew he had no attachment to the NightWing village that was being built in the rainforest. His father, Mastermind, was in prison — or the closest thing the RainWings could come up with anyway — until Glory could figure out how to try him for his crimes. And Fierceteeth was still in the Scorpion Den. Sunny reminded herself that she had to talk to Thorn about her and Strongwings … once they figured out what they wanted to do with them.
“Oh, I know! Peril!” Clay said suddenly. “Peril could be one of the students. She’s got nowhere else to go, and we’d know how to take care of her.”
Sunny caught the look that went between Glory and Tsunami. They all knew they owed Peril Clay’s life, but it was still hard to feel entirely safe around her.
“She really doesn’t know where Scarlet is?” Tsunami asked. “Isn’t that a little weird, that she rescued Scarlet, and then Scarlet just vanished on her?”
“Peril’s out looking for her now,” Clay said. “She said Scarlet was appearing in her dreams all the time before the rescue, but she hasn’t come back since.”
“Maybe we could use our dreamvisitor to look for her?” Sunny suggested. “Except then she’ll see us, too, which makes me so nervous. I wish we’d found the Obsidian Mirror.” She’d gone back to the outskirts of the Scorpion Den to look for it, but as she’d feared, every sand dune looked the same, and a day of digging had turned up nothing. Either someone else had found it — which was also a worrying thought — or the desert had swallowed it up.
“It is disturbing,” Deathbringer said, frowning up at the sky. “She’s going to come for you sometime, especially you,” he said to Glory.
Glory shrugged. “I’ll let you worry about that,” she said.
“Oh, thanks,” he said. “You know I will.”
“Fine by me,” she said, and despite their sarcastic words, the look they gave each other made Tsunami roll her eyes at Sunny.