“Careful, Alex,” Pan said. “Step back a moment.”
Alex stepped back as a roar and a tiny burst of flames shot from the orange dragon’s mouth. The dragon smiled sleepily at the mage, and he smiled back. Pan spoke to her, and she hopped back into the water with a splash.
In turn, Alex examined each dragon and drew elaborate sketches of it. He even drew one so perfectly and distinctly that it sprang from the page in 3-D and floated above the notebook, just like a 3-D doorway. He’d never done that before—he didn’t even know it was possible. He couldn’t wait to tell Ms. Octavia about it. It would make a great model for the preliminary design work.
When Alex had collected scales from each dragon and sketched and colored in everything he could, he pressed the 3-D drawing back into the notebook and closed it, and said good-bye to the five young dragons.
Pan brought him back up to the top of the island, and the two descended the other side. Once in the sea, Pan sped over the water with Alex on her back, both of them silent and contemplating. One sorrowful, one stumped, but both determined.
When Pan reached Artimé not long after dawn, Alex dismounted and stifled a yawn. “This is our first priority now,” Alex promised her. “But I have to be completely honest with you about my abilities. I don’t know if I can actually do this. And even if I can, I’m not sure I can make wings that will work for the dragons’ entire lives. They may only be useful while they remain this size.”
Pan bowed to Alex. “I am grateful for your efforts to help my family, even if you find no success at all,” she said. “We will survive somehow. Dragons always do.”
Magic All Around
While Alex slept and dreamed about dragon wings, the rest of Artimé was doing business as usual, or so it appeared. With the mention of ships at the neighboring island, Claire Morning decided it was important to continue Magical Warrior Training during Florence’s absence as a precaution, and to keep the spell casters in the know about new spells. Today her class was made up of the more experienced fighters, including Warbler children Scarlet and Thatcher, who had by now graduated from their beginner’s training.
Working alongside Claire was Lani Haluki, who was explaining some of the most recent nonlethal spell components and how they worked. She also reminded the warriors of the two deadly spells: heart attack, which required three components to put an end to an average human-size enemy, and the single scatterclip, which was harmless on its own, but deadly when coupled with the right phrase. There would be no practicing for these two, and only those who wished to have that amount of power carried them. Lani reminded the class that it was Artimé’s policy since the days of Mr. Today, that each person must think long and hard about whether she wanted to have that responsibility.
Observing the training today were Aaron and some nonmagical friends: Kaylee, Sky, and Crow, who was looking after Thisbe and Fifer along the water’s edge. Sky sat in a chair under a tree a short distance away, reading a book, while Aaron, Kaylee, and Crow all lay on their stomachs, elbows in the sand, hands cupping their chins. Aaron and Kaylee lounged together, and Crow was a few feet away, perched sideways so he could see the training and watch the twins at the same time.
Kaylee and Aaron, both feeling a bit like outsiders in Artimé, had fallen into a friendship of convenience. Aaron wasn’t accustomed to having friends at all, so he was always awkward with people until he relaxed. And Kaylee was boisterous and playful—the complete opposite of Aaron, or so it seemed. Yet it was her large personality that relaxed him, and the two got along somehow.
Crow eyed them suspiciously from time to time, but they didn’t seem to be romantically involved at all, which was a relief. He was tired of watching other people kissing, including his own sister. He preferred a more anonymous kind of admiration over outward displays of affection, and he was exercising that anonymous admiration now as he watched Scarlet. He studied the intense look on her face that never broke when she was casting spells. He appreciated her long blond hair swishing over her shoulders when she followed through on her spell casting.
Scarlet stood next to Thatcher, who had the tallest hair Crow had ever seen. Most of the time Scarlet stayed focused on her task. But once, between exercises, she and Thatcher laughed together at something Ms. Morning said to them, which Crow couldn’t hear. Crow frowned, even though he knew Scarlet and Thatcher had been friends for a long time.